Conservative Skeptics?
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AmateurScientist
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Not really. As the Wall Street Journal has pointed out for years and years, income tax revenues tend to remain fairly steady as a percentage of GDP (about 19.5%), regardless of the level of marginal income tax rates. This suggests strongly that taxpayers shift their activities away from taxable events during times of relatively high income taxes, and back to them during years of lower tax rates. The lesson is that American taxpayers have a sort of built-in tolerance for a certain level of income taxation. Try to exceed that, and you achieve nothing positive, and may in fact be acting contrary to your intended goal of raising additional income tax revenue.
Tax and spenders really need to study more macroeconomics. The overall economy tends to suffer after periods of tax increases, and then rebound after a relaxation of tax rates.
Here's a brief prose summary of this effect from Standford University's Hoover Institution:
HOOVER INSTITUTION
Essays in Public Policy
Taxation and Economic Performance
W. Kurt Hauser
Executive Summary
Over the past two centuries, economists have debated whether or not higher rates of taxation lead to increased levels of government revenues. In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith pointed to a reduced level of revenues from substantially higher tariffs and duties on traded goods. In the twentieth century, the Laffer Curve postulated that there would be no government revenue at a taxation level of 100 percent or 0 percent. More recently, the debate focused on the tax increases of 1990 and 1993, which were designed to reduce the federal budget deficit through an increase in government revenues. In fact, the forecasted revenue generation following each tax increase fell short of the mark.
Increases in tax rates have not raised the desired additional revenues, but they have dampened economic activity. Higher tax rates tend to reduce the tax base as taxpayers have disincentives to work, produce, save, or invest. There are, however, incentives to hide, shelter, and underreport income as tax rates are raised. Thus, the economy as a whole tends to perform less well following a tax increase. Conversely, the economy tends to perform more favorably following a reduction in tax rates. In the postwar period, government revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product have averaged 19.5 percent despite marginal income tax rates as high as 92 percent and as low as 28 percent. Despite the historic record, policy makers continue to embrace the notion that an increase in marginal tax rates will raise revenues without any attendant adverse effects on economic growth, job creation, or standard of living.
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/epp68.html
AS
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Mycroft
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Tony
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Not a conservative. He sympathized with the American revolution. The conservative in this case ws King George III
Alexander Hamilton? Not a conservative, even by today's standards.
A corrupt and tyrannical politician. Maybe a conservative, maybe not. By what metric are you using to label him as such?
Not a conservative. In fact, he left the conservatives because they were too jingoistic, protectionist and intolerant (his words).
So? That action, by definition, was not conservative.
How are those actions conservative?
I am running out the door (gotta work sometime) and will have to elaborate another time. The short answer is that his politics were far more extreme than the "old guard" like Ford and Rockefeller. Although it is true that many of the former Reagan people have complained bitterly about the extremist policies of the current administration (seriously; look it up.). Maybe Reagan belongs in the early stages of the neocon movement.
Tony
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Awww, so if your support of rapists isn't grounded in religion what is it grounded in?
FYI, having a disdain for religion pretty much excludes you from any claim of being conservative. Nothing is more conservative than religion.
Tmy
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There are more to taxes than INCOME tax.
bagtaggar
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Classical liberals are what we call conservatives here in America.
So to be accurate, I am politically conservative as an American. The definition of liberal/conservative on the political arena changes from country to country and with history.
At the time, Hamilton was indeed no conservative. Today his views would be considered Republican. In fact, there was a period of time in American history when Republicans were considered liberal.
Again, I beg everyone to recognize the distinction between politically liberal/conservative, classically liberal/conservative, and intellectually liberal/conservative.
I for one, am conservative in the American political sense.
So to be accurate, I am politically conservative as an American. The definition of liberal/conservative on the political arena changes from country to country and with history.
At the time, Hamilton was indeed no conservative. Today his views would be considered Republican. In fact, there was a period of time in American history when Republicans were considered liberal.
Again, I beg everyone to recognize the distinction between politically liberal/conservative, classically liberal/conservative, and intellectually liberal/conservative.
I for one, am conservative in the American political sense.
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Tony
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Correction, they're what you call conservatives. But you're wrong. Classic liberals believed in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (among other things), modern conservatives do not. As evidenced by their support for a ban on gay marriage.
punchdrunk
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Do you think a classic liberal - those people who helped coin the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - would have supported gay rights? They didn't even support slave rights.
Seems to me you are guilty of what you accuse bagtaggar: having your own definition.
Tony
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Actually, I was just trying to get you to stop from hiding behind that sarcasm and explain what you meant by that asinine statement.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Are you talking about classic liberals or classic democrats?
Tony
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Gayness was a cultural taboo of their time. The issue wasn't even on the table so it's difficult to say what they would think about. But I think some of them, based on their stated values of individual rights, could be persuaded to support gay rights (which are really individual rights).
So in short, yes. Otherwise they’d be hypocrites.
Who exactly?
Perhaps, but since I've never seen terms like "conservative", "liberal", "leftists" and "rightist" objectively defined I don't really have a choice.
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AmateurScientist
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punchdrunk
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I'm talking about the founders of our country.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Then I would disagree with you that what you said was 100% true. There were those founders who were very opposed to slavery (you're going to ask me for specific names, aren't you? **trying to remember what book that was...**), but put aside that issue in order for all the colonies to come together.
I want to say someone from Pennsylvania. Franklin? Ugh. This is going to bother me now.