Admin Note: This thread was moved from headlines.
What a difference 40 years make. Today’s Democratic President, Barack Hussein Obama demagogues the rich. He is claiming that raising taxes on the rich will raise revenue. Well JFK, had a different view point. He believed economic growth leads to more revenue.
“Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other,” this Democrat said. “It is increasingly clear that…an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.”
He went on.
“In short,” he said, “it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”
And that’s exactly what John F. Kennedy did.
The 35th president of the United States, who delivered those remarks at a Dec. 14, 1962, speech to the Economic Club of New York, made good on his pledge.
As a result, federal tax revenues went from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968 as Kennedy slashed the capital gains tax and cut the top marginal tax rate from 90 percent to 70 percent.
Annual gross domestic product during those years ranged from a high of 6.5 percent to a low of 2.3 percent.
JFK was right and Obama is wrong. But this is not about raising more revenue, Obama wants to spread the wealth.
