The reason the tax cuts were sunsetted is because the Dems and some repubs were shocked by the impact it would have on the debt. They refused to make it permanent back then when we had a surplus. Now that we are in terrible debt the Repubs still want it.
They are trying to starve the beast. They want government to fail. They attack every social program because they think the rich and powerful may actually be forced to kick in for the general welfare. That would be bad. the middle class should be glad to give up everything to make the rich more powerful.
the vision of America that most people share is not the same for the super wealthy. They think the chosen few should be in charge of everything and get the vast majority of the wealth. They are buying the politicians ,they control the news and setting the agenda for the house and senate. We are doomed. They will destroy Social Security. They have already ruined American medical care. Americans will be treated as peons in the future. they will have no power. The tax bill is just part of the program to starve all public agencies. We seemed to have plenty of money to save the banks, the institutions who blew up the world economy with rampant greed. The people who did it got rich and never missed a check. They just wrote them off taxpayers funds when it all crashed. they are impervious to the pain they cause.
I guess thats a matter of opinion. I don’t think 5% is an acceptable tax rate for the median household in America. In other words having half the country paying 5% or less in federal income taxes is not good for the country. I think that we should have a progressive tax rate taht imposes a meaningful burden on all citizens so that we don’t forget that government costs money. If that leads them to want smaller government then fine. If that leads them to conclude that the wealthy are undertaxed then that also is fine but we should not shelter more than half the population from meaningful tax burdens.
If you tax the median household at 10 or 15%, I bet they will start to sonder why the rich are paying so little.
More likely for the Gold Water.
Well, since social security and Medicare are on the chopping block due to future federal deficits, I’m not sure it makes sense to exclude those from the tax bill. In that case, you should add payroll taxes to the percentage that the little people pay. It sure looks the same as income taxes from this end of the paycheck.
That’s just federal income tax, though. They’re paying at least twice that in sales, excise, consumption, property, capital gains and other taxes, remember.
And, most of those taxes fall disproportionately on lower income households. A hedge fund manager is only going to buy so many yachts.
It would be a mistake to say they fall disproportionately on lower income households. They’re just not progressive, which is a bit different.
Sales taxes will be a bigger percentage of someone’s income at $50,000 than at $50,000,000. At $50,000, maybe they will buy a new TV one of these years. It’s not like the guy making $50,000,000 will buy 1,000 televisions for each TV that the lower income guy buys.
Take gas taxes – the guy making $50,000,000 will not drive 1,000 times as far as the guy making $50,000.
Since I argue that sales taxes (sin taxes, gas taxes, you name it) will be a bigger percentage of the lower income family’s take home pay, it falls disproportionately on them.
I don’t know the numbers in the U.S., RNATB, but V.A.T. in the UK was slightly progressive - but only because of the exemptions for food and childrens clothing. If they were factored out (and I don’t think they exist for U.S. sales taxes in most states), expenditure taxes are regressive - poorer people spend a greater percentage of their income, therefore pay a greater percentage of their income in sales tax.
The cuts were timed to expire at a time which would give Republicans an advantage (mid-terms and heading into a Presidential election cycle). They are now arguing that allowing them to expire would be the largest tax increase in history…in fact, they were the largest tax CUTS in history.
Good spin…bad policy.
80% of the cuts went and go to the top 3%. The average tax savings for the other 97% of us is about $650. A cheap pay-off which allowed one of the largest transfers of wealth fom the poor and middle class to the rich ever.
These tax cuts alone account for a significant percentage of the deficit, costing 70 billion a year and generating ZERO jobs to date.
I’m pretty damned exercised about this…so we can’t extend UE benefits for millions who can’t find work through no fault of their own, are debating cuts to SS and Medicare (which are not even IN the general budget or in any way resp. for the deficit AND running surpluses) and yet we can “afford” tax cuts for millionares.
Seems that’s what has happened; 2 more yrs of treasury busting tax breaks for the rich in exchange for a brief extension of UE benefits. Democrat pussies. I guess I am going to go back to voting for Independent candidates. Maybe rioting in the streets to boot. :mad:
They were temporary because there were Senate rules in place at the time (later scrapped by the GOP) that prevented unfunded tax cuts, spending increases. The only way Bush could get them passed was to make them temporary.
US sales taxes typically include similar exceptions for staple goods to those for VAT. Obviously, a flat sales tax on all goods and services would be regressive.
No one took anything from the poor. They stopped taking quite so much from the rich, which isn’t the same (never mind the class-warfare definition of “the rich.”). Income taxes apply only to income, that is, wealth generated by an individual through his labors, in an individual given year. When you quit taking 40% and instead take only 37% from one guy’s earned income, while allowing another guy to pay 0%, there is no intellectually honest way to pretend that wealth has been transferred from the slacker to the high earner.
I’m no sure how typical it is - I know VA and PA do, but in TN food was taxed (but at a 1% lower rate IIRC).
This is, of course, complete bollocks. If I sit in a chair and do nothing for 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, and don’t get fired, I still pay income tax. Presuming that there is a direct link between an individual’s labor and his earnings is based on an incredibly naive view that the labor market is in some way fair.
Inheritance aside, there is no pre-existing “wealth” that gets arbitrarily divvied up. People with more get more when they do something successful. Your view of economics is a primitive pennies-from-heaven one, where the government is the steward of some gigantic Uncle Scrooge vault of “wealth” that collectively belongs to “the people,” and you’re complaining because “the powerful” distorted the divvying up of this collectively-owned “wealth.” Do you think there’s a fair, or unfair, distribution of “wealth” in Chad? Trick question – there’s no wealth at all because no hard-working/well-educated class has emerged to create it.
At some point you’re just creating Leftist Mad Libs with your all-purpose mix-and-match jumble of lefty tropes. I saw an article just the other day about some Saudi prince coming over here to be treated for cancer. When’s the last time anyone flew to Saudi Arabia from America for cancer treatment? “But that’s just the rich!” Well, I was recently at a Ronald McDonald House function, and let me tell you a good third of the kids there had travelled from Europe, Mexico, SA (middle to lower middle class, all, or they wouldn’t be staying at the RMH). Again, NO ONE has ever taken a flight from the U.S. to Mexico City or Helsinki because American medical care was “ruined.” American lifespans have steadily increased, infant mortality has not, all of which, again, quite obviously does not occur in a country whose medical care standard has gotten much worse, as opposed to significantly better.
And yet those lifespans are still shorter than those in many nations with far less wealth, and the mortality rate much higher. Now, maybe the US system hasn’t gotten worse, but it should be much better.
Does it count I know plenty of people who have taken a flight from the U.S. to the U.K. or to Ireland for medical treatment?
It counts to counterbalance my point that generally people come to the U.S. for top notch advanced medical care, but both really are side issues to his unsustainable claim that the medical care standard in the U.S. was “ruined,” which is just made up.
Well it would be relevant if the “ruined” claim was an assertion that high quality health care isn’t available in the U.S. But it isn’t. No one claims that.
A health care system can also be seen as ruined while stil providing great care if it rations that care to a smaller group.