We have to RAISE taxes!!

One MAJOR problem....

Federal tax revenue always equals approximately 19.5% of GDP.

online.wsj.com...

s.wsj.net...

Hauser's Law is a theory that states that in the United States, federal tax revenues will always be equal to approximately 19.5% of GDP, regardless of what the top marginal tax rate is. The theory was first suggested in 1993 by Kurt Hauser, a San Francisco investment economist, who wrote at the time, "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP." In a May 20, 2008 editorial, the Wall St. Journal published a graph showing that even though the top marginal tax rate of federal income tax had varied between a low of 28% to a high of 91% between 1950 and 2007, federal tax revenues had indeed constantly remained at about 19.5% of GDP. [17]

What America need to sort out it's finacial mess is...........Dismantleing of a majority of it's oversees bases, withdrawl from Iraq and Afghanistan, less foreign aid, more tax on high earners and corporations, investment in infrastructure to improve productivity, more investment in sending people to college. And i'm sure alot more.

A kind of crazy fear of any government intervention in the economy or government ownership of anything doesn't help either....this doesn't make your country commie!!

Lets have Obama with all of the campaign money he got from the Mafia and from Al Qaeda pay!!

reply to post by Ranger23


I assume your being Sardonic?! America needs to remove this love of free-market capitalism. It doesn;t solve everything having the markets so deregulated... as we are now finding out.

reply to post by Blaine91555


How cutting government spending helps the economy? Please explain. It surely helps to reduce the National Debt but thats an entire different subject.

Government spending has it goods sides and it bad sides.

Earmarks=Bad (for the most part)
Spending to stimulate the economy= Good (when is used wisely)

My point is that not all government spending is bad, it is just that spending that is wasteful and not targeted that don't help.

Obama is re-defining rich to = $250,000.

How long do you think that will last, until it is re-defined to be $200,000?

And then... $175,000?

Either that or increase the taxes on the rich even more!

All that setting a lower limit on rich will do is:

* Suffocate the concept of trying hard to succeed

* Encourage tax fraud

* Encourage more tax loopholes

* Escalate a "brain drain", as is happening in the UK and Venezuela.

Obama wants to instill a socialistic system in the US. And the new "Gang Of Three" - Obama, Reid, and Pelosi - will destroy this country for a full generation. People better wake up and realize this before it is too late.

reply to post by Wise Dome


You are correct, sir (or madam). It's a hard price to pay, but the past 8 years have been like a kid taking mom's credit card and going on a spending spree, buying several houses, a Harley or two, a few trips and several new and expensive cars... Now there's a HUGE balance plus the interest and SOMEONE has to pay the piper. Unfortunately, we are left holding the bag.

McCain's policies are far too irresponsible, just like Bush's. If we are ever to get out of this debt and leave our kids a country worth inheriting, we must start paying for it NOW.

My taxes will go down with Obama, but I'd be willing to pay more if that's what it took.

Originally posted by Wise Dome


Why? Because the last 8 years Bush and the Congress didn't pay for anything and that's why we have a debt over 10 trillion dollars.

Bush is a pseudo-conservative who did nothing to control spending.

Then I am sure you would agree with McCain when he says we should have a spending freeze?

Rich people and businesses do not pay taxes.....you do, buy paying higher prices for the goods and products they produce.

When was the last time any one of you got a job from a poor person? I know I haven't. So is it really a good idea to punish the people that create the jobs?

Taxes are a penalty. Want to cut down on smokers? Raise cigarette taxes. Want to energize the economy? Give people a tax rebate. So when you tax the rich, what you are doing is wanting them to slow down their production.

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
reply to post by Grafilthy

 

Now, let's see. What do you want to cut? The soldiers' pay? How about not letting them eat? Maybe they could live in tents, instead of barracks?
Why not get rid of the entire military? I'm sure Russian, Iran and North Korea will freely get rid of their military also. I just bet Al Qaeda would be willing to stop trying to attack us.

Ok, let me ask you this how many troops do we need for defense of the United States? Do you really think anyone will attempt an invasion of our borders? They won't as long as we have WMD.

Who even has the numbers to try that anyway - only Russia or China. Don't you think we would see their armada coming, because they would need 100's of thousands of troops to fight the US citizens. It would be an easy target as long as we keep our fleet of subs and Air Dominance.

In this day and age Infantry troops serve one purpose, and that is attacking third world countries, which pose no real threat but may have natural resources to steal. We can defiantly afford to reduce the size of military greatly if we give up on our ill gotten empire.

Originally posted by RRconservative
Rich people and businesses do not pay taxes.....you do, buy paying higher prices for the goods and products they produce.

This is an economic fallacy keep being said by those who dont have any idea of how or tax system works.

Rich people DO pay taxes a lots of them. If they raise their prices they become non competitive and they loose market share and would go bankrupt.

Would they raise they prices if they get tax more? They might think about it, but then they realize if they do so they going to loose market share so they get reluctant.

Now, would rasing taxes prevent economic growth? Sure, if the policies enacted are not implemented in the right way.

Look we have seen this happen, Bill Clinton not only raise taxes on the rich, but also to the middle class but his policies were so well implemented that we saw the biggest boom in the U.S. history EVER! as in OF ALL TIMES!

Economist and analyst have been debating these for years and still haven't come to a final conclusion on the subject, why? Becasue when ever in a equation you have to account for the HUMAN FACTOR it becomes hard to quatify.

Obama is going to raise taxes and those affected are going to throw their cry of pain at first, but them if everything work out good, they be saying that Obama was the best thing that ever happen to this country.

reply to post by infolurker

Federal tax revenue always equals approximately 19.5% of GDP.

Liberals try to dodge this one, but Hauser has shown through very accurate data that post-war, his "Law" is fairly predictive. Of course, it is nothing more than Supply Side Economics, and like it or not, the figures don't lie. With additional variables that we have not seen, it remains to be seen whether it will continue to huddle at around 19.%, but it certainly has up to this point.
I do firmly believe that at some "pressure point", wealth will find ways to avoid excessive taxes, and I also firmly believe that Obama's tax plans, if enacted by Congress, will chase considerable jobs overseas, far in excess of what we have seen.
Let's put it this way, forget the rich for now, if YOU were faced with two alternatives, paying more taxes, or finding a legal way to avoid it, what would YOU do?
Let me give you my answer. I would choose the legal way to avoid paying more taxes. After all, isn't that what we do now when we itemize deductions?
I don't wish to debate this point now, because quite honestly, I am fed up with the partisan arguments on both sides that have no basis of fact, other than choosing a position which supports their candidate.

reply to post by Wise Dome


We dont have to raise taxes , actually we should lower them and you ask you we will pay for all the stuff government does.. eliminat 90% of what government does and we would not need any income taxes and we'd have a surplus to pay off the d11 trillion dollar debt, we dont need federal government states make all the roads and provide unenployment insurance etc..

All federal taxes should go for are for defense, and I mean defense only, not parading around the entire globe policing the world.

The feds are way to big and way to powerful, we don't need that thatis what screwing this country over in the first place.

Remember this country is a republic of independent states, and never forget that.

reply to post by Wise Dome


How about stopping all foreign aid, removing all US bases from foreign soil, and allowing line item vetoes so things like goat farmers won't get subsidized for angora sweaters that were needed in WW1, before you take more money from me.

Here's another one, put able bodied welfare recipients to work in the fields and send the illegals home.

After all that's done come talk to me about raising taxes.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


To me Hauser's Law proves is that tax policies need to be implemented in a way that it targets a particular sector in order to perpetuate a strong economy.

The data that is shown in his study points out how irrelevant tax increases or cuts are in regard to the yield in Federal Tax revenue. What you need to see is that during these period that data was collected taxes where raised on the rich and decreased, taxes where raised to the middle class and decreased.

So what changes? How the economy reacts to the policies implemented by a particular President.

An example of that is when Bill Clinton rose taxes to a good portion of the middle class and the rich in the 90's...what happen? The biggest boom in the economy EVER and the lowest level in unemployment seen in decades.

Another example is the Bush taxcuts, they were intended to spur economic growth, but at the end send the National Debt through the roof with no beniefit to none except the rich.

Hauser's Law again all it shows is how important the implementation of tax policies are to the economy and how irrelevant they are when it comes to tax revenues and thats where I see Obama's plan working, becasue he don't want to keep the money for the government, he wants to allocates the resources where they are needed the most. To a struggling middle class and lower income people.

You might disagree with his policy, that perfectly understandable, but history speaks for itself when it comes to tax policy.

[edit on 19-10-2008 by Bunch]

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[edit on 19-10-2008 by Bunch]

Originally posted by Wise Dome
As a Conservative I hate to say this but we do.

Why? Because the last 8 years Bush and the Congress didn't pay for anything and that's why we have a debt over 10 trillion dollars.

SNIP: If these are your views, then you are not a Conservative. Nothing was paid for??? Source, please. Since 2003, more money went to the government than ever before. Lower taxes, people spend more, and more taxes are paid. Economics 101

Bush is a pseudo-conservative who did nothing to control spending.
SNIP: You're partially correct, there.

He gave out 12 vetos vs Reagan 78 and even Clinton 37. Bush borrowed more money from foreign governments than the 42 Presidents before him combined in his first four years.
SNIP: Source please?

So all the Joe the plumbers out there crying about taxes has to understand that somebody has to pay for the last 8 years. We are tapped out and if McCain wants to stay in Iraq that's 10 billion a month we have to borrow.

You have to "spread the wealth" when the top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 50% and we are 10 trillion dollars in the hole.
SNUIP: So, you want to punish the rich for being successful and achieving the American dream?

When you raise the tax rate on people making 250,000 dollars and more and then give a tax cut to the bottom 95% this will keep the economy going while we pay some bills and ease up the debt.
SNIP: Who was the last Democrat to lower taxes? You really think that 'ol Barry is going to lower those taxes? Think a bit.... when the Dems let the Bush tax rate reductions run out, who's taxes are going to go up? Answer: everyone's!!! So, that puts paid to Barry's lie(s) on taxes. He's a flat out Marxist/Socialist, which has NEVER worked in all of history.

So yes, we have to spread the wealth when the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger under a 10 trillion dollar debt.

You recently went to public school, didn't you? Another economic genius! Here's some facts for you:

According to data from the IRS, the bottom 50 percent of income earners pay approximately 4 percent of income taxes.

The top 25 percent of income earners pay nearly 83 percent of the income tax burden, and the top 10 percent pay 65 percent.

The top 1 percent of income earners pay almost 35 percent of all income taxes.
Source: taxesandgrowth.ncpa.org...

reply to post by Blaine91555


That one is going to be hard to do as our moronic and incompetent congress has given a "a blank check" to the Treasury department to print money as they seem fit.

So we don't even know how much that "blank check is going to add to the national debt.

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus

Sure, if we're invaded, we can just nuke Texas. That'll show them.
Get real. Your position is a complete joke.
Now here is what you do. Wait a day or two, get another member name, sign on, and maybe THIS time, post something intelligent, because right now, you are making a laughing stock of yourself.

There is no need to speak to another ATS member like this. At all.

This is not a one-line. Treating others like that on ATS really bothers me.
Attack the subject, NOT other people.

reply to post by Bunch

Actually, it is both, and in fact, your point supports the idea that Obama's plan will cause what I predicted will happen, namely that the rich will revolt. A study by Louis Levy-Garboua, David Masclet and Claude Montmarquette examined the behavior of individuals subject to different tax rates:

www.cirano.qc.ca...

The study concludes:

The initiators of tax revolts are usually found among the most productive, high-earning, and hard-working group of taxpayers.

Thus, by raising the marginal rate, and NOT touching other rates, the study supports the position that the wealthy will do exactly what I stated earlier. If all taxes were raised equally, according to the study, such a tax revolt would not occur. It is the perceived unfairness of the tax increase that prompts tax revolts. It is virtually impossible for the poor or middle class to instigate a tax revolt in the US. What are they going to do, stop working? The rich have the power to carry out their threats that others do not have. Likewise, when the marginal rate goes down, the incentive is there to create more jobs which will result in increased profits. The rich have the luxury many of us do not have, the ability to "wait out policies". They can live off their wealth, and like it or not, they can punish the government and the people they employ for treating them in what THEY consider an unfair manner.
As someone who spent the majority of his career in the business world, I had the advantage of actually hearing and seeing some of the predictive actions carried out by executives. A very real component of business decisions is revenge, as childish as that may sound to many of us. I have seen executives make decisions which destroyed entire divisions of a company, because of it.

reply to post by LostNemesis

Look, lately these threads have been populated by people that get a "throw-away" sign-on, post ridiculous comments, then disappear. Suggesting that we get rid of our military if someone tries to invade us and instead just use WMD's fits the description of such comments. Although the name changes, the writing styles do not, and it is usually very easy to spot them.