Reagan, Bush or both?

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

All they have to do is support the Fair Tax and we're there. Tax filings would then take 0 minutes.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

We could also reduce taxes dramatically if we nationalized the oilfields.
But that's not going to happen either.

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Yeah we should be putting the government in charge of more things since it manages things so well.

When you decrease taxes, revenues go up. Gibson even said that directly to Obama who just ignored it. He is more interested in making things more "FAIR" than to actually make the country better.

No.

The Revenue Outlook

If you're identifying higher tax revenues as a gross amount, as is common with those touting capital gain tax cuts, not as a percentage of GDP, don't waste my time. This administration's tax cuts have resulted in the lowest tax revenues since the 60s.

Maybe Warren Buffet's secretary has investments that when sold qualify for capital gain tax rates, but she'd be an exception in the general work force.

Capital Gains Taxes and Federal Revenues

"Reducing the taxes imposed on the return from capital raises investment demand, but an increase in the capital stock depends as well on how much of its resources an economy makes available for investment--that is, how much it saves and how much capital it attracts from abroad. Analysts disagree about the effect on saving of cutting taxes. And the availability of resources would also depend on how the government financed any loss in revenue resulting from a tax cut. If the loss was offset by reduced spending, the outcome would be increased economic growth. If it was not offset, the cut's overall impact on the economy might be negative: its growth-promoting effects on investment demand could be insufficient to overcome either the decline in investment resources resulting from additional government borrowing or the effects of the government's need to raise taxes later to make up for the lost revenue."

There has been no reduced spending but we have borrowed a bunch of money, record amounts of debt, to bridge the gap between spending and tax revenue.

Most lower-income Americans now pay someone to complete a simple, one-page tax return a chimp could do to get the instant (at a price) refund. The government could easily complete simple tax returns with the information they have except for the number of dependents, which often contains a different number for paycheck withholding purposes than claimed on filing.

Well said.

Doubling the capital gains tax hurts everyone.

There are people who are tapping into their retirement funds or their other holdings in the market to pay their mortgages during the current housing crash. Obama and his crowd will steal twice the amount that Washington currently grabs from those withdrawals.

The "evil" wealthy people (a group including Obama and Clinton) will always find other ways of paying their bills. It is the average person with a 401K or mutual funds who will be the victims of this lunatic idea.

But worshipers of Obama are not concerned with such mundane matters as facts and data. They are in thrall to him as a person, and emotions are the guide.

That's why they're average. If they're so unfortunate as to have to depend on a 401k managed by commissioned sales people for retirement they're not going to make enough when they close it out to make any difference. Unless you think there's a significant difference between a 15% or 28% capital gain tax on maybe 5% of gain. Most average 401k people haven't recovered from the .com crash and face no capital gain taxes. The big players are the ones who benefit from lower capital gain taxes and they don't invest their gains in the US economy.

Over 100 million people hold stock in the US. Of course nearly doubling a tax is going to hurt everyone. The people get hurt because they get to keep less of the money they earn and it hurts the government because it decreases their revenue because many people will not sell their stock under a taxing administration. They know someone more intelligent will come along and lower the taxes again, then they will sell them.

You managed to completely evade the points I made. Why did you respond?

The average working person that has any equity stock or bonds has them in a 401k managed by a mutual fund. Unless they're desperate, it'll stay there until they're retired. They don't know preferred from common shares, REIT bonds from general obligation and less than anything about tax structures.

The US is looking at minimum $500B deficits for both 2008 and 2009. Those deficits will further erode our currency and increase our annual debt service to a point where capital gain taxes will be meaningless in the combined tax burden of future generations. Unless the US bites the bullet now and assumes some semblance of fiscal responsibility, we're going to be in a world of hurt in the very near future regardless of who's president.

I do agree we need fiscal responsibility. The run away spending of this Congress and administration has hurt us deeply. Increasing the capital gains tax will just make the deficit larger. I think most of us would agree we need to cut spending. I have listed what I would cut many times on here before. I have not seen Obama list anything he would cut out of the budget that is non-military.

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No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor

How will increasing capital gain tax increase the deficit? There's no economic investment/growth from capital gains.

When the capital gains taxes have been increased, revenue goes down. Decreased revenue equals increased deficit does it not? All other spending and revenue sources being equal.