Quote:1. So you don't like deficits? What do you think of trump's policies that would increase them exponentially?
2. Also, it's a tough thing to understand, so I guess I don't blame you too much... But let me try to explain it to you. If the rich are not paying taxes, not only do deficits increase. But almost more importantly, the burden falls on the workers to try and sustain the services that are being provided to the society by the government. Basically, the rich - those that reap the most fruit from the greatest country in the world are paying less into the society that gives them such great freedoms and opportunities, not to mention protects thier wealth. It falls on us workers to make up for that lost tax revenue. And when that cannot happen, deficits and austerity occurs.
I know it's complicated, and it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, so it can be lost on people that just like slogans. But if we're gonna talk about politics, sometimes you have to think a bit deeper than, "lock her up", or "solyndra"...
I wasn't complaining about the deficit in and of itself. I was complaining about the lack of production with the capital that the federal bureaucracy consumed. For the purposes of this conversation whether a dollar consumed by the feds is borrowed or taken out of the private sector doesn't matter, (ill get to that in a second). What I'm saying is that the government had enough money. They will have spent nearly thirty trillion dollars all total in the time that Obama left office. nearly 900 billion dollars was specifically part of a stimulus package. Where has that thirty trillion dollars gone? Where is this post racial egalitarian utopia that we are promised by having the government consume larger and larger parts of our GDP? The money was wasted, plain and simple.
As for deficit spending vs. tax increases the answer is neither. As we just demonstrated in section 1, the federal government is remarkably inefficient at actually producing or stimulating the production of goods and services. If the government is just going to waste the money it consumes, more often than not, how does it make ANY SENSE to deplete the capital markets that you are trying to stimulate through higher taxes? It doesn't make any sense.
We spend 900 billion dollars on shovel ready projects and you have the most powerful man in the world laughing about "I guess they weren't so shovel ready" We spend trillions of dollars taking over 1/6th of the economy. We're promised a savings of 2500 dollars per family, we have an increase of 4400 per family, people loose their doctors, loose their plans. We start 27 co-ops to provide health care, and 23 of them have gone or are going out of business. We are told that the waters will recede the ice will refreeze etc. etc. We spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on GREEN PROJECTS (that have helped dramatically hinder the economy of spain) but you still have to use fossil fuels to lift a 747 and there is nothing close to viable to replace our current energy production.
Moreover, while you are lamenting a FAIR SHARE, if a person or an entity doesn't generate income in a given year then an INCOME TAX isn't going to obligate them to anything. Progressives have been touting INCOME TAXES as a means to a post inequality society for a century now. We have had rates of 1% all the way up to 91% We have the economic stagnation, we have the loss of jobs to more tax friendly climates. We have the progressive nature of the income tax (charts have already been provided in the thread) but we still don't have anything resembling the Bernie Sanders Utopia that you guys keep talking about.
Private Capital investment is the key to prosperity in any economy PERIOD. An economy that works for everyone has to be an economy that works.
