Originally Posted by sgallan

I don't have a problem with cutting taxes. I do have a problem with yearly budget deficits in the 1-2 trillion range, and an overall deficit of 13 plus trillion. Yeah they help stimulate the economy, but the Bush tax cuts never paid for themselves even in the best of times. So we are borrowing and spending instead of tax and spending.

The end result is the same..... ugly huge deficits. Politicians doing politically pretty things, without addressing the deficit. If we cannot discipline our spending, then cutting other revenues might look good in the short term, but eventually those bills become due. And the payment on the interest crowds out money from the private sector, as well as weakens the dollar, and helps finance our global competition (who carry a lot of the paper) as well.

I am guessing you won't get this as the entire premise of the thread sounds just like the sound bites I hear on the various (shallow emotion driven) talk shows by celebrities making money off of the gullible.

Scott I hear you. I would like to see much of the bowlesSimpson plan put into action to resolve that issue. That is why I said I like the idea of a tax rate of 28% with know deductions or loopholes. I believe that would bring in more tax revenue from the rich. I also believe that we need drastic spending cuts. Eliminate deductions for all people except the lowest income earners.

Originally Posted by ODH

Don't all people who work pay the same SS and Medicare taxes?

They do but the taxes collected do not come close to funding those programs. SS is taxed up to a certain amount then it stops.

I would like to see people keep their own SS and put it into an IRA or another type of safe investment, so they could count on it being there for them, rather than relying on the government to secure it for us.

The rich do not benefit from those programs, they do not need them. They are rich they have money to retire and money to get medical care. Those programs benefit those making below the wealthiest levels. I guess you might want to define rich. To me 250 grand a year is not rich, it is well off. 1 mill a year is rich.

Still give a level of taxation that you would think is fair. For all the tax brackets.

Originally Posted by UGLY

They do but the taxes collected do not come close to funding those programs. SS is taxed up to a certain amount then it stops.

I would like to see people keep their own SS and put it into an IRA or another type of safe investment, so they could count on it being there for them, rather than relying on the government to secure it for us.

The rich do not benefit from those programs, they do not need them. They are rich they have money to retire and money to get medical care. Those programs benefit those making below the wealthiest levels. I guess you might want to define rich. To me 250 grand a year is not rich, it is well off. 1 mill a year is rich.

Still give a level of taxation that you would think is fair. For all the tax brackets.

I think you are mixing statistics. I believe the statistic that says the poor pay no income tax SS and Medicare are not counted as taxes because they are annuities (or something like that)... so you can't say the poor don't pay any taxes and also count SS of part of the spending that the poor are not helping fund.

I find fault with the philosophy that taxes and government should be something that you evaluate based on how much you put in versus what benefits you get. Taxes help fund government that maintains a civil society and the rich benefit from that more than anybody becasue they hav ethe most to lose.

Also since tax rates are progessive for everybody some who has enough income to reach the highest tax bracket is not paying that tax rate on all their income. right now the top tax bracket is 35% which starts at 373,650 , but you only start paying that rate at dollar number 373,651.. and you only pay that on adjusted income after all the deductibles which in general the rich have many. So Obamas actually fufilled his campaign promise and gave a tax break to everyone making less than 250,000, someone actually making $250,000 would essentially get the exact same tax break.

Finally, to answer your question, things seemed pretty fair with the tax rates during the Clinton years (which I think were passed by Bush I). We had the longest period of economic expansion in our nation's history and the US government had a surplus.

Originally Posted by UGLY

They do but the taxes collected do not come close to funding those programs.

That's true for nearly every program at the Federal, State, and local level. In my opinion taxes are plenty high, the problem is spending.

Originally Posted by ban basketball

In terms of how much should the wealthy be taxed? I don't know, nor have I ever tried to know. Thank God that bigger minds that mine have to tackle that problem!

I do know that as one who grew up in the working class and still advocates for them that I often ask the same question of "How Much Is Enough", with a slightly different twist to it. For me, I can't help but ask how much profit is enough, especially when it is at the expense of workers, individual lives, families, and society at large. That is a question that, at some point, our society will have to address.

About Reagan and revenues: Here is one graph and analysis that is useful to see if revenues increase with lower taxes. http://rricketts.ba.ttu.edu/Tax%20Ra...20Revenues.htm

As can also be seen in the graph, at the time, we were told that Bill Clinton had put in "the largest tax increase in history," yet the budget ended up producing a surplus, which also runs counter to the tax cuts=larger revenue myth.

However, the larger question with the Reagan tax cuts/revenue issue has always been why he had to raise taxes so many times during his Presidency to cover the budget shortfalls? http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...301.green.html

The easy answer to the above has always been that it was a democratic Congress during the Reagan years, but that is yet another falsehood: only half of Congress during the Reagan years was democrat; the Senate was republican. http://arts.bev.net/roperldavid/politics/congress.htm

Interesting numbers I will have to research no graphs just numbers and I believe they show a dollar increase. They did have to raise tax rates most likely because they cut them too much. We know that tax rates can not be zero. Spending also increased a large amount because of the democratic congress with reagan. Clintons numbers will always be skewed because of the .com boom which was going to happen no matter what happened.

Originally Posted by ODH

I think you are mixing statistics. I believe the statistic that says the poor pay no income tax SS and Medicare are not counted as taxes because they are annuities (or something like that)... so you can't say the poor don't pay any taxes and also count SS of part of the spending that the poor are not helping fund.

I find fault with the philosophy that taxes and government should be something that you evaluate based on how much you put in versus what benefits you get. Taxes help fund government that maintains a civil society and the rich benefit from that more than anybody becasue they hav ethe most to lose.

Also since tax rates are progessive for everybody some who has enough income to reach the highest tax bracket is not paying that tax rate on all their income. right now the top tax bracket is 35% which starts at 373,650 , but you only start paying that rate at dollar number 373,651.. and you only pay that on adjusted income after all the deductibles which in general the rich have many. So Obamas actually fufilled his campaign promise and gave a tax break to everyone making less than 250,000, someone actually making $250,000 would essentially get the exact same tax break.

Finally, to answer your question, things seemed pretty fair with the tax rates during the Clinton years (which I think were passed by Bush I). We had the longest period of economic expansion in our nation's history and the US government had a surplus.

I was not trying to mix the tax and SS. I thought you said that they do pay those as taxes so I was trying to impliment those also. I was also refering to the claim that defense is 60% of the budget.