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Krugman: IMF World Economic Outlook Report Confirms "Republicans have been wrong about everything"
Krugman: IMF World Economic Outlook Report Confirms "Republicans have been wrong about everything"by Hungary coyote at the Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/12/1143498/-Krugman-IMF-World-Economic-Outlook-Report-Confirms-Republicans-have-been-wrong-about-everything
"SNIP................................................
(Clinton on the daily show)
Unless you were being driven by ideology instead of by evidence. This is a practical country. We have ideals. We have philosophies. But the problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence. So you have to mold the evidence to get the answer that you've already decided you've got to have. It doesn't work that way. Building an economy; rebuilding an economy is hard, practical nuts and bolts work.
And so last night at the debate Paul Ryan twisted and tied himself into a knot trying to explain how his plan would work, without giving actual numbers as to how he would do it because if he gave the numbers the American public would learn that they don't add up. I wasn't able to find a video clip where Ryan talked about the deficit, but I found this excellent review of the debate with a transcript of that section by Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones:
I thought Paul Ryan was unusually brazen in his defense of the Republican insistence on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Biden made the reasonable point that you could easily vote separately on extending the cuts for the middle class and extending the cuts for the rich, but Republicans refuse to do that: "They’re holding hostage the middle class tax cut to the super wealthy." This was Ryan's response:
Look, if you taxed every person and successful business making over $250,000 at 100 percent, it would only run the government for 98 days. If everybody who paid income taxes last year, including successful small businesses, doubled their income taxes this year, we'd still have a $300 billion deficit. You see? There aren't enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending.
..................................................SNIP"
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
in other words, this (hypothetical) tax increase alone would meet 25% of gov't expenses ...
ASSUMING Ryan's number is correct ... 
BUT it sounds like less if you say "only ... 98 days", thus disguising the effectiveness of an actual tax increase on those at the top. And most people utterly missed the implications of that "98 days" remark.