by Pops » Sat 20 Aug 2011, 10:34:51
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', 'S')o which taxes would you like to raise, and how much of an impact will it make to the debt?
The biggest problem with our economy is there is too much money trying to find a passive profit instead of moving through the economy as wages. J6p's income has been stagnant for 30 years as tax breaks for the rich have siphoned off the profits from increased productivity into commodities, gold, hedge funds and other gambling halls.
Basically encouraging too much money in stay in too few hands (as evidenced by big cash wads in banks and company accounts) is where the problem lies, not in a lack of consumption for pete's sake.
So ideally I think a progressive flat tax on all income would be the most fair, basically no deductions except for other federal taxes.
I'm not big on government giveaways so I think the G should get out of the business of "encouraging" things. So instead of encouraging people to put money into a corporation where they personally have no liability for what the corporation does, the corporation should pay a full share of taxes just like any other "person" and the shareholder should pay income tax on his income just like anyone else. One more example, deductions for interest on mortgage should be limited and on 2nd homes eliminated altogether, either of these could happen without a flat tax rate.
Aside from the fact that the system has been rigged so the wealthy pay a smaller percentage of income tax - especially over the last 10 years, our defense expenditures are obscene and our medical system is a sham, again rigged for the profit of the corps.
I have no problem with helping people who've fallen and can't get up, I think we should do more to help them. I don't think we should give them a life but for the temporarily broke we should provide basic medicine, unemployment check, food and help finding a job, getting training or education, etc
For the terminally broken down, chronically unemployed we must find something because unskilled or semi-skilled work is going or gone and won't be back till the oil is gone. You can call unskilled and /or uneducated people moochers all day but at the end of the day if you haven't found those people something to do you are going to pay, one way or the other - exactly like you pay today for the uninsured to go to the emergency room for a cold. It may make you feel good and righeous to call them moochers but you are paying their biils with your insurance premium just not very efficiently.
So I don't know, we should give them a check and a push broom/push mower/snow shovel and take the money from the people who have benefitted from the downfall of unskilled jobs is really the only way to do it that I can see.
Really though, the idea that we should throw the moochres out in the street is far from the majority view, I know it's popular with old white evangelicals but it's going to run it's course, probably already has.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)