The Biden Economy

[Oerets]

Liabilities exceeding assets.....

The answer for some is pay as you go. Yet they want others to pay, choosing to keep their wealth. Not wanting to pay for others less fortunate then them.

Much like the long term care issue and the answer some choose to protect assets. Appears everyone is in agreement that receiving care should not cause financial ruin. That just because you have assets are treated differently then those who don't. Taking steps to protect assets by setting up trusts or other legal means. Forcing the rest of the country to pay your way.

The argument now of the national debt. Increasing revinue is the steps forward needed with increased oversight of where the money goes. There is not a lot of cutting left without serious pain and loss of our way of life.

[whell]

Originally Posted by Oerets

Liabilities exceeding assets.....

The answer for some is pay as you go. Yet they want others to pay, choosing to keep their wealth. Not wanting to pay for others less fortunate then them.

Much like the long term care issue and the answer some choose to protect assets. Appears everyone is in agreement that receiving care should not cause financial ruin. That just because you have assets are treated differently then those who don't. Taking steps to protect assets by setting up trusts or other legal means. Forcing the rest of the country to pay your way.

The argument that the "rich don't pay their fair share", or as you put it "forcing the rest of the country to pay your own way" really gets tiresome after a while. Beyond that, it's simply another way for advocates of higher gov't spending to shift the focus of the argument: the left doesn't want to argue about whether or not the government spends too much, so they create a bogeyman out of higher-income folks and accuse them of not "paying their fair share". Besides, my reference to "assets" was limited in the post above to those assets that are held by the US Gov't.

So, let's shift the discussion back to where it belongs.

1) There's no argument from anyone anywhere that the US Federal Tax system is a progressive system.

2) The "rich" know that the tax system is progressive. The "rich" who are elected to congress (if they're not rich when they get to DC they'll be rich before they leave), and the "rich" who pay the lobbyists to spread money all over Washington", designed the damn system. Most of the folks who had a hand in legislating the tax system are folks that you voted for. Yeah, I probably voted for some of them too. So don't blame the "rich" if you don't like the current tax system. Blame the person in the mirror.

2) Joe Biden: “A firefighter and a teacher shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than a billionaire pays. That’s not right. My budget contains a Billionaire Minimum Income Tax to make sure billionaires pay their fair share.” This is a "false statement" as reported by Politifact. If I were writing for Politifact, I would have given that statement the "pants on fire" rating, since Biden knows full well that his words are specifically designed to mislead people.

3) Biden knows damn well that there's a difference between marginal and effective tax rates. He also knows that "closing the loopholes in the tax code" really means changing the regs on itemized deductions that the "rich", including Biden, have taken advantage of in the past. A politician is unlikely to vote against their own self-interest, so the deductions are probably safe for the foreseeable future.

4) Finally, the marginal tax rates are irrelevant to the argument when talking about the share of federal taxes that individuals pay. Effective tax rates are the relevant metric. Biden knows that too. A teacher with a $70,000 taxable income (income from all sources) pays around 16% effective tax rate. A person with $600,000 (from all sources) has an effective tax rate in excess of 30%.

Bottom line: we have a progressive tax system. Higher-income earners are already paying higher effective tax rates.

So, what do you want the target effective tax rate of someone with $600,000 of income to be? Is 30% not enough?

Originally Posted by Oerets

The argument now of the national debt. Increasing revinue is the steps forward needed with increased oversight of where the money goes. There is not a lot of cutting left without serious pain and loss of our way of life.

Not true. Federal revenue increases every year. If we simply froze spending at current levels we'd be able to decrease our debt liabilities every year. Hell, if we focused the cost cutting on weeding out inefficiencies, graft, and malfeasance we'd probably save billions every year.