USA has the worlds most progressive tax system

JeffSkillingI read this as "USA has the worlds most prestigious tax system". Too much WSO.

Same

TheKingWhat is your point? I'm not a proponent of arguing that people need to pay their "fair share," but I do think it's pretty reasonable to go back to the rates we had in the 1990s for everybody involved. Of course, this would require us getting serious about cutting the deficit. Right now, it's just a bunch of bullshit talking points about defunding shit like NPR (which is just a drop in the bucket.)

That said, I think keeping Cap Gains where it's at now (15%) is appropriate.

100% agree on going back to a '90s tax schedule. The Bush tax cuts were ill-conceived from the get-go; if I was able to understand that as a middle school student, I'd hope that Congressmen would be able to. Of course, getting serious about the deficit would piss off the very people who claim they want to reduce the deficit, because while they are the ones who are going to benefit from social security, they're not the ones who are going to have to pay taxes to fund it.

I disagree with the point on cap gains. The argument in favour of low cap gains tax, from what I remember of public finance courses, is that it results in sup-optimal supply of capital. The obvious counter to that is that cap gains tax substitutes for income tax at 1:1, and income tax has a similar effect on the labour supply. The question should then turn on the elasticity of capital supply versus labour supply, but instead turns on a political calculation. When income tax discourages someone from working, it shows up in LFP, which no one looks at (and in the unemployment denominator, but I doubt many politicians consider that). When cap gains discourages someone from investing, it affects the DJII, which politicians have a pathetic fascination with. Therefore, less money invested is seen as bad.

Should cap gains rates equal income tax rates? Maybe not, but they should probably be closer.

A Posse Ad EsseHow about serious spending cuts + elimination of all the fat (i.e. 97 departments identical in that people don't know what they were created to do) in our government before we start hiking tax rates higher?

Discretionary spending accounts for 35.2% of the Federal budget. Non-defense discretionary accounts for 15.0%.

www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/03/discretionary_spending_interact…

Of that, you believe that eliminating 97 departments you have never heard of (but which are probably doing vital work) is going to fix the budget? Here's a further breakdown of Federal spending by agency (see table S-11):

http://useconomy.about.com/library/fy2012budget.pdf

The budget problem has nothing to do with government waste. It has everything to do with demographics and entitlement spending, defense expenditure, and tax cuts.

ANTGod forbid you do your homework and show up to work on time. Please point me in the direction of US policy that says parents should emphasize education.

Wait, let me get my raft while you start crying me a river.

I'm not sure I follow...

ANTWe need less taxes not more. Cut the budget and loosen up the rules. Revenues will increase as production increases.

We live in a nation with safety nets and plentiful opportunity. People fail because of things that laws and rules cannot control. At the end of the day, you cannot legislate basic responsibility.

I have my life preserver on. I'm waiting for the tears to start flowing.

Where is super liberal to the rescue.

So what would you cut? It's easy to speak in abstract.

I think the retirement age should gradually be raised for social security, but I also think the social security taxes need to be raised until the program can pay for itself. The problem is, any reform for social security or medicare is met with resistance by seniors who actually vote. Any change here is going to have to come over time, so it will continue to be a drain on the budget.

The next major category is defense. I don't see the US being able to decrease its military spending significantly over the next few years.

ANTWe need less taxes not more. Cut the budget and loosen up the rules. Revenues will increase as production increases.

Because that worked for Reagan, right?

txjustinThe quality of education has gotten worse year after year since the enactment of the Department of Education...draw your own conclusions.

Well, clearly it's been successful at turning out graduates who can't tell the difference between correlation and causation, and who don't care to back up their claim with actual data

LLcoolJIncreasing taxes won't do shit. More taxes = even more spending.

Then why did we have a surplus under Clinton?

ANTLess taxation is always right. The bar for raising taxes should be set so high that only the most absolute reasoning should move us to raise it. Taxation is forcibly taking from someone who earned, for the betterment of the nation. Unless it can be convincely proven that increasing taxes will benefit the nation and those who are robbed, taxes should not be raised.

Honestly, I could careless. I already use every chance to dump on the goverent what I should do. I do not donate to anything that doesn't not benefit myself. I don't even date an American. This nation codifies the worst and the most draining. It is all of our most American duty to starve this country of the drug it is most addicted to, tax revenue. Only until we are force to kill the cancer that is draining us of life will we be free.

Socialism and all of it's roots. The cancer that grows in all prosperous nations. It's is our duty to take the resources that this parasite needs to grow and hide from it.

Long story short. Donate nothing. Minimize taxes and when taxation become too much to avoide, leave this country or produce nothing. Only from ashes will a phoenix arise.

Maybe ANT is a Chinese dissenter sent here to spread propaganda that will eventually bankrupt us and make Chinese bend us over because we can't pay our enormous debt to them?