The government needs money to grease the economy, so they'll have to tax something. Those taxes should provide value somehow, either in growing or protecting the economy.
Pork does not usually provide value. It is a bribe, which usually provides value to a few by taking away value for the many. It should be illegal.
There are two sides of an economy that need to be kept in balance: production and consumption. More taxes slow things down, less taxes speed things up. If you tax consumption too much, you end up with no consumption, which doesn't help because nobody consumes your products. If you tax production too much, you end up with no production to feed your consumption. Both are bad. It's probably best to tax production at one rate, and consumption at another. Those two levers would probably be great help in optimizing an economy along with control of interest rates.
Donks seem to think taxes are some kind of pennance they feel the need to raise taxes until everyone's hair bleeds. I think if they feel so bad about making money, then go write a check to the US Treasury and stop making everyone else miserable, but that would contribute to unbalancing a good economy, wouldn't it?
Dems say they want to improve the economy, but they tax the crap out of everything that moves and doesn't buy enough votes! That slows down the economy, especially if they overtax key sources of the evil production side of an economy - business spending and investing, and key components of the consumption side of the economy like personal spending and investing. Perhaps it would be a good idea to tax stagnant money or money that results in stagnation, too. The idea is to keep it moving. I don't know if inheritances would fall into this category or not. It would depend on whether the inheritees continued productive business or turned into economic deadbeats.
Anyway, I know lots of you folks are probably laughing at my naivete, but this is kind of how I end up thinking whenever I think of how taxes should be. The US tax code may sort of kind of be like this, just too cumbersome to be effective. It needs to have the levers easier to access.
Please let me know where the pinholes are in my thinking so I can suture them up! :-)
Democratic presidential hopefuls called for higher taxes on the highest-paid Americans and on big corporations Thursday and agreed in an unusually cordial debate that any thought of balancing the federal budget would have to wait."We're not going to be able to dig ourselves out" of Bush-era deficits in the next year or two, said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, one of six Democratic rivals sharing a stage for the final time before Iowa's leadoff Jan. 3 caucuses.
But given the Bush economy you could dig yourself out of it quicker despite the WoT. Think about that, oh clueless ones who will never admit defeat, especially if I can be made to pay for it.
Asked about the importance of eliminating deficits, Democrats responded by criticizing President Bush's economic policies, including some of his tax cuts.
But wait a minute, if nobody is invested in the US, what would stop them from getting out of line?
"I want to keep the middle class tax cuts" that Congress passed during President Bush's tenure, said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. But she said she favors raising taxes for the
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina readily agreed. "The truth of the matter is the tax policy has been established by the big corporations and the wealthiest Americans
Across 90 minutes, the fierce competition between the two Iowa front-runners shone through only once - when Obama was asked how he could offer a new type of foreign policy since several of his advisers once worked for President Clinton.
Hillary Clinton laughed out loud at that, and said with a smile, "I'm looking forward to hearing that."
I would so much like to hear your answer to that one first, babe.
Obama, also smiling, waited for the laughter to die down before saying, "Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well."
Smack!
The discussion of taxes underscored the gulf between the two parties on economic issues. Republican candidates called repeatedly on Wednesday for elimination of the estate tax - which falls principally on the largest of estates - and reduction in the income tax on corporations.
Those differences will have to wait for the general election campaign, however. For now, all presidential hopefuls in both parties are concentrating with single-minded determination on their nomination races beginning with the Iowa caucuses on Jan 3 and the New Hampshire primary five days later.
You mean to say that one mind is divided between all the Democratic candidates?!
Obama, Clinton and Edwards are in a tight race in Iowa, according to numerous pre-caucus polls. Richardson, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden trail badly.
I dunno. I think they are bouncing along behind the bus quite well!
After months of campaigning, the six debaters stuck to well-rehearsed lines, passing up opportunities to attack one another and periodically illustrating their points with Iowa-specific examples.
Dodd noted that the cost of attending the University of Iowa had risen 147 percent in the past six or seven years. Obama, addressing energy issues, squeezed in a reference to a new wind turbine manufacturing plant in Keokuk with 400 jobs. Biden said his first trip to Iowa was a generation ago, when former Sen. John Culver ran in 1974. Biden didn't say so, but Culver's son, Chet, is the current governor, neutral in the race for the party's presidential nomination.
Asked how they would have voted on a Senate proposal earlier this week to shift some crop subsidy payments into conservation and other programs, Dodd and Biden said they would have supported it. Obama and Clinton expressed opposition - and the New York senator made a point of saying she had generally been following the lead of Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin on a big farm bill.
Yes, No, I don't know/Maybe. OK, a little something for everybody there!
Only Richardson said balancing the budget would be a high priority. He noted that as governor in New Mexico, he is required to do so, and he called for a presidential line-item veto, a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, the elimination of "corporate welfare" and elimination of congressional earmarks to help get rid of federal red ink.
None of this will happen until the economy is understood better and the politicians all get stuck in jail permanently.
Dodd jabbed at Richardson, saying the federal government is "much more complicated than state budgets. What we need to be doing is growing our economy, giving people a sense of confidence again."
Again? To which subconscious conclusion are you trying to funnel your clueless, drooling, "single-minded" followers?
Biden was one of several Democrats who noted that the Iraq War is costing $10 billion a month - money that he said could be spent on education, health care and other programs, or allocated to deficit reduction.
I call it insurance money. Why don't you stop paying your insurance premiums then come back after a few years of living as a normal citizen with a normal budget in a disaster-prone area and bring up the subject again. The only difference is that there is no "State Farm Insurance" for the USA to run off to, so insurance spending takes on a whole new dimension and meaning.
The federal budget ran a surplus of $127 billion the year Bush took office. The deficit hit a record high of $413 billion in 2004 before declining to $162.8 billion for the 2007 budget year, which ended last Sept. 30.
Well, he had a war to fight, a recession to climb out of, a couple of cities to rebuild, and a gutted military that had to be rebuilt. (Not to mention all your earmarks and pork spending, of course.)
Republicans have long blamed an economic slowdown, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a stock market crash for the country's descent into deficit spending and have said tax cuts have promoted economic growth. Democrats contend Bush's tax cuts needlessly drained the treasury of revenue, while disproportionately helping the wealthy and corporations.
So increasing economic activity equates with disproportionately helping the wealthy and corporations? Oookayyyy . . . . How do you plan on increasing economic activity with no more business? I'd measure how much "welfare" there was by how streamlined and profitable the businesses are in addition to how much business there is.
The field of debaters was trimmed to six at the direction of the newspaper that hosted it. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio was excluded because he does not have a campaign office in the state. His supporters protested the decision, but to no avail.
Sniff. I'm sure most everyone will miss him exactly as much as I do. Except for his supporters.
It was not clear why the same rules did not exclude former Ambassador Alan Keyes from the Register's debate of Republican candidates on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the newspaper did not immediately return a telephone call or e-mail.
There's your answer!