Quote:
Originally Posted by jorgelito
Hong Kong has a flat tax system. Flat tax is ideal because everyone only pays a percentage. 5-10% sounds about right to me.
I actually think we do need to "slash and burn" as it were. Time to go on a diet. That deficit needs to start going down. It hurts at first but we will be better for it in the long run. We will have to learn to budget better, not spend so freely, and not waste. We need to hold our politicians accountable and responsible. More taxes only hurts us.
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jorgelito...there is really not that much discretionary, non-defense spending to cut...certainly not enough to make a big difference....and it would take a flat tax of far more than 5-10% and/or a significant increase in state and local taxes.
The most recent proposal was Huckabee's "fair tax" which eliminated the federal income tax and replaced it with an effective 30% national sales tax. The fallacies are laid out
here.
The deficit was not only reduced in the late 90s...we had several years of budget surpluses....based on a simple "pay as you go" principle that was abandoned in 2001.
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9/11 and the tech bubble burst contributed to the exploding deficit and national debt..but by most objective measures, so did Bush's tax cuts and war funding.