American Teabagging

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Recently the Republican Party has brought its followers to a state of panic that the US has not seen in a long time.  Even one of my research group members has fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.  And I do mean sinker!  The argument goes that you can only save the economy and the government budget two ways: raise taxes or cut spending.  Neither party (Republican nor Democrat) what their special interests cut.  So cutting military spending is out and so is cutting social services.  With only two options (cutting or taxing) that leaves raising taxes as the only way to continue funding the juggernaut that the US government has become.  Yet two interesting things have occurred during this Teabagging party.  First, the Congress has passed a bill to give themselves and all government workers a 6% raise.  That alone is a good enough reason to talk about why we need to increase taxes!  But secondly, the main concern about raising the taxes is that everyone (especially the rich) will be taxed higher than they ever have been in history.  This is complete rubbish!  It is propaganda.  Just look at this chart (provide by the Tax Foundation and the US Internal Revenue Service:Table 8
Average Tax Rate, 1980-2006
(Percentage of AGI paid in income taxes)

Source: Internal Revenue Service

Notice that in no way have we become the most taxed year since 1980.  The entire nation would have to have an average increase in taxes of over 2.5% just to reach the maximum in 2000.  Greg Mankiw has statistics showing just how low the taxation rate here in the US truly is.What truly gets me is that our government claims that there is only two ways to fix the problem: taxation or cuts.  What about the third way?  How about getting rid of inefficiencies?  We all, here in the US, know about how inefficient the government is.  Do we truly need to pay Senators $169,300 per year + the 6% raise?  Do we really need to pay the members of the House of Representatives $174,000 per year?  With 535 members between both houses that comes to $77,484,580 per year.  Talk about a top heavy bureaucratic money bag!  That money does not even cover the cost of the war in Iraq ($864,000,000,000 since 2003) or Afghanistan ($439,100,000,000 since 2001).  This of course does not include the loss of life (both military and civilian), the cost of creating hostile sentiment towards the US, or the cost of Veteran Affairs – the soldiers coming back “alive” will suffer many medical condition for the rest of their lives.  What about other US government “business”?  Read this article on the Post Office.  Or read this article on the US Mint.  Talk about big government, let’s cut the fat from the rich instead of cutting the heart out of the middle-class and poor!

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This entry was posted on April 18, 2009, 8:54 am at 08:54 and is filed under State of Mind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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