posted October 25, 2012 10:56 PM            

But Kennedy, John Kennedy, not Edward Kennedy had it right and the current crop of Socialist moron idiot demoscats have it all wrong. The proof they have it wrong and are wrong is in the result they've produced.

Back When Democrats Knew Economics
Ralph R. Reiland
10.25.12

Who warned that "increasing federal expenditures" would "demoralize both the government and our economy"?

Eleven months before he was assassinated as he rode with his wife in the back seat of an open convertible in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, President John F. Kennedy delivered a major address to the Economic Club of New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on December 14, 1962.

The unemployment rate that month was 5.5 percent. The annual inflation rate was 1.3 percent.

The sticker price on a new Chevy Impala convertible was $2,919. Gas was 31 cents a gallon. A morning coffee and newspaper was 15 cents -- a dime for the coffee, a nickel for the paper. Cheeseburgers were 20 cents.

The minimum wage in 1962 was $1.15. For 50 weeks at 40 hours per week, that's $2,300 a year -- 79 percent of the price of a new Impala convertible.

The 1962 federal deficit $7.1 billion, more than double the $3.3 billion in federal red ink in 1961.

The $7.1 billion deficit was 1.3 percent of GDP. For 2012, the Office of Management and Budget projects that the federal deficit will hit 8.5 percent of GDP, over six times higher than in 1962, relative to the size of the economy.

President Kennedy began his address to the Economic Club of New York by stating that U.S. security is directly linked to the strength of the nation's economy.

National security "will not be determined by military or diplomatic moves alone," he stated. "It will be affected by the decisions of finance ministers as well as by the decisions of Secretaries of State and Secretaries of Defense, by the deployment of fiscal and monetary weapons as well as by military weapons, and, above all, by the strength of this nation's economy as well as by the strength of our defenses."

To strengthen the economy, Kennedy called tax cuts on business and all income groups, a less expansionary government, a simplified tax code that downsized loopholes and special privileges, and the removal of obstacles to private initiative.

The "most direct and significant kind of federal action aiding economic growth is to make possible an increase in private consumption and investment demand -- to cut the fetters which hold back private spending," he asserted.

In contrast, a course of "increasing federal expenditures more rapidly than necessary," he warned, "would soon demoralize both the government and our economy."

Kennedy called for "an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes" in order to reduce "the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our current tax system" -- a federal tax system that "exerts too heavy a drag on growth," "siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power," and "reduces the financial incentive for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking."

Kennedy's bottom line? "In short," he stated, "to increase demand and lift the economy, the federal government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the initiatives and opportunities for private expenditures."

And the impact of tax cuts on deficits? "Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other," he declared. The"paradoxical truth" is that "tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now."

Those were the good old days, a time when Democrats and liberals understood that it's economic growth, not redistribution, that delivers overall increases in a nation's standard of living, across all income groups.

"A rising tide lifts all the boats," Kennedy stated in a speech in Arkansas on October 3, 1963.

Today, President Obama thinks the path to a better world is by way of a confiscatory tax on the biggest yachts, even if it means fewer boats of all sizes in the water.

Obama's way has already been tried and it doesn't work. In 1990, Congress passed a 10 percent "luxury tax" on high-end jewelry, aircraft and yachts as a way to force "the rich" to pay their "fair share."

Taxing away another $2 million from a rich guy when he buys a $20 million yacht was supposed to create more heaven on earth.

Instead, 81 percent of the 1,400 workers at Viking Yachts, the largest yacht manufacturer in the United States, were laid off within eight months of the enactment of the yacht tax -- and "the rich" still had their money, and their old yachts.

Egg Harbor Yacht, one of the oldest boatyards in South Jersey, filed for bankruptcy a year after the yacht tax was enacted and laid off its 250 workers.

By the time the law was rescinded in 1993, Viking Yachts was down to 68 employees.

"When it was all over, 25,000 workers had lost their jobs building yachts, and 75,000 more jobs were lost in companies that supplied yacht parts and materials," reports economics professor Walter Williams at George Mason University. "The Joint Economic Committee concluded that the value of jobs lost in just the first six months of the luxury tax was $159.6 million."

The impact on the federal deficit during the first year of this shot at creating more "fairness"? Instead of adding a projected $31 million to the government coffers, the net effect of the luxury tax was $7.6 million more in federal red ink.

The redistributionists sneer at the concept of "trickle down," as if they can't see the obvious fact that new jobs are created and new income is generated when someone invests his energy and risks his capital in creating a new enterprise or expanding an existing business.

What's also obvious is what trickled down from the "luxury tax" -- more unemployment, more poverty, more red ink, and more inequality.

posted October 25, 2012 11:26 PM            

he had more money than romney for sure, but he was a different breed. pity he wasn't a bit more cautious in his first term, we could have a very different present if he had made it through.

not once did he suggest that the poor and discriminated against should "suck it up" or pull themselves up by their bootstraps. he decried the pitiful amount of aid to families in appalachia.

he lowered taxes, sure, all the way down to 70% for the top bracket. and today people are screaming mimi at the suggestion they might have to pay 39%.

he also gave his entire presidential salary to charity.

he also, unlike the romneys and cheneys and bushes of this world, faced death in the war. unlike our modern warmongers who to a man ducked and dived when it was their turn to serve but think anyone else who doesn't line up to be killed is a "traitor"...or so they paint it.

they called kennedy a coward when he suggested diplomacy instead of international fisticuffs, and communist when he supported the revolutions in latin america and urged MORE GOVT HELP FOR THE POOR... time changes people's perspectives, dontcha think?

posted October 26, 2012 02:50 PM            

while jacks womanizing was not only considered impeachable but a badge of merit by many.

meanwhile nixon made it a point of honour and sensible-ness that his wife wore a "decent, republican cloth coat"...

posted October 31, 2012 12:37 PM            

You don't know who was behind the killing of Kennedy.

Kennedy, John Kennedy would be shunned by the leftist morons in the demoscat party, villified by move on, villified by puffington post, villified by the center for american regression, villified by demoscat underground, villified by Soros, villified by the idiots at media matters, villified by the idiot anchors at MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN amd villified as a 1 percenter by the utterly contemptible morons of the OWS crowd.

Today, John Kennedy would be considered a Republican...or at the very least a very conservative Democrat like Scoop Jackson.

posted October 31, 2012 01:27 PM            

JFK would probably be astounded at the current tax rates as would any rational person from politics from that day and age. If he looked at modern history, he'd have said that Clinton got it right.

posted October 31, 2012 04:22 PM            

whoever might vilify him today, in HIS day, both conservatives and liberals found fault with him. MANY considered him a communist with sympathies for communist/socialist countries.

after some 20 years of the top tax rate being 90% "his" cuts were huge, but still the top rate was TWICE what it is today.

and the spending he cut was NOT on the social safety net, in fact he urged MORE govt help for those in need.

and congress gave him ALMOST as hard a time as this last congress had given obama.

posted November 02, 2012 10:25 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AcousticGod:
That's not true. Democrats are still the more pliable, reasonable party. They're still more willing to work with Republicans than is true in reverse.

JFK would probably be astounded at the current tax rates as would any rational person from politics from that day and age. If he looked at modern history, he'd have said that Clinton got it right.

Saying that JFK was for Republican policies of today is forgetting JFK's social views.

---

What proof do you have that they are more pliable?

posted November 03, 2012 11:32 AM            

See chart here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/p ost/the-history-of-the-filibuster-in-one-graph/2012/05/15/gIQAVHf0RU_blog.html

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-i t-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html