Cant read a chart either can you. I count 7 periods before Bush cut taxes.  That is not 7 years, 7 periods.  The last being just before Clinton jacked them up.  You are still wrong.  Do you want the actual link so you can verify the numbers (without the hearts)?

Well I guess I must be blind sir.  As I look at YOUR chart, I see the 1920's and the first few years in the 1930's that the highest tax bracket is at 25% roughly.  Then in '32 it goes up to 63%, and doesnt come down below that level until the 1980's and reagan.  Then in the late 80's bush 1 lowers it to the low 30's.  Then Clinton raises it to 39.6(a steal for the rich even still).  How and where do you see 7 periods in that chart where the top tax rate was below the 3 times I listed.

Blind?  Perhaps.  Or just can express yourself properly.  You did not say decades, you said periods.  A period is an indeterminate amount of time that is started and stopped based upon an event.  Since we are talking tax rates, then we have to look at the periods of when they changed.  Not decades.

Lesson #2.  A couple is 2, a few is 3 or more.  2 years (actually 1 since 30 is in the 20s decade, just as 2000 was the end of the 20th century - there is no year 0) is not a few.

SO I see NO decades where the rate was below the current rate for the entire decade (but then it wont be this entire decade either since it was not there in 2001-2, and thanks to Obama wont be there in 09 or 10 either).

Any way you stretch the truth, you are wrong.  So go ahead, turn in your liberal card, get a man card and admit it.

When you start paying the top rate (which after the state taxes could be and probably is in the blue states, over 50%), you can call it a steal for you. But you can only say you (or the government) is stealing it from the rich.  And hardly say that they are not paying their share.  The only ones that can say that are those paying the highest rate and then saying they are not paying enough (but there is no law against paying more than you owe - but as all hypocrites, I dont see liberals ante-ing up the extra either).

Seriously your talking symantics here....dont give your definitions or some books definitions of what a few or couple is.  You know what I meant and I am right as to what I said.  3 periods or time frames(whatever you wish to call it) as I have previously listed and described in detail where taxes on the rich for the federal tax(lets stay on subject here federal not state) was lowered(3 lowest since it was established) by long presiding republican president(s)(during thier time periods) and we got 3 very bad economic results.  There is no disputing that.

No.  Semantics is when you say "10 year period" versus decade (both very similar, but not the same).

You did not say that, nor is it true unless you decide to not use tax rates as your deciding factor.  If you look at the chart, there are 7 periods of tax rates lower than 2003.

Yes there is since your statement does not match the facts.  The lowering of tax rates does not have a direct correlation with bad economic results.  Indeed the only one that does is a very minor one (from 25-24%), so it tends to blow your conclusion out of the water.  If we look at when rates were signigicantly lowered (24, 64, 82, 88, 03) we see periods of great prosperity ensued.  Your conclusion is not backed up by any observable data.

Yes it does, oh sure not right away, but as you see continued low rates DOES adversely affect the country(in conjunction with deregulation).  You just cant stand to admit it. 

And in my statement I did specifically say the 3 lowest periods of tax rates led to 3 of the most significant recession/depression/financial crisis of the last 100 years(roughly).

I understand that seeing your idea of low taxes on the rich stimulating the economy not working in obvious terms kills the whole conservative economic plan, but its right there and its undeniable.  3 extended time frames of the lowest tax rates on the wealthy and 3 times we wound up in chaos(economically). 

I just dont see what is so hard to understand here.  I think you are just trying to dance around the meat and potatos of this whole thing and hope I go away. 

That is like saying birth causes death - just not right away.  Sorry, you blew the baby on that one.  The money does not cause the economic downturns.  It causes prosperity as we have seen.  But the economy cannot stay up forever, and as we see, when you screw the pooch, you get bad times, and if you screw it hard, it gets worse.  The worst recessions and the depression were caused not by tax cuts, but by bad government policy.

We already have a test tube case of this.  The US versus USSR.  SImilar in size as should have been the economies.  But as we know, the USSR never matched up to the US.  WHy?  Government control of all.  Sure no one starved (just beaten and imprisoned in gulags - and killed when the whim took the government), but the difference is that the US allowed the market, not the government to decide.  It is not perfect, but it works better than any alternative.

Yes especially in times when taxes on the rich are left low as history has shown thanks again for proving me right.

my point exactly we agree if you keep screwing the economy by giving to the rich they just keep most of it and the middle class and poor suffer.

Right and one of those MAJOR policies was taxes and complete deregulation and non reregulation once business found away around the old regulations.  Which I might add happened during the 3 aforementioned time froames.

OR when taxes are kept high.  YOu cherry pick again with that statement.  Taxes on the rich are a dissincentive to investment, but hardly a cause of recessions. (by your logic, we should have been in a recession or depression since the inception of the country to 1913.  But then you see the stupidity of trying to say that heart attacks are caused by progress).

Not even close.  The first error is the word give.  A classic mistake by liberals.  Nothing has been given to the rich ever.  Only less taken.  And as I just pointed out, taking less from them for the first 150 years did not seem to have caused the US to fold up and disappear.  Your logic is flawed.  Second, by not taking (note theword) from the rich, you deprive the middle class and poor of nothing.  Since nothing was taken from them, they are not deprived.  Third, everyone suffers.  It is called life.  You cannot eliminate suffering.  And those that attempt to are not all there.  You can (through charitible means) attempt to mitigate the suffering, but you putting your had in my pocket and taking my money is not a demonstration of your charity. Only that you have no charity within you.

No.  Again you would make a great communist, but a lousy economist (and yes the 2 are mutually exclusive).  You have only proven that your idea of charity is for others to give, but not you.  And you have proven that you cannot develop an hypothesis and then back it up with facts.  Sadly, all you have proven is that you do know how to cherry pick.  Your own hypothesis is blown out of the water by the very facts you try to twist to support your thesis, but not by the facts themselves.

I agree I dont think that the rich should be taxed at the levels we saw years ago...60% or higher.  But I think that a reasonable rate would be 40-50.  As compared to history that is pretty decent.

Wrong.  The whole idea of what you advocate is that the reason the government taxes rich people less is that they CREATE something for the middle class and poor....JOBS.  When this doesnt happen(And once again in history is doesnt) they are deprived.  About the suffering why cant we cure it?  Funny I always thought that americans could do anything we put our minds too.  They said we couldnt reach the moon before 1970 but we did.  They said LBJ couldnt lower the poverty rate from 24% to the roughly 12% he did when he left office.  They said we couldnt harness the power of the atom but we did.  Why cant we cure world hunger or at least our own countries.  Why cant we have an abundence of good jobs that people can at least support themselves on.  We can still have rich people, and upper middle class, we just raise the bar.  Its called vision and I think many on this board and in our country have lost it.

I find this repeated statement funny as you are the one who has yet to really deal with what I brought forth other than to say that it was failed government policies.  By the way who was in charge before these time periods that you said they were failed government policies?  Seem to me that it was republicans.  1921-1933--3 different republican presidents, 1981-1993--2 republican presidents, and finally 2001-present--1 republican president.  So whos screwing the pooch now?(sorry I threw that in for effect, I still try to keep some levity here I hope you still do understand that about me)

When you add all levels of taxation, the marginal rate of the rich is already above 50%.  SO I guess you agree it should not be raised.

Oh?  And where did the jobs come from?  The poor?  On the contrary, history shows that it indeed does.  The poor do not create jobs.  The poor take jobs.

Man cannot achieve perfection, and to think that we can is arrogance beyond belief.

The poverty rate was not 24% nor did Johnson's Great Society lower it appreciably.

I have dealt each of your points and refuted them.  I have attributed failed government policies to many of them since that is what the debate was.  The "poverty" (there is no poverty in America) rate was in the low teens before Johnson's massive expenditures, and it has not varied by more than a couple of points (less than actually) since then.  No matter how much money you poor down the drain, you cannot change the shape of a Bell curve - because by definition that is what it is.

Imagine a society of 100 people and a simple poverty line definition of "makes less than 50% of the average".

25 people make 100,000 Garfunkels per year.

25 people make 70,000 Garfunkels per year.

25 people make 50,000 Garfunkels per year.

And 25 people make 40,000 Garfunkels per year.

50% of the people in the society are poor.

And whose fault is that?

Garfunkles.

Garfunkles are the root of all evil?????

no my reference is to income tax only.

Actually history shows that jobs are best created when the middle class is stong and has good purchasing power, rich people do not help this cause, it starts from the bottom up.

Myabe not but should we not strive to it.  Or at least get as close to we can as curing it, that is the american way.  Tell us we cant do something and then we do it.

Right the poor policies of conservative republican presidents, at least part of which(and in my opinion most of which) had to do with bad tax and regulation policies that let business run wild.

So was mine.

And no where in history can you find where the poor create jobs.  Nor the middle class.  However the middle class is necessary to buy the good produced (which does lead to job creation), but the poor is not really in the equation from a standpoint of driving GDP.  They never have and trying to make them the engine (as was done in 33-41) resulted in prolonging the recession/depression.  LIke it or not, they are swept along, not the engine of the economy.

Yes, and that is why I give to charity.  But you digging into my pocket to give to give to them is not your charity.  NOr is pouring money into a program that is proven not to make a difference (after all we have been doing it for 45 years and as you state, there has been no change).

Tough love is both tough and love, and sometimes that is what it takes.  Giving a man a fish is not as good as teaching the man to fish. 

That is your opinion, that is not what is supported by the facts.  The facts tend to demonstrate that when people are given a disincentive to produce (high tax rates) they produce less.  Just as Obama said that "all should benefit" from their work, so do the rich.  They think they should benefit as well, but taxing them so they do not, means they have no incentive to produce.

Isn't this more like middle up rather than bottom up?  But SINCE the middle are still ABOVE the poor this seems to contradict the whole 'bottom' up economics.

There are a lot of contradictions there, mostly from the historical perspective.  Namely that the poor has driven any economy.  They never have. If his premise is true, then the old USSR should have been the most powerful economy the world has ever seen (and with 1.2b people, China should be skunking us).  As we see, the old USSR isdead ,and china, when it started catering to its middle class (thus creating a purchasing class) have they started to creak out of the dark ages.

If there was even a TINY bit of truth here why aren't we then bailing out the homeless and giving them 750 Billion dollars to stimulate the economy?

Of course the poor don't build up the economy. How many studies and examples do we have to go through where a homeless person is given a bunch of money only to find them, 6 months later, homeless again because they squandered it.

If you want society to be better off, the best route is to get the government out of the way and let the people, rich, poor, middle class, strive to achieve the best of their ability.

I haven't posted for a long while and I come back I am glad there is a lot of non-sense out there.

Mooseplow (I'm not sure if you're going to read this), let me get this right you feel that the government should tax the wealthy in order that that money can be used to help less fortunate people, correct?

Dr Guy, is correct about the Great Depression. FDR (though most neonates think he was the President of Presidents) prolonged the depression with the help of congress. Hover, was just riding coattails of economical success. When the stock market crashed he started doing similar programs that FDR continued in his administration. What Dr. Guy was stating is what I call in very very layman's terms 'what goes up must come down'. FDR, taxed the rich heavily and extensively during the great depression, so from 1932 to 1945 income tax was very high for the rich. IF we look at 1917 to 1921 taxes were high as well, but also a war was going on during some of that time.

FDR's programs effectively help/solve/ save the U.S in the depression. I will say this that a lot of his programs we are still feeling the affects of, but very few of them were good at that current time (and some would argue that very few of them were good if that even today due to the impact of his programs we are still seeing).

I hear people all the time claiming that GW cut taxes for the most wealthy. I can't find that to be true. Looking at www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html Before the 2001 tax cuts, the richest 1% paid about 34% of all federal income taxes and by 2006 they were paying about 40%.

SO, Moosey the man who you speak ill of actually did what you been so boastfully for. Our govenment has shown countless times of how irresponsible it is with very large sums of money. I just use one example: Suha Arafat is? She was the wife of Yasser Arafat. Now what does she have to do with anything? She is in the top 10 wealthiest women in the world. Last time I checked the Palestinian leader didn't get paid that much.  That is OUR hard earned tax money that she has. Let me say this I know this first hand because I USED to work for the government.

One more thing Moosey, the Republicians did not control Congress during the Bush time unlike now how that the Democrat do have dominance.

Being neither Republician nor Democrat, it is never good when one (1) party controls everything. This will NOT be good for the next 4 years.

Government intervention has rarely been a good thing.

Correction to the above: FDR's programs DID NOT EFFECTIVELY solve/help/save the U.S in the depression.

YEAH OBAMA ALL THE WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!