| JaggedSac said: Could we get some actual data in here? Besides percentages. I think there are way to many variables involved to generalize the situation down to a percentage of GDP revenue from taxation that has not changed. How has GDP revenue changed from year to year? How has other tax brackets changed from year to year? How was the overall economy changed from year to year? How has the threshold for the top bracket changed? Not saying that this is not the case, just saying that more data than some percentages should be given. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser's_Law
And I was wrong about something. It's not the rich that pay 19.5%, it's that all taxes collected from all people, is 19.5% of GDP, regardless of what the top tax bracket is.
This really means that no matter what people in washington have done, they can't really "break" that.
Again, I could get more info for a different debate, but the purpose of this discussion was to just say that getting on national TV and saying we are going to pay for this program by raising taxes on people, just shows that you don't understand how it all works. (or you do, but you are just looking for support).
What he should have said, is "in order to pay for this, we are going to raise GDP". The problem with that, is how you raise GDP, is unpopular.
