To pay for it all....

Or maybe how about EVERY HOUSEHOLD paying their fair share of income tax, rather than only the richest?

So the answer is what we've all been saying all along: Don't raise taxes, simply cut spending!!! Across the board cuts in entitlements by 5% per year until we get it under control. Medicare cuts, medicaid cuts, social security cuts. Old people and poor people don't grow the economy, they deplete it. We need to do this, not because we hate old or sick people, but because we love our children more.

"Or maybe how about EVERY HOUSEHOLD paying their fair share of income tax, rather than only the richest?"

Matt, I agree completely: EVERY HOUSEHOLD should pay their fair share, and the fair share for the richest is a much higher percentage of income than the fair share for the poorest.

At least we agree about highly progressive taxation being the fair way to go, if not regarding reproduction 20th Century furniture made from new-growth wood.

NYCROBOT, old people and poor people spend a much higher percentage on the domestic economy than children with their Bugatti-buying tendencies.

EVERY HOUSEHOLD should pay their fair share

The problem is everyone has a different definition of what their fair share ought to be.

Income Tax propaganda cartoon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ69X1qt4sQ

To NYCROBOT
OLD people have been around this country and have contributed to this country through their whole lives. It would be really STUPID to go and screw them over now for people who aren't their own grandchildren just so that other people who are new to the United States can be leaches on our contributions over decades. Youngsters do not deserve free handouts.

"At least we agree about highly progressive taxation being the fair way to go"

I never said that.

I believe that we should abolish the income tax for EVERYONE altogether.

Barring that, I believe we should have a flat tax for everyone. Unhappy that your 8.5% flat tax takes a bigger bite out of your $25,000 income's living expenses than it does for the other guy who makes $685,000? Well then, I suppose that's incentive enough to make yourself more marketable to bump yourself into his income bracket.

Go ahead -- this is America. No one is holding you back except YOU.

And conversely, a flat tax removes all incentive for rich people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and earn more so they can keep more. A 90% top tax rate does that much more effectively.

Look how prosperous we were as a nation during Richard Milhouse Nixon's presidency, when the top rate was 70%.

Better yet, Eisenhower, when the top rate was 90%, and middle class income was growing faster than ever before or since.

and look at how quickly we can all agree.

Since the US is the lowest taxed of the rich countries, and high taxes usually result in higher quality of life (as NYers who choose not to live in rural Wyoming should understand), we should have no trouble affording higher taxes.

Especially if the upper classes, who have appropriated virtually all of the economic growth of the last generation for themselves, can be persuaded or forced to pay something like their fair share.

hmm... someone has been reading commy propaganda.. wake up !