Concur. Axe all subsidies too. Hell, axe everything that should have been left to the states from the get-go.
really?? because they have. raising taxes in the midst of a recession is not a good thing. i really like obama and agree with him on a ton...but on this one, he loses me. there is a time to raise taxes. i don't think this is it.
Both Democratic candidates have pledged to raise capital gains taxes. That increased burden will be placed disproportionately on retirees, including those making far less than $250,000 per year. That being said, government benefits from more spending, so maybe we should encourage less savings.
Yet in the 90's when our capital gains taxes were higher we did alright. And retirees aren't the largest consumers in our economy. It would be better to put cash in the hands of those folks if it is about stimulating the economy.
The reason why US is no longer a manufacturing giant is not due to productivity or infrastructure. It is due to the cost of manufacturing is just too high in the US compared to countries like China and India (used to be Japan and Korea, Singapore), could be Africa in twenty years for all we know. The only way those manufacturing job will ever come back is when the world reach a certain equilibrium where most of the countries have about the same standard of living. Many say the Chinese labor is cheap because they only make two dollars an hour compared to the people in the US making twenty dollars an hour, but the cost of living in many parts of China is only sixty to seventy dollars a month. To give you an extreme example from past. My parents (college profs) used to make about 15 dollars a month combined, but our rent is only one dollar a month. A pound of tomato is only .5 penny, a bike is only 7 dollars. So talking about hourly wages without factoring the cost of living is pointless. Why does export jobs go to China and India but not to African (at the moment anyway)? Because they have a very large well educated work force that is capable of producing anything the US work force is capable of producing. This is not true for many parts of the developing nations. If you think service sector jobs cannot be out source, you are going to be in for a rude awakening in the future. With technology advancement, just about any job can be outsourced. You can even have people in India taking your burger orders (thus reducing labor requirement in fast food restaurants). You can out source financial service, medical service, engineering, or just about anything you can dream of in the future. They best way is hope countries like China and India catch up to the US in standard of living fast, then there will be huge market for US made products and services and some jobs could actually come back to the US. The days where US and Western Europe monopolize the world economical power alone is history and will not come back in our life time.
False. Revenues have increased consistently since WWII. Under Bush tax revenue increases have declined to the lowest levels since the great depression. Reagan's cuts had the same effect, although not as bad. It's all in how you phrase it. Perhaps you were misled by the bigtexxx/TJ school of economic deceit.
I wasn't talking about the overall economic impact. I was talking about the morality of increasing taxes on money made from savings of retirees.
So it is OK to raise the taxes of the non-retirees, who are paying for retirees SS benefits? Whoever gets stuck paying a tax will be unhappy. But W et al should have thought of that before spending money like a drunk sailor on a weekend pass.
you know what, I take it back, I understand your point, seniors are probably hurt most by the capital gains tax. it should be something considered when talking about raising them.
Raise the cap gains on rich retirees then? I am sure that they will be happy, especially with that whole morality angle.
Capital Gains tax is one of the few flat taxes that we have. The more areas that we can keep Marxism out the better. If I'm forced to pick among evils, raising the income tax is the least offensive of these, especially if raised across the board.
Tax revenue increases every decade if you increase or lower the tax. During the great depression the gov't tried to raise taxes thinking the way you did. It didn't really work.
That's the point. You have to look at it relatively. Simply saying Bush's cuts increased revenues is bogus - all trends indicate that those cuts lowered projected revenue increases, at least in the short term.
If every year for 20 years there was 5% increase, regardless of tax increases, and then Bush lowered taxes and there was only a 2% increase in revenues, Bush could still claim tax revenues were up. That is exactly what happened. His tax revenues were up, but far less than any other President since WWII.
the ruling economic thought is tax cuts do not equal increased tax revenues. if anyone remembers, this is "voodoo economics"... numerous economic studies have shown that growth will not overcome rates. there's a school of thought that believes that CORPORATE tax cuts might attract growth and make up the difference, however, at this point in american businesses, growth is not really what's going on. companies are acquiring, merging, and monopolizing, which seems to me that cutting corporate tax rates is leaving money on the table. and yes, tax revenues might have grown under bush's tax cuts, but the basic argument against that is that the revenues would have been higher, had he not meddled with the rates.
