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I want to post something here because people in the lower income levels have a hard time understanding this.
Why don't we just raise taxes on the super rich and corporations?
Because they will just move. They don't have to live here. They have the money to live anywhere in the world. There are plenty of countries that want their money. To the people on here that don't believe that rich people drive the economy, you need to wake up. I have some examples, Tesla. Microsoft. Apple. Boeing. Ford. GM. GE. I can go on and on. These are all super rich companies, started and owned by people who are now super rich, that hundreds of thousands of people world wide work for. They don't have to have any presence in the US. They can pick up and move whenever they want. If you increase the tax rate higher than they are willing to pay, they will pack it up a leave.
Trump didn't pay taxes, boo hoo.
Trump derives his income from business. A business only pays taxes when it wants to. If at the end of the year, you have a huge profit, you can blow it all on new equipment, purchasing a failing company, give your employees a bonus, expand. All of this will get rid of your profit, and you don't pay a penny in tax. However, the economy benefits from all of these activities. Someone has to make that new equipment, and sells it to you. The jobs of the workers in that failing company just got saved. Your employees have more money in their pocket to spend during Christmas. Construction workers have a job building your new locations. So yes, mega corporations, and super rich people create jobs and move the economy forward. Small businesses do this too.
I wish that Americans would have to take a real, hardcore economics class in high school to graduate. It will never happen because career politicians like Hillary Clinton stay in power by lying to people who have very little understanding of what is going on. Yes Trump is a blow hard, but the man understands money. Clinton doesn't know the first thing about finance, the economy, or world wide competition.
I too am a Libertarian. I think it is past time to get the Lawyers out of government.
Having said all of this, people will still come on here and not believe a single thing I wrote, and call me a liar.
I guess we have different definitions of "super rich" because the first company you cite is Tesla. Tesla has never made a profit and loses over $20,000 per car - super rich indeed!
"A business only pays taxes when it wants to?" And you're okay with Trump, and all like him I presume, not paying any taxes at all?
Somebody has gotten to you, hook, line and sinker. The tragedy is people like you are welcome to vote and all those career politicians on both sides of the aisle will tell you anything you want to hear, however preposterous, to get your vote.
I'm not going to call you a liar because, unfortunately for all of us, you believe you know what you're talking about. You haven't a clue.
Because the national debt not a problem, that's why. There is no need to raise taxes to pay something that does not need to be paid. The majority of the debt is to ourselves. It's like a bank, which prints it's own money and that you, yourself own, putting money in your personal account as a "loan."
It would be somewhat of a problem if the U.S. was not in control of its own currency (ie: Greece). It would be a bigger problem if that currency was not the world's reserve currency. It would be a very bad problem if, if payments were not made, there was some kind of collateral that a stronger nation expected to collect and could enforce.
None of those conditions apply to the United States in 2016. Quite the contrary.
a) the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency, holding approximately the same value practically everywhere in the world.
b) The U.S. is in control of that currency, not some outside entity.
c) The U.S. is the premier economic power on Earth, at least twice as powerful as the next nearest competitor, who is closely connected to our economy & to a large extent dependent on it (China).
d) The U.S. is the premier military power on Earth, at least twelve times as powerful as the next nearest competitor who is our ally (NATO combined minus the U.S.).
There is no one who will collect on the debt because there is no one who WANTS to collect on the debt or could force the U.S. to do ANYthing it didn't want to. And like I said, the majority of the debt is to ourselves anyway. This is not like a bank mortgage where they can take your house.
Basically the U.S. is beholden to itself and to the world economic system when it comes to the debt. Not to any conceivable outside entity. If the federal government does not make its debt payments to its own bondholders which are all of us, the credit agencies would torpedo the U.S. credit rating. That would cause stock markets around the world to plummet & the resulting economic consequences would cause a recession or possibly depression.
Basically, we have a revolving line of credit that we control, using monopoly money that we can print as much as we want of. The only way this can go wrong is if we consciously pretend that we are not in control & collapse the system due to a loss of confidence, or we go out of control with the printing and the credit, causing a loss of confidence. We are not near that 2nd scenario... although closer to it than we should be. There are politicians in America, though, who seem to actively desire the first scenario.
Last edited by redguard57; 09-28-2016 at 09:27 PM..
So for several years now we have talked about the 16, 18 and 20 trillion USD of debt that America has. We hear how we make cuts but yet despite cuts we see our debt increase year after year. There have been cuts but it's not enough to really make a dent.
There has never been a cut. They raise spending by 5% and call it a cut only because the previous year it went up by 6%. I don't know why nobody talks about the penny plan anymore. The idea is if you cut one penny out of each dollar across the board for say 5 years, you can balance the budget. I don't care how tight your budget is, you can cut a penny.
Trump was making these points last night at the debate and Hillary just seems to be made keen on taxing the rich and making them "pay their fair share" while giving the middle class a tax break. How is that going to work but it sounds good right.
She seems so against the trickle down economics plan but it works. Trump himself has buildings that employ thousands of people right down to the guy who brooms the floor.
Without the investment in the building the janitor wouldn't have a job. It is simple as that.
Trump also spoke of cutting the red tape to ribbons that often mire down good ideas and stagnate growth and economy.
Why do our politicians continue to fund foreign Governments where the people hate us? They dump billions into these countries that appear no better from it while we have homeless vets walking our streets?
I have heard mention of a penny tax that might be a way out of this debt but first we need to stitch up the holes that are bleeding.
Problem I have against giving the wealthy and companies tax breaks is there's NO GAURANTEE that they'll invest those savings into America or its workers. Corporation X now has an extra $400 million in the bank. Great right? But what's to stop them from continuing slashing jobs, benefits, offshoring jobs, and instead investing it into Wall Street and other financial institutions where none of it goes to the average American worker?
There will never be enough taxes to pay for an ever expanding government. You could tax everyone 100% of what they make and it would not work to pay down or off the debt .. why? because a) governments will spend at least as much as they bring in, never less b) when they say they are 'cutting' spending what they invariably mean is that they are (thinking about) cutting proposed spending ... about 10 years down the line when they won't be in power .. I doubt anyone could ever really show where they really cut a dollar today .. and c) they have been doing this so long and no one has stopped them that they have amassed terrible debt, an amount that the human mind just can't truly grasp at this point so yes, they truly believe that now there really is no worry at all because it is just a number, not real any more.
So for several years now we have talked about the 16, 18 and 20 trillion USD of debt that America has. We hear how we make cuts but yet despite cuts we see our debt increase year after year. There have been cuts but it's not enough to really make a dent. The biggest thing I see that our debt is a lot of talk of cutting taxes. In reality any tax cut leads to increasing debt. $2 of tax cuts for every $1 of budget cuts is still $1 of debt increased. I ask why can't we raise taxes if the national debt is such a problem for America?
i'll give you a gambling analogy.
Horse Racetracks charge a 'takeout' on each dollar wagered. The higher the takeout, the less money that is wagered because less money comes back to the gamblers. So if you raise the takeout even more, there will be even less wagered. lower it, and you get more wagered. i think this works with taxes, the more money people have in their pockets, the more they spend and since every dollar gets taxed, there will be more money that gets taxed at a lower rate vs a smaller amount of money taxed at a higher rate.
Problem I have against giving the wealthy and companies tax breaks is there's NO GAURANTEE that they'll invest those savings into America or its workers. Corporation X now has an extra $400 million in the bank. Great right? But what's to stop them from continuing slashing jobs, benefits, offshoring jobs, and instead investing it into Wall Street and other financial institutions where none of it goes to the average American worker?
Corporations do not pay taxes; they merely collect them from customers and pass them on to the government.
Moreover, it is a highly inefficient way to collect that revenue.
In the USA, approximately $400 Billion to $425 Billion is collected from corporations large and small. Those corporations spend another $325 Billion to $350 Billion -- just to fill out the darn paperwork!
So collectively, that is roughly $750 BILLION spent, of which only $400 Billion to $425 Billion ends up in the US Treasury.
Why is so much spent just filling out the paperwork? Let's take General Electric. The Vice President of Tax for GE famously reported that GE's Federal Income Tax Return exceeds 24,000 pages. 24,000 pages! And GE's payroll includes 1,400 tax attorneys and another 1500 tax accountants, who just fill out the paperwork for this year and plan for next year. Moreover, the IRS keeps about 100 tax auditors on-site at GE. They audit GE 5 days per week, 52 weeks per year, just like they do with every other major corporation.
This is horribly inefficient. About 3000 bright people employed by GE and the IRS to do nothing other than fill out paperwork and then check to see if the paperwork is filled out correctly.
There is a far better method to for the IRS to collect that $425 Billion or so.
Step one: eliminate corporate income taxes.
Step two: in the real world, the Treasury must make up for the lost corporate income tax. So, just raise personal income taxes by $425 Billion. This can be as progressive as you want - that is, it could all come from the top, say, the top 20% or top 10%.
Corporations can lay-off hundreds of thousands of tax attorneys and tax accountants who don't do any real work anyway. And the IRS can redeploy hundreds of thousands of tax attorneys and tax accountants from auditing corporations to working on individual income taxes.
Collectively, corporations will have higher after tax income. They will invest some of that, and they will issue some of it to shareholders in the form of dividends.
Private citizens like me would pay more income taxes. I expect my income tax would go up quite a bit, but that's OK because I would also have a higher gross income, as I will receive higher dividends from my investments.
Everyone is better off:
Treasury gets the same (or more) receipts.
The IRS can focus on individual income taxes.
Corporations can lay off tax lawyers and tax accountants that they no longer need.
Shareholders, including public sector union pension funds, will receive more income from dividends and more share price appreciation.
Everyone is better off, well, with the exception of the newly laid off tax attorneys and tax accountants. But they are bright people and will bounce back. Many of them can find new careers in the fast-food preparation industry or perhaps the hotel housekeeping industry.
Location: Appalachian New York, Formerly Louisiana
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Because the rich, who are hoarding at this point, pay too little if at all. I am under the poverty line and I pay taxes, they should have to pay them too, and in fair percentage.
Hmmm, because of your name I think this is a fake question or your motivation in asking is mixed. Unless your a young quasi punk-then maybe you are serious.
At any rate, people hate paying taxes so it will not be raised to pay it off.
A government in theory provides services to their country and so right now many are not doing well in America so it especially not a great time to ask people to give more. Many Americans feel the rich should not be punished for being rich so we can't ask them to help like we might want to. Sort of like asking your rich brother to pay off your student loan, The rich brother wants you to work for your own pay off. His money belongs to him, etc.
Ok so for me the solution lies in using some of the billions spent on the US military to start paying down our debt. The US spends 57% of its money on the military. This is a crime, an absolute crime. Also it does not take care of vets with that money just military.
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