Economists have a fancy term for the fall in incomes of the US working class due to trade with China: wage compression. It means that US and Chinese wages will converge and that means that US wages must fall. These sons of bitches think that this is good, after all they claim quite seriously, we owe it to Chinese families to help them get ahead. Then they glibly say 'ah but then just retrain and have some good income insurance when you get displaced, have a good social safety net'. They never get around to answering just how the hell you are supposed to do that when all the cash to pay for it is going overseas. They never tell you what to retrain for when you are 40, have 3 kids and a mortgage, and haven't been to school in 20 years. Why bother anyway, the chinese will take those jobs next. To say I have little respect for these pseudo science wankers is understating it. I think they are a bunch of pompous, sanctimonious, self-righteous, anti-american a-holes. They can shove their theories about wage compression up their ass. In fact if I were king I would compress their wages and have all economics work outsourced to India. It would be fun to shrug and tell them to retrain, perhaps they could show Steak and Shake how to increase productivity at the shake machine.
It is so overwhelmingly obvious that Russia is not a valid example for low tax rates. Russia has petrol&natural gas economy at its core. Just because a certain service sector (underwritten by debt as well..) set up shop does not mean Russia is not a commodities driven economy. "Russia's economic growth" correlates highly with prices for crude and natural gas. That is just a thought.
...to the folks proposing fanciful tax regimes: you could go for intellectual honesty, and the compromise that was the 1986 tax reform, a masterful balance between left wing desires for limiting deductions and right wing desires for simplification and flattening. There were two brackets: 15 and 28%. It was indexed to inflation. It eliminated a large number of deductions. A columnist at the time predicted that it would never last: both parties would tear it apart to favor their respective constituencies. And so it went. And now, you get wild ideas that will never pass in a million years. The 1986 reform passed both houses and was signed by the President. It did a world of good in its brief life. Anybody here for a realistic solution to this real world problem?
I am for a solution, I could argue tax rates all day and it doesn't mean much anymore. There are stronger fundamantals at play here which make it moot. The banks will not be fixed, globalism will continue to wreck american living standards, and debt will pile up. It isn't 1986. Supply side is good, but like everything of this sort, it needs the right environment.