We need new taxes
The operative word is new taxes, not higher income taxes. The US government needs to be creative in how they are going to deal with the deficit. I believe that they should look for new sources of revenue. Here are a couple of ideas that may be supported by a surprisingly large portion of the population because they wouldn't be personally impacted. How about higher taxes on gambling (why should the sovereign Indian nations be getting all this windfall, prostitution (regulate and tax it), legalization of marijuana (huge tax potential coming right out of the pockets of the black market) and through the sale of citizenships. Let's start with selling citizenships to the 10 million illegals currently in the US. The government can finance the sale over five years and reduce the amount of money going to coyotes and immigration lawyers. Citizenships can be sold to people originating outside of the Americas for $40-50,000 each. Hey, if you want to be an American, you got to take some responsibility for the National Debt.
posted by Michael Sick @ 7:03 PM
1 Comments:
I also think that we need to re-consider changing the tax rates so that they are more progressive. I recently saw PBS show in which Bill Gates & Warren Buffett answered questions from a college audience. Warren said that his tax rate was lower than that of his clerical staff and he could structure his finances such that he wouldn't pay any federal tax. It has been argued that a more progressive tax would be a disincentive to work and would therefor damage the economy. I don't believe that Bill McGuire (United Health CEO) who had unexercised options worth $1.78 BILLION at the end of 2005 would have quit work and hit the beaches if his tax rate was say 75% in which case he could only net $450 million.
There is also the argument that the people have earned the money and should not be penalized by a more progressive tax code. You could argue that someone who makes a very high income level does so in large part because of the investment that the country has made. For instance, a CEO of a large company will not do well if the country has not spent a large amount of tax dollars financing higher education (the CEO typically needs a lot of highly educated engineers, MBA's, accountants, etc.) and infrastructure (roads, hospitals, etc).
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