Easy
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=w3xl45ls

Basically we are seeing the same thing that happened to the british empire. Its time to scale back the foreign imperialism and fix our budget without gutting our people. Taxes have to go back to how they were when clinton was in office (o those terrible times) and cuts to medicare and social security can't happen in any way. Those are the most vulnerable people. We also can't cut government research or jobs as they move us forward.

I balanced the budget without doing anything drastic but if it was up to me I would have cut foreign aid by 90%. Stop aiding countries that don't need it and stop aiding oppressive regimes. Stop giving subsidies to fossil fuels. That wasn't on there but that would generate all sorts of revenue and also fuel incentive for solving our energy problem making the cuts to foreign aid (middle east) painless.

End the wars and reduce the military reach. Its not helping us. Sure, every now and then we can save some people from a natural disaster but its just too costly.

If only we could go back to 2000 and take the war money and invest it in the country. High speed rail linking every major us city, the fastest broadband, homeland security, energy independence, single payer healthcare and no deficit would all likely be today's alternate reality.

2/22/2011 12:45:04 AM

hahaha

2/22/2011 12:50:27 AM

Your solution is to ignore the programs that are eating up the bulk of our budget and growing at unsustainable levels, raise taxes during a tenuous economic recovery, cut back virtually all foreign aid when the rest of the world is suffering worse than us, end oil exploration and development subsidies at a time when gas prices are once again spiraling out of control, slash the military during wartime, increase federal spending on shit like high-speed rails when we have a $1.5 trillion deficit, and switch to a single-payer healthcare system that the majority of Americans hate.

Interesting. It doesn't sound like you really thought this one through.

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 1:48 AM. Reason : 2]

2/22/2011 1:46:49 AM

Quote :

"slash the military during wartime"

you say that like it wasn't a war hostile invasion of choice

Quote :

"single-payer healthcare system that the majority of Americans hate"

what they hate is the distorted vision of such a system foisted upon them by the right-wing lie machine; when people are polled on the specifics they actually enjoy the idea

With that said, I have a different idea: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=41t784mc

Despite the widespread unpopularity of foreign aid, the fact is that it does strengthen our alliances with the rest of the world, and it doesn't even account for 1% of the budget; indeed we would do well to increase it, like maybe Pakistan would be more focused on taking out bin Laden (or more willing to let us run missions in the borderlands) if they had more assurance that we would be there for them and that we don't always side with India.

Also, as unpopular and undesirable as earmarks are, they form the grease that frees us from legislative friction, it's unreasonable to rely on their elimination to save the budget, and again they don't form a substantial part of it.

However it is more feasible to get rid of farm subsidies, especially for the boondoggle known as "ethanol" (at least until switchgrass becomes a viable source); I realize the farm lobby is powerful, especially in the all-important Presidential state of Iowa, but it is easier to battle that special interest than the interests of every single member of Congress.

I decided not to cut the workforce of the Federal government (it has already taken a hit) or the number of contractors (although they could use some culling); I did not suggest other cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, including aid to states (which are notorious for having insufficiently high taxes).

I believe our military is too large and widespread, so it makes sense to reduce its size, by pulling posts out of Asia and Europe and winding down Iraq and Afghanistan a bit more quickly, by retiring some craft, and by reducing R&D on weaponry; however I did not decide to cut missile defense or noncombat pay.

I also decided to slow the growth of Medicare, forming the bulk of savings from spending cuts, including raising the eligibility age to 70, capping growth at 1%+growth of GDP, and reducing the protected tax status of employer-sponsored health insurance (I'd eliminate it but for that to be feasible we'd need at least a public option); I did not however decide to enact malpractice reform.

In the end the only change I decided on for Social Security was to raise the retirement age to 70, although I am amenable to tightening eligibility for disability.

The most justifiable tax in my mind is the estate tax, and if the sim gave me the option I would raise it above Clinton-era levels, to something like 10% starting at $500K, 20% starting at $1M, all the way to 65% starting at $3.5M.

Although I think well of taxing people heavily for having that windfall that comes with having a wealthy relative die, I decided not to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends, because investment is the basis for sustained economic growth.

I do think that nearly everyone needs to feel like they're shouldering some of the burden here, so I decided to repeal the Bush-era cuts in individual income taxes for all levels; however, I ended up not raising the ceiling on the payroll tax, although I am still amenable to that.

I am strongly in favor of a "millionaire's tax" bracket, which added to the Clinton-era levels would imply a new top tax rate of 45% on all individual income above $1M.

...this application is buggy, because it won't let me repeal the Bush tax rates for all levels and also implement the Bowles-Simpson plan on individual and corporate income-tax loopholes; in the end I decided that as a matter of fairness it was more important to reduce the loopholes and only end the Bush-era tax cuts for people making above $250K, which means the base rates (especially on corporate income tax, which is higher than in most of the developed world) could be cut and tax revenue would still increase.

Obviously we need to do less to encourage home-ownership (remember that bubble?), so I decided to reduce the mortgage-interest deduction and similar tax breaks.

Cap-and-trade sounds more fun, but I think a better idea is a carbon tax; also we need to make the banks act more like banks and less like speculative investors, but I decided against screwing the poor with a national sales tax.

In the end it consisted of 40% higher taxes and 60% lower spending, with projected surpluses of $203B in 2015 and $716B in 2030, which would go a long way toward reducing our debt unless another Rethugnican leadership screws it up like back in 2000.

2/22/2011 3:38:30 AM

Wouldn't work. I don't entirely understand why, but it does seem to make logical sense, but you cannot raise revenue in this country. Many have tried and failed. You can raise tax rates to where they were under Clinton, but you won't get much more revenue.



http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_onfhuU9ehI/TWEtJIcTEaI/AAAAAAAAO_0/lXv00nZ4Nr0/s1600/tax3.jpg

2/22/2011 8:54:45 AM

Because the top income bracket can afford to evade taxes. Duh. That's why nominal upper class and business class taxes may appear to be high, but effectively they are very low. It's the market finding a solution for a problem by neutralizing government policy.

2/22/2011 9:10:27 AM

Quote :

"Because the top income bracket can afford to evade taxes. Duh. That's why nominal upper class and business class taxes may appear to be high, but effectively they are very low. It's the market finding a solution for a problem by neutralizing government policy."

It's rich folks and big business avoiding their responsibility to the communities they draw labor from and passing the burden to small businesses and the middle class.

Close loopholes, actually collect taxes, and we'll easily be able to afford lowering them for the vast majority of taxpayers. Also, add a few more brackets. There's no reason Exxon should have the same tax rate on their multi-billion annual profits that a smalltown general store does on what little of its income exceeds 250k.

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 9:51 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 9:49:17 AM

yea. income taxes are the dumbest way to try to tax the wealthy. cash is way to fluid to pin down.

You'd need some kind of progressive sales tax/VAT and/or a progressive property tax.

Progressive VAT would probably work pretty well considering most higher end items have much larger markups meaning much higher VAT collections. While produce and other common every day items have lower markups.

The problem would be with low income earners who currently pay little or no taxes who would essentially get taxed more via VAT. You'd either have to elimiate the VAT on common household items or do some kind of prebate thing.

The main advantage of the VAT is its pretty inescapable. Essentially at every point an item passes through the supply chain it gets taxed. So no matter what state you bought the end product in, the taxes have already been paid.

2/22/2011 10:00:26 AM

^^corporate taxes are a stupid joke. They're regressive and pointless.

Tax goods, services, and property, not liquid assets.

and they do "actually collect taxes" but the tax system is so bad that nothing works

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:04 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 10:03:18 AM

Quote :

"The whole budget debate, then, is a sham. House Republicans, in particular, are literally stealing food from the mouths of babes — nutritional aid to pregnant women and very young children is one of the items on their cutting block — so they can pose, falsely, as deficit hawks."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/02/americas_deficit?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fbl%2Foutrageouscuts

Quote :

"Here's a fun fact: non-defence discretionary spending was equal to 3.6% of GDP in 1963. It was also equal to 3.6% of GDP in 2008. It is not behind the increase in government spending as a share of the economy over that time period. It has not made government any less affordable. It is not projected to rise substantially in the future. This is not to suggest that there is no waste in this portion of the government. Without question, there is. This portion of the budget should be subject to close scrutiny, to reform, and perhaps to some cuts (though whether net cuts are justified is far from clear). To pretend that one can balance the budget with cuts focused on this portion of the budget, or that major cuts to this portion of the budget are in any way desirable, is madness. And yet this is what Republicans are doing. Mr Krugman notes that cuts so far have affected programmes that support food budgets of poor Americans. I've pointed out that proposed cuts would reduce spending on job re-training, despite the country's serious long-term unemployment problem. "

Quote :

"This is not responsible policymaking. This is not fiscal discipline. This is not a careful, cost-benefit-based analysis of the government's spending priorities. This is a joke. And it's a cruel one."

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:11 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 10:11:10 AM

Quote :

"and they do "actually collect taxes" but the tax system is so bad that nothing works"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/12/us-usa-taxes-corporations-idUSN1249465620080812

Quote :

"The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005. More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said."

Quote :

"The study showed about 28 percent of large foreign corporations, those with more than $250 million in assets, doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $372 billion in gross receipts, the senators said. About 25 percent of the largest U.S. companies paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $1.1 trillion in gross sales that year, they said."

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:15 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 10:14:43 AM

i dont think anyones disagreeing. non-discretionary spending on entitlements and the military need the largest cuts.

2/22/2011 10:14:56 AM

the us trying to collect taxes on foreign companies is awful and retarded. Corporate taxes in any instance are stupid, regressive, and pointless. trying to enforce them on non-american entities is laughable

2/22/2011 10:16:27 AM

Quote :

"i dont think anyones disagreeing. non-discretionary spending on entitlements and the military need the largest cuts."

I wasn't trying to start an argument, just posting a relevant article to the topic

Quote :

"the us trying to collect taxes on foreign companies is awful and retarded. Corporate taxes in any instance are stupid, regressive, and pointless. trying to enforce them on non-american entities is laughable"

Congrats on reading the first 11 words of what I posted now try the rest.

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:18 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 10:17:05 AM

I mean i completely agree that cutting a few million from welfare or education is a total joke and a terrible idea, but I disagree that the problem is entirely defense spending or that corporate/income taxes are the solution.

Another thing that would be a good idea is to get rid of all production subsidies (farm/corporate/manufacturing/oil/etc...). Also remove limits on liability.

The goal should make the system self correcting instead of trying to single out individual potential problems.

^Most corporations dont pay taxes because they get credits and deductions, not because they're doing illegal things. Its really a fucking stupid system and corporate taxes/deductions/credits should all collectively be abolished


[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:22 AM. Reason : a]

2/22/2011 10:21:23 AM

Quote :

"The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005."

So in other words, 57% of US companies experienced a net loss in one year out of 8. Not that shocking.

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:32 AM. Reason : A far cry from "most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes"]

2/22/2011 10:31:34 AM

How are corporate income taxes regressive? Is it because more profitable corporations are more easily able to take advantage of loopholes, some of which they lobbied Congress for?

2/22/2011 10:40:48 AM

^they can hold money in countries that have better tax structures. Not evil or surprising.

I think a couple simple changes would help balance the budget. Changing the taxcode over time will help. Doing away with people who receive a profit from their tax returns, end that. If you paid in 2k and there is a credit for 3k you qualify for, you only get 2k back, not a 1k profit.

Paul ryan has a pretty interesting plan on helping with medicare's growth rate. Just have medicare issue vouchers, so the liablity becomes defined. Pretty good idea, I think.

2/22/2011 10:50:21 AM

corporate taxes are regressive because they are always passed on to consumers. they are essentially a consumption tax. consumption taxes are inherently regressive.

also the thing you pointed out. Small businesses are less likely to have the same credits/deductions, although its not as bad for them as you'd think. Any business can hire a tax firm to come in and find all the deductions and its worth the cost. There may be some highly specific credits in certain industries, but the comparison of big business taxes vs small business taxes isn't as different as rich vs middle class individuals

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 11:01 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 10:52:01 AM

Quote :

"Although I think well of taxing people heavily for having that windfall that comes with having a wealthy relative die, I decided not to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends, because investment is the basis for sustained economic growth."

Our economy never would have been able to grow before Bush came into office and cut the estate tax...o wait...we seem to have plummeted just then.

2/22/2011 11:28:07 AM

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 12:02 PM. Reason : /.]

2/22/2011 11:53:36 AM

Quote :

"It's rich folks and big business avoiding their responsibility to the communities they draw labor from and passing the burden to small businesses and the middle class. Close loopholes, actually collect taxes, and we'll easily be able to afford lowering them for the vast majority of taxpayers. Also, add a few more brackets. There's no reason Exxon should have the same tax rate on their multi-billion annual profits that a smalltown general store does on what little of its income exceeds 250k."

If you want to "close loopholes," you need to toss the income tax. It's a terribly inefficient way of collecting taxes. It's pretty much a combination of the "honor code" (counting on people to properly file their taxes) and having enough money to hire someone that has enough training to navigate the overly complex tax code.

I know American liberals, for some reason, hate the consumption tax, but it doesn't have to be a flat rate type of thing. You could easily have a consumption tax that is lower on things like food and energy (what poor people spend most of their money on), but higher on luxury goods. It would be, in effect, a scaling luxury tax. That's the only tax system that isn't going to blatantly discourage savings.

Quote :

"Our economy never would have been able to grow before Bush came into office and cut the estate tax...o wait...we seem to have plummeted just then."

The estate tax (and really, any kind of non-commerce related tax, such as the gift tax) is a complete disgrace. Why can I not just give some of my money to whoever I want? Why does the government get to tax that? They didn't fucking do anything to earn it.

The government taxes us at every step of the way. Sales tax. Income tax. Estate tax. Banks, who are really running off government money, levy all kinds of transaction fees. There is a way to simplify the whole thing. Unless, of course, you're on the side of the government, and you want to get as much revenue as possible, regardless of the consequences. If that's you, fuck off and die. We don't need a government that takes care of you from cradle to grave and tells every country on earth how they're allowed to govern themselves.

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 12:13 PM. Reason : ]

2/22/2011 12:07:27 PM

Quote :

"The estate tax (and really, any kind of non-commerce related tax, such as the gift tax) is a complete disgrace. Why can I not just give some of my money to whoever I want? Why does the government get to tax that? They didn't fucking do anything to earn it."

Are you saying that people should only receive money if they earn it?

2/22/2011 3:15:02 PM

Quote :

"corporate taxes are regressive because they are always passed on to consumers."

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And yet this gets posted everywhere.

2/22/2011 3:16:10 PM

hahaha. how is it wrong?

"Hmm im a business and heres this added cost. Shall I eat it or just pass it to my consumers???"

2/22/2011 3:19:30 PM

oh but its separate on the balance sheet! that must mean it never factors into prices!

2/22/2011 3:20:37 PM

Goods are already priced at the highest the market will allow.

Do you think CEO's just reserve potential profit margin in case a new tax passes?

Like seriously do you think when pricing an object they just inch it up a little past operating costs?

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 3:22 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 3:21:44 PM

everyone is affected by the tax so its a cost for everyone and doesnt factor into competitiveness.

new tax comes out, prices are adjusted to maintain desired profit margins

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 3:23 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 3:23:13 PM

CEO: "OH NO A NEW TAX! We'll have to raise the price of our product by a dollar. I really didn't want to do this, now our customers might not buy it!"

*a month later*

CEO: "We're still in the black, that was a close one. Good thing we decided to go for a slim profit margin when we originally priced it!"

2/22/2011 3:23:16 PM

You think that the price of goods is a direct factor of costs that's really adorable.

Tell me, how much do you pay for text messages? How much do you think it costs your provider to send one?

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 3:25 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 3:24:48 PM

more like

Ceo: "taxes are going up for everyone, better increase prices"

*a month later*

Ceo: "people are still buying our goods. good thing we increased prices to preseve these profits"

2/22/2011 3:25:13 PM

fixed costs are always a factor in prices. if fixed costs go up for everyone in your industry then everyone in the industry prices products higher. i dont see how its hard for you to understand that.

2/22/2011 3:26:09 PM

Quote :

"more like Ceo: "taxes are going up for everyone, better increase prices" *a month later* Ceo: "people are still buying our goods. good thing we increased prices to preseve these profits""

Except you're missing that, if the good was viable at the higher price, it would have already been priced that because the upper limit on pricing is a function of what the consumer is willing to pay, not what it costs to produce the item

2/22/2011 3:26:43 PM

no you dont fucking get it you retard

the product was viable at price X
now costs have gone up FOR EVERYONE

EVERYONE NOW PRICES PRODUCT AT X+Y

consumers pay X+Y because no one sells it for X anymore

2/22/2011 3:27:41 PM

in your world apparently gas prices stay the same when oil prices go up, right"?

2/22/2011 3:28:59 PM

Text messages are viable at $0.0001 apiece.

All of the major cell phone providers offer $.01 per text message options for people who don't want a plan.

Do you understand why they would possibly price something at 1000% of its operating cost?

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 3:31 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 3:31:13 PM

text messages are priced at .05 cents for people with no plan and incur about .03 per message in operating costs.

you can bet your behind that if costs went up to .04 so would the cost of messages

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 3:33 PM. Reason : a]

2/22/2011 3:32:32 PM

SMS is an awful system thats a massive pain in the ass for every carrier. it operates on slim profit margins with very very very very high volume

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 3:34 PM. Reason : e]

2/22/2011 3:34:12 PM

Are you insane?

A text message is about 165 characters of information, encoded digitally, not even consuming a kilobyte of information. A single second of digital audio contains orders of magnitude more than that.

$.03 per message? Maybe if they were using carrier pigeons to transport them. Please, just for laughs, what's your source indicating that text messages cost $.03 apiece?

2/22/2011 3:34:31 PM

yes if you dont know what the fuck you're talking about you can make up whatever numbers you want.

SMS is a horrible protocol and there are litterally thousands of phones that all handle it in different ways that your system has to fix before sending it to other carriers. and those carriers all do things differently. plus you have to deal with 3rd party SMS gateways sending garbage.

It all about manhours in support, its not pure bandwidth costs

2/22/2011 3:36:09 PM

http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages

Quote :

"A standard SMS message contains up to 140 bytes (1120 bits) of data - this takes care of the 160 characters allowed in your text message. This might not make sense at first, until you realize that SMS uses 7 - not 8 - bit characters - leaving you with 128 possible character values instead of the normal 256. So 1120bits/7bits = 160 characters. So our total message length is about a tenth of a kilobyte (.13671875 Kbytes). In terms that the iPod generation would understand - if you had an iPod with a tenth of a kilobyte you could fit 1/4000th of a song on it. I assume here and for the rest of this article that 1 song = 4 Megabytes. If you divide 140 (the total number of bytes available to you) by 20 (the cost per message), you find that you are paying 1 cent for every 7 bytes of data. This leaves you with a cost of $1,497.97 for the 1024Kbytes contained in a single megabyte. iPod users: It would cost you $5,991.88 to transfer - not even to buy - a single song via SMS. "

Seriously you have to be the most gullible retard on the planet to believe your phone provider is actually charging you anything near the marginal cost of an SMS.

2/22/2011 3:37:40 PM

you're the fucking moron because you dont understand where the cost is coming from.

again

SMS cost has 0 to do with bandwidth you fucking retard

2/22/2011 3:41:14 PM

Man hours in development and support for sending 170 character messages between phones that regularly transfer hundreds of megabytes in digital audio, web pages, email, netflix movies.


Are you even thinking about what you're posting?

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 3:42 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 3:42:05 PM

Quote :

"Goods are already priced at the highest the market will allow. "

Yet im paying more at the pump and grocery store.
And I now pay a baggage fee when I fly.

2/22/2011 3:46:03 PM

Stop for a moment and briefly consider the possibility that a business might set their prices according to the laws of supply and demand, and not just add 1 cent to their operating cost.

2/22/2011 3:46:24 PM

again. since you have no fucking clue how SMS works or how bad the system is i can see how its hard to understand why support+development costs for it are so high.

I mean you're right. it should be really cheap but because its such a poorly designed system with so many hacks and so many inconsistencies its not that cheap.

basically you're coming in here and saying "hurrr bandaids costs 50 cents to make why to doctors get paid so much!!!"

2/22/2011 3:48:17 PM

Quote :

"Yet im paying more at the pump and grocery store. And I now pay a baggage fee when I fly."

As for oil:





Tell me, what happens to prices when demand rises while supply stays the same?

2/22/2011 3:50:35 PM

For items where high margins are the norm (luxuries) theres much more wiggle room when dealing with taxes.

But commodities like gas and text messages are already priced as low as the business can go while still maintaining a profit margin. New taxes would destroy that margin if prices were not increased. therefore prices increase.

2/22/2011 3:50:48 PM

Quote :

"again. since you have no fucking clue how SMS works or how bad the system is i can see how its hard to understand why support+development costs for it are so high. I mean you're right. it should be really cheap but because its such a poorly designed system with so many hacks and so many inconsistencies its not that cheap. basically you're coming in here and saying "hurrr bandaids costs 50 cents to make why to doctors get paid so much!!!""

You have provided no evidence whatsoever to support your claim that an SMS costs $.03 cents in costs to the company, you just keep repeating it over and over again. You also pretend these companies are bound to stay on SMS and could never just do text messaging through normal data services to reduce costs. Even more hilarious is that the decade-old SMS system is still paying off debts to developers because it takes a research facility to figure out how to send a 170-character message.

All I'm trying to say is that prices are set by supply and demand, not by incremental additions to marginal costs. Apparently this is not how markets work


edit: Lol gas being priced near the margin is hilarious, considering that in 2008 Exxon set the record for highest profits in a single year. Add to that the fact that oil must be extracted, transported, refined, and distributed, which makes for a massive investment. The global market price for it fluctuates wildly on a daily basis, so any aspiring oil man planning around a slim profit margin would be bankrupt as soon as Hugo Chavez sneezes.

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 4:21 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2011 3:56:50 PM

One source that indicates text messages are priced anywhere near marginal operating costs. One source is all I ask.

2/22/2011 3:58:12 PM