General

Re: Tax Rates Would Have To Double To Balance Federal Budget

krazy kaju — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:31:55 GMT

Haha, that's how we know they're not serious.

Re: Tax Rates Would Have To Double To Balance Federal Budget

bloomj31 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:30:05 GMT

Welp, you and I both know it won't happen. Dems will never vote to cut spending. Medicare and SS are untouchable and now we're basically getting a new entitlement.

Re: Tax Rates Would Have To Double To Balance Federal Budget

krazy kaju — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:27:30 GMT

If they were really serious, they would cut spending enough to make current tax revenue sufficient. Or at least that's what this paper from Harvard states:

As for fiscal adjustments, those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases. In addition, adjustments on the spending side rather than on the tax side are less likely to create recessions

Re: Tax Rates Would Have To Double To Balance Federal Budget

bloomj31 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:34:16 GMT

If they were really serious about balancing the budget they'd probably have to cut spending AND raise taxes.

Tax Rates Would Have To Double To Balance Federal Budget

krazy kaju — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:08:19 GMT

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Here's the Tax Foundation report: http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/25984

Here's Amity Shlaes (author of The Forgotten Man) making a good point about how this report proves that the way to balance the federal budget is to cut spending, not raise taxes:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Notice that this is static scoring, not dynamic scoring. That means that in reality, income tax rates would have increase even more than the Tax Foundation reports, since the wealthy would inevitably move and/or hide their wealth from the IRS.

This is good ammo to use against leftists who claim that we need to raise taxes to balance the budget.