BoatShoes wrote:
bigmanbt wrote:
^ All I can say is your view of what we are right now is very optimistic. We keep jacking up our national debt at record levels and levy more taxes on business then we will struggle to even be a shell of our former selves.
And Justice Marshall's view of the Constitution is a good one, hence the reason we have the amendment process. But we haven't followed the Constitution in a LONG time.
edit: was for the post above eers'
The debt really isn't AT record levels as a percentage of GDP and that's what really counts because GDP is our ability as a nation to pay it off. We could pay off our debt in one year and still have more income left over as a nation than the country 2nd to us in GDP, Japan. Hell China's GDP is only 4.3 Trillion and they have a BILLION people to spread it out amongst.
Most American's live more comfortably than Henry VIII. If we were really serious about it...we could tighten our belts and pay it off very quickly. But hey, that's not what's important...what's important is increasing the wealth of 2% of Americans and getting the masses to do the nasty political work for them by arguing for "smaller government, Freedom, Don't tread on me, darpa darrr, strict constructionisstt...DARbbb DArr, Socialist, hmr Darp."
And, the thing about taxes on businesses being "crushing"; this is a little true in that the U.S. has a very, very low mean tax rate for individuals but a decently high one on businesses. Evil Socialist/Marxist/Anti-Capitalism states like Denmark, Finland and the UK all of mean corporate tax rates below 30% whereas the U.S.'s is more like Germany's around 40%.
But ya know, one way to reduce this burden has been proposed with the tax credit for businesses that hire. AND, the stimulus bill frontloaded depreciation deductions on businesses capital expenditures even more. These can signfiicantly reduce the corporate tax burden....But, alas, both opposed by the Republican party....
(It's important to note that the Tax credit for hiring employees...instead of just offering a tax cut up front will do more to stimulate hiring because the business has to hire to get the cut...instead of getting the cut and waiting til things turn around to start hiring...which can have bad economic facts if everyone does this...which, acting rationally, it's easy to see why they might). If a business wants to lower its tax burden they call a tax planner and she says, "hire somebody because you'll get a double tax benefit for the same dollars because you'll get a tax credit dollar for dollar and a deduction for an ordinary business expense."
Can you believe it? Republicans arguing against a double tax benefit for the same dollars! The ultimate stick em to the feds! Oh, if only a guy with an R next to his name had thought of it!
Back to the different tax burdens of other countries...
The difference is that all of those countries have mean individual tax rates above 30% with Germany's as high as above 50%. The AVERAGE above 50%!
It should also be noted that of those countries, besides the U.S., the most economically powerful is Germany, the world's top exporter with a trade surplus of 165 billion dollars; fourth in the world in GDP.
The country also has the highest individual and corporate tax rates (when you combine the percentages) of any nation in the world....it has the highest average corporate taxes and it's average individual income tax is second only to Belgium.
And all of the other countries I mentioned rank highly in terms of economic freedom as well.
It really is amazing, when we look at the tax burdens of other countries, and people will act like Obama is somehow the doppleganger of some conglomeration of Mao-Engels-Marx-Satan because he wants to raise...get this...
ONE...rate bracket 4.6% percentage points.
THE AVERAGE TAX in the Country that builds and exports more crap than us (therefore, people are still going to work and actually putting shit together out of raw material instead of swiping some shit made in Vietnam through a checkout line) is OVER 50%!
* Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure Germany recently cut some taxes to stimulate economic activity...which yes, guess what it DOES work; just like increased spending does and it made more sense for Germany to cut taxes rather than increase spending (which might not for us...at least in the individual sphere)...but the mean tax rates are still far greater than our own.
The bottom line is that...the debt is cause for alarm and it's on an unsustainable path...but, it's relatively easy to fix. I mean hell, Paul Ryan proposed away to fix it with out
a single damn tax raise!
.
