Let me correct that for you.
Republicans have only started to care about the debt since ignoring it helped cause them to lose power.
Something the Dems will learn in a couple months.
Wikipedia’s page gives good info. Don’t miss the red/blue graph near the top which shows which party increases the debt recently, and that, as Tea Partiers seem not to know, a Reuplican was in office in 2008 when the deficit began to escalate due to the economic crisis.
The map chart of public debt may improve one’s prospective. (I’m not claiming U.S. has no problem, just that many other developed countries have it worse.)
Tax-rates have not become more progressive; instead income inequality is getting “worse” (or “better” if we take Mr. Smashy’s view – keep those links from your “independent, non-partisan” website coming! 
:D).
(Side note about innumeracy: OP’s question whether $20 per person would make a dent seems naive. Big numbers are hard to udnerstand; dividing by U.S. population is often a good way to make them comprehensible.)
The OP has a great idea. For this year though we need to use the money to pay for some new planes and long overdue pay-raises for ourselves. We’ll start applying the payments to the debt next year. Seriously. I mean it. Next year the budget is going on a diet. Really. Stop laughing.
In another thread there is heated discussion about a vote for over $8 billion for 9/11 rescue workers. That single vote would more than wipe out the OP’s fund and I saw very little debate there about the amount, it’s just some money with an “illion” on the end. We just can’t even concieve of the numbers anymore. What the OP suggests has been done over and over and the money always goes somewhere else. Its called a Tax.
I can’t find a breakdown on this site of actual income to percent of income paid. That’s the comparison I would consider more relevant. If the bottom half of earners in the country collectively earn 3% of the income, I don’t have a problem with them paying 3% of the income tax.
This is a ubiquitous right-wing talking point. But remember that “income tax” is only part of all federal payroll taxes. Take a look at your paystub next week, and you’ll notice you pay a hefty amount for social security and medicare, besides FICA. And those payroll taxes only apply to part of your income. You only pay SS tax on the first $106,800. Make more than that per year and it’s payroll tax free.
SS tax is a huge river of revenue that we currently use to pay our annual expenses. That’s what the phony “trust fund” is–we take in SS taxes now, buy T-bills with it, and use the money in the general fund. In the future when more people retire and we have to pay more SS, we’ll have to raise taxes to pay off those T-bills.
So the 3%/40% is a very misleading statistic, and it’s being pushed for a reason. So next time you use it, realize why you’ve been fed it.
I agree, and understand exactly what it means.
The SS and FICA taxes are more like insurance programs, since you get out of them what you put in (more actually). Those who make more wages and get taxed higher SS amounts end up with higher SS payments. Someone who never paid SS taxes won’t get much (if any?) SS payments, based on their own work.
Federal income taxes are a completely different animal; whether you ‘use’ government services or not, you get them regardless. For example, the poor person ‘uses’ the DOD about the same amount as a very rich person. The paying off of the interest on the debt benefits the poor and rich to about the same (I’m willing to concede that the rich have more to lose, so ‘benefit’ more by FBI etc enforcing contracts, etc).
I think you see my point though.
I never claimed anything about the tax rates… my point was about the amount of money paid to the treasury by the richest 1% vs the bottom 50%, and that it creates an unhealthy dynamic between those who fund the largesse and those who consume it.
Anyone who has kids knows that they often take for granted that which is given to them, and appreciate far more that which they’ve earned. So perhaps the OP’s $20 exercise would be a good start in getting the losers in life (financially speaking only, of course) a little perspective, that there’s no free lunch.
As for the website, I had no idea it was partisan or had an agenda - I simply googled the tax distro question and it was first up. I based my comment on the raw data. If you have an issue with it, you should post a more accurate cite. If not, um… then your point is… ?
I’m becoming more convinced lately that default is the likely endgame. What the USA looks like after that I don’t know.
Really bad. The consequences of defaulting on the national debt would be worse than any of the alternatives.
We agree to disagree on whether income inequality is good or bad. My only point is that the statistic you link to is a consequence of rising inequality and not, as you seemed to imply, of an increase in tax progressivity. Since progressive taxation is intended partly to reduce income inequality, your statistic can be viewed as using trickery to reverse a more meaningful statistic.
No matter how sincere your own thinking, statistics which reverse that meaning are “partisan.” Your particular Google query evidently led you to sites with a partisan agenda.
(Re: income inequality, I’m not a Marxist, but something is wrong when the super-rich can feed caviar to their pets while millions of children are undernourished. U.S.A. has severe inequality. Studies have shown that inequality leads to discontent.)
A reasonable reply, IMHO. FWIW, as one of the few moderates on a board that tilts heavily lefty, I also think it’s good to decrease the inequity… however I hate the government methods that are generally tried, because they seem to degenerate into class warfare, and more importantly, the law of unintended consequences usually rears its ugly head. Raise tax rates and people move money (and capital and jobs) offshore. Or they reduce outputs/production, which lowers the Treasury’s rake.
Nobody likes seeing the poor starving in the streets, if only because it’s just a matter of time before the proles line up the ruling class against the wall…
PS For my thinking, the income inequality is never the problem. It’s the symptom of some other problem. A lefty would say it’s because we don’t take enough from the top, the righty would say, hey let the market have its way. I like to think we could push people up from the bottom without punishing the top and creating the perverse incentives to reduce economic output. Private groups (funded by grants if need be) are the best way to do that, again IMHO.
Millions of children in the USA are not undernourished, so you are objecting to a situation that does not exist.
Even if it did, the problem would not be inequality, but poverty. If I have enough, it makes no difference if someone else has more than enough.
If you mean the difference between the US and the Third World, that is another matter, and not related to progressive taxation.
Regards,
Shodan
There is plenty of inequality in the US, but no starvation except as a choice. Even the homeless can get enough food to live on. Rices, beans and gov’t cheese may not make for a tasty ration, but you only starve if you don;t even try.
There are a lot of arguments here based on the idea that we practise free enterprise in this country. Instead we have corporate communism where legislators in the employ of the rich and powerful create laws to eliminate competition and increasingly funnel our tax dollars right into the pockets of their masters. Take a look at the never ending chant that regulations are bad for the business and the economy. In fact, the overwhelming number of regulations are designed to limit competition and benefit the privileged. No surprise since they are the ones who wrote the regulations in the first place. The banks are currently howling because the congress has created hollow regulations requiring them to maintain tiny percentages of non-fraudulent transactions.
I love this one: the highest 1 percent in income are already paying 40% of all income taxes. The bottom half of earners in this country don’t even pay 3% of all income taxes.
Yeah, its so unfair that the people who gained ownership of 90% of everything by fiat, have to pay a whole 40% of the income taxes. I feel like such a slacker for earning everything I own, and paying the highest tax rates we have, while the wealthiest have to spend so much money on bribing politicians.
The problem is what I call the “Lottery Fallacy”.
In Ohio, and many other states, the original selling point for the state lottery was “it all goes for education” and “will lower property taxes because this will help fund schools”.
That’s wrong. Say the lottery raises $200 million a year. The state takes that money and pays off X amount of school funding, but now they start looking for what they can spend the “extra” $200 million on, and it doesn’t take long to find stuff.
Reducing spending, is faster, easier, and much more effective than increasing taxes.
The problem with the United States, is NOT that its people are taxed to little, rather, the real problem is that the US government spends too much.
Really, it’s easy to cut spending? So we just pull put of Afganistan, Iraq, South Korea, immediately? Lay off a few hundred thousand soldiers and devastate the economy of a dozen states when we closes bases? Do we default on paying off our debts? Of course we could just cut Social Security, but since that is payed for with a dedicated tax it doesn’t help the deficit any.
Maybe it’s just me, but raising taxes back to where they were for the better part of the last century seems easier and quicker. Especially now, since conservatives have so effectively concentrated the wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
So are you just unaware that people pay taxes in ways other than Federal Income tax or are you just ignoring it to support your narrative? People pay social security and medicaire taxes on the first dollars of income, they pay sales tax, property tax, gas tax, taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, telephone service, and a variety of other taxes. This makes the rate of total taxes paid by Americans much more equal. The richest 1% pay a lower effective tax rate than the 10% below them.
You are on a board that fights ignorance. At some point t might make sense to stop and look at the facts before just repeating the nonsense you hear in the echo chamber.
Originally Posted by Susanann
Reducing spending, is faster, easier, and much more effective than increasing taxes.
The problem with the United States, is NOT that its people are taxed to little, rather, the real problem is that the US government spends too much.
Yes, it** IS!!!** easier to cut spending…just stop spending, or cut spending in half. All it takes is a vote in Congress. Simple enough.
As far as raising taxes, the budget deficit this year alone is **1 1/2 trillion dollars. **. That means that you would have to increase taxes by 1 1/2 trillion dollars just to balance the yearly budget, and even if you could do that(which you cant), you would still not even begun to reduce the debt by one single penny .
This sure seems like covered ground already, but the only way you’re going to reduce the deficit and begin to chomp away at the national debt is to enact serious entitlement reform. The non-DOD, non-interest payment, and non-entitlement piece of the federal budget is only 17%. That’s everything in there: FBI, DHS, federal parks, prisons, etc.
Some people (myself included) felt that the biggest problem with passing the healthcare bill wasn’t because it was too heavy-handed government-wise - it was because it tapped the entitlement reform savings as a means to pay for a new entitlement. So money to help the deficit from SS and Medicare reform is already spoken for, so to speak.
I hope that’s not a threadjack but any reasonable discussion about reducing the deficit and debt has to begin, and pretty much end, with controlling entitlements. Even most squishy lefties would agree you cannot tax yourself to prosperity.