Permanent tax breaks for the upper 1% ?!?
 

Oh my geez. Ok lets get this straight.

The tax cuts are going to expire. If possible the good parts for middle and lower will be kept but overall if those cant be salvaged the entire thing is going down. Obama isnt sinking the last of his liberal support by keeping it.

It is just a hed herring to keep businesses holding onto their money as long as possible to make things extra bad in the economy to help republicans. That is what the entire meme is about.

congress is just a case of the rich robbing from the poor to give to the rich.
it's time the mega rich ponied up to the situation. They used to pay up to 90% in taxes without major complaint. You'll notice that was in a time of great national budget distress (WWII) and when we had to basically outproduce the Russians in the cold war arms race. But now, when a similar distress is evident everybody is kicking and screaming.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...omeTax.svg.png

picture sourced from Wikipedia

I think you give them too much credit. The tax cuts were about votes and political capital, period. That's all they're still about. And if it were up to me, I'd expand them.

Cut state spending drastically, cut taxes drastically (especially on business), and watch the economy grow.

Grow in China you mean. Where companies have used the savings from the tax cuts to expand in.

You are laughable if you think expanding the tax cuts will grow business anywhere near the levels investment in technology will.

Businesses invest in technology, ZS. Marketable, usable technology. They also generate the revenue you want to invest in technology. Gotta have a horse to pull the cart, boss:03:

And there used to be no personal income tax at all. That it exists is an example of the government screwing everything up and then needing more money. "I know - let's come up with a system that will make the rich 'pay their fair share'! That'll show 'em!" So somebody comes up with a scheme, and makes it sound good, because getting even is always good. The answer is to tear down the current system, including the income tax, and force the government, not the people (even rich people) to tighten the belt.

Sounds like a good idea to me. The top 1% already pays a higher % than ever, AND a far higher % than people below.

How about this, not tax cuts for anyone that doesn't pay at least a fair share.

A fair share is the entire federal budget (including deficit and debt service), divided by the population.

That means a family of 4 must pay 4 shares, or they never see a tax cut, ever.

Right now that's something like 12-13k per family member.

So any family of 4 paying less than 50 grand a year should be happy they are subsidized.

The idea sounds good, but they'll probably pull down,
 

on a few things,but many others may do so when one of these days..

no they don't

in WWII they paid above 90%. the cold war through the 70's it was 90%

I always love it when someone says that companies invest in the future. What was that lovely bush era term... "Trickle-Down" economics.

They generate the revenue for themselves and do it greatly. Holding 1.8 TRILLION dollars hostage to influence the results of the election.

Their investments mostly are on technology they can build in china with labor that gets paid pennies on the dollar. And even then it amounts to little more than who can write the most patents with key technological advancements killed because a company wants to be a troll with its patents.

Oh and FYI they invested in technology for US when their Taxes were MUCH MUCH MUCH greater.

Not a great way to watch the economy grow - cutting taxes on people who already have lots of money and aren't likely to spend any more.
Expand the EITC.

The economy will grow again even if democrats win big in November. This is just like the other election year stunts corp groups do in order to try to drive turnout for republicans. 1.8 Trillion held while companies say they are suffering. Bah they will spend after the elections.

And in 1913 when the income tax was created they payed a whopping 7%.

The government raised the rates to help pay for wars, but mostly to teach the evil rich a lesson. Just because they did it before and can do it again doesn't make it right. The income tax is wrong - period.

They pay a higher % of taxes collected, not a higher marginal rate. The two are unrelated, particularly given the dodges in the old system.

Taxes were not greater. Taxes as a function of GDP have remained relatively constant in recent years, and were in fact far LOWER during that period. US government outlays used to be about 1/3 of what they are now as a function of GDP.

In the 1930s, for example, the high for US government spending was ~10% of GDP. Tax receipts were considerably lower then, too, on the order of 5-7% of GDP (the rest being deficit spending). After WW2 (where spending was more than double receipts), things stabilized and the receipts vs expenditures have been relatively constant since then at ~20% of GDP (receipts generally slightly lower than expenses, but over time it's real money).

Except that doesn't happen.

http://www.faireconomy.org/files/images/tax_gdp.gif

http://www.faireconomy.org/files/images/tax_inc.gif

http://www.faireconomy.org/files/images/tax_wage.gif

The correlation between taxes and GDP or income growth rate is just not there.

Apparently the correlation between top income tax rate and GDP growth isn't there, but that's not what I was arguing for and anything beyond a very vague correlation wouldn't make much sense, anyway. For the record, though, I would cut it; 10% income tax for everybody, no corporate taxes, 1% capital gains tax, no property tax, no social security tax, low sales tax, and low universal tariffs. No price controls or subsidies, either.

The government does not need to raise the tax rate, all they need, and in my opinion should, do is cut deductions.

I have never seen the logic in setting high tax rates and then allowing myriad deductions. How about lowering the tax rate and getting rid of the deductions.

Deductions only seem to benefit those who can afford tax attorneys and have access to "alternative" tax shelters.

How much of the IRS budget is spent dealing with tax deduction issues?

So no, I don't get worried if the rich have their tax rates increased from 36% to 39%, they have access to tax attorneys and have myriad ways of sheltering their money to the point they may be paying less in taxes than I do as a working slug. And in in the end, they are still rich.

It's meant more of a refutation of the trickle down, supply side, Reaganomics nonsense. But the idea still stands when you consider average taxes across all brackets as we can see from the chart below. Sure, it's only through 2004 but it's close enough for casual discussion.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/...axes_graph.gif

Looking at that chart, I'll bet there's an interesting correlation between size of the federal deficit and tax rate for the top earning 0.01% of taxpayers. There's other factors at work there, so it's not as simplistic as that comparison would imply, but I bet there's something to it.