A reporter’s visit to Fallujah, observing the insurgents being sniped at.
Sounds OK to me.
I suggested to someone that we should freeze the tax code. Then create a new tax code from scratch with the condition that it be no more than 100 pages long.
Dal Timgar
Do away with payroll deductions. On April 15th you get your bill, which you will pay in 12 installments.
Like the idea of elimiating payrole deductions.
I would like such an amendment just to limit future horror, and set it very high so it gets passed w/o question, perhaps at 40-60%. This would help out when risky scheams like hillary care comes around again.
But then again, the untimate power of the fed gov’t (far under God’s power of coarse) would enable it to print money, thereby reducing the value of everyones money and in effect leavy a tax.
What we need is an admendment limiting gov’t spending to a fixed percent of GNP.
Attempting to limit the fed’s accounts receivables without first limiting their accounts payables would be folly.
What we need are politicians that don’t rely on their re-election bid focusing on how much money they were able to get appropriated back into the local community. It would also help if we stopped the practice of congressional bill attachments that have no relation to the original bill.
Well, W talked about tying growth of the federal budget to the GNP. We can see how that went.
Just to make sure we realize what numbers we are talking about here…
According the the published tax rates in my 1040 Instruction book, and a little Excel tinkering, under the current tax law, in order for your total tax burden to be as high as 25%, your total TAXABLE income (that’s after all adjustments and taking as high a deduction as you can), your taxable income has to be at least $155, 362.50.
for it to be as high as 25% of your total ACTUAL income, you’d have to be making quite a bit more than that.
That’s as a single taxpayer assuming nothing you claim triggers the Alternative Minimum Tax
Actually, something that Congress did implement in 1990 that seemed to work to some degree is called “Paygo”, short for “pay as you go” which required that any new spending increases or tax cuts be paid for by other spending cuts or tax increases. But it expired in 2002 and has not been renewed. The Senate has now voted to re-implement it but the House wants to re-implement it for spending increases only (apparently wanting to naively believe in pretty-well-disproven supply side notions in regards to tax cuts). Here is an editorial discussing this:
By the way, does anyone understand how the Bush 2001 tax cut was passed with PAYGO presumably still in effect? The editorial implies it was evaded but how exactly?
It is bad public policy and law making to enact things that put the governing entity in a straightjacket. Ergo, all laws should have an “except in the case of” escape clause to handle unforseen contingencies.
And, of course everything will become a “contingency.” Laws and constitutions and New Year’s Resolutions will not result in people doing the right thing unless they want to.
I’m not entirely sure of the mechanics, but as I understand it, the PAYGO system had been broken for a number of years. Did I read that in one of your links to articles about Greenspan’s testimony? I’m not sure.
Here is a link to the history of the senate paygo procedural rule.
(emphasis mine)
So… how are things doing in cloud cuckoo land?
One of the reasons I joined this forum is that I thought posts like the above weren’t tolerated here. But if you have some evidence to the contrary please let us know.
Congress passed legislation telling the OMB Director to report that there would be no Paygo budget consequences for FY01 and FY02.
This isn’t really a response to your point as much as it is an attempt to put down in words an idea that’s been banging around in my head for a while. Doing my taxes this year I was thinking over charitable contributions versus taxes. Most charitable contributions are tax deductible. As such there is incentive to give because it isn’t like you’re going to get to keep it no matter what you do. Why not give it to a local charity and feel warm and fuzzy about helping someone in your own neighborhood instead of giving it to the man and worrying he’ll spend it on blowing up people you don’t think should be blown up or wasting it on measuring cow fart potency. If this incentive were gone, and charitable contributions were not tax deductable, you could keep your money instead of giving it to charity, and it didn’t affect your taxes either way, I’m wondering what effect this would have on charitable contributions in the US. I’m guessing that charitable behavior would drop if it weren’t tax deductible but I’m considering starting researching it because I’m curious if anyone has studied the question.
Enjoy,
Steven
We had small governemt once, in the 1890’s for example. We also had child labor, filthy meat packers, industrial accidents which threw care of
the injured onto the general tax rolls, automobiles with plate glass windshields and on and on.
None of the things that government does today arose in a vacuum. Believe it or not they were all a response to a need at the time. The weakness is that such things develop a constituency and are hard to get rid of when the need is past. But that will also happen with small government which turns out, in most cases, to be small in the areas that the politically powerful don’t want and big in the areas they do.
The problem with charity giving and tax deductions is that you only get to the deduct to the percentage of your tax bracket. There would be a lot more charity giving if it were a 100% offset against income. But then there is also the problem that some reasonable number of charities keep a large percentage of the money they get for “administrative overhead”. A 100% offset would encourage more flim-flam artists operating charities, since there would be more money to work with. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t…
Good points, for sure. but a case can be made that these improvements came about not because government legislated that they must, but because of the success of capitalism. As people get more wealthy they spend more on safety.
Think of it this way. If they government had outlawed plate glass windshields in 1890, what would have happened? My guess is that the automobile industry would have shut down in the US and the best and brightest would have taken off for England or Germany.
Or what if the government passes laws that we can’t sustain right now? Car manufacturers have to build cars that go 100 mpg. Or hospitals have to cure cancer and heart disease. I wouldn’t want to be around for the results.
Capitalism was very successful for some. However the work week was 60 hrs and the great majority just got by.
You are also entitled to the opinion that without government pressure the success of capitalism would have resulted in the clean-up of the packers and the ending of child labor. Well, in the 1890’s capitalism was very successful - why weren’t they eliminated without laws forcing it?
A scary scenario indeed but at the time of plate glass windshields Europe already had most of the best and the brightest in the automobile field. US free market boosters always point with pride to the ingenuity of the US free market practioners. However when they are told to make a safety improvement they whine that it’s too hard and costs too much. Humbug!
This assumes laws are passed willy-nilly in a vacuum. Car manufacturers testify at hearings on proposed legislation as do all other businesses. That’s what lobbyists are for. There are even some people who complain that the legislators pass laws that are too much influenced by the input from those to be regulated.
Yes, but they did get by. The essential question is not to compare working conditions in the 1830s with those in the 2000s. But to compare the working conditions in the 1830s with those in the 1660s. How did those on the bottom economic rung fare during the late 17th century compared to those on that same rung during the 19th century?