Quote:
Originally Posted by 57hemicuda
Its funny we had police and fire protection, a military etc. in the 60's and still kept a tax rate below 20%. What has changed??, oh yeah social spending. I'm all for making the military live within its means, along with all the all the other corporate welfare that needs to be stopped. But, the real fiscal problem right now, is direct payments to individuals. You can choose not to except that, but it doesn't change the fact that it will end up crushing us. The fall of Rome.
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Again, tax rates are not radically higher than they were in the 60s.
http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog...y-income-group
Note how for virtually everyone except for the top 1%, tax rates are basically where they were in the 1960s. That's probably a large reason why most of the gains made in terms of wealth over the last decade, have pretty much been for that set of people. That of course doesn't include state/local taxes which have almost certainly tended to increase.
I don't know that I'd be so dramatic as to compare it to the fall of Rome, but I agree that we should be cutting spending in all areas. It logically makes sense that entitlement spending would increase during a serious recession, but again, we could certainly find efficiencies and ways to make the dollars go farther.
My thinking is that any change should be phased in over time. While I think going over the fiscal cliff would not be as bad as people think, it would be clearly superior to cut 2% a year over 5 years (and increase taxes 0.5% a year over 5), than to cut 10%, and raise taxes 5% at the exact same time.