Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax

And it surprises you why when Bear engages in obvious and oblivious use of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy?

Well, what I find funny is the similarities between the current administration's economic policies and Reaganomics.

Some things worked, tax cuts for example, but then he went and raised the budget astronomically and screwed his successor when Bush absolutely had to raise taxes.

I have always liked the idea of a a National Sales Tax, scaled from necessities to luxuries. Organized crime, those working off the books, welfare cheats, would pay their share. Good start.

That's no better than a progressive tax.

It might work if it were a flat tax rate, the same percentage on all items. Why punish those who can afford to spend more? A scaled tax is a disincentive toward spending, yielding the opposite of the desired result.

Plus...who gets to decide what's a "necessity" and what's a "luxury"? Congress?
Thanks, but no thanks.

Yes.

Totally irrelevant.

You act like the income tax is the only tax. It isn't.

Most people are smart enough to figure that out for themselves.

Clearly your efforts to do something about it in all those years failed.

Not totally.

You act like it's clear cut and common sense what is a luxury and what isn't...that isn't always true.

Computers for instance...luxury or necessity? Kind of depends, doesn't it?

Televisions and radios...seem like luxury items...but then they are often the only way to get out emergency information.

Air conditioning is a luxury....but for some it's a necessity or they may suffer or die.

Cars....luxury or necessity...can be either or both.

Not always so easy to tell, is it?

Moron. Yes, you, moron. The question was (since you've clearly forgotten):

Totally irrelevant, especially to me. Since I work for myself, I always owe. That notwithstanding, even if I did have refund money coming, it would have been money that I EARNED in the first place, which makes the issue of spending MY OWN MONEY irrelevant to this issue.

It's not as though the government was giving me that refund out of the goodness of it's heart.

It is, however, the only significantly progressive major tax. All the other major taxes we have are mildly to extremely regressive. Which is why looking at the income tax in isolation and complaining that it's too progressive is nothing short of a deliberate lie.

The simple fact is that U.S. tax policy does spectacularly little to redistribute income, less than just about any other major economy's tax policy and far less than for any other major economy with comparable pre-tax distribution of income, as measured by the Gini coefficient.



(the more recent statistics are comparable, but I couldn't find a pretty graph that included the pre-tax numbers)

Pre-tax U.S. distribution of income in the U.S. is middle-of-the pack and typical among the most comparable economies; post-tax income in the U.S. is more weighted towards the wealthy than in any other comparable economy.

BUT BUT BUT.... If we cut taxes, how are we going to pay for Obama Nation????

Not to entierly dispute your point about "having skin in the game" but when spending gets to the point it is now, we all DO. A bankrupt government hurts all of us. The day is coming when we will ALL feel the pain and the ones who will fel it most are the ones who are closest to the edge of financial ruin and have only the FedGov standing between them and destitution.

Now, again, in the abstract i agree with your point - but when the train goes off the cliff, everyone dies.

Yeah, I was as unhappy about GOP deficit spending as i am about Dem deficit spending, but i'm more uipset in proportion to how much more injury is being done.

much as I would be upset if my neighbor punched me and broke my nose - but I'd be much MORE upset if he put a .45 slug through my thigh.

not if his economic policies so far are any indication

Two questions:

1. who was in charge of the House of Representatives in those days?

2. Where do spending bills originate?

Well that's very true but I think there's room for SOME adjustments.

Exempt food, medicine, medical services

Have a lower rate on things like utility bills and other "must have" items.

But yes, I do disagree with the concept that it would be "common sense" to distinguish between whether a computer, or an air conditioner, was a "necessity"

At first blush, I'd be very skeptical of adding anything to the list. there would have to be a really good case made for it. But yeah, maybe it can be argued that heaters and fuel oil and so forth should be reduced or exempted (maybe only in some regions?) or ACs or whatever.

Frankly, trusting Congress to decide what should and shouldn't be exempt can't end up any worse than the tax laws we already live under - at least it would take them a while to equal the amount of fuckeduptedness.

The Chosen One shall make money rain down from the skies like manna from heaven.

It will still suck, but it's better than the crappy unfair system what we have now, plus everyone would have to pay as I mentioned, including overseas tourists. Necessity and luxury could just be based on price and not items.

And, along with leprechauns and their pots of gold, oil magically appears from nowhere. We had to "drill, baby, drill!" Granted a lot of the groundwork happened earlier and Reagan benefited from it but if Clinton, for instance, had laid the groundwork 15 years ago, we'd be benefiting from that now, too.

It would only make sense that a tax system based on purchases vs income would also need to be progressive.

I agree about food, medicine and medical services.

It would never have occurred to me about heat and AC, but you're right. I was watching a documentary last night and learned most houses in Miami don't have heat! Of course, it makes sense, but it just never occurred to me. I lived in GA and southern parts of Texas and all of them had heat.

Here in Chicagoland - the last two summers I don't think we turned on the AC at all, but the previous 13 years would have killed us not to have it. Perhaps not killed us, but certainly uncomfortable and some seniors were taken to emergency rooms.

Boortz talked about this with a caller a little the other day. In an imperfect world, there will never be a perfect system. But we can sure do a heckuva lot better than we are right now.

I wonder if a national sales tax would actually cut revenue to the government.

If my numbers are correct, there are $300-$400billion in US retail and food services sales each month.

I don't know what exactly falls under retail though.

But, say you have a 7% NST.

$350 billion X .07% = $24,000,000,000 each month X 12 months = $294,000,000,000/year.

How would organized crime pay?

They already dabble in smuggling and under the table exchanges, you don't think they're going to report and charge tax for their stolen cartons of cigarettes, do you?

I like to pretend to.

Too bad nothing you just said was near the truth.

3. Who prepares and submits the budget to the Congress as required by law?

4. Who vetoes bills?

5. Who constantly pissed and moaned about "balancing the budget" while doing the complete opposite?

Doesn't mean the House passed the Budgets he submitted.

How does he get a Dem House to give him tax cuts, and military spending, if he vetoes their domestic spending?

Use of "the bully pulpit" is often more ambitious than what can actually be accomplished in Congress.

Yes, but if you're not payinhg anything, you don't feel anything until there's a crisis. If EVERYONE'S taxes went up everytime spending increased, there'd be a lot less enthusiasm for government spending. Everyone would have to give up some money for the program du jour.

Alas, it's too late to fix the problem after you go over the precipice. Prevention is the only cure.

Yes, but if you aren't paying to support the burgeoning federal government, you have no sense of approaching a cliff.

Fair enough. In my observation, though, for every financial pundit who cries "disaster" there's another one explaining in Very Big Words how everything will work out fine.

Case in point, Alan Greenspan. Decades of being considered the go-to guru, and only recently willing to admit that he kind of sort of maybe might have been wrong about some things.

And the average American's only concern about government spending, understandably, is how it will affect them personally. It's kind of funny to see the same folks running to the mailbox to get their Gubmint check a few years ago crying "wolf" right now.

For the last fucking time, nobody is interested in the behaviors of your imaginary characters.

...because your world begins and ends in your skin. Right.

That said, there's no reason other than Friday afternoon petulance for you to interrupt, is there?

By all means, feel free to put it to a vote.

Not really, no.