Quote:
Originally Posted by pan6467
See I seriously disagree with this. MANY politicians on both sides of the aisle fail to recognize or if they do, mention the fact that it is the TAX BASE hurting not the TAX RATE.
If you, are able to find ways to bring back good paying jobs (say rebuild the infrastructure, bring back manufacturing jobs, make education affordable to all and bring in tech jobs, etc), this builds up the TAX BASE and allows for the TAX RATE to decrease. This is the only way to sustain a government that provides needed social programs.
What we have now is a TAX BASE being depleted thus the TAX RATE must increase and thus the government either goes seriously in debt trying to maintain social programs and eventually goes either broke or has to totally cut the social programs.
In order to rebuild the TAX BASE you have to spend wisely and make some cuts but put that money into better more efficient programs (education, construction on the outdated electrical grids, roads, bridges, the major cities).
You can do this by raising our very low tariffs on imports and thus even the playing field for domestic products, which brings back jobs, which rebuilds the TAX BASE and not touch the TAX RATES, until that base is solid again at which time you'd be able to lower the rates.
The biggest thing needed is not cutting programs but making them more streamlined and effective. Stop allowing abuses, get rid of pork and cut overseas aid.
It's not too late to get to there, but I don't see the Dems currently in power even attempting to do it and the GOP doesn't show that they have a feasible plan to accomplish this, they rely more on selling a lower tax but no plan to rebuild a base.
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Except that none of this is actually true. If by increasing the "tax base" you mean getting more jobs, even if every single unemployed person got a job that still would not raise enough taxes to pay for just the basic stuff you seem to be against cutting. And if you think that increasing tariffs will make the difference (and let's set aside for a minute that increased tariffs increase prices and thus reduce purchasing power, and let's set aside for a minute that a tariff is a tax which the consumer will pay), again you are sorely mistaken. Imports as percent of GDP are 17%. If you increase the "tax base" by miraculously raising incomes, you'd have to raise pensions, military salaries and medicare spending as well.
This is not even a matter of economics or theory, but basic math.
Total revenue is 2009: 2.1 trillion
SS pensions: 736 billion
Defense 821 billion
Medicare: 430 billion
interest on current debt: 142 billion
Protection (police+firefighters+courts): 53 billion
Now let's see what you want to cut:
Foreign aid: 21 billion
earmarks: 15 billion
In other words, even if you cut all spending on everything else, including roads, elections, the administration of the federal government, medicaid and so on, current tax revenues still don't make up for that. Unemployment is 10%, so even if you employed every single one of them, you'd still come up short, given that the majority of them would probably still be between poor and middle class. Increasing incomes through whatever magic governmental program also isn't enough, unless you increase the income of everyone else except the military, retirees, and doctors who attend patients through medicare.
A budget is not a magical thing, but actual numbers and figures. And that is specially true when you are talking about not raising tax rates but somehow paying for entitlements, which, guess what, also go up as income goes up.
It really is that simple, and the only way anyone can talk about paying for medicare, social security and the military without raising taxes is if you found jobs for all the 10 % who are unemployed that paid over half a million dollars a year.
And this is all talking about current figures. As the population gets older medicare and social security will continue to grow.