vicariousparent

Cutting the deficit is really not hard. The linked website is a good demonstration of this. Each one of us could easily accomplish it with ease. So far I have not seen anyone post here saying that it was an impossible task and they simply couldn't do it.

Getting the votes in Congress and getting a President to sign off on it, and then making sure a future Congress or President doesn't unravel it all- that is the challenge.

vicariousparent

dstark post#40:



These are bad times.

crescent22

> It's real easy to cut the other guy......

and it seems real easy to say my taxes shouldn't be raised; someone else's should.

vicariousparent

^^ I am in favor of raising my own taxes. A lot. Unfortunately it looks like the Republicans will have none of it.

I am going to donate a large chunk of my tax savings to the Obama re-election fund. Or maybe to one of those shadowy tax-exempt organizations the Supreme Court has encouraged.

crescent22

> The roofer said he used to be able to employ 15 union workers and they made enough money to buy their own homes. Now...he is down to 1 employee. Workers in the industry have seen their pay go down over the last 15 years.

Take a reality pill. It was an UNSUSTAINABLE boom. There is no license to have it keep going if it's uneconomic. If your industry self-destructs, you gotta adapt and go do something else; if that means competing with cheap labor abroad, well that is a problem, but you have to deal with it.

SamuraiLandshark

Adapt or die.

There are several industries that have been unsustainable and people who worked in those sectors will likely never see the same economic success they did in the boom years (at least in those old professions.)

Time to increase your skill set, get more education/training or use transferable job skills to move into another profession.

My H's industry is one of them. It will never, ever be the same. Those jobs aren't coming back.

cartera45

Not only will they have none of it but the vast majority of people against it will never in their lifetime make enough money to be in the group whose taxes will be raised. Remember Joe the Plumber? He was worried about taxes on the wealthy going up on the off, and very unlikely chance, that he might, just might, make a lot of money one day.

kluge

I think the essence of how we got into this mess is the fact that everyone knows they're going to pay taxes, but it's easy to convince people that all (or most) of the spending is being "wasted on welfare queens" or spent on foreign aid (both categories are wildly overestimated by surveyed voters.) Examples abound on this forum of posts by people who are absolutely convinced that the budget mess could be "solved" just by "eliminating waste and fraud" or the like. On the other hand, people typically overestimate the amount of income tax they pay, and commonly think income taxes are higher today than in the past - the exact opposite of the truth.

An accurate understanding of how much taxpayers pay and where it goes would be a good start to solving the problem; but it appears that there are a lot of people who are more interested in scoring points and gaining power than solving the problem.

crescent22

> ^^ I am in favor of raising my own taxes. A lot. Unfortunately it looks like the Republicans will have none of it.

So am I, if everyone else gets a bill too. Otherwise, no way.


> I am going to donate a large chunk of my tax savings to the Obama re-election fund.

What a waste of money- why people donate unless the polls are 50.1/49.9 I will never know.

vicariousparent

Because you can only vote once. But your money can keep voting.

hayden

I am always amazed by the number of people I talk to who do not understand how taxes are calculated. I think the concept of progressive taxation must elude a lot of people. This weekend a guy was going on and on about the cost of a tax increase to the wealthy. He was adamant that a 1% tax increase (using made-up numbers) on couples earning over $250,000, would cost $3,000 to a couple earning $300,000. When we told him it would actualy cost an additional $500, he told us we were flat out wrong.

geeps20

^ you support the 50% of people who don't pay taxes to pay something?

kluge

I support having everyone with income paying income taxes, with a progressive rate structure. I support setting the rates at a level sufficient to replace regressive FICA, sales and other consumption taxes.

I also support the proposition that people who are convinced that "50% of the people [] don't pay taxes" should be required to attend a 3 hour mandatory citizenship class and repeat it until they gain an understanding that income taxes are only one of myriad taxes paid by everyone in the country.

geeps20

^yes, federal income tax..thought that was obvious.

BigG

Again, print money to pay the debt and leave Afghanistan and Iraq. Then we won't need to raise taxes.

Since the G20 summit shows we can expect no cooperation from any other nation, why not kill the world economy and take care of ourselves? We still have a better physical resource base than most of the world.

Why wait until all wealth and prosperity has been riven away? Act NOW and save what we can.

The only thing we are struggling to preserve is the ability of Wall Streeters to "wheel and deal" in "international finance". Kill it, kill it dead, let all international trade be cash backed by gold only.

America first, let the rest of the world take care of itself.