The guys that cook the books to get lucrative stock options are surely more deserving than the lower middle class. The guys that come up with brilliant strategies like cut costs 10% are far more deserving than those that figure out how to do it. The guys that have the power to earn 10 times more than their contributions to the company deserve it more than those doing the majority of the work.

Yes tax cuts are stimulative Larry. Anybody arguing differently is an economic moron. It also takes a lack of economic astuteness to think dividend cuts are going to be more stimulative over the short term (and recessions are usually a short term problem) dollar per dollar than income tax cuts to people with a small amount of disposable income.

It is also a proven fact that tax cuts do not stimulate enough growth to return a dollar in extra income per dollar in cut. They grow deficits or cut surpluses. We have a huge national debt and it is irresponsible to reqire our children to pay for what we want now. It is also quite obvious that the system pre-Bush was working fine. We had a long period of growth and dropping unemployement due to low deficits and/or surpluses and resulting interest rates. The growth rate was so high and employment rates so low that we had to increase interest rates to keep the economy from overheating. This resulted in a relatively soft landing that gave us a mild recession in terms of job losses, but the transfer of jobs out of the country and the demand for those in the upper income brackets to maintain their high cash flows no matter what or to make up for what they lost has lead to very little trickle down to average workers despite increasing sales and an official end to the recession.

With a tax base restructered to be inately more stimulative and bigger deficits I doubt we will see such a long period of low interest/inflation rates and high growth for a long time to come. It was a period good for everyone yet those with money and political influence are determined to get even more of the pie at the expense of everyone else.

Most people get this. It is part of the reason why Democrats have such die hard supporters despite being fairly out of sinc with the public on Iraq.

And yes I think it is fair for those that benefit from our system more than others to pay more for it. I had a friend who's father was a millionaire wine maker in Lebanon before civil war broke out. The civil war ruined his business. I doubt very much he would have minded paying US taxes in trade for a stable government. A good business climate is one with a stable government, a just rule of law, and a tax structure sufficient to provide basic infrastructure, without hobbling competitiveness. Mexico has benefitted far less from NAFTA than expected in part because China has invested heavily in infrastructure and is a better low cost environment than Mexico.

Regards,
Mark