No offense, but the federal budget is NOT like running a household. Unless your household has a few million people working (or not) different jobs, the ability to print money whenever it wants, some ability to control the interest rates different members of the household charge each other for borrowing money, and members of the household spending their own money totaling far, far more than the household budget.
Oh, and if your household can at the moment get free loans (literally 0%), and has a whole bunch of members without jobs, while other members of the household might start hiring, but only if someone starts buying what they’re trying to sell.
The whole ‘just like a household’ is just a really, really, bad analogy that leads to really bad decisions; the kind of decisions that created the Great Depression. Here’s a much better analogy: Baby-Sitting the Economy
A recession is NOT the time to balance the federal budget; it’s the time to spend money to get the economy moving. Once you’re in a boom, THEN stop spending stimulus and raise taxes to slow things down and save up for the next rainy day.
Bull. Why should we get taxed 25% [roughly combining state fed and assorted crap taken out of mrAru’s paycheck] on $40000, and some rich guy with access to lots of accountants and lawyers gets off with paying less of their much greater income simply because they can afford to have a team pore over the books to find every single way to squirm out of paying their fair share. People with LOWER incomes should pay the flat tax and the asshole CEOs and executives that get millions and billions in income for screwing over the public in the first place, and doing jack shit towards fostering business get slammed with a percentage of their income with no little old boy network tax breaks. We can afford it less than those jackasses can.
World War II actually. The New Deal helped slightly but there were parts of it that hurt more than it helped and the economy did not fully recover until World War II started.
Hypothetically if were to simplify the tax code via flat tax or something, I suppose we would eliminate most tax breaks/loopholes as part of it.
It would be possible (tough, and probably not a good idea, but possible) to tax our way out of the current deficit. It would not be possible to cut our way out of it. Yes, there are some things that can and should be cut, and which could go a significant way towards making ends meet. But even if, say, we cut the Department of War entirely (which even I won’t advocate), it wouldn’t be enough. Toss in the entirety of of the NSF, NASA, the Department of Education, and the National Endowment for the Arts, like a lot of conservatives are fond of talking about, and you’d hardly even see a difference. Toss out Social Security, and you’re just making things worse, since Social Security is a source of income, too. We absolutely need to raise taxes.
My preferred method for doing so would be to eliminate the inheritance tax and capital gains tax and just consider those income like any other. Why should some schlub who works hard for his money have to pay more than someone who just sits back and gets it handed to him on a silver platter? Added to this, of course, we should add another bracket or two at the top end. The current bracket cutoffs made sense when “millionaire” meant “fabulously stinking wealthy”, but times have changed since then.
EDIT:
And the way that World War II helped was that it represented massive government spending. If we had had the guts to spend that much on the New Deal in the first place, that would have worked even better.
Really? You’re going to say that the top 1% owe more than the 80-whatever percent they pay now? And that the bottom 50% that doesn’t pay any tax at all is paying their share?
It’s absolutely baffling how someone can look at who pays what and put the phrases “pay their share” and “I’m looking at you, top 1%” together.
I will never understand the general US ignorance of how much the rich are financially carrying this country on their backs.
It’s nice to finally get a Democrat to admit that what they really want is for the rich to pay for the poor’s retirement. Y’know, originally, the grasshopper died, come winter. I liked it better that way.
Name one way that rich people “squirm out of paying their fair share”. Name one, or admit that you’re just making up stuff that makes you feel better. Second, explain how the “jackass” rich people were the ones buying houses they couldn’t afford.
I don’t understand the “taxes are eeevvviiill” mindset. I get a lot of good stuff for the taxes I pay and I don’t mind paying my fair share. I do mind picking up the tab for the wealthy and mega corporations though, and I just cannot fathom why anyone thought starting 2 wars and cutting taxes made any kind of sense in any kind of way.
Responsible tax policies should have been in place years ago.
If we tax the rich at substantially higher percentages than the middle class and poor, what is the incentive to work hard and become rich? Are we trying to have everyone take home the some amount of money? Might as well stay poor and sponge off the government.
Right, why would anyone want to be a guy who makes $5 million a year paying 40% taxes when it’s practically the same thing as a guy making $50,000 a year paying 32% taxes? No one would bother to work to become rich.
At 33% top marginal tax rate, the rich work as hard as they can to increase their wealth, which allows them to invest and hire people and stuff. At 37% top marginal tax rate, they all decide to live under bridges and the economy goes nowhere.
You know why. Because gaining capital is extremely risky and taxes take a huge chunk out of the “reward” side of risk vs. reward. Replace “sits back and gets it handed to him on a silver platter” with “sweats it out, risks bankruptcy, and goes balls-out” and maybe it’ll make sense.
ETA:
Fiction: Ca3799 is picking up the tab for corporations and the wealthy.
Fact: The wealthy and corporations are picking up the tab for Ca3799.
Fiction: The poor are paying more than their fair share.
Fact: The bottom half pay nothing.
Where the crazy are you getting 80-whatever-percent as a current tax rate on the rich?
I don’t use the “pay their share” terminology, but if (to pull numbers out of nowhere) the top 1% have 30% of the wealth in the country, and they pay 25% of the tax load - even though they are disproportionately paying more than everyone else in taxes, they still wouldn’t actually be paying their share in terms of how much of their ability to be taxed that they’re actually being taxed.
Do you understand that the super rich are increasing the wealth gap so that increasingly the large majority of people can’t do stuff like own houses or afford health care? That the massive increase in productivity over the last few decades has actually seen a decline in the average relative financial power of individuals, whereas the gains were made amongst the super rich? They stack society in their favor so that they have all the wealth - so it becomes necesary to tax them to run society because they’re the only ones with the fucking money. You guys make me sound like some fucking hippy when you make me do this.
Do you really? I mean this in a very literal way. Would you like to have things like social security taken away so that old people go back to starving to death on the streets in mass like the good old days?
Yeah, I remember how much all of the super rich financial people suffered because of wrecking the entire world financial system with their bad risks. Oh, right, too big to fail.
I think small business owners face some real risk, but the super rich really don’t. When is the last time one of them lost everything due to poor decisions or risks going against them?
[Moderator Note]Despite your original intention, this topic cannot avoid becoming a debate. My choice is to either shut down the poll and move it to Great Debates, or shut it down and refer people to the Great Debates thread currently running. If you have a preference let me know, otherwise I’m going to do one or the other pretty soon.[/Moderator Note]
Poll results won’t register as responses, and your thread would sink faster than Aquaman with a bad leg cramp.
If people wish to continue this discussion, they may do so here.
Closing thread.
