Taxing the rich won't help, kinda.

[kiryan]

There's a narrative out there that doesn't seem to have much traction and it basically goes like this...

even if you were to tax the rich people at 100%, you can't close the deficit.

Glenn Beck did a segment where he talked about taking 100% of the profits of the fortune 500 and 100% of the income of the richest 10% or so and you still couldn't come close the deficit.... and thats not counting what city/state would have to do if the feds took all the money.

Oh and the richest 10%... we're talking about anyone making over 114k... Really think about that. If you took 100% from anyone making over 114k, your still over a trillion short on this year's budget. The rich simply CAN NOT pay for the services we all enjoy. You can not raise taxes enough to fix the budget problem.

As conservatives constantly bemoan, we have a spendign problem, not a revenue problem. That is not to say raising taxes makes the problem smaller due to increased revenues (at least without considering the effect of higher taxes on the economy and legal tax evasion)... but it won't solve the budget / deficit problem now or long term. This can only be done by cutting spending... and we all saw the battle over the "historic" 38 billion of cuts this year... which was 0.5% of the budget...

Now can we stop talking about the rich and start talking about how to close the deficit? Cuz you can't do it with tax increases. And if you insist on talking about taxing the rich, I want a #, what % do you think the rich should be taxed at (don't forget to consider state taxes, if you say 50%, you're actually saying 60-70%).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... rialPage_h

Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.

[Teflor Lyorian]

"The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others." - Theodore Roosevelt (Labor Day speech, 1903)

[Sarvis]

There's a narrative out there that doesn't seem to have much traction and it basically goes like this...

even if you were to tax the rich people at 100%, you can't close the deficit.

Glenn Beck did a segment where he talked about taking 100% of the profits of the fortune 500 and 100% of the income of the richest 10% or so and you still couldn't come close the deficit.... and thats not counting what city/state would have to do if the feds took all the money.

Went through roughly 50 of the Fortune 500 (from 2008 by accident before I noticed :( ) and added it up. I skipped the ones with negative profits too, because I'd guess 100% tax on a loss is still 0.

Got to just over half the deficit. So guessing we probably could close it if I included the other 450 companies. Which just tells me what I already knew: Don't listen to Glenn Beck.

As conservatives constantly bemoan, we have a spendign problem, not a revenue problem.

Technically, I think we have both. It's simply not feasible to cut our spending enough to balance the budget. Clinton balanced the budget with both tax increases and spending limitations, along with a booming economy. No one thing is going to be the solution.

Now can we stop talking about the rich and start talking about how to close the deficit? Cuz you can't do it with tax increases. And if you insist on talking about taxing the rich, I want a #, what % do you think the rich should be taxed at (don't forget to consider state taxes, if you say 50%, you're actually saying 60-70%).

Under Eisenhower things seemed to be going well, and that was 90%. So I'll just throw that number out there until I have time and stop being lazy to actually think about it. Also there's this article which basically talks about how a high tax rate forces businessmen to be more responsible about how they generate their fortunes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-john ... 51802.html

Well, other stuff too but the first couple items really make sense. Right now everyone is in for short term big gains, which doesn't work at a very high tax rate. Long term gains make more sense with a high tax rate.

Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.

And remember, the top 10% and 5% earn more than 69% of all income, and control even more money than that. Your case is incredibly weak when people are building full-sized houses just for their poodle while the builders might not be able to afford a home at all.