Infinitum98 said:
But that is what i'm saying. I'm saying that the middle class is working very hard for their money, and the money that they have they need to live, we can all agree on that. So why tax the middle class is what i'm saying. I understand that the cost of living continues to rise, that inflation hurts the middle class more than anyone becasue wages have lagging growth. But I'm saying that since they have all these problems to deal with, why tax them? Or at least why not cut their taxes as much as possible. It doesn't make sense to me when people say that we should subsidize their healthcare, education, etc., when we are taxing them in the first place.
Because there's so many of them, meaning they add up to a decent percentage of our tax revenue, while eliminating their taxes completely will not eliminate their financial woes. Most poorer people already pay comparatively little in taxes after taking into account tax refunds.
But secondly, having a class of people who pay no taxes at all means that you have an utterly apathetic class of people who have unrealistic expectations in government. Hence, our "clergy class," for the most part. It's a pretty nice luxury to not have to worry about things like the job market and tax bills and focus solely on abortion!
If anything, if all these priests and ministers had to pay taxes like the rest of us, I have a feeling that they'd be a little more down-to-earth.
Yes, I agree about the stock market. But just because there is Social Security, it doesn't mean people won't be stupid with their money. Just look at the situation now. People were too speculative about home prices, others took out Subprime ARM's and other risky loans. A lot of people are going bankrupt and getting put out of their homes. And one problem that has always been there for our country is Credit Card Debt. And besides that, Social Security is bankrupt anyway. If anything, people should be given the choice of whether they want to contribute to Social Security or not. Just because some people are going to be stupid with their money it is not fair to make everyone join into this program where everyone is required give money to a bankrupt fund for 45 years until they retire.
Social Security's "dire" scenarios generally peak at a certain point, then go down afterward. But we only hear about the "peak" in the news. It will take, at most, temporary financial discipline to keep it going.
My problem with letting people opt-out of Social Security is that, guaranteed, a large percentage of people who think that they can manage their money better will screw it up and then beg the government to bail them out, not to mention that it will invite all the usual scams that surround investing, in general. I just think that it opens a can of worms that we are just best not to open. I think of it as an insurance policy, while I still generously contribute to my 401K. I am certainly not expecting to live solely on Social Security income.
And since your brought up the stock market issue, why not regulate that through the government? If a large proportion of investors are stupid, why are we allowing people to freely invest quite speculatively in the first place? Should the government be our financial advisor? That idea is crazy, and people do go bankrupt and lose their life savings in stock market crashes. So the problem still exists.
Because our entire stock market system is predicated on the existence of stupid investors? Without them, who would run up a stock price so that savvy investors can then sell for a substantial profit? Who would also oversell a stock price so that savvy investors can then buy for a bargain?
These kinds of questions would certainly make a Marxist philosopher quite giddy.
You are right, the problem is that everyone wants everyone else to cut. We can start cutting with the obvious example of the trillion dollar war in Iraq. We spend more on the military than the entire world combined, we can definitely cut a chunk of that. We have troops stationed in I think more than a hundred countries or so, we can cut a lot of that. We can stop subsidizing the oil companies. And with the pork spending, it may be hard to cut a lot of that, most politicians are useless in helping to cut this sort of spending, but of course if we had someone like Ron Paul or John McCain or anyone serious about cutting spending in the White House, we can get cutting spending.
Republicans, though, never cut any of those items. During Reagan's tenure, of course, for all his talk about "fiscal discipline" and "tax cuts," he's the one responsible for creating our multi-trillion dollar national debt in the first place, through his massive military spending. Further Republican presidents have only made that number substantially larger.
And why would Republicans betray their friends in the oil companies? Talk about an industry that certainly knows how to pay for their access.
And for the long term, we need a person or persons in power who are willing to encourage research in science: both alternative energy and medicine. These sort of measures will help our energy and healthcare costs in the future.
I agree, but considering that the energy and health care industries are heavy campaign contributors and lobbyists for the status quo, I doubt we'll see either happen.
This is kind of back to my original idea about how those with disproportionate access and benefit from the government should pay more in taxes than the rest of us. And, yet, these seem to be the industries that get a free pass more often than not.