Your "soft-headed liberals" are costing me a house sale and purchase both because of a knee-jerk response that doesn't address the fundamental issues. These issues exist because everyone ought to be able to be able to buy a house because they want to, not because they can actually afford it and have demonstrated that they can pay for it (FHA loans). The price I pay for my new house will be artificially inflated by MHA (the thread I supposedly got owned in before) and other chicanery. All of the problems arising from these programs are easily foreseeable by anyone who believes in causality, the fundamental underpinning of all science which liberals claim to champion. They are the "unforeseen" consequences of feel-good legislation meant to address all of the malfeasance of the private sector.
I didn't say it was brilliant - I said it was simple and would work. 20% was a number pulled out of my ass that could easily be adjusted whatever the numbers happen to be. I grabbed a number and gave the source. What is the real number - $8.4 billion? You already have it somewhere apparently, so if I assume you know middle school algebra, you should be able to tell us the rate needed to reach the same level of revenue using my system.
So the solution is to sell a house to people who have no down payment or have government offer loans to people who can't get them from a bank because they don't have good enough credit? How does that make sense, exactly?
See the edits above. Everyone except the most wealthy still pay a lower overall rate under my system.
I didn't say it was brilliant - I said it was simple and would work. 20% was a number pulled out of my ass that could easily be adjusted whatever the numbers happen to be. I grabbed a number and gave the source. What is the real number - $8.4 billion? You already have it somewhere apparently, so if I assume you know middle school algebra, you should be able to tell us the rate needed to reach the same level of revenue using my system.
edit: Not that I doubt your ability to do basic math, but... If the true taxable value is $8.23 trillion and the required taxation rate goes to 34.87% to raise the same revenue, this simple plan still gives the following results for rates:
In other words, it's better for everyone except the guys with really high income, and they end up the same as before (except before they were making their money from capital gains, taxed at a lower rate, minus crazy deductions, right?). So, with all the loopholes gone and no more 15% capital gains rate, we would see higher revenues by a lot using this method.
edit #2: Here are the actual total tax rates for a given income level using the same assumptions as before.
Raw Income Current Proposed
$5,000.00 6.2% 0.0%
$10,000.00 10.5% 0.0%
$14,200.00 12.2% 0.0%
$18,077.00 14.1% 0.0%
$30,000.00 16.9% 13.9%
$40,200.00 18.0% 19.2%
$50,000.00 23.2% 22.3%
$60,000.00 24.5% 24.4%
$70,000.00 25.5% 25.9%
$80,000.00 26.2% 27.0%
$89,300.00 26.7% 27.8%
$100,000.00 36.1% 28.6%
$250,000.00 42.2% 32.3%
$500,000.00 49.6% 33.6%
$750,000.00 44.7% 34.0%
$1,000,000.00 42.3% 34.2%
$5,000,000.00 36.5% 34.7%
$10,000,000.00 35.7% 34.8%
$50,000,000.00 35.1% 34.9%
$100,000,000.00 35.1% 34.9%
$500,000,000.00 35.0% 34.9%
$1,000,000,000.00 35.0% 34.9%
Agreed. Government programs are currently encouraging the opposite, which is what I spoke out against.
If I had the actual data for income for individual households, I'm sure the percentage would go down, but not sure how far of course. No free lunch. The government is currently taking $2.16 trillion per year from $8.23 trillion in personal income (according to Demo), or 26% of all personal income. I may be neglecting corporate contributions or something else, but I don't really care anymore - point is, there's a simpler way to achieve the same result. I can list a hundred similar plans that maintain marginal rates, use a simple formula to compute a continuously variable rate, or any number of other things that will be simpler, easier, and more effective than the currently-broken system. I just wrote the simplest before because it was the simplest.
$1.764 trillion from $8.23 trillion can be had at the low, low price of 28%. 😛
Agreed. With that wall of separation, the mortgage crisis would not have grown so quickly (less money chasing the derivatives) and would have taken down only one sector of our banking. It would have been painful, but nothing at all like what we suffered, and probably over by now.
This is true. One thing though - that extra $700 billion may hit China proportionally more than us, depending on whether people cut back more on imported Chinese goods or on homegrown things like housing. If we cut our import-export deficit by several hundred billion, that would have good as well as bad effects. Of course, it could also go the other way as taxpayers, being more squeezed, can't afford and/or justify spending the extra on American-made goods and proportionally step up Chinese goods consumption.
That requires enforcing existing laws rather than passing new ones. Current laws are not enforced because it allows passing new, more restrictive laws, thereby giving the government more power. Once they have this power, they can choose to enforce all of them and run things however they choose.
