Nat'l debt raises 4X in one year

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/12/news/economy/US_budget_deficit/

Only the third time in 30 years, Fed govt. posts an april deficit. Highest ever.

 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gP0WrW8HAS5xFp_B_zF0N02UTt_w

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jmT59dgLTTziX4p9X9MRBRpWZGdQD9FLB2DG0


The economy is improving. If the government stops spending money, espcially in certain areas, we'll be in even worse shape. Once we can get unemployment to under 10%, then we should cut spending, especially in defense. Then we ought to raise taxes on the top 10% income brackets, whove had their taxes the lowest in history for the last nine years, to make up for our budget shortfall. It would be the responsible thing.

 

You're money gets redistributed no matter who's in power. With Republicans you're money was redistributed upwards. The past 30 years the rich haven't paid their fair share in taxes. for most of the last 50 or so years, the rich have seen their tax rates decrease substantially while the tax burden has shifted to the middle class. Since changes in the global economy as well as the execution of neoliberal economic policies beginning in the late '70s, we no longer have much of a middle class. The working class is now just a step above poverty, while the upper middle classes have continued on a downward spiral in the tax brackets. Meanwhile, the top 10% have seen their incomes increase tenfold in the past 30 years, productivity has remained very healthy, even during recent recessions. But there's been little benefit to the worker. And you can't blame high tax rates, we actually enjoy one of the lowest tax rates compared to most industrialized nations. In fact, despite Bush's best efforts to keep taxes low for the rich permanently, the tax cuts passed in 2001-2004 did not lead to more job creation in the 2000s. The 2008 crash did not result from high taxes. There's many factors and events that led to it, but all-in-all crash occurred from the fact there's been so little oversight of industry that the system practically failed itself, and it's sending shockwaves throughout the global economy.

So back to tax rates.
http://forums.thephins.com/showthread.php?t=45849&page=2

This discount came at a heavy price. Yes, we needed to boost the economy after 9/11. However, we had two wars going on simultaneously in Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead of building up the homeland by funding infrastructure projects to keep the economy going and coming up with ways to support the war effort, Bush passes more tax cuts. The surplus that was projected under Clinton vanished. The economy recovered from the 2001/post 9-11 recession thanks to government spending in homeland defense which created low paying security guard jobs and such. However, job creation was null. The jobs that were created were low-paying service jobs and retail, because Americans who still had money were told to shop. However, these low paying jobs did not lead to preservation of the middle class, in fact many families fell several levels below in terms of taxable income. Average income for families fell in the 2000s, for the first time since the 1930s.




As my friend Lucky said, Its like the game of monopoly, at the end, only person, or on a grander scale, one group of people, will wind up with all the money, everyone else be damned.

Sooner or later taxes are going to have to be raised, probably for everyone. We have to make up for the that huge budget shortfall we've endured.



Cutting spending is not going to do it. Plus, it could be detrimental, as FDR learned when he was told to cut spending after the New Deal passed, and unemployment went up. When the private sector is not spending money, when the rich who have everything don't need to buy anything, the middle class can't afford to go shopping, the working class is out of work, and the poor are even poorer, the government is the last resort. You may not like it, but it's been the story since the beginning of our country, government needs to be involved in the economy. From building railroads, highways, levees, bridges, power plants, airports, military bases, schools, hospitals, ect. There's many other ways.

We can pay for this by having the top 10% pay their fair share of taxes, they haven't in 30 years and what has that done for us?

But once the economy recovers and we get back to 1990s level job creation, then we can cut spending and cut taxes.

We've got to get back to being responsible, we've got to get the government in the business of providing services for it's citizens, not to be the guardians of the rich and protecting the interests of big industry. Obviously capitalism is the economic system we have here, and its not going to change overnight. But it must evolve. We cannot go on living like this. We cannot have something for nothing. I for one do not mind paying taxes as long as it goes towards providing services and economic relief on those falling on hard times, god knows we need it now. I know welfare is not popular, but imagine if we didn't have any. We'd be a step above Somalia, thats a libertarian's paradise right there. The government and the private sector both need to evolve and adapt to the new realities of the global economy, but us workers should not have to bear all the sacrifice. No more socialism for the business class, we all need to have a voice in our future.

 

I'm sorry Finsane, your post is way too long to quote. but where did you come up with the numbers to back up this statement:

I hope you didn't just assume so because the top marginal brackets fell ... did you?

Under Jimmy Carter, the top 1% of all income earners paid 19% of ALL federal taxes. In 2007, 27 years later, the top 1% pay 40.4% of all federal taxes.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/24944.html

So I'm not sure if you want to revise everything you wrote, since it was on the premise that the rich paid less than their share of taxes over the past few decades.

And I know the common rebuttal to all of that is the shrinking middle class. Oh no, the shrinking middle class. Yes the middle class shrunk over the past 30 years. The problem, if you could even call it such, is that the middle class shrunk because those in the middle class moved up, got richer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122101556.html

Yes, maybe we should do a better job so that more from the "lower" class move up to the middle class. But it's not as if all those who left the shrinking middle class trended downwards.

 

If the top 10% of income earner's see their annual income rise dramatically over a period of time, the government ought to periodically raise taxes to keep up with it, much like adjusting prices and wages to inflation. I know you guys see that as punishment, but the government needs revenue. Instead they've been given a steep discount, despite two wars still ongoing. Whoever heard of cutting taxes during a war, or two? You guys don't seem to understand that that Bush-era debt is going to need to be repaid by someone, and why not the only group who saw their income increase in the last decade versus the rest of us?

They do pay more percentage-wise, but they also get alot of benefits from the government as well.

Consider defense, for example, which makes up 20% of the budget. Defending the country benefits everyone; but it benefits the rich more, because they have defense companies which receive very generous defense contracts. They also have more to defend. It's the same principle as insurance: if you have a bigger house or a fancier car, you pay more to insure it.

Social security payments, which make up another 20% of the budget, are dependent on income, if you've put more into the system, you get higher payments when you retire.

Investments in the nation's infrastructure, such as transportation, education, research & development, energy, police subsidies, the courts, ect. again are more useful the more you have. The interstates and airports benefit interstate commerce and people who can travel, not ghetto dwellers. Energy is used disproportionately by the rich and by industry.

As for public education, the better public schools are the ones attended by the moderately well off. The very well off ship their offspring off to private schools; but it is their companies that benefit from a well-educated public as well as universities get taxpayer dollars for research and development which is then transferred into private hands.

Not to mention countless bailouts, health care industry subsidies, agricultural subsidies, information technology subsidies, the energy industry and so on.

Beyond all this, the federal budget is top-heavy with corporate welfare. Counting tax breaks and expenditures, corporations and the rich snuffle up over $400 billion a year-- compare that to the $1400 budget, or the $116 billion spent on programs for the poor. There's billions of dollars in military waste and fraud. And there's untold billions in tax credits, deductions, and loopholes. Accelerated depreciation alone, for instance, is estimated to cost billions more than the mortgage interest deduction.

How about social spending? Well, putting aside the merely religious consideration that the richest nation on the planet can't afford to help those who need it most, I'd argue that it's social spending, aka the New Deal/Great Society, that's kept this country capitalistic. Tempting as it is for the rich to take all the wealth of a country, it's really not wise to leave the poor with no stake in the system, and every reason to agitate for imposing a new system of their own. Think of social spending as insurance against violent revolution and again, like any insurance, it's of most benefit to those with the most to lose. Not to mention, the New Deal was passed in part because of fear of the appeal communism and socialism spreading to the masses during the Great Depression, because of which most experts concluded that laissez faire style capitalism was not working and in fact, played a part in crashing the system.

Of course, alot of voters of unaware of how their own economy works. All they know is "supply and demand. High taxes = bad for economy. Welfare= bad for country because it leads to dependency on the government....that is until jobs disappear and I need the help." But corporate welfare is just fine and dandy, wonder why you never hear Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly complain about corporate welfare but having personal welfare in this country is the biggest crime committed on the rich since Teddy Roosevelt and the socialists took over and broke up the "trusts".

Cheers.

 

The federal government doesn't work like a business or a personal checkbook. In times of crises, deficit spending is ok, as long as it is strictly short term. I never heard a peep out of the conversative base about Bush's spending until Obama came into office. If Obama cut spending the economy would have been worse off. The private sector IS NOT SPENDING ANY MONEY ON HIRING NEW WORKERS. The government cut backs on spending, that means less government employees who's employment keeps the economy from going into a freefall. If the private sectors not hiring, the public sector stops hiring, WHO'S GOING TO WORK AND PUT MONEY BACK INTO THE ECONOMY??

By the way, he's not trying to wack anyone. If you make over $250,000/year, which is a pretty good annual income and I'll probably never make nearly that much, you tax rate is simply rolling back to Clinton-era levels. During which time, when the top tax rates payed 39%, compared to 36% under Bush, the economy was actually pretty strong, millions of jobs were being added per month, all that despite "high taxes". And you can't attribute all that growth just because of the internet, the internet economy was still in its infant stages and didn't take off until 2000 and afterward.

Lastly, CEO's salary are clearly inflated and has no relation to productivity or real wages. They ought to pay their fair share in taxes, which they don't thanks to offshore accounts and other neat tricks they do to get out of paying. But no one is proposing limiting what CEO's make, this isn't Stalinist Russia and no, Obama is not a Stalinist.

 

The spending is Keynes in action FY, spend, print, issue debt, it is terribly inefficient and imho based on a model that no longer exists in America.

Spending 280k to create one crappy job is pretty much how this works, and keep in mind, Globalism has seen manufacturing of consumer goods done overseas, all of that money that in theory will "prime the pump" is leaking overseas and that is diffusing the impact of Keynesian Theory.

Basically "we the people" as a Country are going massively into Debt and Mr Po in Shanghai is growing even wealthier on money that "we' will have to pay back via taxes down the road, it is all rather foolish, but no one ever accused the .Gov of being overly creative when it comes to spending programs and utilizing ideas.