Torture versus collateral damage; the bigger evil?

[carl]

First things first.

Like I said, you will get farther with American audiences if you don't use the snooty European approach like the following.

Come back with that when all people in the U.S. have a health insurance and when there's no museum showing human and dinosaur puppets in the same diorama any more.
We left those issues in the 19th century, where they belong.
(Adding more examples wouldn't make it prettier.)

That scores points mainly with other Europeans. Those bumptious bumpkin Americans might point out some salient events in European history in return.

income + tax rate = revenues.

Halve the tax rate and you'll ceteris paribus only have increased revenues with more than doubled incomes. Likewise with other changes of tax rates.

Ceteris paribus...ok repair to the internet...all other things being equal...well why didn't you say so? That is just the point, all other things won't be equal. Human nature decrees that all other things won't be equal.

No, income + tax rate does not equal revenues. 5 + 5% doesn't equal anything. It doesn't make any sense.

Look, discussing counterfactuals is only fun for so long.
Feel free to read some more on the subject (such as studies), and feel even more free to take into account that there's an economic cycle, tax base and deduction changes play a role as well and taxes don't exist in isolation, but are interacting with other regulation and economic activities. Don't forget inflation, either.

I get all that. Remember too that in the 70s we had stagflation. Then Reagan came along and Voila! We didn't.

You should also get your figures right. The 70% top marginal rate was lowered in a 1981 bill ( Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981).

Yes, being off by a year is a fatal flaw isn't it?

Meanwhile, feel free to show the boom in tax revenue in %GDP, that is without lots of GDP change and inflation influences - for I see an income tax revenue slump in the early 80's here.

If the tax rate cut causes an increase in the GDP, you can have an increase in revenue while at the same time reducing the % of revenue to GDP. You spend revenue, not %. I figure that low tax revenue as a % of GDP is a good thing. More money in the pocket of them that made it.

Besides,

"There are not only horrible policies, but also discussions about horrible policies between big lie believers and the unconvinced. The conflict goes on and on and on and the end result is that the U.S. is still discussing or unable to fix problems which have been closed cases in many European countries for between 20 and 110 years.
I suppose these discussions and policies could not be sustained if there were more interactions with non-anglophone countries"

was meant as a factual statement.
I don't bend or omit facts to please. I'm no entertainer.

Saying it don't make it so.