I’ve always been an advocate of English Only as the law of the land. It’s not jingoism that drives that but rather the need for communication. People have a difficult time communicating in the best of circumstances. How many times have you heard a husband or wife who have been married for a decade say about their spouse “He (or she) simply doesn’t understand me?” Or have you ever been involved in a political or religious discussion when at some point you think the person across the table is simply speaking a different language, despite the fact that both of you are using the King’s English. A common language is a starting point for communicating with one another, not the end in itself.
In a similar way, political discussion often looks like people trying to talk to one another using completely different languages. Take the Bush tax cuts for example. If nothing is done in the next month taxes will rise for everyone in America – or at least for those who pay income taxes. Democrats accuse the Republicans of wanting to give tax cuts to the rich. The GOP says they don’t want to raise taxes on anyone, rich or middle class. Same situation, two different takes.
This might sound like a simple question of semantics, but actually it’s anything but. The left frequently uses language to try and hide what is really being said – not a surprise coming from a party that is heavily supported by trial lawyers. They crucified George Bush as trying to gamble senior citizen’s retirement money on Wall Street when he sought to reform Social Security. Nothing could have been farther from the truth, but it played well enough in Peoria that the proposal never made it out of the gate. Such is the language of government: Lots of words, little communication and even less truth.
Every time some Democrat talks about the government doing this or that good thing they are not referring to some Xanadu where the government only does wonderful things for the citizenry, where there is plenty of everything to go around and where things work like a well oiled machine. Rather, they are using illusory language to talk about something quite different. They are at the most basic level talking about the government making choices for you… at the point of a gun. Make no mistake, that is exactly what government does. If you decide not to pay income taxes this year, the government will send you some correspondence seeking to get you to pay up. If you ignore them you will likely have your wages garnished or your bank account emptied. If that does not work or if you try flee, the IRS will send federal marshals after you and you can be sure they will be carrying guns. It happens every day. You don’t see the guns, but they are implied.
Now, once the government has your money they get to spend it on all the things they want… not what you want. Here are just a few examples of things the government decided to spend your money on last year thanks to President Obama’s Stimulus Bill:
- $389,000 to pay 100 Buffalonians $45 each to record how much malt liquor they drank — and how much pot they smoked each day.
- $762,372 to fund the development of computer technology at UNC Charlotte to digitally record the dance moves of performers.
- $1 million dollars for three Arizona graduate students to study how ants work.
Those three projects cost a total of $2,151,372. In the current environment that might sound like much. Looked at another way however, it takes on a bit more consequence. The average individual or family who filed a tax form in 2008 (the most recent year for which data are available) paid, on average, $7,366 in federal taxes – and that doesn’t include Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid taxes. That means that $2,151,372 represented the entire federal tax bill for 292 families across the country. That $7,366 the government took from each of those families and used to pay for the Buffalonians to write down how much beer and pot they used couldn’t be used to pay for school supplies for their children. Couldn’t be spent on replacing their old car. Couldn’t be spent to take the family to Disney World. Couldn’t be spent catching up on their mortgage. Couldn’t be given to their local church or charity. If that’s too obscure or disconnected for you, take a look at your own checkstub or income tax return. Whatever you paid, $7,366 (or everything up to it) went to support one of those programs above. What could you have done with that money?
Unfortunately for America, this $2 million is only a tiny slice of the money the government forcibly takes away from Americans to spend on things they would never spend their own money on. And it’s not just the Stimulus. It’s virtually the entire government. Farm subsidies. Welfare payments to recipients with enough money to buy cell phones, video games and big screen TVs. Thousands of dollars in bribes to buy electric cars few people want. Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund public broadcasting in the most diverse media market in the world. $123,000 salaries (and benefits) for federal workers who operate the dysfunctional government in the first place!
And what’s worse, it’s not just the money. The government increasingly is taking aim at the choices you should be making for yourself: How you can pay for college. Whether or not you must be a member of a union – and of course pay union dues, which are then spent on Democratic politicians whether you like it or not. What doctors you can choose. The kinds of cars you are allowed to buy.
Democrats (and too many Republicans) try to dress up this travesty in governance in innocuous or paternal sounding language: Insurance for children or A right to own their own home or Fairness in education. Behind every compassionate sounding phrase is the reality of dysfunctional government programs and regulations that take money out of the pockets of workers and take liberty and choices away from everyone.
At the end of the day government exists to provide citizens with an environment where they can enjoy their liberties and pursue happiness. Not sure? Let’s go to the source:
- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The Declaration of Independence is why we have a government. The Constitution is how we do it. The Constitution describes a variety of government responsibilities such as providing for a national defense, limits on abridging individual rights and liberties as well as a role in areas such as interstate commerce, patents, roads and few others. It was limited by design. Somewhere in the last century that limited design was shunted to the side and is rapidly becoming a distant memory.
As 2010 comes to an end and the newly recalibrated Congress begins its work, the country is likely at something of a tipping point. Will it be omnipresent government that decides how we can live our lives and takes our money to spend on beer and pot diaries or will it be individual freedom where citizens are free to pursue happiness and benefit their families and communities prosperity resulting from ingenuity and hard work?
Such basic questions sometimes get lost in the language of politics but we allow that to happen at our own peril. Indeed Barack Obama and the Democrats won in 2008 with the vacuous language of “Hope and Change”… but lost because of “poor communication”. As 2012 comes into focus conservatives must move the conversation away from simple platitudes and towards the consequential implications of government policies. If they speak plainly in a language that voters can understand and paint a crystal clear picture of exactly what the choices are, they will surely take the day. The question is, are they equipped to speak that language? Maybe some of them should register for English 101 in the spring just to make sure.
See author page
So, in essence, the Bush tax cuts are being followed by the Bush tax increases. This is no surprise, since that is the way the GOPer cons wrote the friggin law! Why? Because they wanted to show an artificially cheap “cost” of the tax cuts, hence the sunset.
None of this would be a big issue IF (a) the cons had reduced spending to offset the lost tax revenue in the first place, or (b) proposed some spending cuts to pay for extension of the Bush tax cuts, since we KNOW FOR A FACT that they will increases the deficit. Luckily, from what he said yesterday, Obama appears to want the GOPer cons to come up with some spending cuts to pay for the tax cuts to the people earning more than $250,000. It is a small start, but a start nonetheless.
When I deployed in above the Afgan border 5 years ago, the regional language was Russian (whose presense was from 1919 and heavy handed). The nationa language had so many dialects that the best communication was Russian.
After the 1991 Soviet separation The Brits tried to introduce english. But after the Americans arrived in strength in ’02 the natives wanted American english instead via any American books, talk incessently to Americans etc.
So to me its amazing that a common regional language isn’t seen as a benefit to all…I mean even the Uzbkes are more ardent then so many here in the blessed USA…
I’ve yet to hear any coherent explanation as to how extending high-end tax cuts–which would reduce federal revenues by $4 trillion over the next 10 years–somehow represents a step in the direction of fiscal responsibility.
The entire argument seems to revolve around the assertion that cutting high-end taxes increases tax revenue. Charts and graphs are frequently rolled out to support that assertion, but the bottom line is that the national debt began to soar at precisely the point when that thinking was put into practice. Each high-end tax cut has been predictably followed by a new and higher wave of deficits and debt. The most recent episode doubled the national debt over 8 years and nearly tipped the economy into a depression.
If the wealthiest among us want more high-end tax cuts–which in my opinion they don’t need, considering the astonishing upward transfer of wealth that has already taken place and presently continues–maybe we had better get the most recent train wreck cleared up and some spending issues under control first. High end tax cuts are not a cure for deficits and debt. All indications are that they’ve been an aggravating factor, if not a primary cause.
@ Greg, if it were offered, if We have to repetitively explain, draw you a picture, would you understand what you were looking at?
So far NOT.
Didn’t hear Democrats whine about Tax cuts durng Slick Willies reign. Republicans cut them on his watch and the debt was reduced. Very selective memory as usual.
@Common Sense: Tried to. System wouldn’t let me…
BRob said:
That is the statement of an ignorant leftist. Only the democrats will be to blame if taxes increase. They are the ones holding up the vote to extend the cuts.
Greg said:
One, numerous posters have given explanations that explain why ALL the cuts need to be extended. If you haven’t understood it by now, you never will. I expect that since it doesn’t fit into the language of progressives, that the reasoning behind extending them to everyone goes completely over your head.
Two, the $4trillion number being paraded around by the left is based on assumptions that are static in nature. It doesn’t allow for the economic activity that will change, most likely for the better, that the extended cuts will produce. It doesn’t allow for the new hires, broadened tax bases, and higher revenue due to those that the cuts will produce.
Three, no one who has supported the generational thievery of the current leadership in congress and the WH has any business whatsoever insinuating that extending the tax cuts somehow goes away from fiscal responsibility. Over $1 trillion on the stimulus and porkulus and none of that money is coming back to DC.
Greg said:
A typical statement from a leftist thief. No concern whatsoever for individual property rights. Everything belongs to the collective, including the successes by them. I don’t expect a progressive mind to understand what is actually “fair” to people. They only understand greed and envy of others and work to continually bring them down to the masses. Instead of holding them up as shining examples of what hard work and ingenuity can bring, they blame them for their excesses and unfairly place the cause of poverty on their shoulders.
Need? Who are you, or anyone else, to determine what exactly constitutes need? Who are you, or anyone else, to determine that a person has gained too much? You don’t have the right to make judgements on what people can or cannot keep of the wealth they earn. For all of your supposed learning, you really are quite dense when it comes to the ideals that our country was founded upon. Our way of life has been under attack for over a hundred years now by progressive “elitists” like yourself who think they know better than the masses on everything from social issues to economic issues. It is well past time for this country to move back to the “strict constructionist” philosophy regarding our Constitution.
@ johngalt, #7:
It’s not that it doesn’t fit into the language of progressives. It’s that it defies common sense, ignores the rules of arithmetic, and has repeatedly been shown not to work out as advertised.
It’s not as though anyone were suggesting we should go back to pre-Reagan high-end tax rates. The suggestion is only that the current rates are too low. That’s evidenced by the fact that for most of the past 30 years there hasn’t been enough coming in to pay the bills.
Who owns the hours of any individual human being’s life, or any human being’s productive capabilities? I would suggest that they’re the property of the individual. Many conservatives reflexively condemn any collective efforts of individuals to set a higher value on that property. They want to buy it on the cheap, and the less they have to pay for it the better.
One has only to look at how America’s wealth is presently distributed from the perspective of a growing majority of Americans–and observe that this is an accelerating trend–to conclude that something about the system has gotten seriously out of balance. Any benefits of the dysfunction are accruing to a very small, enormously wealthy minority–many of whom want to shift both the blame and the eventual dire societal consequences onto those who are losing the most in the process.
Need shouldn’t be too hard for most Americans to identify. It’s not as if it were some sort of abstraction concocted by progressives as an excuse to spend money.
I guess it must be obvious to the progressives in the audience that those who hold the majority of the wealth have obtained their wealth by illegitimate means, but I’m not drawing the same conclusion. Maybe we need to ask Oprah to give her multitudinous millions to those who are less fortunate. Maybe Forbes, and the Gates’ (Bill and Melissa.) And all those Hollywood celebrities and politicians (past and present,) and all the CEOs of private businesses, and how about everybody on the public dole who makes more than the average per capita income in this country. And while we’re at it, let’s make sure we also take extra away from the politicians to compensate for the expenses they ring up on the taxpayer’s dime.
I believe a flat tax is the solution to the revenue side of the equation, and a minimum government necessary to protect our civil liberties to fix the spending. It’s so easy to get politicians to spend other people’s money, because they get rewarded at home for bringing home the bacon. Unfortunately, government has a habit of overfeeding the pig with our tax money, regardless of whether the pig is getting morbidly obese. Congress has not shown that it knows how to be fiscally responsible, particularly because promising tomorrows programs funded with years of debt has continued to buy votes for themselves.
When you start to add up the costs of this pork, plus the waste and deliberate misuse of funds in government, it adds up to a lot which can and SHOULD be eliminated. The taxpayers (rich and not-so-rich) have been taken for granted and taken advantage of for too long! For all the good intentions and even positive results of progressives (and not just Democrats) the last hundred plus years in America, it has created a cancer that is stealing the life from the very heart of this once great nation.
@ JVerive, #9:
Legitimacy only suggests that no laws have been broken. That’s a separate issue from whether or not a law–or any particular tax schedule–is optimal, balancing fairness and the rights of the individual against the legitimate needs of a sustainable and reasonably equitable society.
Becoming wealthy by virtue of one’s own creativity and effort is a good and admirable thing. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to allow the process to continue unchecked until a very few own everything, and the rest have next to nothing.
@ Greg
What? So who gets to make the call as to when you’ve “made enough?” You? Obama? Who? I don’t really care for Bill Gates’ politics, but the man is giving his money away hand over fist. It’s his money and he’s free to do so. Is that not good enough for you? Is it that he’s giving the money to people you don’t care for? You want it to go to the government so they can give it to the right people?
It is my right to bust my rear end and earn as much as I want for as long as I want. People that do not want to work, are unwilling to work, refuse to get education or training to earn more money have the right to do that as well. They have a right to play Call of Duty while I bust my a$$. But I shouldn’t have to support them. Do we have a duty as citizens to help our fellow citizens with legitimate problems? I my opinion, yes. But the government has proven over and over again that they cannot facilitate this need. The graft and corruption in welfare is rampant. My wife used to work for DFCS and she has seen it first hand. She has had to give out food stamps and welfare to people she knows make over $50k a year, people that have spouses with good paying jobs but claim they don’t live in the same house and have abandoned the family. It is a racket. And the DFCS workers are prohibited from launching investigations. The best they can do is voice a concern and watch it get dropped by a supervisor.
My boss will be one of the people hit by the Obama tax increases. His income is tied to that of the company. It will affect whether or not we hire more people, invest in equipment and technology, and expand the business. Is that what you want to do in this economy? I’m sure it is, because I doubt you care about it. As long as we are making sure food stamps continue to flow to able-bodied people, illegal immigrants can continue to suck the life from our economy, and rich people are forced to give their money to people that just want to stay home and play Call of Duty. Hell Greg, you should be treasury secretary. You couldn’t do much worse.
Funny how folks like Greg don’t seem to have a problem with Soros, Turner, Moore, etc. who are multi millionaires and billionaires.
@ Aqua, #11:
I haven’t suggested that anyone should get to set an upper limit on how wealthy any individual can ultimately become. That’s the sort of strawman argument I’m frequently accused of myself.
What I’m arguing is that progressive taxation is essential to achieve a balanced budget, and that the rate of taxation at the highest backets should be at a higher percentage than it has been under the Bush tax cuts. Through most of the Reagan years the top rate was 50%. It need not be that high. The rate in effect in 1993–39.6%–seems reasonable. Bear in mind that the historical rates from 1917 through 1981 were generally much higher than that. Our chronic deficits and soaring national debt set in at precisely the point where the upper-end tax rates were excessively reduced, and continued to escalate even during periods of strong economic activity.
Deficits and the skyrocketing national debt can only be controlled and reversed through a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. That’s the unpleasant realilty.
Increasing the high-end tax rate by 5% or so isn’t going to kill the incentive of the most successful people in our economic system. They could still make themselves progressively richer. They just wouldn’t be be accumulating additional wealth at quite so rapid a pace. And they would be doing so without worries that the value of their dollars might suddenly fall through the floorboards–an inevitable consequence of printing up money to cover chronic revenue shortfalls.
@ Hard Right, #12:
I have no more or less of a problem with them than anyone else. They should all be subject to the same tax schedule.
@ Greg
I quoted you Greg.
*emphasis added mine
Taxes may very well have to be raised eventually, but now is not the time. You claim our deficits soared as a result of lower tax rates for top earners. I take it you don’t believe Washington is spending our money is ways that shame a shopaholic. For example:
$554,763 – Forest Service to Replace Windows in Visitor Center
Closed in 2007 (Amboy, WA)
$762,372 – “Dance Draw” – Interactive Dance Software Development
(Charlotte, NC)
$1.9million – To photograph 3,000 ant species (San Francisco, Ca.)
$712,883 – Scientist Attempts to Create Joke Machine (Evanston, IL)
$762,372 – To study improvised music (Atlanta, GA)
$350,000 – To hire “experts” to help people plug in Digital TV converters mandated by the FCC. (Buffalo, NY)
$9.38 million – to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades
$2 million – to build a replica railroad tourist attraction in Carson City, Nevada
$3.1 million – to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York
$3.4 million – to create an underground turtle tunnel, or eco-passage, in Lake Jackson, Florida.
$1 million – to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago
$1.5 billion – for a Carbon Capturing Contest
$1 million – to a Chicago dinner cruise company to “combat terrorism”
$30 million – for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies
$11 million – for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash.
$1.15 million – to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.
$2.5 million – in stimulus checks sent to the deceased
$6 million – for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.
*source: http://www.youngmoney.com/credit_debt/stupid-stimulus-spending-projects-that-piss-us-off/
I know, that’s just a drop in the bucket…right? Every bucket gets filled one drop at a time. Some drops are just bigger than others. Why should we give these idiots more money? This isn’t a democrat or republican issue. Both parties spent money like idiots. Taxes may have to be raised…eventually. I’ll tell you the truth, I’m willing to take a tax increase to keep my kids from having to deal with this crap later. But first, Washington needs to reign in the spending. When a shopaholic maxes out their credit card, you don’t increase the limit; you cut the card up.
Greg,
What you call strawmen is what others see as the logical conclusion to excessive government that goes unchecked. Many of us are old enough to remember hour destitute people had become under the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and many of us recall the amazement Russian immigrants to America displayed in our free market system. I worked with several Russian immigrants who as far back as 25 years ago were told by their government that the US was one big slave labor camp, and that conditions in Russia were far better than in America. This is no strawman!
As to the revenue side of government operations, I believe a reasonable progressive system is possible, and I also think a flat tax is just as possible. In fact, I’d like to see a national non-binding resolution where Americans can voice their support for a few different options: perhaps either a flat tax or a progressive tax, both with or without a VAT.
What should the actual percentages be? Well, that’s the spending side of the problem, and is easily the more contentious problem between the two (revenues vs spending.) I personally believe that voter outrage over the past decade or two has been far more directed at the givernment’s inability to curb its appetite for spending. Politicians as a group are wealthier than the average citizen, get numerous perks paid for by tax dollars, and in general don’t have to live (or choose to live) under the same conditions they impose on the citizenry. Until politicians experience the burdens they imposed on us, they ought not be given the privilege to legislate. Legislators base too many decisions on pleasing their financial supporters, rationalizing their decisions too often with the “commerce clause.” If the average citizen took the time to read even a fraction of the stimulus or healthcare bills, they’d be amazed and appalled at the giveaways to special interest groups.
But government rarely talks about making significant cuts, because then they’d pay hell for them. Not from the voters, who should count the most, but from the special interest groups they’re in bed with. It’s human nature to grease the wheel that squeaks, and only recently have the citizens shown that they can squeak loudly. You can say what you want about the Tea Party (or Parties,) but the best thing that has happened in the past four years is that the Republican and Democratic Parties – both of which have gamed and abused the system – have been put on notice: politics as usual that leaves citizens responsible for reckless government spending has got to stop. Without the successes of the Tea Party movement, I think this country was headed for a bloody revolution. We may still be headed in that direction, but at least the Tea Party movement has shown that a diplomatic solution has a chance. It’s time for politicians to do the hard work of cutting the waste out of government, including as much pork and unnecessary government programs, institutions, and grants as possible.
Ultimately, unless government gets back to restricting itself to yielding little more than the constitutionally enumerated powers with much narrower interpretation, secession or revolution may be the only options left to return the country to the free land of opportunity that our founders envisioned.
Jeff
Greg said:
No, Greg, it has been shown to work, and every time taxes have been cut, the economy has responded positively, which means more tax revenue for the federal government. Cut taxes, more for people to spend, or invest, more demand for products/merchandise, suppliers rally to supply the demand by hiring more, and on and on and on.
No, Greg, employers do not want to ‘buy’ labor on the cheap. They wish to pay a fair wage within the prevailing wage range for the particular job. The employee’s time is his own, until he/she sells it to the employer. If they don’t think they are getting a fair price for their time, they negotiate a higher wage, or find another job paying more. It’s as simple as supply and demand. It gets to be a problem when people “collectively” get together and continually go on strike, like unions tend to do, for higher and higher wages regardless of the prevailing wage ranges, and regardless of the effect on the employer’s future prospects to stay in business. Conservatives simply wish to pay fair wages for time sold to them in order to grow and expand their business. Many times this results in either more workers hired, or higher wages given, or a combination of the two. Any of those is a win-win for the employees and the employer both. Quit trying to attach a label of “evil” or “greedy” to all conservative business practices.
So do you discount the fact that under the tax system prior to the Bush tax cuts that the upper percentages of tax-payers were paying a smaller percentage of income taxes? The current tax rates have made the entire tax code MORE progressive than they were previously. Yet, you want to extend that progression even further, which unfairly penalizes those who make more.
Let us look at the US Constitution:
Also, it is generally accepted that the “Equal Protection” clause under the fourteenth amendment applies to actions of the States, but regarding the Federal government, the Fifth amendment applies to equal protection of all citizens by actions of the federal government. In the case of Bolling vs. Sharpe(1954), involving a desegregation case in the District of Columbia, the court held that discrimination by Congress(who has governmental control over DC) could violate the “Due Process” clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Now, having quoted, and described the amendments above, it is easily seen that the tax code of the United States, with it’s progressive tax rates applied differently dependent upon one’s economic status, violates the Constitution. This code was adopted by the US in 1909 after ratification of the 16th amendment, which erased the apportionment issue brought in previous cases before the USSC. Throughout it’s history, the tax rates have changed dramatically, as well as the number of rate “groups”.
Regardless of your ideas on taxes, the code progressively adds penalizes those who make above certain income levels, and the “fairness” desired by progressives and liberals is nothing of the kind. You wish to make judgments upon a person based on their income level, in order to spare others from paying higher amounts on their income, including those who do not pay anything. Your rational, as you have put forth in this topic thread, has been, “to conclude that something about the system has gotten seriously out of balance” and, “One has only to look at how America’s wealth is presently distributed from the perspective of a growing majority of Americans”. As well, you have related in the past your thoughts on conservative business practices that you have insinuated take unfair advantage of the employees, and have applied that rational across the entire spectrum of business ownership.
No, Greg, it isn’t that there isn’t enough coming in to pay the bills. It’s that Congress, for the better part of a century, has outspent what it takes in. It isn’t any different than the private citizen, who spends more, placing large amounts on credit, than they take home in wages. It is a spending issue and not a revenue issue. Vast amounts have been appropriated for new departments, new benefits, and progressive/liberal wishes that aren’t enumerated specifically within the text of the Constitution. You and your kind, if pressed to discuss spending issues, immediately bring up Defense, one of the few spending areas our Constitution specifically mentions as a responsibility of our federal government. And, what’s more, you skate around discussing such spending issues as the Dept. of Education, or the Interior, or Energy, or Transportation, or Health and Human Services, or Housing and Urban Development. And that list doesn’t even account for all of the Czarist departments our government spends money on.
We get it, even if you don’t realize it. You wish to punish the successful. And you use a few spare anecdotal examples of the “rich soaking the poor” as your rational behind such wishes of thievery. To you, and most progressive/liberal minds, the idea of personal property means nothing if the person you are vilifying has more than most. You continue to advocate for the demonizing of those who produce. We conservatives, on the other hand, will continue to advocate to everyone about the opportunities available to all, given a little hard work and personal pride in doing for oneself.
Anyone who doubts that cutting taxes can spur economic growth and increase GDP needs to look at what Sweden is accomplishing as it moves away from its social welfare economic model:
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/76470/20101027/sweden-gdp-economy-banks-riksbank-social-welfare.htm
Jeff
One of the few things I admire about conservatives (as opposed to social democrats) is that I thought they believed in self-sufficiency and living within your means. However the records of Reagan and Dubya seem to go against this when I believed they borrowed more money to pay for tax cuts thus raising the national debt. At least the Conservative & Liberal coalition in the UK have got it right by reigning in costs, cutting back and raising taxes. No one personally likes higher taxes but paying ridiculous amount of interest for staggering amount of national debt owned mostly by foreign nationals is foolish. Cut taxes when there is a budget surplus and not a penny before.
Gaffa said:
A typical reply from a liberal that uses wordplay to spin this issue. Tax cuts are Not spending items, and as such, there is no paying for them. Tax cuts are simply a move by a government to spur economic activity and growth. It is allowing the people to keep more of what they earn so that they may spend it or invest it, both of which help to add new jobs and increase the taxable base of an economy.
The wording from the rest of Gaffa’s posting implies that government IS the economy. This is nothing more than ignorance and misunderstanding of basic economics, something liberals/progressives tend not to understand too well.
@John Galt
Oh I guess in that case Reagan must have been an ignorant Liberal when his raised taxes to reduce the deficit of California when he was Governor?! You don’t need to be an accountant to know that you have money coming in and money coming out and if a deficit is so big – just having cuts in spending isn’t always practical or politically possible. Tax reduction doesn’t have to be a spending item to make a deficit situation worst!
@ GaffaUK
Gaffa, tax increases may be necessary…may be. We know the idiots in Washington, on both sides, know how to raise taxes. What they have yet to prove is their ability to cut spending. Just because the Bush tax cuts are extended doesn’t mean congress has lost the ability to raise taxes. But they need to prove to the people that government can live within a budget, just like the rest of the country. Is that too much to ask? Personally, I believe raising anyone’s taxes right now is insane. Any economic growth that may be going on right now would be killed.
@ John Galt, #17:
What I discount is what we’re supposed to conclude from the wording of that statement: that upper-income individuals have shouldered a larger share of the total tax burden as a result of the Bush tax cuts.
Subsequent to the Bush tax cuts, the top tier have collectively paid a larger percentage of all income taxes collected than before, but that’s because the total number of people in that high income tier has expanded, and their collective share of total income has increased. Individually, the percentage of personal income each has paid in taxes has declined.
Greg said:
Once again, ignorance is shown on the issue. When the statistics are discussed, they are about the percentage of taxpayers. The total income of those taxpayers increases. So, to say it again for you: The top income earners are paying a higher share of total income tax revenue to the government now than they did prior to the Bush tax cuts. The responsibility for taxes has shifted to the higher income brackets, and you and your liberal friends wish to shift it higher still. When is enough, enough? When the top ten percent of wage earners are paying ALL of the taxes? The top five percent?
Apparently, to you and your kind, personal property rights stops when people make more than what liberals and progressives define as enough. Liberals defending the rights of everyone? What a laugher!