Subject: Re: =?UTF-8?B?UmU6IOKAnFRydW1w4oCZcyDigJhHb2xkZW4gRG9tZeKAmSBNaXNzaWxl?=
=?UTF-8?Q?_Shield_Expected_To_Cost_=24500_Billion=E2=80=9D?=
Lynn McGuire <
lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
Sigh. Your mantra of taxing the rich grows tiring.
Many people of gone through the numbers, taking every penny of the rich
will not be even close to fixing the USA debt.
Issue one is that taxing the rich reduces a lot of resentment. I make about three times as much as my sister does, and we both pay about the same amount
in taxes. Not the same percentage, the same amount. My uncle plays about three times what I do, and he doesn't pay anything at all in taxes (although
he does pay as much as I pay in taxes for tax attorneys fees, I suspect.)
And we are none of us even close to the 2% mark. I am okay with paying taxes as long as others are paying taxes too.
Also note that "taxing the rich" is not the same thing as "taxing the wealthy."
So I think a lot of what the "tax the rich" crowd is about is having fair
taxes so that everybody pays their share. This has less to do with adjusting tax brackets than with removing deductions.
If you actually look at the tax code, it's many, many volumes. Pick up any page and there's something alarming on it. "This applies only to purchase
of an ocean-going ship between 130 and 135 feet in length in the month of February." Someone did something for their senator or congressman and got
that put in. Those things need to be out in the open so they can go away.
The only way to fix the debt problem through taxes is to tax the middle >class to death. And the uniparty is rightfully scared to do so.
When you do that, the middle class gives up and stops working and then everything goes wrong. That's the issue, that you have to look at the
economic consequences of behaviour caused by taxes and not just the
taxes themselves. There have been cases where reducing taxes made for
more money being collected. There have of course been cases where the
opposite was the case too.
So, the financial apocalypse of the USA approaches as that is the
default option.
The problem is that some of us look at Europe and see countries where the government services are much better and the taxes on the middle class are
not much higher, and the budget is much closer to being balanced, and we wonder why we can't be like that.
--scott
--
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