you are defining "accomplishment" too broadly. is something to be lauded simply because it was done? what does the tax cut accomplish actually accomplish if trickle-down economics is a complete farce? i stepped in dogshit today - where the eff is my standing ovation?
I agree that simply doing something shouldn’t be lauded as an accomplishment if it doesn’t actually help. That’s why I don’t consider Obamacare an accomplishment - more like a trillion dollar fuckup that actually increased dependency on insurance middlemen and further increased the cost of health insurance while putting millions more on the rolls of a Medicaid entitlement that is already unsustainable.
Concerning the tax reform, some very smart economists disagree on how much impact it had, it is really too early to measure its success, and it will never be known for certain anyway. However, I consider allowing people to keep more of their own money to be a good thing, period. And that’s what happened for the vast majority of Americans.
In my case the tax reform is going to reduce my effective rate by several whole percentage points, which is stunning. Highly compensated W2 wage earners were getting absolutely mumped by the old tax code, and many of us got significant relief with the tax reform. Of course, people like us are outliers. Most people won’t realize the same tax savings I will, but again, most weren’t getting nearly as screwed as I was to start with. Again, allowing people to keep any additional amount of their own money is a good thing.
How can it be a good thing if it has led to the country being less solvent than it was prior to the tax cuts? It's not pulling people up out of poverty and increasing the size of the middle class, so how can it be a good thing?
You don’t know that the tax cuts have made the country “less solvent.” Nobody does. Some very smart economists disagree on the exact “cost” of the tax reform, if any. It is a fact that in straight up nominal dollars, tax receipts
increased by $14 billion in FY18 over FY17. You can scoff at that and say “sure, but historically it should have increased by more.” And maybe you’re right. Or maybe not. Because we don’t actually know exactly how much impact the cuts had on boosting the economy.
Two things seem pretty clear, however. First, tax reform didn’t cost us anywhere near the price tag predicted by most experts, dynamically scores or otherwise. Second, our deficits continue to be driven mostly by the simple fact that spending continues to far outpace revenue either at the present or former level of taxation.
And that second point leads me to one more. It seems manifestly absurd and unfair to me to say that even if tax reform cost us something, we shouldn’t have allowed people to keep a little more of their own money just because our government can’t get a grip on its spending binge. This wasn’t a new entitlement redistributing people’s money to others. It’s their money.
I guess I can’t expect liberals to agree on that last point. They simply have a markedly different, more socialist, “you didn’t build that” frame of mind. On that we’ll just have to agree to disagree.