Does cutting taxes actually mean that money goes back into our pockets?

Seriously, doesn't it just 'trickle down' into increased state taxes, local taxes, or deficit? Can't we finally see through this as a nation, and say 'there is no way to spend money, without income'? I can't believe the republicans STILL convince people that they can spend, and not tax. I understand how it is supposed to work, but if you cut funding for schools, and then cut taxes, the schools still need their money, so the state taxes increase, and so on down the line...

Public Comments

1. i wish that was true .no
2. No. they just change what is taxed. You wind up paying more in taxes, but this scheme makes you feel better about it.
3. Ask your neighbour or anyone in the MIDDLE CLASS. That is, if the middle class is still around. Tax cuts benefit only those who make large amounts of cash. The goal of the current administration is to bankrupt the nation so it can be taken over by the Neo-Con Fascist savours.
4. Yes, but raising taxes means it'll go back into the community's pocket. Our money will go to schools, roads, health care, welfare, etc. The question is 'Who do you care about? You, or the community in which you live?'
5. You have got to be kidding, nope.
6. NO! No! NO ! What part of NO you don't undersatand?????
7. They reduced the amount of tax that goes into the government and allowed people to keep theat money. What does someone do when they get $600 extra cash? They will go buy something like a tv or a vacation and put it right back into our economy. If they bought online they wouldn't be paying taxes again.
8. Get real. Cutting taxes is a joke as expenses are never cut. Tell you elected representative you will not vote for him or her unless they begin taking positive action on reducing spending - starting with their own office and definitely with all the pork that is added on.
9. no
10. Because it works. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/images/chart.gif Q: What policies would create a more robust economy? A: Lower tax rates create better economic conditions. It’s simple: lower tax rates = more robust economy = more federal revenue. Tax relief will boost the economy's performance. To energize a soft economy, lawmakers should seek far larger reductions in the tax penalties that are imposed on productive behavior. The higher the rate, the steeper the penalty.
11. It does whenever you cut out other wasteful federal programs. I'd give examples but it would just piss off the art liberals and socialists on this site. If you are not taxed as much or given more money back in a tax refund then I obviously have more money to spend or invest.
12. Cutting taxes is done when there is a very healthy economy, and the government pulls in more money than it spends. THEN, money goes back into our pockets. But when the government pulls in less money than it spends, then a tax is needed. While it may be, "true," that money goes back into our pockets, this view is extremely short sighted. As the debt mounts, you only increase the chances of the next generation paying more taxes, and or the collapse of the economy. Cutting taxes is very short sighted, and should only be done when afforded. In our current situation, a tax cut cannot be afforded.
13. If they would cut the taxes for the working class. But now when they speak of cutting taxes they're referring to cutting the tax responsibility for the upper 2% of the population. Bush's dad cut working class tax deductions his second to last year in office. He also forgot to adjust the tax chart on the income tax forms at the end of the year. So we picked up about five bucks a week but had to give it back when we filed. So far the trickle down effect only works on losses of benefits.
14. I agree with Gerry above. Cutting taxes does not mean money goes back into our pockets, it simply means that it is never taken out of them. Wouldn't you prefer to have more of a say in how your hard earned dollar is spent? I know I would! It has been proven time after time that by decreasing tax percentages, it actually increases tax revenue. For example, if you cut taxes on (let's just say) gasoline... This will ultimately mean that less tax per dollar spent is being collected. However, it will also likely lead to more gasoline being consumed. In another example that often times democrats like to use a lot - the rich versus the poor, and we should tax them more! If that is the case, what incentive does ANYONE have for working our tails off to earn more money... simply to pay more taxes? Let me speak for how my money is spent!
15. I am amazed at how many people actually think we need to be taxed MORE. Trickle down means that when people get a bigger paycheck due to fewer taxes, they spend the extra money in the private sector, which is taxed down stream. The theory is that government should do less, and the private sector should do more. Governments are wasteful and have no incentive to be efficient. Of course, the not spending part hasn't been adhered to, but thats another issue
16. If it is a direct tax cut on income taxes for example then yes it does. Taxes are an expense on the public. They are like paying your light bill. It is money gone and nothing is produced. So the higher your taxes are the less money you have to spend on real goods. That means the ice cream shop or the clothing outlet or the sporting goods store or whatever else you like to spend money on does not get that business it would have gotten from you. Instead the money is gobbled up by the most inefficient method of spending man has yet devised. The Gov by it's very nature rarely creates a real job. It takes other people working to sustain any Gov job and very few produce a tangible product. NASA being one of the few. Other research projects being the other examples of actual Gov jobs. The rest are leeches upon the economy. Some like food inspectors necessary drains on the economy. Thier existance means you can buy food with pretty good confidence that what you bought was safe to eat. So instead of spending money on food testing kits you can just eat it. Many like the IRS and the legion of tax preperation people and tax lawyers that surround it are pure drains on the economy. For them to exist others have to work to produce a tangible product. Entertainment, manufacturing, information goods are all products that are consumed and often can be exported. Jobs that produce a good that is exported are the most valuable. The economy has three types of jobs. Exporting jobs - Those that produce a tangible good. These are the roots, the nutrient providers for an economy. Without these the economy dies. These are the factory workers, the owners of the factories. The people that work at moving those goods from factories to ships overseas, the people that sell these goods overseas. These jobs bring money into the country. Whether it be the sale of a CD, a piece of software or a hammer. Each one sold outside the country brings hard currency in. The more sold the more money coming in to spread around between people. Money is finite. The more that resides in your borders the more that you might possibly have in your own pocket. Productive jobs - These are jobs that keep money circulating inside the borders. These are goods and productive services sold within the borders but that produce a tangible product or a productive service. It might be a consultant saving a company millions of dollars without laying somebody off. It is normally the people who grow our food, make the products we use or ship those products/raw materials around. When you buy a US made product you keep your money ciruclating in the US if the company is owned by Americans. Leach jobs - These are jobs that leach off the economy. Drain it. Gov jobs generally fall into this catagory. Tax accountants, lawyers, consultants that cause layoffs, pure service jobs. For example dry cleaning produces no product. It is an expense. It might provide jobs but it takes quite a few people with productive jobs to sustain a service industry job. The tiny amount of tourism dollars that a service job might produce are insubstantial to a nation the size of the US. Almost all service based economies are third world nations. They are thus because they have no productive jobs. Thier only export is tourism. They import almost everything. The tax system in the US cost us trillions each year. Billions spent just on the IRS. Hundreds of millions housing people incarcerated for tax evasion. Billions spent on forms, court costs, and tax code revisions. Then the trillions spent by companies on taxes. This does not count the actual money lost to the Gov in the form of taxes. This is just in preparing the taxes. We could feed all of Africa on just what America spends on preparing it's taxes. The man hours lost to IRS audits and tax preperation exceeds any health related cause in lost man hours. Why is this so destructive to our economy? These people have jobs after all? Yes they have jobs but they produce nothing. Instead of designing a new product or building that new product they fill out tax forms. Instead of writing a book, working in a factory, growing food they handle your taxes so that you don't go to jail. Billions of man hours that might as well have been spent paying people to be on vacation. The result is the same. At least on vacation they might invent something usefull. So taxes are bad for the economy in terms of productivty. They are also an attack on your freedom. Every dollar you spend is politcal empowerment. You can choose to spend it on a charity, a political cause. You can choose to spend it to fight a monopoly. Or you can go to the mall and spend it on a trend. This is especially true with high dollar items like a car or a home. If you have enough money you have the abilty to own these items. To choose where you live and how you will get too and from work. The less money you have the less choice you have. The less money you have the less you have to give to your favorite politcal organizations and charities. Taxes are a form of repression. Every penny the Gov takes from you is a piece of your freedom stolen away. Just to grind that loss of freedom in your face the Gov may choose to do things like fund companies and or organizations you are bitterly opposed too. For example every penny spent on Microsoft products to me is an outrage! That the Gov takes money from me and gives it to them to produce shody second rate software written by people often not even in the US. No no no that is just not right. If it was MY money I could choose to not buy Microsoft products. In many industries the Gov keeps alive companies that have been soundly rejected in the private sector. A whole segment of our economy exists purely to siphon money from Gov work. Corruption and incompentence often mean much of this money is just thrown away. Inefficiency is another problem. The super collider for example. We spent tens of millions or more building most of it. Then we cut the funding. I am baffled. Why build it at all if it was not needed. Once you invested so much money why stop? The Space station is another example. The redesigns have cost several times what we have spent on actual construction. Each year Congress would change thier mind and reduce the funding or place other stipulations. If they had just gone with the origional budget the space station would have been done long ago and done with purely US funding. We would have spent less money building it and had far more functionality. Instead we threw away hundreds of millions of dollars for political posturing. Every Gov program has such wastes and sheer loss in them. Every dollar collected by the US Gov has about a 10 cent actual use. The other %90 is wasted, lost in theft/corruption or just plain misspent. So taxes are not only a drain on society and a loss of freedom. They are a waste of money. This is all relitive to a free market economy. The US no longer has a free market economy. Years of work by both parties has turned the US into a corporate economy. Small business is crushed under unfair laws and restrictions. Global influences have forced US companies to compete with subsidized and substandard goods that are illegally flooded into our nation, often at below cost initially to kill of American producers of the same good. Then gradually raised to profitable levels once the compitition is gone. The US is an economy of monopolies. They choke inovation and the small company out. Whether it be in software, the food you buy, the toiletries you use. In most markets only a few companies are responsible for making your limited choices. If you buy a diaper it's made by one of two companies. A potatoe chip by one. The mergers of the auto makers means you have less than 10 possible choices of who makes your car and the number is decreasing dailly. The trickle down theory is basically that companies and investors given less headaches will use the new money to invest in infrastructure and that it will be put back into the company. This worked as recently as the 70s and to an extent in the early 80s. A new merconary generation of managers was taking hold. Ones that had no loyalty to company, nation or anything but looking good for a single quarter. Mass business suicide has been taking place in the US for over 20 years. Companies go for the quick easy dollar this quarter knowing that it means they will not exist a decade from now because of it. Few companies even think about long range planning. They see workers as an expense not a resource. They see the consumer of thier goods and services as an enemy to be sucked dry by every availible means. It's an economic war going on between consumers and corporations. For a free market to work the producer and the consumer have to be on the same side. I agree, the spending has to stop. I took a look at our budge and a few things like the legalization of marajuana, abolishment of the IRS replacing it with a sales tax or a flat and or two tier tax could save the nation hundreds of billions of dollars. Leaving the UN, pulling up stakes in some of our subsidies and bases in the world again would save the nation hundreds of billions of dollars. Net loss to the US citizen? Nothing. Not one service touched. US interests abroad not affected. Each and every tax payer could get half of the savings the other half could be used to reverse the deficiet. Nothing contraversial. Few still think Marajuana is some evil drug. Our current tax system is one of equal repression to poor and middle class alike. It is bothersome to the rich. Those people working in the tax industry could easily find more productive work. Think about it. With %10 more money what you could buy. if you made $20k a year thats $2,000 dollars you'd have all of a sudden. At $50k that's $5,000. You could buy a used car for cash for that. You could add that deck you always wanted too. Put a down payment on a house with it. You could do LOTS of things. Those things you spent the money on would create twice as many jobs as the jobs lost to lay offs in the Gov and tax preperation. As for the UN. It is a toothless vile instrament of corruption. We could fund a new world health organization which did ten times more with %1 of the the investment. It would also be free of the politics that the UN crushes such good intentions with. Anyway those are some examples. So I agree the spending needs to be cut way back. Taxes cannot be raised one penny without cratering the middle class. Most people spend a fifth to a quarter of their work day just to pay open taxes like income tax and SS. Then you have the hidden taxes like the gas tax, taxes on corporations who just pass such expenses on to the conumers. Sin taxes, estate taxes and a zillion other taxes which ultimately end up coming out of your pocket. By the time the hidden taxes are accounted for you are more slave to Uncle Sam than worker. Few people today have any savings. Single income familes are just not making it today. Few have the luxory of living off just one person working. This means most of the US is one layoff away from losing most of what they own. Forclosures and bankruptcies are at record levels and the nation has never been remotely close to as deep in debt as it is, both externally and by it's citizens. The entire credit industry is in real danger. Most Americans are getting by today using credit. They charge groceries, dentist bills and whatever else they cannot cover with the paychecks on credit cards. They are not able to clear the balences any more and eventually those balences come to eat them alive. Late fees, interest and evnetually overlimit fees can sometimes eat as much as %10 of a person's income. Yet what choice do they have? Some yes they live beyond thier means. Most get into the situation buying essentials. If you raise taxes these people are going under imediately. They are just making it as it is. People that are staying out of debt will be forced into debt. Many organizations will be harmed. Already many are finding fund raising tougher each year. Entire luxory industries will start to fold as people will be reduced to food shelter and clothing only mentalities. The last of the struggling middle class will fold up and become working poor. We are drowning in taxes. We need to dramatically reduce them or face economic crisis and the meanest recession this nation has ever seen. One that will make the great depression seem mild. We desperately need to end outsourcing, dramatically reduce H1 visas and replace illegal imigrants with legal imigrants. We need to end the hiring of illegals. They are killing whole industries American's used to work in. They are also a drain on our budget. Just the language issue and resulting costs is enough to send millions of Americans to college. All we would have to do is print in a single language only and end translation services in most places. Thats bilions of dollars saved right there. The most crucial thing of all of this is to end monopolies. That means opening markets. That means enforcing anti-trust legislation and fair trade laws. Even if it means running our super corporations out of the country. All we'd be doing is speeding up thier already eminient departure. Today many huge corps have only thier HQ here in the US. They are less American companies than many Japanese companies. Only a short matter of time until the HQ is elsewhere. Yet these huge corpos affect our dailly lives from the time we wake until we go to sleep. They make our blankets, our toothbrushes, the food we eat, the furniture we sit in. They control our media (Clear Channel is a great example. Time Warner another of massive Corperations running roughshod over entire industries). We are becoming literally enslaved by these mega souless nationless monstrosities.
17. If only it were that simple. If you cut taxes, the government takes in less money. If they would also cut expenditures, it would be fine and everything would even out. But they dont - they just charge everything to the debt, which makes the economy weaker. Or they cut programs like medicaid or highway funding, which causes the states to raise their taxes to make up the difference. End result for the average citizen - no change in total taxes paid, and you now owe more money to China as part of the national debt.