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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (10640)	2/14/2017 8:15:35 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 361170

Other countries do it, why not us? 1 - Most other countries don't do it. Quite a few get enough revenue as a percentage of GDP to cover our current spending, not enough to cover current spending on the state and federal level plus the promised increase in entitlement spending plus interest on all of that debt that is being accumulated and will be in the future. Certainly not enough revenue in terms of dollars per capita. 2 - To the extent they do cover higher spending levels now, to a large degree they do it through taxation you would probably consider regressive. There aren't enough "plutocrats" to support such high spending so many European countries tax the middle class, and working members of those below middle class more. 3 - Whatever other countries can do, If we couldn't do it in WWII. When necessity and patriotism drove people to be able to accept a much bigger burden of government and when rationing and other government controls didn't give them as much choice on the matter anyway, what makes you think that we can do it now. And remember what we couldn't do in WWII was have government revenue cover current levels of spending. "Mandatory Spending" (entitlements plus interest on the debt) is projected by itself to take up more than current levels of spending as a percentage of GDP. So it would be unaffordable even if we spent zero on defense, zero on federal law enforcement, on diplomacy, on foreign aid, on non-entitlement social benefits, on NASA, on federal law enforcement, on parks and land management, on federal transportation spending, on homland security, espionage, counter-espionage, farm programs, regulatory enforcement, aid to states and localities, disaster relief, etc. And what do you mean confiscatory taxation? Lets say you have a self employed person in New York City paying the top rates - (self employed so he actually writes the check for both sides of the payroll tax, employees get just as impacted by the "employers portion", but I don't want to complicate the example with that argument right now) If you remove the cap or raise it to a very large extent the marginal tax rate for this person is - 39.6% federal income tax. 4.8% Medicare, 12.4% percent social security, .6% net federal unemployment tax, 9.62% percent state income tax but its deductible against federal tax so the net figure is 60.4% of that or about 5.81% percent, 3.88% city income tax rate but its also deductible so .234% - Total of over 75% More scenarios, and supporting links at Message 30932109 And what problems? Depressed and distorted investment, depressed incentive to work harder or take risks to produce more, increased incentive for tax avoidance, tax evasion and lobbying for targeted tax breaks, tax rates on the far side of the Laffer curve so revenue is less then it would be lower rates even if it could be higher than it is now, and you get more and more pain and government control for every additional dollar you extract even before you hit the inflection point in the Laffer curve. That's just considering directly practical things, not political and moral points that I'm sure you'd disagree with about how immoral such confiscatory taxation is.