Did you ever stop to think what the results would be if you somehow “fixed” that? Smoothed out the income gap by cutting the rich down to size?

Right now the top ten percent are paying 73 percent of income taxes and 55 percent of ALL Federal taxes. Go ahead, cut their income in half. And the resulting taxes on it. Who picks up the load then?

That “wealth gap” that everybody hates is what gives half this country a free ride.

The only thing you said I like.

Again your hyperbole is sickening. No one believes “trillion dollar deficits are ok.” (I could just as easily say you want trillion dollar deficits because you’re a tax cut zombie for the rich. ) There is disagreement on how to fix those deficits. The school of thought that you need to kick start the economy in the short run and reduce the deficit with economic growth has history on its side. We’ve done it before many times.

No one thinks a $150b rich tax is going balance the budget. Well, maybe almost as many as believe we can balance the budget by cutting funding to NPR and the NEA, Yes we need tax reform and that includes raising the rate for the wealthy, as well as eliminating corporate welfare. I doubt you guys would raise taxes if the existence of the republic was threatened!

“Half the country getting social services”… and that includes SS and medicare right? Yeah we have a large elderly population (and certainly many of them do not need those programs, but most do). And we have a growing poor population. The top 400 families have as much wealth as the bottom 50%.

Uncertainty with government financial policies is a big problem right now, and fundamental changes to the tax code in one fell swoop will not help that. But as with entitlement reform, we need a goal, and way to ease us toward it over a period of time.

And you’re salivating. Remember it wasn’t the tax code that tanked the economy and it won’t be the tax code that comes to the rescue.

I’ve said many times before that during this economic crisis, no party should do anything that ads uncertainty to economic decision making.

Me come up with a proposal? That’s not fair. It would require a tremendous amount of effort, not simply tossing out a catchy set of numbers and letting the country deal with the consequences.

In 1972 the payroll tax (employer plus employee) was 7.5 percent. 18 years later it was twice that, 15.3 percent. That’s where it is now. Where was the squalling and howling when that tax increase was slapped across all income classes? Make $64,000 or more a year and there’s your $5,000. They’ve been taking it out of your pocket for over 20 years now.

We have an ever-increasing number of tax consumers and a decreasing number of tax payers. The looters are in full cry around this nation to further crush that minority that is already carrying most of our load. Once a demographic is comfortably placed in the tax consumer category, it is apparently inconceivable to make any of them start paying part of the load again.

What do you propose?

“The economy runs on consumer consumption. Wealthy will buy more commodities like legal services, stocks, and one off items like yachts and 20,000 square foot high-rise apartments.”

This is a myth. It has always been a myth. If this was how you grew an economy, we could make a Third World agrarian nation in Africa a wealthy productive industrial economy just by handing every citizen 5,000 dollars. When somebody has an idea, and wants to build a factory, a restaurant, a store, or anything else that costs real money to get started, it isn’t the middle class that coughs up the investment.

These are the numbers from 2007 They include ALL Federal taxes, including payroll taxes. Go ahead and mark up the chart until you think that top 20 percent is paying enough. When a large enough voting majority is living off the minority, how do you think it’s going to wind up?