# Go ahead, raise my taxes! How much? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 30, 2011, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-raise-my-taxes-how-much/604595 "2011-11-30T19:17:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2011, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-raise-my-taxes-how-much/604595/21 "2011-12-03T04:28:24Z")
> [@Furious\_Marmot](#): > > I’m trying to get some idea of just how much money people are arguing about when it comes to raising taxes… > > Spending, however, will remain unchanged at its current level, and will grow at the currently projected rate… > > Your fixes must work permanently… With the conditions you’ve imposed, you won’t get an idea of “how much money people are talking about when it comes to raising taxes”. Everyone agrees, both Republicans and Democrats, that spending _has_ to be cut, and until you know by how much, you can’t determine the necessary tax hikes. By hypothetically not cutting spending, you’ll end up with an unrealistic, inflated figure. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2011, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-raise-my-taxes-how-much/604595/22 "2011-12-03T04:29:36Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Tapir in 2012 I wanna see a birth certificate. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2011, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-raise-my-taxes-how-much/604595/23 "2011-12-05T14:44:23Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > I’m not convinced. If we only focused on income tax than it’s true spending has to be cut. But couldn’t taxes be tied in a way to adjust upwards with spending? Personally this is what annoys me most with the US system of taxation. > > As just one example, consider gas taxes. As a general rule, the more someone uses the roads the more gas they consume. Taxing gas provides increased income along with increased use. If we payed for roads from a 1% income tax, people could destroy the roads faster than we could repair them. > > In Canada, certain programs like [un]Employment Insurance is paid for directly from a payroll tax, so there are times when the program is actually flush with cash. > > The US federal government is now stuck paying for retirement, seniors healthcare, and the military, all programs that continue to grow year after year. But they’re tied to income, which isn’t going to grow at the same rate. > > So you are right in the sense that simply playing around with income tax rates isn’t going to solve the problem. But playing around with where taxes are applied might. The problem is mostly health care spending. Social security is a defined benefit and you can fiddle around with the numbers and balance out the ledger on social security. You get almost the entire way there by removing the cap on both the tax side and the benefit side. Sure someone who makes 10 million/year over their career will end up getting a $50,000 social security check every month during retirement but they would have to live to be 150 years old just to get their money back with zero interest. If we means tested benefits and removed the cap on the tax side we no longer have a social security problem. Whatever we do if we didn’t have the baby boomers coming through the system we would have a problem as current funding levels so any attempts to balance socials ecurity without addressing benefits to the baby boomers doesn’t actually address the the main source of the problem. Health care doesn’t work that way. There is no relationship between how much is taken in and how much is paid out. Medicare costs grow significantly faster than any increase in medicare receipts, and I don’t mean just right now as the baby boomers are going onto medicare I mean for last few decades and for the forseeable future. As things stand if we don’t do eanything, medicare will engulf our entire budget within my child’s lifetime. Obama tried to fix that but he only got about a quarter of the way there. No program can continue to see costs rising at 2 or 3 times the growth in tax receipts forever. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2011, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-raise-my-taxes-how-much/604595/24 "2011-12-05T21:57:54Z")
I blame (among other things) the 1990’s cuts in medical residency funding for that. We’re in a shortage situation, and health care providers can charge a premium to those “lucky” enough to gain access to their services. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-raise-my-taxes-how-much/604595/25 "2011-12-06T04:43:47Z")
> [@Furious\_Marmot](#): > > I’m trying to get some idea of just how much money people are arguing about when it comes to raising taxes. > > Thanks to bad mushrooms served at a state dinner and a bizarre case of mistaken identity, you have been tasked with fixing the US budget problems. You have complete, unilateral control over all US federal tax rates, including social security, medicare, etc. Spending, however, will remain unchanged at its current level, and will grow at the currently projected rate. That responsibilty was given to a tapir, and he decided to leave things exactly as they are. Then he bought a first class ticket to Malaysia and disappeared into the jungle. > > Your fixes must work permanently, so no funny stuff with sunset clauses or other tricks to just push the problem down the road. Also, they just made it a capital crime to bribe you, or the tapir, so don’t even think about selling your power to the highest bidder. > > Let’s say I’m near the bottom of the 1% which, according to something I heard on NPR yesterday, means my annual household income is at least $506,000. That’s a lot of money for one person to make, so let’s assume I’m an engineer and my wife is a doctor, and that is a combined income figure. > > How much do our household taxes need to increase in order to fix the US government’s financial problems for the foreseeable future? > > What about somebody making $100k or $50k; how much more will he have to pay? Max out itemized deductions at half of what they are now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-raise-my-taxes-how-much/604595.md?page=1)