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To: MSI who wrote (8940)	2/17/2003 3:24:15 PM
From: GraceZ	Respond to of 306849

and cut taxes on the poor and consumers first Cutting taxes on the poor involves cutting social security because the poor don't pay much in the way of income taxes, just transfer payments like SS and medicare. Most politicians refer to cutting SS as touching the third rail. When SS was set up, there was a great deal of concern that it would grow to the size that it has and the payouts of this benefit has always had to come from receipts, even while the surplus, as you said, has gone to the general fund (although the funds used are replaced with IOUs that could be considered bonds). The bottom half of all tax filers pays less then 4% of all income tax collected. Any future bailout of SS involves the use of general tax receipts so that wall will come down. A huge chunk of government spending is transfer payments to individuals. Tax changes designed to increase consumption only results in rising prices defeating the purpose of the break. Contrary to popular belief there has hardly been a moment's slow down in consumer spending. For the economy to grow you have to lower the tax disincentive to invest risk capital. It is risk capital which creates companies and jobs. If you could convince me that the last dollar received by a family of four making 25k goes to investment I'd say, sure, give the break to them. But I can assure you that the last dollar to someone in the that bracket gets consumed, not only that it is consumed buying cheap goods from overseas. You could argue they don't deserve to be taxed and if you've done enough tax returns for the poor, like I have, you'd know that a lot pay zero income tax and in some cases receive money back that they never paid in because they get the earned income credit when they have children. As hard as it is to swallow, tax breaks to the wealthy actually wind up creating jobs for the poor and middle class everyone worries about. Why this is, is because the wealthy seek return for their last dollar. Anywhere they try to get return adds to the pool of capital available for economic growth. If what you want to do is make us move to being even more socialist then we already are you can tax the rich even more then they already are so you can increase the transfer of income from rich to poor. Do that and all you wind up with lower tax receipts, a lot of useless non-productive tax shelters and poor people on the dole with no jobs. Frankly I'll take a job over a benefit check any day of the week. I think we've all had enough of the welfare state.