When President Obama speaks tomorrow night, here's what he won't say: your taxes are going up. OK, maybe the lowest echelon on taxpayers will be spared, but anyone who does the simple math can see that the amount of money necessary to finance health care reform, along with existing government obligations, means that taxpayer liability is going up–and not just for the rich.
According to the CBO, the US budget deficit is expected to rise by something close to a gazillion dollars. OK, the White House expects the ten-year budget deficit to reach $9 trillion, up from the original estimate of $7.1 trillion. Given that there are few plans to cut anything out of the budget, the alternative is to raise taxes.
What the President won't say about health care reform is the following: there are not enough rich people to float the country's needs right now. This is not a political statement, it's a fact. This chart from last week's Wall Street Journal demonstrates the point that to close the budget gap over the next ten years, tax rates on the rich would need to rise to nearly 69%. Even if you think that would be a good idea, it just isn't going to happen.
Source: Wall Street Journal
So where do we go from here? Well, the former investment advisor in me says that rather than fight the concept, embrace higher taxes as a likelihood and adjust your life as much as possible. That means maxing out retirement accounts; using tax efficient vehicles like index funds or ETFs; and limiting dividend and capital gains as much as possible. Far better to prepare for the eventuality than screaming, yelling and belly-aching about it.
Why in god's name are we spending so much money if we are so deep in the hole.
It's like this. You have to spend money to get OUT of the hole. Changes need to be made and you can't do that without money.
The U.S. was in major debt long before Obama. And the only way you are going to get out of that debt is to raise the taxes! No way out of that one. It's time that some of you started living in REALITY.
With that large elephant sitting in the middle of the room, "the rich" are now complaining about paying taxes on unearned money they got from "trickle down"?
I find that almost funny.
You would think that they would begin to understand that we don't need to be involved in military hostilities in Iraq, and Afghanistan, but no, they insist we must continue, at $10 billion per month, to "kill the boogieman".
Then they whine when the bill comes in.
During the Eisenhower years, the rich paid a lot higher tax rates than they do now. Everyone agrees that the Eisnehower years were a time of relative prosperity (unless you were African-American.) The rich can easily afford higher taxes and still do very nicely. It will prevent them from donating to right-wing think tanks, but these are the same people who brought us the war in Iraq. Truth told. The rich have shipwrecked this economy - they can pay for the damages they have done.
As far as the stats Schlesinger quoted, Mark Twain stated "There are lies, damn lies and statistics." The Wall Street Journal assured us we could afford a war in Iraq and a tax cut for the rich at the same time. Can we believe anything else the Wall Street Journal says.
While we're on stats, let's see if Schlesinger has a grasp of these stats. Every year 22,000 people die because of a lack of medical care, according to the Urban Institute. Our health care system kills 7 times more people than we lost at 9/11. Does Wall Street Journal care??? According to the 2009 CIA fact book, our infant mortality rate is twice as high as the infant mortality rate of Sweden or France. The Wall Street Journal would rather sentence babies to death than tread down the slippery slope to socialism.
I might point out that our current dysfunctional health care system is the most expensive health care system in the world. It drains $ 2.2 trillion dollars from the economy. And if we do not act now, our health care system will collapse.
Does Wall Street Journal have the right determine the value of human life. Perhaps the denizens of Wall Street as well as their puppets in Congres are the real "panels of death" that we're supposed to fear.
What a lot of conservatives don't remember are the 50% to 70% tax brackets under Reagan.
Of course, we could just do like Bush did an borrow, instead.
What I'd like to see is personal income tax abolished and a flat nationwide sales tax implemented. It would be interesting to see the Wall Street Journal run some numbers for that.
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