There you just touched on it... it is not about revenue (taxes) it is about spending. Why would anyone want to pay more taxes when they can't control the waste and foolishness. Some day we may allow taxes to be raised but there have to be reforms first, not second. Reforms first and demonstrations that government has make good choices.
Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
I agree with you that politicians would seek to spend any new money raised. In fact, I'll take it a step further and suggest that they'll try to spend any incremental revenue that they can claim static-scoring analysts even
think will materialize, no matter how unrealistic the projections may be. A similar thing happened in the early 1980s, when Reagan administration officials thought they had a deal on spending cuts, which of course never materialized.
The problem we have now is that the tax structure we have is perfectly tailored to spending levels of twelve years ago, which in nominal dollars were about half what they are now. (Adjusted for inflation, they're roughly 50% higher.) To narrow the deficit sufficiently, we'd have to slash spending by something like 30%. I don't think it's even remotely possible that we'll cut spending by more than a small fraction of that. So big tax increases are coming one way or another, sooner or later.
We need to repeal the 16th amendment, abolish the income tax, and adopt the FairTax. It is as simple as that.
Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy
If spending levels on all non-defense items were at 1950s levels, and if we spent no more than 3-4% on defense, that would work. Philosophically and in principle, a system relying to a greater extent on consumption taxes would be better. But the Fair Tax would raise no more than about 15% of GDP at best, and I think even that is a very optimistic estimate.
Yaddayadda, as depressing as your post is to read, it's hard to disagree with any of it.
