The official 4.2 percent unemployment rate excludes those who have given up or determined that available jobs aren’t worth the effort, risk or travel.
crowding out investment? i do believe that we have to have fiscal discipline in addition to economic growth. melissa: joining me now senator rand paul. you wrote a great article. you wrote about something that drives me crazy. as someone who can do math and study economics you said let me translate a little bit of washington speak. revenue neutral tax cuts aren t really tax cuts. it s more like tax shifting. some will pay more, some will pay less, the net effect is the government collects the same amount of taxes. why is that? it s very important that we have this debate, because unfortunately too many republicans in washington want to do the tax shifting. ever since i have come up here and i met these folks they re like, we want to do revenue neutral tax reform. i m like, why bother? if that s what we re for, i m going home. i want to lower taxes to leave more money in the hands of those
it would also reduce dividend income because the taxes on dividends would probably go up and, people would shift their tax burden into tax exempt bonds, and also have fewer stock transactions, so you d have lower capital gains revenues and, orders, you wouldn t get much more revenue, what you would get is tax shifting and, also, fewer people earning income. gregg: the notion of raising taxes has politically been radioactive, to voters, and, nevertheless, the president, on december 7, i believe it was, when he was extolling the virtues of, you know, the across the boards maintenance or extension of the bush tax cuts, promising essentially that s going to raise taxes and he was going to do his darndest over the next couple of years to raise taxes on the top wage earners. what do you make of that politically? well, i think the president is sending mixed messages which will perhaps harm him