(04-20-2011 12:32 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: [ -> ]Just read this article
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53455.html
where people overwhemingly support taxing people who make 250,000 more. I know I am in the minority but to me this is the wrong tact. We need to start framing the debate around "ARE we raising enough revenue to cover expenditures". None of us are. Democrat, Republican, Purple, Blue, or Asian. No one balances budgets. How do we get there? I think my Republican friends want to bankrupt the govt. Just my humble opinion. It's the only way to starve the beast in their opinion.
I think we can bridge some gaps if we ran away from two mindsets.
The first one being............. Income taxes. We have to come up with some form of a national sales tax or a VAT. There is something fundamentally UnAmerican about taxing people who work harder. You have to get people to understand that raising revenue is part of the solution and that tax shouldn't be the burden of only the top 5% or whatever it is.
Two........ I can keep my "pets" but I'll slaughter yours. The two gangs get too caught up in protecting turf. People wouldn't protect their turf as agressively if we truly had to pay for them.
My 2 cents.
Mach,
Don't have time right now to read the article, but this is what I've been saying for years. I actually remember the first time I debated it, March 1988.
Europe tried to support their welfare system by taxing the "rich." It didn't work. The rich beat feet for tax havens. That's a lilttle harder for Americans to do, since we tax worldwide, but there are ways to get there, and relatively easily if it's done over several years.
You've read my tax proposal, I'm sure. It's basically what Europe does, and that structure allows them to support a much bigger social welfare program without killing their economy. Lower and flatter rates, applied to a broader tax base, including a consumption tax.
Europe also has a better idea on the welfare side. Instead of so many focused and "means tested" specific programs, they just build a floor under everybody and let things work out from there.
Again, what I have proposed on this side is the Boortz-Linder prefund and French health care. Most of the focused welfare programs wither, because the prefund means that very few people qualify. Transfer what's left to the states as optional programs, they can do what they want and pay for it with what they save off medical costs that the feds assume under French health care.
At the 15-15-15 level I've proposed (payroll, consumption, and business/investment income, with no personal income tax), coupled with the prefund at 30%, you raise about $400 billion more than under the current structure. And you do it without creating the disincentives for businesses that are rampant in our current tax code. French health care costs $800 billion, which you pay for by eliminating now-redundant Medicaid ($350 billion), eliminating the welfare programs that you no longer need ($300 billion), and realizing that French health care will subsidize Medicare to the tune of $150 billion. Every single person now starts out with a floor under income and free basic medical care. Near as I can tell, every single American would then be less than a minimum-wage job away from being above the poverty level. So we have come this far without screwing any of the poor or middle class. In fact, we've made their lives substantially better, because we have removed the "welfare trap" that curerntly keeps many of them pinned down in poverty.
And we're also $400 billion closer to a balanced budget. And we've raised the revenues to get there in ways that do less harm to the economy than our current tax structure. This is a lesson we can learn from Europe.
Let's assume we are working with a trillion dollar deficit (projections by 2014 or 2015 are in this range). We need $600 billion more. We can cut $200 billion from military without giving up security. Bring home troops from Germany and Japan, convert a substantial number of active duty billets to reserve slots that cost 20% as much (actually would probably increase overall headcount by adding more reserve slots), and give up wasteful and questionable procurement projects like the Zumwalt destroyer and the Littoral Control Ship. Go with a high-low mix on procurement, where we compbine some of the latest and greatest state of the art technology (super-expensive) with some lower end, more basic things. You don't need an Arleigh Burke to outgun Somali pirates, to give one obvious example.
That leaves $400 billion, and I'm quite certain there's that much waste in the rest of the discretionary budget. Probably at least half that much in corporate welfare expenditures (outside tax loopholes, that were addressed above) that would no longer be necessary to attract businesses with a 15% corporate tax rate.
It's doable. That we can do it without really making anyone out there in the real world worse off is testament to just how much fraud, waste, and abuse there is in Washington, DC.