Is it Really so Burdensome?
If I hear another person complain about the high taxes in this country…
Here is a chart of family tax burden broken down by country. Click on the picture on the right to enlarge it. You may notice that the US is 28th on this list. If you’re having trouble finding it, that’s almost all the way at the bottom, right above Iceland and Ireland.
One of the popular rallying cries in this election cycle is “lower taxes!” I mean really, when have lower taxes ever been an unpopular campaign slogan? But just because it gets people excited doesn’t necessarily mean that we need lower taxes because they are so oppressively high right now.
In fact, the article that cites this chart goes on to say that citizens in these other countries are paying more money, but they are getting more back, in terms of social programs.
Sure, nobody likes paying taxes; however, we do get valuable services back from what we pay and our pooled resources can achieve even more with future programs. On another note, almost half of Americans pay zero dollars in federal taxes. What in the world are those people complaining about?
I think people are still disillusioned by arcane promises of Reganomics. Bush’s current economic stimulus package proves that the spirit of Reganomics is very much alive (and has been with Bush since his inception).
Conservative economic policies are still holding fast to the postulate of trickle-down theory, as if it is a true economic stimulus.
Although economic policy is tough issue, Keynes and Hopkins had something right when they ushered America into the economic-policy era of the modern welfare state. We still live in it, believe it or not. It’s not only real economics, its American Political Thought. Why else do Americans, whenever things go awry, first ask, “where was the government?” Not, “where was the private corporation or multinational business.”
I cannot see this new stimulus package as abetting the current short-term economic woes. Even worse, it does seemingly make matters prospectively worse in the long run. The current administration is accruing massive amounts of debt. So, I ask you why are they proposing further tax cuts/breaks and more tax rebates? Am I missing something?
I agree with some people that I normally don’t agree with on this point: if we are going to cut taxes to help the economy, we need to cut spending also.
I’m not opposed to tax cuts, especially when they have the chance to really help people and hopefully avert a recession. However, we need to make sure that we lower our government’s spending in a comparable way. I like my social programs, so I’d rather not go straight there with the hatchet. Instead, we could save a lot of money by reducing our foreign military commitments, especially in Iraq. We can also save a lot by reducing the expansion of our offensive military weaponry.
About 8 years ago, I was in a high school American history class studying the Great Depression. I received an F on a test for the following reasons:
-I used the phrase “Trickled-ON-economics”
-I used the word hell
-I pointed out similarities between President Hoover and a certain vacuum company with the same name
I should have been more tactful in answering essay questions, especially Harding Academy of Memphis (perhaps more conservative than HU), but I was a 16-year-old bleeding liberal watching the country’s government being stolen by George W. Bush in his first election. I had to vent.
Trickled-on… I love it.
A tax cut specifically intended to help the economy in a short term way cannot be offset with spending cuts if it is going to be effective (its the straightforward Keynesian argument for tax cut). Long term it is not a good idea (more likely an exploding deficit disaster and general confidence erosion) and comparable spending cuts are needed.