Happy 10th Birthday, Bush Tax Cuts! You've been a failure in every conceivable way.

[QuintanarooBoy]

by Annie Lowrey, Slate

The massive Bush tax cuts mark their 10th birthday this week. Sadly, despite my best efforts to find something redeeming about them--honest!--there is little to celebrate. By nearly all of the metrics set out by President Bush himself, the cuts were a colossal failure.

In 2001, the Bush administration inherited a few years' worth of budget surpluses, so it decided to cut income tax rates, double the child-care credit, and sharply reduce the levies on investment income. The economy then slowed, even entering a brief recession. As a form of stimulus, the administration doubled down, expanding and hastening the 2001 changes. Bush promised that the tax cuts would do a whole lot more than put money in people's pockets—which, in fact, they did. He said they would "starve the beast," forcing Congress to reduce the size and scope of government. He promised they would increase the prosperity of all Americans. He also vowed: "Tax relief will create new jobs. Tax relief will generate new wealth. And tax relief will open new opportunities."

But the benefits mostly accrued to the rich, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The think tank reports that between 2001 and 2008, the bottom 80 percent of filers received about 35 percent of the cuts. The top 20 percent received about 65 percent—and the top 1 percent alone claimed 38 percent.

Then there's wealth. Put simply, the aughts were a decade of income stagnation: The tax cuts failed to bolster most taxpayers' earnings, even before the recession hit. Median real wages actually dropped from 2003 to 2007. Household income from business-cycle peak to business-cycle peak declined for the first time since tracking started in 1967. As documented by my colleague Timothy Noah in his series "The United States of Inequality," this did not hold true for the nation's billionaires and millionaires. Garden-variety high-wage earners saw their income go up. And incomes for the top 1 percent skyrocketed. For some people, obviously, the cuts "generated new wealth," in the president's phrase. But overall, inequality got worse.

Full article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2296578/

[RandomThoughts]

1. Although being modest is better.

One of my happiest memories, is even when only making 35K a year, I advocated for higher taxes.

[Scuba]

2. Are you kidding? They worked perfectly: destabilized the country, transferred...

...huge amounts of wealth to the already-wealthiest and crippled the American working family.


Just what the International Owner-Overlords wanted. They hate America and fear our Democracy.

[slipslidingaway]

3. knr and Welcome to DU :) n/t

[indepat]

4. Letting these ruinous tax cuts continue was humongous political and fiscal mistakes

imo. :patriot:

[RussBLib]

5. A failure in every way? Not

...not if you're one of the uber wealthy that made out like a bandit. Like Bush himself and so many more.