The reason the deficit was hurt was because of overspending, specifically on interventionist foreign affairs, cold war efforts, and stupid and miserably failed "war on drugs". The actual revenue only decreased about 1%. Talking of the budget balance exclusively with respect to revenue and no respect to spending is about as stupid as it gets. The logical contortions you are making in a desperate attempt to cling to some degree of "correctness" on this topic is really pathetic. Have some class, take your medicine. LOL!!!
So really the 28% figure would decrease things even more, if ALL income were to be put under a single umbrella with a single rate over the 28% bracket, that would mean that capital gains taxes were REDUCED. Yet somehow this reduction would have somehow increased the ACTUAL rate to 50%?!
Before you weren't even aware of the second reagan tax cut, now you are trying to act like you knew about it the whole time, yet you had some other means of compensating for the other 22% Thanks for reinforcing my point again. ROFL!!! What a clown. Do you think anyone here (besides you) is stupid enough to buy that?
I am correct in every sense with regard to this topic. But more importantly, you are wrong, and you have a lesson to learn here. You can learn your lesson with grace, and admit to yourself that your position on this topic as well as your political and economic thinking in general are based on faulty logic, and false information. Much like the time when you were swearing by Cuba as being one of the better places to live south of the border (ROFL!!),. or countless other examples of you making a fool of yourself that I could cite (like when you had "people on the ground in Copenhagen" for the global warming summit, I think that will always be one of my personal favorites. OR you can squirm and whine and throw a little tantrum about it, with zero class and learn nothing. Then you can continue your existence as the laughing stock of whatever social circle you find yourself in. Now, I'm sure your poor wife has had similar things to say to you several times since you have started ruining her life, but maybe it will help hearing it from someone else... There are fundamental flaws in much of your thinking. Learn your lesson, do so with couth and grace. Be open minded about the fact that since you were so miserably wrong about this, and many other things, it's probably not that you keep turning down bumpy roads.... you have a flat tire... You're welcome...
] The effect was primarily a change in the composition of tax revenue, towards payroll and new investment, and away from higher earners and capital gains on existing investments,
with comparatively small effect on overall tax revenue: the changes "reduced the federal revenue share of GDP from 20.2 percent in fiscal 1981 to 19.2 percent in fiscal 1989," a 1% reduction.
Quote from bigdavediode:
Kind of, sort of, yes. The top marginal rate was 28%, but the bubble rate was implemented to push higher income earners to a flat 28% on ALL income, not just marginal income.
So you're technically correct, while being essentially wrong. But you are technically correct so I'm conceding the point. The reason you find this "claptrap" is because you rarely really grasp my posts.
Again, I'm more than willing to write "you're right, I'm wrong" and just restate my position as "tax rates before 1986."
But even then that would hurt the deficit -- we could go back to the good old Eisenhower tax rates and eliminate the deficit pretty quickly. That's fiscal conservatism.