Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The GOP is already falling back on its faith based supply-side 'trickle down" voodoo economics that has been entiirely disproved and discredited over the past dozen years as the "fiscal cliff" negotiations begin. Greg Sargent writes at the Plum Line:
As the fiscal cliff talks heat up, you’ll be hearing a lot of Republicans claiming that hiking taxes on the rich will kill 700,00 jobs right away. But as [Washington Post fact checker] Glenn Kessler documents, the study that this claim is based on falls laughably short of supporting that claim.
Footnote: A recent nonpartisan [Congressional Research Service (CRS)] report found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, which Republicans responded to by simply making it disappear. [suppressed it]
Steve Benen reports, CBO: higher taxes on rich won't harm economy:
Yesterday, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported the looming tax hikes and spending cuts would undermine the economy in 2013, but the "least harmful component of the coming fiscal consolidation is precisely what Democrats are demanding: the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for high earners."
CBO doesn't examine the top bracket Bush tax cuts directly. But it does look at two competing scenarios: One where all of the expiring tax cuts except for the payroll tax cut are extended; another where all of the expiring tax cuts except for the payroll tax cut and the Bush tax cuts for top earners are extended.
The former, CBO says, would increase employment by 1.8 million full time equivalent employees in 2013 relative to allowing everything to lapse. The latter would increase employment by 1.6 million. The difference, 200,000 full time equivalent jobs, is attributable to the expiration of the top bracket Bush tax cuts alone.
By comparison, other layers of the fiscal cliff save less money and have far greater economic consequences. Failing to extend the expiring payroll tax cut and expiring emergency unemployment benefits through 2014 would cost the economy about 800,000 jobs, according to CBO. The two halves of the sequester -- the defense cuts and the domestic cuts -- would each cost the economy about 400,000 full time equivalent jobs.
So, according to the CBO, the Democratic priorities do more to help the economy, and the Republican priorities do less. The 700,000 figure cited by the House Speaker has no basis in reality at all.
Maybe Republicans will try to suppress this, too?
These damn Tea-Publicans remind me of the Spanish Inquisition. Anything that questions their socio-economic dogma is heresy. "Burn them at the stake!" What these Tea-Publicans believe is a load of crap. Nobody should be listening to these guys.
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