Yeh I know math can be boring

The yawn is from someone who has done the math many times over many years, bub.  I'm a Professional Engineer.

Just sayin....

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We will see when the April 2019 treasury numbers come out, I guess.  
Making our entitlements solvent is extremely simple if you either raise taxes or cut benefits. What is lacking in Washington is political will, not the ability to do the math.  Also most in Washington don't think the math as it stands today will lead to an actual crisis.  I don't think I ever claimed to have done the math over my lunch break.

It's not binary, though you are limited to those choices by your belief in your own correctness.

What's not binary?
April 2019 tax receipts are either going to be higher or lower than April 2018 tax receipts. Two possibilities.  Most of you have staked out the position that they will be higher.  If they are, you will say, "Look I was right and you were wrong." If they are not, most of you will say, "well, that was unexpected, but there was this other economic factor, see, and really I'm still right".

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

It's not binary, though you are limited to those choices by your belief in your own correctness.

What's not binary?
April 2019 tax receipts are either going to be higher or lower than April 2018 tax receipts. Two possibilities.  Most of you have staked out the position that they will be higher.  If they are, you will say, "Look I was right and you were wrong." If they are not, most of you will say, "well, that was unexpected, but there was this other economic factor, see, and really I'm still right".

"Making our entitlements solvent is extremely simple if you either raise taxes or cut benefits."

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“An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.”. - Plato

It's not binary, though you are limited to those choices by your belief in your own correctness.

What's not binary?
April 2019 tax receipts are either going to be higher or lower than April 2018 tax receipts. Two possibilities.  Most of you have staked out the position that they will be higher.  If they are, you will say, "Look I was right and you were wrong." If they are not, most of you will say, "well, that was unexpected, but there was this other economic factor, see, and really I'm still right".

Still putting words in other people's mouths?  DETENTION!!!!!!

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What's not binary?
April 2019 tax receipts are either going to be higher or lower than April 2018 tax receipts. Two possibilities.  Most of you have staked out the position that they will be higher.  If they are, you will say, "Look I was right and you were wrong." If they are not, most of you will say, "well, that was unexpected, but there was this other economic factor, see, and really I'm still right".

"Making our entitlements solvent is extremely simple if you either raise taxes or cut benefits."

Of course if you raise taxes too much, there can be a second order effect the cancels out the revenue gains, but we're nowhere near that part of the curve. So sure, that's binary too.

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What's not binary?
April 2019 tax receipts are either going to be higher or lower than April 2018 tax receipts. Two possibilities.  Most of you have staked out the position that they will be higher.  If they are, you will say, "Look I was right and you were wrong." If they are not, most of you will say, "well, that was unexpected, but there was this other economic factor, see, and really I'm still right".

Still putting words in other people's mouths?  DETENTION!!!!!!

So if that's not what you would say in that situation, what would you say?

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

"Making our entitlements solvent is extremely simple if you either raise taxes or cut benefits."

Of course if you raise taxes too much, there can be a second order effect the cancels out the revenue gains, but we're nowhere near that part of the curve. So sure, that's binary too.

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Still putting words in other people's mouths?  DETENTION!!!!!!

So if that's not what you would say in that situation, what would you say?

Basic empirical predictions are generally pretty straight forward.  If tax revenue is down then u get to say I told u so.  

With projected growth North of 3% then that means were looking at about 1/2 a trillion dollars more in gdp.  That projects to close to 90 billion more in federal tax revenue, so I'm not really all that concerned.

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Of course if you raise taxes too much, there can be a second order effect the cancels out the revenue gains, but we're nowhere near that part of the curve. So sure, that's binary too.

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So if that's not what you would say in that situation, what would you say?

Basic empirical predictions are generally pretty straight forward.  If tax revenue is down then u get to say I told u so.  

With projected growth North of 3% then that means were looking at about 1/2 a trillion dollars more in gdp.  That projects to close to 90 billion more in federal tax revenue, so I'm not really all that concerned.

Math is not your strong suit.
Yes, if the economy grows, you can take the fraction of growth, multiply it by rough, new, gross tax rate, and say the product is new revenue for the government.
However
Gross tax rates changed.
You also have to multiply the original GDP by the change in gross tax rate.
That's lost revenue to the government.
In all likelihood, the magnitude of the postive will be smaller than the magnitude of the negative. Probably adds up to an annual revenue loss of about $60 billion, if your growth number of 3% holds.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Basic empirical predictions are generally pretty straight forward.  If tax revenue is down then u get to say I told u so.  

With projected growth North of 3% then that means were looking at about 1/2 a trillion dollars more in gdp.  That projects to close to 90 billion more in federal tax revenue, so I'm not really all that concerned.

Math is not your strong suit.
Yes, if the economy grows, you can take the fraction of growth, multiply it by rough, new, gross tax rate, and say the product is new revenue for the government.
However
Gross tax rates changed.
You also have to multiply the original GDP by the change in gross tax rate.
That's lost revenue to the government.
In all likelihood, the magnitude of the postive will be smaller than the magnitude of the negative. Probably adds up to an annual revenue loss of about $60 billion, if your growth number of 3% holds.

The Government produces NOTHING so they have to tax the working stiffs for their revenue. How can you say it's a loss for the government under the old tax rate when the growth was not there? If it wasn't for the tax cuts, growth would not be there in the 1st place and then it would have been a net loss because less people working means less revenue. Tax cuts work every time they're tried, Kennedy proved that, Reagan Proved that, and now Trump is proving that.

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Instead of a sign that says "Do Not Disturb" I need one that says "Already Disturbed Proceed With Caution."

Basic empirical predictions are generally pretty straight forward.  If tax revenue is down then u get to say I told u so.  

With projected growth North of 3% then that means were looking at about 1/2 a trillion dollars more in gdp.  That projects to close to 90 billion more in federal tax revenue, so I'm not really all that concerned.

Math is not your strong suit.
Yes, if the economy grows, you can take the fraction of growth, multiply it by rough, new, gross tax rate, and say the product is new revenue for the government.
However
Gross tax rates changed.
You also have to multiply the original GDP by the change in gross tax rate.
That's lost revenue to the government.
In all likelihood, the magnitude of the postive will be smaller than the magnitude of the negative. Probably adds up to an annual revenue loss of about $60 billion, if your growth number of 3% holds.

U said ur an engineer right?  Prove it.  Let's see if u can spot ur mistake

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Hope it kept up with inflation!

Core Rate is 1.8%, projections are 2% for the next 2 years. Those are healthy numbers.

Bah, you can pretty much add 3% to whatever is officially posted these days. All of them have been doctored up.

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Yes, it's improvement, but it's Blaine Gabbert 2012 level improvement. - Pirkster

http://youtu.be/ouGM3NWpjxk The Home Hypnotist!

http://youtu.be/XQRFkn0Ly3A Media on the Brain Link!
 

Peyton must store oxygen in that forehead of his. No way I'd still be alive after all that choking.

 

Underfunded Social Security is not a problem. $72 billion magically appears in the accounts of recipients every month. It is nothing but a ledger entry.

Underfunded pension plans are a huge problem, though. They are required to have the money they pay out.

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Math is not your strong suit.
Yes, if the economy grows, you can take the fraction of growth, multiply it by rough, new, gross tax rate, and say the product is new revenue for the government.
However
Gross tax rates changed.
You also have to multiply the original GDP by the change in gross tax rate.
That's lost revenue to the government.
In all likelihood, the magnitude of the postive will be smaller than the magnitude of the negative. Probably adds up to an annual revenue loss of about $60 billion, if your growth number of 3% holds.

U said ur an engineer right?  Prove it.  Let's see if u can spot ur mistake

...that's not how engineering works.  Engineers check each other's work when it's new and important. The only time an engineer works alone is when the thing is exactly the type of thing he or she has done before. It's very hard for any human to find their own mistakes in something he is trying to complete for the first time. Mentoring is part of the process for this reason.

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Underfunded Social Security is not a problem.  $72 billion magically appears in the accounts of recipients every month.  It is nothing but a ledger entry.

Underfunded pension plans are a huge problem, though.  They are required to have the money they pay out.

Right.  The US Treasury can print new money for SS at will.

Other pension programs don't have that nifty feature.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

What rate did I use?

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What rate did I use?

You said "north of 3%"
Then you said "about half a trillion of extra GDP"
GDP in 2017 was $19.5 trillion in 2017 dollars.
3% growth on that would be $585 billion, significantly more than half a trillion, so your shorthand estimates don't match up well.
"north of" that would be more.

The effective gross rate in 2017 was 17%.

So you'd get between $85 - $100 billion in new tax revenue depending on which of your two spitball numbers we run with, but only if you use the old effective gross rate.

But the effective gross rate in 2018 is sure to be slightly lower, as taxes were cut.  We don't really know what that new effective number will be, but CBO took a stab at it, and thought that it was around 16.2%.  The missing money for that part of the calculation works out to somewhere around $150 billion.

In other words, growth will have to be at least 4% and probably 5% for the growth effect to outpace the rate cut effect.

And we still haven't accounted for inflation.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Not necessarily. An unspoken dynamic function of tax cuts/reform is broadening the taxable base of the gdp as lower tax rates disincentivise tax avoidance behaviors when actually paying income taxes.

So it is possible to have a reduction in specific tax rates and have an increase in tax revenue as a % of the National income. That's the beauty of a dynamic system. (At times past with 70% marginal rates we collected around 16%)

Even still the math dictates that at a 3% growth rate if we take in 16.5% of the National income we will be revenue neutral (assuming 17% previous effective rate).

Now if your advocating cutting spending to make reasonable tax rates sustainable then you won't get any complaint from me. The challenge of annual operating deficits is that if certain government spending is set to automatically jump 5 to 8% through baseline budgeting then it's almost impossible for any economy to keep pace.

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Not necessarily.  An unspoken dynamic function of tax cuts/reform is broadening the taxable base of the gdp as lower tax rates disincentivise tax avoidance behaviors when actually paying income taxes.  

So it is possible to have a reduction in specific tax rates and have an increase in tax revenue as a % of the National income.  That's the beauty of a dynamic system.  (At times past with 70% marginal rates we collected around 16%)

Even still the math dictates that at a 3% growth rate if we take in 16.5% of the National income we will be revenue neutral (assuming 17% previous effective rate).

Now if your advocating cutting spending to make reasonable tax rates sustainable then you won't get any complaint from me.  The challenge of annual operating deficits is that if certain government spending is set to automatically jump 5 to 8% through baseline budgeting then it's almost impossible for any economy to keep pace.

At least we we're understanding each other.  I said your analysis was incomplete, you accepted the things that I added to it and now you're adding other things that point the other way. 
Your narration that things shift around such that income that the tax man didn't see it all before is now visible to him is credible, but I think the CBO already included that in their analysis.
Again we will see in April 2019.
We will compare that number to the April 2018 number X the rate of inflation, and see if real GDP growth or increased compliance wiped out the first order effects or not.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

Not necessarily.  An unspoken dynamic function of tax cuts/reform is broadening the taxable base of the gdp as lower tax rates disincentivise tax avoidance behaviors when actually paying income taxes.  

So it is possible to have a reduction in specific tax rates and have an increase in tax revenue as a % of the National income.  That's the beauty of a dynamic system.  (At times past with 70% marginal rates we collected around 16%)

Even still the math dictates that at a 3% growth rate if we take in 16.5% of the National income we will be revenue neutral (assuming 17% previous effective rate).

Now if your advocating cutting spending to make reasonable tax rates sustainable then you won't get any complaint from me.  The challenge of annual operating deficits is that if certain government spending is set to automatically jump 5 to 8% through baseline budgeting then it's almost impossible for any economy to keep pace.

At least we we're understanding each other.  I said your analysis was incomplete, you accepted the things that I added to it and now you're adding other things that point the other way. 
Your narration that things shift around such that income that the tax man didn't see it all before is now visible to him is credible, but I think the CBO already included that in their analysis.
Again we will see in April 2019.
We will compare that number to the April 2018 number X the rate of inflation, and see if real GDP growth or increased compliance wiped out the first order effects or not.

You need to compare what the April 2019 revenue would have been without the tax cuts to what is is with the tax cuts. The rate of inflation is just one modifier. How much tax would have been lost from corporations fleeing the US in 2018 had the corporate rate remained the same is another.

The tax cut was not passed to raise revenue, it was 1) to stop the bleeding of corporations from the US, (via the cut in the corporate rate), 2) a small stimulus (by reducing the top rate) and 3) to make the tax code fairer (by doubling the standard deduction and limiting the state and local tax deduction). #1 was the most important for the future of our country, and was the most significant change. If the net effect is to also raise revenue, then that's a bonus.

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"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

At least we we're understanding each other.  I said your analysis was incomplete, you accepted the things that I added to it and now you're adding other things that point the other way. 
Your narration that things shift around such that income that the tax man didn't see it all before is now visible to him is credible, but I think the CBO already included that in their analysis.
Again we will see in April 2019.
We will compare that number to the April 2018 number X the rate of inflation, and see if real GDP growth or increased compliance wiped out the first order effects or not.

You need to compare what the April 2019 revenue would have been without the tax cuts to what is is with the tax cuts. The rate of inflation is just one modifier. How much tax would have been lost from corporations fleeing the US in 2018 had the corporate rate remained the same is another.

The tax cut was not passed to raise revenue, it was 1) to stop the bleeding of corporations from the US, (via the cut in the corporate rate), 2) a small stimulus (by reducing the top rate) and 3) to make the tax code fairer (by doubling the standard deduction and limiting the state and local tax deduction). #1 was the most important for the future of our country, and was the most significant change. If the net effect is to also raise revenue, then that's a bonus.

I'm sorry that's moving the goalposts.
the only thing that is as tenuous as predicting the future is trying to counter factually recreate a past but with alternate decisions. counterfactual analysis is great as a thought experiment between friends, but it doesn't give definitive answers.

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My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.

I can predict the future. Trump allowing Russian asbestos to be back on the American market means more mesothelioma commercials.That was easy.

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Only a chump boos the home team!

You need to compare what the April 2019 revenue would have been without the tax cuts to what is is with the tax cuts. The rate of inflation is just one modifier. How much tax would have been lost from corporations fleeing the US in 2018 had the corporate rate remained the same is another.

The tax cut was not passed to raise revenue, it was 1) to stop the bleeding of corporations from the US, (via the cut in the corporate rate), 2) a small stimulus (by reducing the top rate) and 3) to make the tax code fairer (by doubling the standard deduction and limiting the state and local tax deduction). #1 was the most important for the future of our country, and was the most significant change. If the net effect is to also raise revenue, then that's a bonus.

I'm sorry that's moving the goalposts.
the only thing that is as tenuous as predicting the future is trying to counter factually recreate a past but with alternate decisions. counterfactual analysis is great as a thought experiment between friends, but it doesn't give definitive answers.

Moving the goalposts implies a purely linear frame of reference.  We've been having a discussion about short term revenue projections.  That's interesting and important.  That's not the same as the question of long term stimulative affects or long term revenue projections but that doesn't make either of those two criteria any less important or desirable.

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