because some economists argue that it doesn't, and some democrats don't want the tax cut

If tax rates have no effect on the economy then why did the United States economy experience its worst string of post WWII recessions when the income tax rate on the top bracket was 90%?

Here is a list of recessions that occurred after WWII when the top rate was 90%.
Nov 1948 –Oct 1949
July 1953 –May 1954
Aug 1957 –April 1958
Apr 1960 –Feb 1961

Yet when JFK ran a campaign promising tax relief and the 1964 tax act cut rates by over 25% when had economic expansion.

Of course until the War on Poverty under LBJ led to the stagflation and high taxes of the 1970's.

Then Reagan cuts taxes massively and sets off another expansion.

Riddle me that you socialist tax raising morons who depend on crumbs from government because you can't cut it on your own ability.

Oh, I don't argue that, its some left wing economists.

Besides, there may have been other factors causing the recessions.

Peter Thiel the founder of PayPal, president of the hedge fund Clarium Capital, managing partner of the venture-capital firm Founders Fund, and one of the early angel investors in Facebook, recently said that the concentration of innovation in technology and finance is because those fields were not overtaxed and regulated relative to other fields.

Of course that has ended with Dodd-Frank so say goodbye to American innovation in technology and finance.

Thank you incompetent government bureaucrats and corrupt government officials who couldn't cut it on their own in the private sector.

If you believe that taxes don't affect output and individuals will work just as hard at a 1% tax rate on their income as they will at a 99% percent tax on their income please provide some empirical real world evidence to support this argument.

In the Soviet Union you didn't have a market. The state awarded apartments, vouchers for food, etc. to people so why did the economy of the Soviet Union collapse? People don't care what the tax rate is right? They will work just as hard no matter what the tax rate right?

What total indefensible liberal bullshit.

The current top marginal tax rate in the US is 35%. This rate kicks in for every dollar made over $388,351. Tax loopholes and investment income aside, the fact that we have millionaires in this country is proof enough to render your claim that taxes affect output false.

The payroll tax cut currently in news headlines does nothing at all to create jobs because employers hire permanent employees based on long-term growth projections with a 1-3 year window, and not on incentives that last four months and then could vanish.

Article on the jobs lost because of taxes in the Obamacare legislation.

To help pay ObamaCare's steep costs, Washington placed a tax on medical device sales. The ugly results: Higher costs that hurt patients, destroy jobs and curb the innovation that extends life and brings relief.

The basic medical devices that we can buy at the retail level won't be subject to the tax, which begins next year. But devices sold by wholesalers to health care providers will be. According to IRS rules proposed earlier this month, those are instruments "primarily intended for use in a medical institution or office, or by medical professionals."

The tax rate will be 2.3%, which might not sound punitive. But the National Center for Policy Analysis has taken a look and found that the costs will indeed be dear.

One pernicious consequence is the bottom line of companies in a growing and promising industry. Some device makers will watch their profits crash hard. NCPA's Devon Herrick says that "Zoll could see its profits fall by 40%" while Abiomed's losses will fall further into the red by 19%.

Even those companies that might have low or no profits will be forced to pay the tax — imposed on sales, not profits — which will plunge young companies that are breaking even into losses and the new firms approaching profitability deeper into the hole.

To offset losses and smaller profits, companies can be expected to raise their prices. And the increases will be industrywide because the tax, which doubles the industry's current tax bill, is industrywide.

This means patients and insurers will have to pay more. Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, estimates that the tax, along with fees on prescription drugs and insurance plans, will push national health care costs higher by $18.2 billion in 2018 and $17.8 billion in 2019. The increased costs will force some patients to forgo medical devices and lose the benefits of instruments that save lives and improve health.

Also in line to be harmed are the employees in the industry. Herrick expects job losses and in fact notes that "firms have already begun preparing for the tax by reducing payrolls." Stryker Corp. announced in November that it intended to lay off 1,000 workers "in order to cut costs in advance of the tax," while Covidien PLC announced it would lay off 200 U.S. workers and move some of its operations to Costa Rica and Mexico.

Herrick's work confirms the forecast of economists Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Harold Furchtgott-Roth, who last fall said that "under reasonable assumptions, the tax could result in job losses in excess of 43,000" in an industry that employs as many as 423,000.

Does raising the tax on capital gains reduce investment?
If it doesn't then why don't we end the exception from the capital gains tax for real estate sales that President Clinton and the Republicans passed in the 1996 that set off the ticking time bomb of the real estate bubble?

Or are all of the politicians in Washington regardless of party in the pockets of big bankers and Wall Street?

Glory Be. President Obama proposes to cut taxes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stop the presses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seems that even the President realizes that cutting taxes will create jobs and increase tax revenues.

Nothing like a looming reelection campaign to make an idealist recognize reality!

Obama says that raising taxes on the "rich" (an ever moving target for liberal/socialist/statists) will reduce the deficit and balance the budget.
The historical evidence says this isn't the case.
Throughout the 1970's the top tax rate was 70% and the nation experienced huge deficits, soaring inflation, and high unemployment.
The history of the stagflation decade during which Democrats completely controlled Congress just doesn't exist in Barack's fantasies, but it is making a comeback in reality because reality doesn't like poor government fiscal and monetary policy which is exactly what Barack and Ben are giving the nation today.

You better read up on your economic history kiddies.

Wall Street Journal Editorial on the drop on tax revenue collected despite higher tax rates in Great Britain.
My company made some money this year off the higher tax rates. We have a client who does contract work using his own equipment. We examined the new tax law and advised him to form a subsidiary that rented out the equipment.
Now instead of getting a flat fee that is all taxable income he gets half of his fee in equipment rental that is not taxable.
My company got a consulting fee.
The greedy government got less money to buy votes from the brain dead with.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577239120562365932.html

"Speaking of higher taxes (and President Obama always does), there's news from once fair Britannia. Preliminary figures out this week show that Britain's 50% top marginal income-tax rate may have reduced tax revenue from top earners by as much as 5%, compared to the old 40% top rate. Tax revenue from those filing self-assessments due January 31 was down some £500 million versus last year.

What this week's numbers teach, however, is that Britain's richest taxpayers are simply shifting their incomes, or themselves, offshore, or deferring income, or otherwise arranging their affairs to avoid the confiscatory new top tax rate. Maybe that's unfair, too—the rich are usually better at protecting their assets—but it's the predictable consequence of a tax rate whose animating purposes are envy and spite."

Why do the incomes of the wealthy explode when tax rates go down?
The teenage socialists on this site that know nothing of how the real world works blindly mouth the party line by saying the rich make more money when their tax rates go down.
A normal amount of income increase would be understandable with lower marginal taxes giving individuals the incentive to earn more money, but this isn't the reason the incomes of the rich explode when marginal rates decline.

The explosion of income occurs because the rich no longer have incentive to hide income in inefficient tax shelters and they once again allow it to be taxed as income.

When will the village idiots in government realize they can never outsmart the people who know how to make money.
If the idiots in government understood how the world worked they would have made their own money in the first place.

If taxation is the answer then why not 100% taxation?
If 100% taxation is the answer then why did the economy of the Soviet Union implode?
If 100% taxation is the answer then why did China open up to markets?
The answer of course is that taxation isn't the answer.
It's simply elementary to refute flawed ideas.

You are truly an idiot. Nobody (except possible Putin) is arguing for 100% taxation. But, of course, since I disagree with you cannot see this.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, proposing on his blog "a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich." After all, he noted, "between the late 1940s and 1979 America's highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent."

Of course Reich and other idiotic liberal/statist/progressives don't want to point out that the 1950's saw three recessions and that 1969-1979 is known as the stagflation decade.

The only period from 1950-1979 that American experienced any kind of sustained economic growth was when JFK's tax cut was passed after his death in 1964.

God the facts get in the way of liberal/statists/progressives moronic fantasies.

Lando, a poker hand is a zero-sum game, but I agree with your basic premise.
There is very little in this life that is zero-sum.