axt113 said:
mrstickball said:
The issue isn't raising taxes on the rich. That really won't help. Every time we've lowered taxes for the rich, the percentage of income taxes we've gathered from them has actually gone up. Not down.
The real issue is cutting of subsidies and tax credits to the rich. Some of the richest people pay less than the middle class because they are given huge credits because of one thing or another. They have great accountants, too.
In reality, if we imposed a flat tax that offered virtually no subsidies, no incentives for particular behaviors, we would likely collect a lot more, and would ensure that those not paying wouldn't be able to dodge taxes.
Furthermore, fixing the tax code won't fix the entire problem. We had a $1.5 trillion deficit in the last year alone. Put it this way, under George W. Bush, our debt increased by $5 trillion dollars. Obama's increase in the deficit was 1/3rd of that in just one year.
To fix it, we do have to increase revenues by reforming the tax code, but also slash every single budget that the government has. Jon Stewart's Ryan rebuttal is a tragedy, because you can't really project future revenues all that well by changing the tax code, because we've seen that it rarely follows along expected forecasts. The only known quantity in a budget are actual outlays in spending, which is far more stable. Therefore, the more responsible thing to do is to cut spending. Of course, a lot of people hate doing that, because you can tax and reduce spending on anyone, until it effects you. We've seen that happen to horrible results all over the Western world when the government has had to introduce austerity measures.
And if you want information about tax rates and correlation of tax revenues:
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Stick, by your own chart, we recieved more money from the rich in the late 90's when taxes were higher than we ever recieved from them in the 2000's
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The Bush tax cuts were started at the very bottom of that trough, not before. Therefore, you could also say that the tax cuts led to a significant increase in the top 1% paying their share of taxes. Having said that, the reason that taxes among the top 1% dropped so quickly was likely due to the .com bust in the late 90's which damaged the stock market and hurt a lot of wealth at the top end.
Furthermore, you can see a significant increase in taxation among the top 1% after the Reagan-era tax cuts. Thats why we have the argument of the laffer curve. Furthermore, you can also note that tax income from the bottom 95% dropped significantly during the late 90s, which shows that the tax burden really moved from the top 1% to the top 5%, which was still taxing the rich. So we are still recieving ever-more money from the rich. Pay attention to the red line, its the most important 
