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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