It’s stunningly obvious, we should be investing in raising our revenue by engaging some short term spending in long term investments.

A simple graphic to show you how the recovery came about.

The Republican party of history was much better than the right-wing ideological mess that the GOP is today.

If our world were ruled by rational, informed decisions, the LIBOR scandal would serve as the final nail that would forever end the plague of deregulation

Some good came out of the housing bust and the securitization collapse. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not celebrating it. Overall it sucked big time. Lots of good, hardworking people lost their jobs and homes. The bust stuck us with more problems than Rick Santorum would have speaking to a women’s rights rally hosted by Ellen and Planned Parenthood.

Having wealthy people is useful; but we need enough money in the hands of average consumers to support that wealth. Concentrate too much of the available wealth into too few hands and you get less ability to consume which means less effective demand.

The private share of payrolls under President Obama rises a bit above the private share under President Reagan. So if President Obama was a socialist as alleged, that’d make President Reagan a socialist

In honor of the GOP’s idol, President Reagan, lets take a look at the effect of his tax cuts for the top marginal rate. When we looked at the course of the past 80 years as a set, it looks as if there isn’t a particularly clear correlation between top marginal tax rates and GDP growth.

There’s a common myth out there that goes, ‘the Great Depression was finally ended by World War 2′. It has some slight variations, such as ‘the Great Depression lasted 15 years’ or even ‘the market didn’t recover until govt spending stopped’. All of these are complete misunderstandings of history if not outright lies.

What came first, the wealthy or the building blocks of wealth? This is no idle ‘chicken or the egg’ question. Major political players base real policies with serious impact on their own answer to the question. What if most of them are getting it wrong? What if getting it wrong could wreck the system and ransack wealth?

Mr. Bartlett called for tax increases on the wealthy. That’s major. That’s fresh facing of reality from one of those who sold us the lower taxes idea in the first place. Even Bruce Bartlett — an architect of Reaganomics — has apparently seen the light. Given enough such calls for rationality, maybe we can get past the ‘starve the beast’ insanity and start doing what needs to be done.

Which would work better, the Keynesian system or the Austrian system, if they were used by separate homeowners in regards to maintaining their respective properties?

I care about the things taxes that taxes pay for, which I why I’m OK with taxation.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of President Reagan’s birth this year, lets take a look at the effect of his tax cuts for the top marginal rate. When we looked at the course of the past 80 years as a set, it looks as if there isn’t a particularly clear correlation between top marginal tax rates and GDP growth.

Let’s see whether we can prove that higher taxes are bad for the economy by charting the top marginal tax rate versus the % growth in GDP for each year. If higher taxes stifle the economy, we should see an increase in growth each time we lower tax rates. And likewise, if the theory holds, we’ll see a drop in growth each time we increase the tax rate. Does that pan out?

Regardless of which inflation-adjusted measure we use, the answer is still the same: Overall, the past 80 years show us a thorough lack of clear correlation between the top marginal tax rate and GDP growth. The data’s closest hint of a relationship derives from the slightly more robust average GDP growth back when the top rates were higher, but that closest hint isn’t close enough to be sure of an ideal rate.

According to the deficit-hawk’s version of conventional wisdom, any time the government borrows it must be bad for the nation. The small government zealot goes even further and declares that anytime the govt spends at all, it detracts from private enterprise. These ideas have overtaken much of our national debate. [...]