New Findings Show Unemployment Insurance Trumps High-Income Tax Cuts on Jobs, Deficits

[JohnWxy]

http://www.offthechartsblog.org/new-findings-show-unemployment-insurance-trumps-high-income-tax-cuts-on-jobs-deficits/


We’ve received some eye-popping policy simulations from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, that flesh out an important point that the Congressional Budget Office, Zandi, and many others have made before: unemployment insurance (UI) and tax cuts focused on low- and moderate-income households have a much larger economic impact than income tax cuts for high-income individuals. I’ll be writing a more detailed report later, but here they are in a nutshell:

■Short-term scenarios: Zandi found that extending federal UI for one year and some of the Obama tax cuts (expansion of the child tax credit, improvements to the earned income tax credit, and the higher education tax credit) for two years would generate more economic activity — including creating 500,000 more jobs next year — than would a two-year extension of the Bush high-income tax cuts. It would also add $30 billion less to deficits over the 2010-2015 period than extending the high-income tax cuts would.(my emphasis__JW)

■Longer-term scenarios: Zandi found that extending federal UI for a year, making the Obama tax cuts described above permanent, extending Obama’s Making Work Pay tax cut for another year, and creating a two-year tax credit to promote additional hiring would generate substantially more economic activity — including creating 1.2 million more jobs next year — than would a permanent extension of the high-income tax cuts. It would also add $441 billion less to deficits over the 2010-2020 period than extending the high-income tax cuts.


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[Demeter]

1. Well, Duh!

[WhiteTara]

2. so, I guess we're not doing that. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

3. how many times does the same research need to be done? better to get the word to the public

& challenge the pub narrative strongly.

[JohnWxy]

4. "better to get the word to the public"...that's the point of the post. But also, hope DUers will

use these new study results (confirming others) in comments on media sites and any other sites on web you care to mention it. Suggest people not wait for others to do the publicizing of info but begin doing it yourself.

[Hannah Bell]

5. didn't mean to criticize you or your post. more a frustration with leadership.

[JohnWxy]

6. I am frustrated too with the lack of a more energetic presentation of their positions from WH.

IF they were more aggressive about the Democratic positions, I think other Dems in Congress would speak up more assertively too. but of course, this has been the problem for a couple of years.

I'm pretty tired of it, frankly.