The Democrats have it wrong

We have the highest corporate taxes, so companies are already taking their profits offshore. That could increase.

Companies that were on the fence, could outsource.

In increase in corporate tax rates could reduce corporate tax income, but what are the odds.....

And, that would fix the deficit for less than 2 years, and kill any hope of recovery as companies flee nationalization.

Link?

We have had big government for the last 3 years, is more of it going to recover the economy? Government can print money, but it can't print prosperity. Without prosperity, we won't have a recovery.

 

I want to increase ? Aren't you missing something ? Like the last 2 sentences of my post, both of which point out a large net DEcrease in entitlement spending, and if I went through the government's programs with a fine tooth comb, I'm sure I could come up with quite a few more besides the ones I mentioned.

 

What is wrong with you ? I just answered that in my last post. Nobody's talking about "If all of the wealth of all US billioniares was confiscated today"
That's not the criteria. The criteria is the super rich being taxed at 90+% rates for a number of consecutive years, not just a one shot deal.

We've had 30 years of UNDERtaxation, so why are you talking about trying to fix it in an instant ?

 

The outsourcing threat is a paper tiger. In past decades the rich paid 70-94% (for most of the past 94 years), and guess where they went. Nowhere. They stayed right here. If anybody thought it really was a problem, then simply enact punitive taxes for doing that, making in non-economical for them to do it. That is highly overdue anyway.

The deficit could be fixed entirely in 5-10 years, with a restoration of normal top bracket taxation (70-94%), and less time than that with some smart spending cuts (not Social Security/Medicare).

 

If the US imposed a 90% interest rate the wealthy really wouldn't be effected but middle and low income individuals would be. The wealthy would simply move their assets to another country to earn money somewhere else beyond the reach of Uncle Sam. That move alone would result in the loss of millions of additional American jobs.

We actually haven't had under-taxation but instead we've had over-spending. The federal dollars spent per household in America has soared in recent years and stands at somewhere between $25,000 to $30,000 per household today. That is an absurd amount of money for the US government to be spending per household. The "Economics of Scale" would dictate that the more American households there are the less the cost of government would be per household. As the population and economy expand the cost of government should be less and not more.

 

Large?

Illegal didn't pay that much into the system (except for the single SSI numbers used by hundreds - but that will only pay out to one person). Many will return to their country of origin (not all are from Mexico) and many work under the table, so the payout to illegals isn't significant.

There aren't enough rich to be significant.

Two small negatives don't offset the increase you propose.

 

In the past 11-12 years, the USA is involved in 3-5 preemptive and unprovoked wars...and the populace was told to go shopping, don't worry about any sacrifice to pay for these wars...

 

The wealthiest 20% of the US households are set to receive about $6.5Trillion in personal income this year, half of all national personal income. Their average tax burden is around 26%, or about $1.7Trillion. This leaves them with $4.8Trillion of disposable income each year.

The current budget deficit is around $1.2Trillion, or about one fourth of the disposable income of the wealthiest. They could be taxed enough to eliminate the budget deficit and still receive 3/4 of their income.

If you want stats they are at census.gov and bea.gov

 

What would be the cutoff in $ per year payout to illegals thaqt you would define as "significant" ?

And what do you think the payout to the rich in Social Security and Medicare is ? And what would you define as "significant" for that ?

 

Interesting how in Post # 380 you make a statement that I just got through refuting in the previous post (#379) - LOL. I have already stated that there is a great deal of overspending going on which needs to be stopped (especially on illegal aliens'welfare) - I don't need coaching on that. But it looks like you do need some coaching about UNDERtaxation.

Yes, we certainly have had UNDERtaxation, when since 1988, top bracket taxes have only been 28%-39.6%, whereas for 50 of 64 years before that (since 1917), they were never less than 70%, and were as high as 94%, with a 13 year clip (1951-1963) of 91-92%. So the normal taxation was 70-94% for most of the past 94 years, which makes the most recent 24 years taxes (far) UNDER that norm. Get it ?

 

The total for SSI and Medicare is about $1.5T.

The high estimate for illegals is 20M, out of population of 300M, a straight percentage 6.7%, assume 1/2 of that, about 3%.

The rich are considered the top 1%, being they draw the maximum, give them 2%.

Total of 5%. SSI and Medicare will go up that much for the next couple of years just due to the baby boomers.

As an engineer, I learned a long time ago, napkin concepts like political talking points sound good, until you run the math.

When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.

 

The actual tax collected was reduced slightly in recent years but the original tax code overhaul in the 1980's eliminated many tax deductions as well as lowering tax rates. It was intended to be revenue neutral and what many seem to ignore that income taxes are based upon two factors:

Tax rate is applied to net income, not gross income. By removing deductions which increases net reported income the tax rates can be lowered without affecting the total taxes being collected.

This argument still misses the point. As the US economy expands and as the population expands the cost per person and as a percentage of the GDP for government should logically go down. The opposite has been happening where the cost of government today is about 22% of GDP as opposed to about 18% of GDP. With the expansion of the population and the increases in the overall economy government expendatures, based upon the economy of scale, should be going down to around 16%.

The cost of defending the United States, for example, does not change based upon population or GDP. The cost is a constant and as the GDP and populaiton increases it logically requires less of the GDP and less per person to provide for the defense of the United States.

Once again the point of this thread is that the federal government is spending way too money. Before any consideration is given to increasing taxation the Congress should be addressing the elimination of all unnecessary government expendatures. Simply throwing more money at wasteful spending merely increases and promotes more wasteful spending.

When anyone can state that all wasteful spending has been eliminated from federal expendatures then they have grounds for addressing tax increases. So long as wasteful spending exists without being addressed there are no grounds for increasing taxation.

 

Incorrect American companies would never leave the largest marketplace in the world.

They are sitting on 2 trillion dollars and holding the economy hostage, if government confiscates this reserve capital from them to fix the nation they will be forced to accept it.

Higher taxes on both wealthy people and businesses is the only answer and democrats are not afraid to take them on.

 

While these corporations may not move their retail sales, if they have any, out of the United States they could certainly move all of their manufacturing out of the United States. They can also access US markets indirectly. Remember when the United States used to manufacture televisions? How many televisions are manufactured in the United States today. (answer: none)

I have no idea where such delusional thinking originates. These corporations may have cash reserves but that money is not being kept under a mattress at the corporate headquarters. It is in banks and the banks use these fund to make loans. Those loans, whether made to individuals or business, are funds that are spent. Money deposited in banks actually increases economic activity and does not diminish it.

Actually there are many means of raising more revenues such as allowing all of the Bush era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 as they are currently scheduled to do. That would increase federal revenues by $300 billion/yr from those earning less than $200K/yr plus an additional $70 billion/yr from those making more. It actually shows that raising taxes on middle income workers would increase federal tax revenues far more than raising taxes on higher income individuals.

 

While these corporations may not move their retail sales, if they have any, out of the United States they could certainly move all of their manufacturing out of the United States. They can also access US markets indirectly. Remember when the United States used to manufacture televisions? How many televisions are manufactured in the United States today. (answer: none)

I have no idea where such delusional thinking originates. These corporations may have cash reserves but that money is not being kept under a mattress at the corporate headquarters. It is in banks and the banks use these fund to make loans. Those loans, whether made to individuals or business, are funds that are spent. Money deposited in banks actually increases economic activity and does not diminish it.

Actually there are many means of raising more revenues such as allowing all of the Bush era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 as they are currently scheduled to do. That would increase federal revenues by $300 billion/yr from those earning less than $200K/yr plus an additional $70 billion/yr from those making more. It actually shows that raising taxes on middle income workers would increase federal tax revenues far more than raising taxes on higher income individuals.

 

While these corporations may not move their retail sales, if they have any, out of the United States they could certainly move all of their manufacturing out of the United States. They can also access US markets indirectly. Remember when the United States used to manufacture televisions? How many televisions are manufactured in the United States today. (answer: none)

I have no idea where such delusional thinking originates. These corporations may have cash reserves but that money is not being kept under a mattress at the corporate headquarters. It is in banks and the banks use these fund to make loans. Those loans, whether made to individuals or business, are funds that are spent. Money deposited in banks actually increases economic activity and does not diminish it.

Actually there are many means of raising more revenues such as allowing all of the Bush era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 as they are currently scheduled to do. That would increase federal revenues by $300 billion/yr from those earning less than $200K/yr plus an additional $70 billion/yr from those making more. It actually shows that raising taxes on middle income workers would increase federal tax revenues far more than raising taxes on higher income individuals.

 

Do Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, Chinese, German, French, etc.... companies have access to the largest market in the world? How much do they pay to the US in corporate tax?

The economy is being held hostage by the laws congress passed the last 3 years, and the executive order Obama wrote. Those laws and EO's are just frameworks for regulations, the bulk of whaich haven't been written.

 

His thinking is not delusional at all. They put it in banks but banks aren't lending it. Lending is down.

 

The banks certainly are lending and they have to to stay in business. They have tightened up the qualification requirements after being burned on home mortgages but they are still leading to qualified borrowers. Outside of more stringent qualification requirements I've had no problem in securing $350,000 in loans in the last 90 days and I'm just one person.

Banks can't afford to keep money in the vault while paying interest on it.

 

If a bank does not lend money the bank goes out of business...

 

Actually, much of it is in short term deposits, which banks cannot use to make loans. The reason why many corporations have accumulated huge cash stockpiles is because of what happened in 2008 when the money market seized up and they were unable to borrow for short term needs, not even for overnight. Until this happened almost all medium and large corporations in the US used the money markets for short term borrowing to smooth out cash flow problems, like paying suppliers while waiting for payment from retailers. The money was coming, but not soon enough to meet the payroll so they would borrow the difference from the money markets, often for a month or less.

When Lehman Brothers failed one of the largest money market funds declared that they had "broken the dollar" due to $1Billion in short term notes from Lehman Bros that were now worthless. What money markets depend on the most is that investor principle will always be protected, i.e. "the dollar will never be broken". When the dollar broke for one of the largest players everyone exited the money market and zero money became available to corporations for short term borrowing. Blue chip companies like HP could not meet their payroll that month until the government intervened and offered money market type short term loans.

Ever since then corporations have been accumulating large cash reserves.

It would be better to raise taxes more on those who make more to balance the budget. The top 26millon households are estimated to receive around 4.8Trillion in after tax income this year, more than half the US personal after tax income, an average of $184,000 each.

The bottom 80% of households are estimated to receive an average after tax income of about $46,000 each.

Who is most able to pay increased taxes to eliminate the deficit?

 

In bold above, the answer is no one!

The deficit is $1.35 trillion with a 'T'

From my perspective I'm not going to pay a penny more in taxes until Obama and Congress stops all the stupid and senseless wars!

The federal government does not need another stinking penny until the federal government gets their house in order! It is 100% retarded to put more money into an out-of-control spending machine!

And here's a question for the brain-dead people; There is only one pool of money and this money is distributed/floating between people/business and the government...in what possible way does it make sense to take more money from people/business and give it to government?

 

So, is it corporation that should have their money confiscated, of the banks?

The banks are loaning money to the government, buying T-Bills. No risk, and they can borrow money from the Fed for less than T-Bills pay.

 

What should happen is that we regulate banks to encourage lending -- which is the purpose of chartering banks (or one of the purposes).

Right now, banks benefit from having capital in excess of their capital floor. Banks get interest on the excess. The FED should disincentivize that by charging penalties on the excess. Then banks would lend.

More and better regulation solves most problems.

 

So the argument is that the corporations require these cash reserves just to stay in business.

There is no justification for raising taxes to pay for expendatures that the US simply can't afford. For example the United States taxpayers simply can't afford to pay for the US playing the role of World Cop or for nation building of countries like Afghanistan or Iraq that are both corrupt and tyrannical governments violating virtually all of what America stands for. The taxpayers cannot afford to pay for expensive federal government social programs that inherently are a State responsibility or better provided for by charities (e.g. private food banks provide almost five times as much food for the dollar than food stamps).

Before the Congress calls on the American People to pay more in taxes they first need to get the runaway spending under control. If and when the budget is cut to the bone if there still aren't enough revenues then Congress can address tax increases. Until then it's merely requiring the People to fund wasteful spending.