How did we get to this point of such expansive government? There's a lot of good stuff out there on the web right now commentating at length on all of the most recent economic developments. I especially liked this comment made on Salt H20's blog:While reading in Mosiah 11 about wicked King Noah and how he burdened his people:
And he laid a tax of one fifth part of all they possessed, a fifth part of their gold and of their silver, and a fifth part of their bziff, and of their copper, and of their brass and their iron; and a fifth part of their fatlings; and also a fifth part of all their grain.Rush Limbaugh made this comment this morning on his show regarding the current administrations politics:
"One fifth? wouldn't that be nice"
The Democrats are trying to say that tax cuts gave us these problems. It’s the same playbook. There’s nothing new. Folks, do you understand? Really, you can boil the Obama speech down last night to what we have heard from every Democrat since FDR except John F. Kennedy, and that is: Raise taxes and cut the military. That’s it. That’s the program. Except this, the Obama program is more wide-ranging and deeply penetrable into the fabric of this nation’s decency and goodness than any Democrat has ever tried, including FDR.The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article yesterday about how Obama's budget plans can't be covered by raising taxes only on the rich. It will have to come from elsewhere, and at very high rates. Some excerpts:
President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."Anyway...I don't really have much time to comment on this right now, so you can come up with your own conclusions. Oh...and the bumper sticker comes courtesy of the Republican Party of Tennessee. For some reason the page isn't loading, but here is the link in case it does start loading.
This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.
Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.
Be blessed y'all.
2 comments:
The WSJ analysis is wrong in a couple areas. First of all, the US budget is only made up of about 35% of income taxes. Watch any of those "illegal income tax" docs made by the Libertarians and you'll see the stats. Second of all, there are other ways of funding the programs, mainly for selling US Treasuries, which has been done for generations and why our deficit is so large. It's not a fool proof plan, but it's cheaper than spending so much money in Iraq each month.
As for taking talking points from Rush, talk about someone with NO new plans! The guy hasn't offered a bit of sage wisdom in over 10 years. Saying the same old thing about the Democrats doesn't accomplish anymore than the plan he is railing against!
In the case that the WSJ analysis is misguided, the point still remains that Obama's plan is a massive undertaking that's not getting the attention that it deserves. He can try and lay all the budgetary problems at the feet of the previous administration all he wants, but that's not to say that what he isn't effectively blotting that all out with his even larger and more foolhardy attempts at pushing through his own agenda.
As a percentage of the GDP, the spending in Iraq is minuscule compared to the spending that will occur with the funding of all the social programs that he's attempting to push through.
And I love all the disdain for Rush from the left. Rail against him all you want, but when even the President is making cutting comments about him you know that he's striking a chord. Even if what he says only remain talking points, he's not in the position of having to come up with new propositions - he's not our elected representation. The guy is a radio commentator, that's it. He's one of the few voices that calls the kettle black; his job is to report, and I can't believe that anyone would ever try and deny that what he said in this case isn't 100% true - that Obama is just like any other liberal democrat who harps on cutting defense, raising taxes, and pushing through social programs. This is the same guy, who in his inauguration speech, declared that he would cut out programs that don't work, and then within weeks he's only added to what programs had already been in place. In fact, of the few things that were really going well for us - Iraq - he wants to immediately draw down.
I do appreciate your comment though. I've seen you on Salt's blog and you do provide a thoughtful, respectful voice to the contrary.
Post a Comment