We should raise taxes to pay off the deficits created by the last president

It's incredible what's going on here and Europe. Despite the best efforts, our economy continues to struggle and Europe's economies are reeling. A major part of the problem is that massive government deficits are discouraging investors and making it more difficult for governments to invest in their people. Now, it's easy to pay off these deficits by raising taxes on the wealthy.

Let's consider the facts. The well-to-do were able to take advantage of the 1990s boom, the various deregulation efforts of the Republicans, and the corrupt practices that reached new heights under Bush. Not only that, they were in the best position to invest in the Halliburtons, Raytheons, and others who profited off the taxpayers dollar. Not only that, the wealthy were not merely investing for retirement, but they were investing for income, so were able to sell high to buy homes, boats, planes, rare artwork, gold, and other items.

Well, in some cases, unbeknownst to those wealthy people, they made ill-gotten gains, in effect received stolen property (tax payer money, shareholder money generated off of faulty mortgages, etc.). Now they have to give it back. Our nation has a lot of debt and it's time for those who benefited from the corruption of the past to take responsibility for that debt.

I think Congress should propose raising taxes to pay off the debts incurred by Bush II, and possibly a few of his predecessors. Not raising taxes is simply irresponsible. It's expensive to run a great nation, and if we don't start paying for it, our nation will cease to be great.

cut the pentagon's wasteful budget

That would make a tax increase more papatable.

I know people at DU don't want to hear it, but
* raising taxes on corporations does encourage moving jobs overseas which we can't afford which we can't afford right now
* raising capital gains taxes does discourage investing in US stocks which can lead to more job losses
* raising taxes on those with income over $1 million/year will do nothing (rich probably only have capital gains, not income over $1 million and will juggle their money according to the taxes)
* raising taxes on the rich won't provide enough money. taxes need to hit 10's millions of middle class, not 10's thousands of rich who will avoid it as much as possible.
* our tax system is such a mess of loopholes that the rich will avoid much of the increases.

Instead of looking at individual details that can be easily argued against, look at it as a whole. Say we want to increase taxes by $500 billion. And assume just 10% of that would have been spend on products and services and 90% saved (10% is probably low, especially if the taxes hit the middle class). That means $50 billion of products and services that won't be purchased, which means no jobs for people who would have produced, transported, and sold those products and services. Even if corporations net is 10% the owners only rake in $5 billion.

This is based on the original post about using additional tax revenue to pay off the deficit, not create jobs. But I'm not sold on the results of the stimulus or the government's ability to create good, long term jobs if the money is used for that. And I picked $500 billion for no good reason - it's big enough to have significant results but lower than the deficit.

Yes, "trickle down" includes "trickle on" but with all of the global options the rich have it's a necessary evil without a MAJOR restructuring (taxes, penalties for foreign investment, tariffs, union laws, etc). If you disagree, how would you remove $500 billion from the economy without loosing jobs or lowering the GDP, since lowering the GDP reduces other tax revenue?

People need to understand why we are in the position we find ourselves in today.

Taxes on income over a million should be 50%.
If they don't like it, they can leave the fucking country.
They got us into this mess, they can pay to get us out of it...

2. Cut the Navy and Air Force by 35%.
3. Tax everyone making more than $250,000 a year at the rate they were taxed in the 1960's.
3. Tax ALL church property - all property, all churches.

That should help. But none of it will happen except maybe the wars will eventually wind down.

mark