Aielyn said:
Since the topic of discussion is the federal government and its budget deficit problem, state and local taxes are entirely irrelevant. Also, I did mention state sales tax, when discussing the comparison between that and Australia's GST (which is a federal sales tax). In theory, one could also analyse each state, or each local government, for its budget revenue and spending, etc. And I'm sure there would be some interesting results - it's entirely possible that some states of America have spending problems. But America's federal government - that is, the one based in Washington DC with Boehner as house leader, Reid as senate leader, and Obama as executive leader - doesn't have a spending problem (or rather, it doesn't have a problem with amount of spending, only quality of spending). Try actually reading what I said in my previous post, before replying again. |
I did read it. when you are going to compare how much tax is paid by a person, and what % of GDP is spent by the government and compare it to another nation its best to have the most accurate numbers or the comparison fails. We pay a large portion of our taxes to the state so it adds a lot more to what our overall government spends. If austraila is different (which i think it is) than your comparisons are wrong. Off the top of my head I am pretty schools are paid for by state and local funding, not federal. Our taxes also do not inlcude a national health care system. I think once you take that into account you will see we have a spending problem. We are spending a greater percentage of our GDP than ever before, and the government is currently collecting a larger percentage our or GDP in taxes, and there is no end in sight for the deficit.
