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Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian
I think Romney made some very popular points, especially regarding the rule on step-up basis upon death. That allows some very wealthy individuals to hand huge untaxed fortunes to heirs, creating far too many Paris Hiltons.
However, the total tax revenue likely resulting from Romney's suggestions would still land well short of covering even a nickel of every deficit dollar. Relative to the size of the deficit, these proposals are little more than nibbling around the edges.
Then Romney really goes off the rails when he references "The Willie Sutton rule: Go where the money is."
And he follows up by completely ignoring where the money is! (The middle class.) That's right; it's impossible to make much headway on the deficit without taxing the stuffing out of the middle class, such as by implementing a European-style VAT. No politician is going to touch the hot potato known as entitlements.
True that! How can anyone support a "green new deal" when we can't even come within $2 trillion per year of paying for what our intrepid leaders have already signed up for?
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Originally Posted by txdot-guy
Mitt Romney is correct when he says that we can’t grow our economy enough to deal with our own spending without raising our taxes. And that tax increase will have to be spread over the entirety of the population to be effective.
To get out of the mess we’re in now we’ll have to increase revenues enough to cover not just our current entitlements but also our interest payments.
Some of this will need to come from estate taxes as our aging population passes but the rest will need to come from everyone else.
Combine this with some rational thinking about military spending and entitlement reform and maybe we can start digging ourselves out of the debt hole that decades of political stagnation and corruption have created.
What I do know is that the Big Beautiful Bill, The extension of Trump’s tax cuts and tax loopholes, the massive increase in military and immigration enforcement, will do nothing to help our economy or national security.
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The estate tax raised $18.4 billion in 2021, which is the most recent year the IRS provides complete data for. It was projected to raise $32 billion in 2024. That's about 0.45% of $7 trillion in federal spending. I'm not necessarily opposed to carrying over cost basis when a person dies, although it would make it difficult for heirs who will have no idea how much Aunt Betty or Uncle Joe paid for that Mobil Oil stock sixty years ago. The current death tax on the other hand, 40% of everything a person owns when he passes away, is akin to theft.
Unfortunately, when the Democratic Party introduced Social Security and Medicare, it fucked up. Government sponsored retirement and healthcare should be self funding, and efficient. If we had something like Australia's superannuation scheme people would actually receive a return on their retirement contributions. Instead they participate in Social Security, a Ponzi scheme. As to healthcare in general, including Medicare, almost anything would work better than what we've got now. We should transition to rational retirement and healthcare systems. As you say TC, unfortunately the bastards in Washington won't allow it. Practically, the best way to deal with it IMO is increase the percentages employers and employees contribute to payroll deductions.
If Romney's planning on putting an 15.3% additional tax on capital gains and dividends though, then he will prove TxDot wrong. The government will receive less revenues through the taxes because people will realize fewer capital gains and companies will cut dividend payouts. I do agree with him about ending certain loopholes like 1031 tax free exchanges. I don't think he even brought up another egregious loophole, carried interest. I wonder why?
If I were dictator, I'd cut spending, moving some of it to the states. And reform entitlements so we have a hybrid of the Singapore and Australian systems, which we've discussed in other threads. So we wouldn't have to increase tax rates to stay solvent.
TxDot, I agree with you about military spending. Also I may agree with you about immigration, I'm not sure exactly what your thoughts are on that.
TC, you're questioning how AOC et al could possibly support the Green New Deal when we have a $2 trillion deficit. Well that's easy if you believe in Modern Monetary Theory, like AOC. She believes deficits don't matter
