Tax revenues mostly come from wages.
No, they don't.
By wages I mean salaries, self-employement income, i.e. individual incomes as opposed to corporate income.
I see, well that may explain this disconnect we've been having. When I talked about wages, I meant wages. Wage earners typically pay little or no income tax, only employment taxes. People making enough money to pay taxes usually earn salaries, not wages. In my world, individual income as opposed to corporate income is called "individual income." So, looks like we've solved that one.
raising taxes on the top two brackets
By how much? I get itchy when marginal tax rates exceed a third. Just "feels" wrong to me. Abusive. If you want another bracket for the super-rich, incomes exceeding several millions a year, that might not itch too badly.
Our US debt levels may be too big period.
Yeah, it would seem so.
the easiest options available to reverse the growth of debt.
Reversing the growth seems too big, too. I don't think we can reasonably do any better than to live within our means going forward. It would take an extraordinary economy like we had last decade before we could make a dent in the debt we have.
If we cut defense dramatically we can probably pay for current commitments. But there's no room for new commitments. |
