Will it raise taxes on all of us?
According to Kayleigh McEnany it will, but I really don't find the cute little bimbo all that convincing. I need an rational argument not just the opinion of someone who looks and acts like she just graduated high school.
Biden himself says it won't. He says it will only raise taxes on those making over $400,000. The difference here is that I can actually see his proposal and that is exactly what it says.
Do we need to raise taxes at all?
I would say that depends on few variables... First, does our government have the money to cover its expenses? If not, can we cut those expenses? If not, can we get the money to cover those expenses without raising taxes?
The fact that our national deficit is continuing to rise tells me that the first answer is no, our government does NOT have the money to cover its expenses. The experience with post-recession budgets has shown a partisan impasse on cutting expenses where Democrats want to keep their spending programs and Republicans want to keep theirs, so I'm going to say the second answer is also no. That leaves the third question... can we get the money to cover those expenses without raising taxes? And the answer there is yes, we can.
Having said that, I want to explain something to my Republican friends. The government's ONLY source of revenue is tax. That is, unless we start allowing the government to run profit-driven services, but do we really want the government competing in the market? Isn't that what all the fuss over Obama's public option was about? Isn't that basically a step toward socialism? Let's just not even get into that.
So... if the only source of revenue is tax, then how else can we get money to cover expenses? Well, if we don't HAVE it we have to BORROW it and our colossal national debt indicates that we do in fact borrow a LOT of money.
Now I'm going to explain these two options in the context of our partisan history. Some of my Republican friends might get a little agitated but please hear me out.
A fundamental difference between parties is in the way each side spends money and another is in the way each side funds their spending. There's a common perception that Democrats just spend more money, so they need more money and that's why they are always raising taxes. But this perception will be corrected in the course of my explanation.
Indeed, Republicans actually spend as much as Democrats do, just on different things. The difference is Republicans promise lower taxes to get the v**es then borrow wh**ever they need to make up the difference and that's why we have such a colossal national debt. If we funded all our spending with taxes we wouldn't even HAVE a national debt.
Now, the reason why people *think* Democrats spend more is because the approach Democrats take is t***sparent by virtue of the fact that they submit spending bills to our elected representatives who v**e on the bill and the taxes required to fund it. This puts their spending in full view where we can watch our representatives argue about it.
Republican leaders on the other hand don't even talk to Congress, they prefer to use the office of the president to borrow money through the U.S.Treasury so there is no obligation to seek our approval or to even inform us that it's happening.
And THAT's why it "appears" as if the Democrats spend more. In reality they're just being more t***sparent.
Of course, both approaches are provisioned in the Constitution but raising taxes, a power given to Congress, is meant to be the standard practice and borrowing through the Treasury is supposed to be for emergencies only, not the standard practice that Republicans have turned it into.
But to give the Republicans credit, their approach has been very successful at keeping them in power, because nothing says "v**e for me" like "No new taxes!"
But there's more to consider...
Not only are Republicans covertly spending borrowed money, the debts they incur from all that borrowing HAVE to be paid off eventually and since the government's only source of revenue is taxes that means the debt, sooner or later, has to be paid WITH taxes... So, not only are Republicans simply deferring the taxes for our children to pay, but they are actually increasing the taxes required to fund their spending because of added interest.
Sorry kids!
So, getting back to the main question... I think it's pretty clear... Yes, we can borrow but it's infinitely better to raise taxes to fund out expenses than it is to borrow. The last thing we want to do is force our children into debt servitude to the c*******ts in Beijing, which is exactly what Republicans have been doing since Reagan and Trump... is NOT changing that.
But wait, there is another trick up the Republican sleeve; it's an interesting idea.
Can we raise revenue by lowering taxes?
Now, I *do* understand the theory that we can increase revenue by lowering taxes. The idea being that lower taxes allows business to divert the money they save to payrolls for more jobs, which means more incomes to tax. It's a neat idea that comes with fancy diagrams like the Laffer Curve. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to work anywhere but on paper.
The Laffer Curve depends on very strict parameters that can be illustrated on paper but they can't be guaranteed in the reality of a free economy. When Reagan implemented this theory in his supply-side economics many other factors came into play and economists to this day can't really determine the isolated impact of supply-side economic policies.
But the kitchen table math doesn't really support the theory either... If a company saves $200,000 in taxes and diverts that to payroll to support four $50,000 jobs. Each of those salaries would be taxed at around 20%, which means the revenue decreases from $200,000 to $40,000.
Sorry folks, but when I see Republicans with a handful of beans, I'm not expecting a beanstalk to lift us up to the clouds where geese lay golden eggs.
The last attempt to push supply-side magic into law was the 2017 tax cuts, which promised more jobs but failed to actually do it. I know Republicans will jump up and down about the jobs Trump created, but they will also ignore the greater number of jobs lost. And there isn't much evidence to suggest that the jobs that were created came from the tax cuts. Actually, we can SEE where a lot of the tax savings went. Millions of it went to stock buybacks which is great for stockholders but it doesn't leave much for those promised payrolls.
So, unless someone can show me what I'm missing, I'm just going to write that whole theory off as a fantasy. Which leaves me with the sobering conclusion that we DO need to raise taxes to increase the government revenue to fund our spending without indebting our children to those c*******ts in China.
So...
Is it fair to tax the wealthy?
Let me ask you this... Is it fair that golf tees for women are closer to the hole? Is it fair that parking spots closest to the entrance are reserved for the disabled? Why would the question about taxing wealthy people more than poor people be any different?
In simple terms... wealthy people can afford bigger tax bills, most people in the middle class can't. That doesn't mean we want to take all the advantages of being wealthy away. We aren't trying to punish people for being rich or equalize people to benefit the lazy. There is a LOT of bandwidth between extremes here. A person with $100 in his pocket can give a starving person $5 to by lunch and STILL have $95 in his pocket and that's about all Biden's tax plan calls for. All he is really proposing with respect to individual income tax is that we repeal the 2017 tax cut for the wealthy who were doing just fine BEFORE the tax cut.
Besides wealth distribution is so extreme by this point that it's ridiculous to think the government can continue squeezing money out of the poorest people to pay for it's spending.
I mean, why tax the worker with a high school diploma at 22% leaving him with barely enough to pay rent and basic provisions for a measly $3,000 when we can tax the NFL athlete at 40%, giving us $800,000 and STILL leaving him with millions in spendable cash? It certainly doesn't take away MY incentive to work hard and make millions.
So in conclusion... I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with Biden's tax plan. In fact, if anything I would say it's not enough. But then again, I'm a geolibertarian who thinks we shouldn't be taxing income at all. I think it's better to tax profits made from the ownership of property. In other words, don't tax the $10 wage earned by the worker laboring in the fields. Tax the $500,000 profit earned by the landlord sipping mojitos on his porch.
But alas, America isn't ready for something that logical. In the meantime, I think Biden's plan to fix the deficit caused by the 2017 cuts is a move in the right direction.
b Will it raise taxes on all of us? /b br br A... (
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