Bush's tax cuts for the rich began the huge deficits and colossal national debt the USA now faces. Tax cuts in California led to the destruction of what was once one of the world's finest education systems, and it was all free to the worthy. Capital gains and income tax cuts have left no incentive to keep money invested. Instead, the wealthy use Wall Street like a gambling casino. When taxes were high in the Eisenhower era, if people pulled cash profits out of businesses they were taxed, so they would let it ride, stabilizing the economy. Let's put back the controls on banks and taxes on the wealthy for economic prosperity for all.

Lol taxes leading to economic prosperity? Are you crazy?

Countries with the lowest taxes are often the most prosperous. Governments have proven they are more than capable of wasting money in disgusting amounts. It is not the lack of funds that is the problem, its the horrendous, disgusting management and waste of funds that is the problem.

You put that money in the hands of someone like Warren Buffet and tell him to manage the money governments normally manage and he could do 2x 3x the work with the same amount. It is capital allocation and management not capital acquisition which is the mark of a great government.

The lower the taxes the higher the economic prosperity gets, there is more money in the system and less in the government to burn away. Taxing the rich will certainly not solve the countries problems, in case you have forgotten it was the rich who brought the US out of the great depression, they were the only ones left with any money.

People are poor because they are bad at managing money, which is why 90% of lottery winners are in worse financial shape then the day before they won the lottery.

It is poor financial management which is the cause of economic hardship, not taxation.

The evidence doesn't support your case. The Eisenhower years had the highest taxes and were the most prosperous. Reagan cut taxes and started the downward slide.

In 1967 when I graduated high school, California had the best public schools in the world. 20 years later after the taxpayer revolt and Reaganomics, they were 49 out of 50 states.

Germany has much higher taxes than the USA and that country is much more prosperous. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the USA economy is in the toilet right now. Retirement accounts have lost up to half their value and half the mortgages are in danger of default.

Laffer's curve is a fraud. We are on the up side of the curve, not the right downward side. Raising taxes, especially on the rich who merely siphon off wealth, raises revenues for rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. Sounds like you've been listening to Repug talking points. When Bush cut taxes on the rich in '01, we started into an immediate deficit. Re-tax the rich.

Nope I like Obama, I dont like the way governments spend money though. The US is the heart of capitalism, its the very foundations of it. It is the nature of capitalism that some people will make more than others, its like playing chess, some people will win more often than others. Its part of the nature of the beast.

I think the reason for the US deficit may also have something to do with the trillions spent on the war in Iraq... not just because the rich got a tax break

I dont think higher taxes are the answer, its inefficient. I think taxes should continually be going lower with increased efficency and effectiveness in capital management by governments.

We should be getting more value for our dollars as every year goes by, not investing more dollars to get more value. That is a poor return on taxation.

The reason why the US is in a deficit is once again mainly due to poor financial management, the idea that its purely because of a change in tax policy is preposterous. The idea that simply getting more taxes will solve all the problems is also preposterous. It is the management of money not the acquisition of it which the government fails at.

I am not a big fan of taxes. Seems like we get taxed every which way possible. I would prefer the government be more self sustaining which I think is possible if things are run well.

One thing that appears to be overlooked here. Government spending is taxes whether it came from taxes or not. If taxes are cut and spending goes up, the reality is the overall tax rate increased. Your income does not depend on how big your paycheck is, it depends on what you can afford to buy with it. Thus government spending is the source of taxes, not the source of the money. When higher income people pay higher taxes it merely places economic pressure on companies to distribute more of the money into higher income pay to maintain the same income differential.

Note that when you purchase any item 100% of that money is profit for someones paycheck, just not all the same company or person. So no matter how sneaky you are claiming someone besides you payed that 40%, that's still 40% from the 100% from which your paycheck is payed from. Even if the government merely printed money to spend without taxing anyone, and purchased 40% of our production, that means your paycheck can purchase 40% less. That doesn't even count the lowered production from government hiring people out of productive jobs to operate the government. Not to say every action they take is non-productive, but it is by definition an overhead cost.

We certainly need government, but governments role should be to insure equitable rules and regulations. Not to provide unfair advantages to their power base for political payoff. Nor create government sanctioned quasi-monopolies like Fanny and Freddie. Simply taxing the rich to pay for the taxes that's already been payed through spending, and counted as a debt because we didn't want it coming out of our paycheck, is just adding more taxes on ourselves to be counted as more of our debt.

Think about it, if rich people thinks it's worth buying bonds to pay taxes that we didn't want to pay ourselves, on the promise of getting a piece of our future income (interest), why does the taxpayers not think it's worth paying it themselves? I don't care what the tax rate is, government should live within the budget of those taxes. We could have payed cash for the war, economic stimulus package, etc., just on what we pay to maintain our debt on taxes we already payed through spending. These same wealthy people that we now want to increase taxes on are to a large degree the ones were paying dividends to for paying our past tax cost.

Instead of insisting the rich pay our taxes for us, why not ask for policies that puts more pressure on increasing income, then pay our own damn taxes. And quit selling our tax burden to the rich for an even larger share of our future income. Simply allowing this to continue and yelling tax the rich more simply increases how much of your future income can be bought by the rich, and freezes out your own income gains with economic expansion. Then we could afford those good schools, etc.

We absolutely do NOT need governments (though we should define precisely what we mean by this). Historically humans fell into this dead-end system and are now suffering the consequences of top-lead decision-making, ignoring the real talent for ideas present in the general population. What we need is a civil service that must take instruction from each and every individual able to vote (the possible rules on this could be discussed). And those votes would determine ALL policies and then associated decisions to enable a consensus society. This would be any easy system to setup and maintain in this digital age. It is time to move on from the archaic, corrupt and fatally flawed system of government with its incessant swings and different in-power policies from those campaigning lies and deceits.

Incidentally: Do YOU have to pay Income tax? No, and truth is YOU never really did. It is your Person/Strawman who is a tax payer. If you are foolish enough to pay for him that is your problem. Search this out for enlightenment.

And why would more tax be needed? When there is all of this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6703413885850200097#

Ah music to my ears, so your a natural person are you Hey Hey?

I take it you know all about natural vs artificial persons...
Theres also a lot on the fractional reserve banking system which is a rather complex monetary system used by many western countries including the united states. Its also completely insane.

is there any fiscal responsibility? seems like more and more money is just thrown into ever deepening deficits in hopes that china and other countries will keep buying US debt.

Not really. A few powerful bankers control the majority of the money in the world. Which is why you really pay taxes. Have you ever heard of economic hitmen? They are used by various gov'ts and banks to weaken a country financially through bribes and manipulation, then the bank loans the country money to get out of the situation -- at which point the country is now at their mercy.

I'm a human being, yes.

Here we have the Bank of England that has deemed itself the owner of straw people and attempted ownership of human beings if it can continue to deceive them into submitting themselves to its authoritative ownership. The complexities devised to hide this slavery system are almost insurmountable for the uninformed, misinformed and actually quite poorly and under-educated majority, however they might think differently. How the various world banks, reserves and investment institutions etc are associated with one another adds a further level of complexity. As the system is so opaque, and to be realistic probably uncrackable, then a world-wide citizen's rebellion is almost certainly necessary. After informing as widely as possible, we need to reject the system and its perpetrators, to regain our free human status, recover our stolen wealth and prevent the situation from ever occurring again. We will need some powerful brains and activists to peacefully achieve this. The first step really is to reject the world's governments and take charge of the decision making.

I have borrowed this quote to illustrate our rights: "The fact is that YOU are actually senior to the Government - because you are a living thinking flesh and blood being, which a government is not. A government is nothing but an idea expressed on paper - a corporation, a legal fiction, all be it a large one. It itself does not exist in the Physical Universe as such - the employees, land and buildings of it does, but the government itself does not. You can sign a contract - the government can't. How can an idea expressed on paper hold a pen? Only another human being authorized to sign on behalf of the government can. And that human being is your equal before the law."

("People are ruled like cattle and sheep, except that the fences which hold us are constructed in our minds". - "Crank Yanker")

so much smoke and mirrors. so many systemic issues.

There is no real debt (cf above). If there was a real debt then there are assets and income to offset it (see the video cited above). Some say this is all a covert way of running an underground communist state anyway. Maybe Chinese ownership of the false debt will be the (intended?) outcome. Then China (communism) will prevail ... as per the design?

In the UK we have never been so heavily taxed (even before the next wave due to the so-called world financial crisis). Much of that is indirect (stealth) tax in an attempt to hide it from the oblivious wii playing masses. And yet we are still in the shit. So how will Rick's 'more tax' idea work? More tax is never good. Efficiency through honesty is the answer. And the first honesty penalty is to openly disclose the Government's assets and use some of it to offset the national debt. This apply on both sides of the Atlantic.

I say we should tax the rick!

I'm going to have to look into this in depth. Thanks.

He can afford it!

I sincerely doubt that govt's will ever get out of debt without a major change, there is too much bribery and political influence stopping it from happening.

Also income tax did not always exist and governments got along fine without it before it existed.

Oh Hey Hey have you ever read up on the Fractional Reserve banking methods? Its ludicrous, you would find it most interesting as it perfectly coincides with the fiat money concept, and debt cannot exist because money is not technically of any value anymore. Even if it was a natural person cannot owe money to a corporation, only a corporation can interact with another corporation. It is fiat, they have a lot of information directly obtained from the Federal Reserve you would be most interested in, some of it should be on YouTube.

I just downloaded my city's CAFR. All on the up-and-up. He may be exagerating. My town's business investments are a tiny fraction of the expenses for services.

Sorry to hear you're so rich. The rich say they hate taxes, but look closely. They love unfair taxes on the poor such as a bottle tax on wine or parcel tax on real estate. That way a poor guy pays exactly the same amount as the rich guy with the hundred dollar bottle of wine and living in a mansion. But the rich enjoy good roads, clean water, safe products, and sanitation even more.

Why Are We Afraid to Tax the Super-Rich?

http://www.alternet.org/story/146020/why_a..._the_super-rich

Did you check it for the state of California to see if it is as broke as it says it is?

I personally know an Assemblymember. California is worse than broke. But I will look at the CAFR when I get a chance and ask the 53rd AD Assemblymember about any inconsistencies I find. I will be very surprised if there's any hidden money to be found. Tax the rich!

Off topic slightly, but I was wondering how much armed forces asset value the US and UK (amongst others) had in Iraq and Afghanistan (to name but two). And what happens to it when the invasions, wars and occupations are over (whoops, nearly fell off my chair!). OK, they will most probably find another country to invade. But let's say they didn't. Is it just a matter of store it 'til it rots? That is, wasted investment? The question is a little bit rhetorical, as I've already seen info on the hundreds of stockpiles of rotting equipment from previous endeavours! So the precedent's already set, eh?

Do the rich like their assets treated that way Rick?

Off topic? Isn't that grounds for banishment?

So lets say a rich guy at KBR sells a billion dollars of war stuff to the government for 10 billion. The government blows up half of it, but the other half is still somewhat useable at the "end" of the conflict. In most cases it will just stay where it is because it costs so much to ship it back and refurbish it. The rich guy at KBR doesn't care 'cause he already got his nine billion in profit, and besides, the rich got the poor to pay for it! I'm a poor guy who pays 30% income tax, while the rich guy pays only 15% capital gains tax (unless he pays zero with loopholes and fancy lawyers). Taxing the rich will allow us to reduce middle class taxes. Tax the rich!

.... future potential candidates include Iran, N. Korea and/or Somalia

We shall see, won't we? FDR shut down wartime profiteers. Oh, the good old days!

Sounds to me Rick like you have a bit of resentment towards the rich and I sincerely doubt you would be advocating "tax the rich!" so strongly if you were rich yourself. Then I think there would be a different story.

As I said before, wealth is just a game, like chess, some people win, some people lose, its the game of economics.

Rick,
In taxing the rich, are you proposing that we take money they already earned and paid taxes on? If not you can't touch their wealth. All you can do is stop it from being worthwhile for them to make more money, which means your job.

My primary concern here is that the government mismanages the money they already receive through taxes and simply throwing more money into the pit is not likely to solve the deeper systemic issues.

I was sincerely hoping that Obama was going to get the US out of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq much more expeditiously, but instead, more and more money gets thrown down the tubes. The only ones getting rich there are the defense contracting companies while mounting debt, cost of dear lives, and mental sanity of many of our soldiers are exacerbating the already exorbitant price of these wars. The US has spent close to a $1 trillion on the wars. This money could be much better spent IMHO for let's say a publicly managed healthcare system.

Here is a good website showing the mounting financial costs of the wars: http://costofwar.com/

Who could resent wealthy people who cheerfully pay their fair share for maintaining and improving our society?

Shouldn't a game be fair? Fairness is what it's about! The wealthy benefit enormously from living in a civilized society with good roads and infrastructure, levees, dams, sewage and storm drains, disease prevention and control, safe drugs and food, an educated workforce, etc., etc. It can be argued that a man who owns 100 trucks benefits from good roads and police 100 times more than the man who owns one truck. Let them pay their fair share! Tax the rich.

I am suggesting that we put back the taxes we had in the 1950s. Income tax that's progressive: pay 30% on the first 200k (like I do), 50% additional on the amount above 200k and under 500k, and so on up to 90% on the sixth million and up. Put the estate tax back up to 50% on estates over two million. Put the capital gains tax back up to 30%. Remove all the new loopholes. The 1950s were the most prosperous years in the USA and we had the most progressive taxes then. Make them pay their fair share. Tax the rich.

The thing about taxes hurting jobs is false and a red herring. High taxes encourage jobs creation because it penalizes people who pull their money out of businesses. Money spent building businesses is not taxed. Only profits pulled out and not reinvested are taxed.

How about if we reduce the population to the size it was in the 50's. Then there would be more money available for who was left.

Are you volunteering?

People generate wealth. Some are just more adept at gathering it for themselves, such as by being born into wealth and ownership. That's where governments can help to equalize.

As we know from centuries of painful experience, without democratic government, the strong will take all to themselves and enslave everyone else.

Nowadays I have a very low income, but I still do not like the idea of high taxes for income earned through sweat. I do have a real problem with the high earnings of many sport people, film/TV stars, rock stars and a few other groups. The trouble with higher taxes for higher earners is that preventing tax avoidance (not evasion - that is a different matter) is very difficult in practice, and higher rates also encourage relocation to lower tax territories so then the country of origin loses out completely.

I'll volunteer all of those who have decided their personal interests are more important than the interests of a healthy humane planet and human society.

High income people already pay the same tax as everybody else on the first part of their income, and higher taxes on each bracket over that. In the 50s it was actually possible for a pay raise to reduce your income, not anymore. When these high taxes on the rich was reduced in the 80s it actually increased taxes on the rich because they could no longer hide their profits as losses. So if as you say it was so much better in the 50s it was because less tax was actually being payed by the rich. The rich never has and never will pay that kind of tax on very much income, period. Even if it means immigrating out of the country. Your living in a fantasy world to think otherwise.

The estate tax as it existed then was geared toward the wealthy. But as inflation builds you have granny's home with a dollar value that used to represent rich. Granny doesn't have that kind of money to pay that tax. You want a 50% estate tax on estates worth more than 2 million? Yet 2 million is only about twice the present median income over 40 years. Thus if you buy a house out of high school, by the time it's payed for, with inflation, valuation, etc., your going to owe half the value of your house that you just spent the last 30 years broke trying to pay for. And that 50% will be a lot more than the original house value that you struggled the last 30 years paying.


I don't guess you remember or understand much about the stagflation in the 60s and 70s. Wealthy people would put their money in investment corporations which just sat on the money, so it could be counted as a loss. Then when interest rates went below a certain point it was like throwing a light switch. These investment corporations would then build large development projects very fast triggering huge inflation, then immediately reinvested profits in the investment corporation to avoid paying taxes on the income. Inflation kicked in higher fed interest rates which killed new projects. The economy then got stuck in a cycle of high growth with high inflation followed be stagnation, repeatedly. Paul Volcker often gets credits for stopping this, but it was the removal of investment corporations as an effective tax haven that removed the mechanism of stagflation. But nobody in their right mind was going to pay 90% tax. Thus lower taxes actually meant the rich payed more taxes. It also meant investments could go into longer term projects, and stock options became a more effective investment strategy. The rich payed more taxes after this tax reduction than ever before, yet now people get to complain about tax cuts for the rich.

Therefore, if you are correct that the 50s was so much better, why then did the rich essentially pay no taxes in the 50s, in spite of the 90% tax bracket on the books?

Sounds like you want everyone to be poor.

A 50% tax rate would crush the economy overnight. Investors couldnt get their money out of the US fast enough. Those tax rates are not anything close to what I would call fair, I would say they are predatory and are trying to punish people for making money. The US has been so prosperous for such a long time because it so heavily favored entrepreneurship, capitalism, investing and risk taking. You are punishing all of those things.

The reason people work so hard is to get ahead, by your system everyone would make the same amount of money and if you made more you would be taxed so badly it wouldnt be worth it. You might as well be a communist.

Those taxes are not fair, its designed to make everyone poor. It would stifle the ambition of the people who are responsible for the creation of all the jobs.

Have you ever known wealthy people? Most of them are incredibly hard working, very smart and very talented. This is why you get wealthy, you have to risk everything and work hard. Why should somebody who puts in 8 hours a day and risks nothing make the same as someone who puts in 18 hours a day and risks everything they have.

Anybody who works and sweats for a living is not rich. How much do you really need that sixth million per year?

Tax avoidance can be reduced by closing the loopholes in the tax code.

If they leave, so much the better. The rich are the highest consumers of government services anyway, so we are better off without them. Let someone else have to put up with them and their cheapskate ways.

Yes, the highest consumers of government services. Police because they have the most to rob. Courts because they like to sue each other so much. Fire department because they have the most to burn down. Roads because they have the most cars and trucks. Sewers because they have more bathrooms than you do, and so on.