I mean, I figured out a pretty long time ago that “waste, fraud and abuse” was just political shorthand for “programs I don’t like”. So when I hear someone say that they’re okay with being taxed, but they ‘just’ don’t like to see their taxes go to support “waste, fraud and abuse”…well, it’s pretty easy to connect the dots.

Okay, I admit, I’m not really that much of an idiot (although I do a pretty convincing imitation, don’t you think?). But this is the kind of initial negotiating position that the Democrats need to be presenting to the American people. The real flaw in the argument I gave you above is of course that the CEO will simply take all the profit for himself, and justify it on the basis of “my tax rate is lower than the company’s tax rate, so it’s just good business.” So here’s rule #1: the maximum tax rate for individuals must be higher — painfully higher, in fact — than the maximum tax rate for corporations. CEOs must have a solid disincentive against robbing their company blind — or so it would seem from recent history. Maybe a good attention-getting maximum individual tax rate would be 70%?

I don’t think it’s an accident that the decline of the American economy and the erosion of the maximum ijndividual tax rate both started with Reagan — and the one reversal in either trend that we can point to in recent history was coincident with a reversal of the other trend: that was the Clinton era. It sounds so logical that “people should get more of what they produce”, doesn’t it? But it’s the CEO and the board that decide how the profits get divided up, and the CEO doesn’t really produce what his company produces. For one thing, his company gets to write off all the costs of producing everything they made in a given year. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t have much of a problem with the median corporate tax rate being a lot higher than the median individual tax rate. I mean, I’d happily let you double my taxes if I only got taxed on the difference between my bank balance on December 31 and my bank balance on the preceding January 1.

Reagan began flush up with 60 tax cut for top. Bush increased it with huge tax cut for top.
Republicans are party of Spend but borrow let kids pay tomorrow. Democrats are the party of spend but get revenue(tax) to pay your way.

Since we overshot the mark so spectacularly and are now in a $5 trillion hole, I fail to see why it isn;t equally ‘fair’ to have them pay back a bit more than they were paying then (after all, the Republicans themselves have said our situation is now ‘desperate’ and ‘critical’).

So yes, the new tax structure should be revenue positive, in the weird calculus that we use today in Washington.

And the corporations must contribute as well.