America.
Home of the free? Yes.
Home of the brave? Yes.
Home of Democracy? Not really
Here's why. Democracy was created to allow people to try and achieve the American Dream. Democracy should mean that no matter how successful you become, you should not have to pay a larger percentage of taxes then anyone else. Democracy is supposed to encourage entrepreneurship, not discourage it. Obama's new ideas of taxing the richer people in the United States at a higher percentage then the middle and lower classes is surely not democracy.
If John makes $50,000 a year, he should pay the same percentage of his income to Uncle Sam as Todd who makes $300,000 a year. Why should he pay a higher percentage? At a 15% income tax, John would be paying $7500, while Todd would have to hand over $45,000 to the IRS. Why should Todd have to pay a higher percentage when he already is paying a huge amount more every year? This is against everything that democracy stands for. Whether you are rich or poor you should still have to hand over the same percentage of income as one another, unless you are below the poverty line. Why should we punish those Americans who have worked their butts off educating themselves, just to help those who were lazy and had no desire to make anything of themselves? Sure, there are those of you who will say that the rich are rich simply because they have had greater means of educating themselves. This is true in many cases. However it is totally false in the majority of cases.
There are solutions to raising tax revenue without taxing the rich's income. It is called "Sales Tax". Currently the national average sales tax is around 6%. If we raised this amount to 23%, we could effectively eliminate income taxes all together. This would in turn put a greater tax burden on the rich who spend more money, and reduce the burden on the poor who have less to spend. This would be a solution, but is it a practical one?
Sales taxes to replace income taxes is of great debate among polititians today. On the Political side of things, it seems all fine and dandy. However on the economic side, it has the potential to be a huge disaster. Once you stop taxing income and only taxing the purchase of goods and services, the amount of spending nationwide should see a large decrease. With the large decrease in spending, there comes a large increase in savings. This would harm the economy especially in a time of recession.
There are economies in this world that have achieved eliminating income taxes in favor of a larger sales tax. It can work, but are the politicians and economist in Washington smart enough to make it work? Probably not.
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The only smart tax today is on gasoline. America's weakness in the world is multifactorial; the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the failure of the banking system (largely from the subprime crisis)and the loss of international respect resulting from the above. But the biggest proportion of it is from our immense use of foreign oil and the immense trade defecit it creates.
ReplyDeleteThe Obama administration is spending billions to subsidize green energy in the form of photovoltaic and wind systems while improving the grid. That's fine but it does nothing to reduce oil consumption. Wind and sun compete with coal, our biggest source of electricity. We have a gazillion tons of coal.
Taxing gas: starting small with 25 cents a gallon and increasing by 25 cents a year will provide funds to accelerate alternative fuels like electric vehicles (my all-electric car arrives next week - a converted Pontiac Vibe). It's the first in the U.S. If we had 300,000 of these on the road we would be reducing the demand and thus the cost of oil. If subsidy money were there from the government, auto manufacturers would be scrambling to build these cars and improve the technology. Increasing the gas tax allows for this while moving the cost balance from the favor of gasoline to electricity. It's a no-brainer. As gas consumption slowly drops, so will the price! This allows for increasing the gas tax to keep the price high, providing more funds to subsidize electric cars. It will take only 5 to 10 years (depending on the gas tax rate) to elimiinate our need for foreign oil but the benefits will be felt in year 2 and accelerate thereafter. We were paying the middle east $4 a gallon. Why not pay the U.S. an additional 25 cents, raising gas to a mere $2.25 and starting us on the road to 100% energy independence? This would be world-changing, very much in our favor.