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The Ninth Mainstream Melee -- The Tax Cut Boom.

It's a non-blog adventure.

I.

The Wall Street Journal: "The Tax Cut Record"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Tax cuts produced the economic boom we have today.

Super Succinct Snippet-

If ever there was a market test of economic policy, the last three years have been it. The stock market has recovered from its implosion in Bill Clinton's last year in office, unemployment is down to 4.7%, and growth has averaged 3.9% in the three years since those tax cuts passed--well above the post-World War II average and more than twice the growth rate in Euroland.

....

Over the past 40 years, the U.S. has had three great experiments in tax-cutting, and each one has worked even better than advertised: The Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s, the Reagan cuts of 1981, and now the Bush tax cuts of 2003. The political tragedy is that the first of those two were bipartisan, while the Bush tax cuts have had little Democratic support.

During the Cold War, Democrats often went out of their way to avoid looking like socialists. Today, all but a few Democrats have shed all pretense of support for free enterprise. They're here, they're Marxists, get used to it.

II.

National Review: "How the Boom Began"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Bush deserves a little (a lot) of credit for the economic boom.

Super Succinct Snippet-

If you find a turtle on top of a fence post, Bill Clinton used to say, it means someone put it there. It was his folksy way to explain why anything good that happened was no accident, and he should get credit.

It's hard to get credit, when the media hype gas prices more than 30:1 over brief mentions of good economic news.

III.

Forbes: "Are Women Earning More Than Men? "

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Women who prioritize family usually make less than men. Women who prioritize career often make more than men.

Super Succinct Snippet-

...women entrepreneurs earn 50% less than their male counterparts.

....

...money was the primary motivator for only 29% of women, versus 76% of men. Women prioritized flexibility, fulfillment, autonomy and safety.

....

...among workers who have never been married and never had children, women earn 117% of what men do.

....

I want my daughters to know that working 44 versus 34 hours per week leads to more than twice the pay.

Knowledge is power.

IV.

The Washington Times: "How gas price controls sparked '70s shortages"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

Want to make a tiny problem a huge one? Go socialist on the problem.

Super Succinct Snippet-

The public -- as it does today -- wanted low prices. But the artificially depressed pump prices imposed during the oil crisis of 1973 -- which stayed in place in various iterations through 1980 -- brought about lines at gas stations and an artificial shortage of gas....

Increased production around the world drove down the price of oil and caused the tax to generate less revenue than expected. By the time it expired in 1988, the tax had generated $40 billion in revenue instead of the $175 billion estimated by the Treasury. After oil prices collapsed in 1986, the tax produced no revenue at all.

And yet, if Democrats take back Congress, this is precisely the kind of thing they would rush to pass.

V.

Bloomberg: "Texas Economy Surges on Gains From Katrina Rebuilding, Energy"

Super Succinct Synopsis-

The Texas economy is roaring.

Super Succinct Snippet-

Texas, the second-largest U.S. state by population, added 274,000 jobs in the year ended March 31, according to the state Workforce Commission. The pace was the fastest since 2000. The state estimated that its budget surplus will almost double to $8.2 billion, second only to California's, for the two years ending in August 2007.

....

Texas recovered more slowly than the rest of the country after the U.S. economy cooled in 2001-02. Sales-tax collections slumped in 2003, and state lawmakers cut spending by $10 billion to balance a two-year budget at $117 billion.

Now, the 9.9 million-person workforce in the state is expanding at about 3.1 percent a year, more than twice as fast as the rest of the U.S.

....

Production of goods and services in 2004 totaled $881 billion, the third-most of any state and more than neighboring Mexico, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Last year, single-family housing starts jumped 15 percent to 205,462, Fed data show.

Texas's economic growth may outpace the nation's for a second year. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn this month raised her growth forecasts to 4.9 percent in 2006 and to 4.7 percent for 2007.

This year's estimate exceeds the 3.4 percent median for U.S. growth in a Bloomberg survey of economists, done April 28 to May 8. The Texas economy expanded 5.2 percent last year, when the U.S. grew 3.5 percent.

....

State taxes on oil and gas production are forecast to jump $2.5 billion, or 77.5 percent, in the current two-year budget, according to Strayhorn. Those taxes now account for about 2.4 percent of state tax revenue.

Imagine how much greater (and more widespread) these already great numbers would be if we hadn't been discouraging domestic energy exploration and production for all of these years.

The previous Mainstream Melee.

WILLisms.com and many other blogs sometimes focus too much on our fellow bloggers, while excluding well-done professional journalism from our posts.

The Mainstream Melee is a quick survey of five non-blog sources, coming atchya at completely random intervals. The stories are either underreported, particularly well-written, interesting, or otherwise important to the big picture. But generally there will be a theme of some kind in the choices.

Posted by Will Franklin · 15 May 2006 11:17 AM

Comments

Posted by: MARIA at May 15, 2006 09:08 PM

Posted by: lamar at May 22, 2006 09:16 PM

Posted by: MALEEK at May 30, 2006 11:01 PM

Posted by: vince at June 5, 2006 09:28 PM