I agree with most of what you guys are saying. It’d be a refreshing step in the right direction. Law enforcement would be a local issue as are fire departments. Many fire departments and firefighters don’t collect any money from the federal and state governments.

I think we can agree that the government is too large. I think we’re nitpicking at relatively small government expenditures like highways and law enforcement.

I don’t like the government monopoly on education.

National security, law enforcement, and settling disputes should be all the government does.

You were right, our government was a LOT smaller back then, and that’s exactly what the framers of our constitution wanted. Somehow we went wrong somewhere since then that has caused our government to be the number 1 employer in the world. What’s that about!?

I understand that we cannot just cut our government down overnight but I would expect that over an eight year period we could do a lot of drastic things.

Here is a breakdown of what I believe the governments should consist of:

Federal government should be the smallest branch of government we have. It’s only responsibilities should the overall stability of our money system (central bank oversight), relationship management between the states [i.e. aiding in designing the national highway systems] and possibly an overall military strategy with a NON-STANDING army.

The state governments should have all the power. Each state should have it’s own militia (like the Iowa National Guard) that can be called up but still is not a standing military and only on a voluntary basis. Taxes should be very minimal and should not tax us on our earning power. I don’t mind paying a consumer tax when I purchase something but it should VERY low.. something like 1-2%. If we need a fire department then we can have volunteers like many towns do. If our city or state needs to raise money for something, such as a road, fire truck, ambulance, etc.. it should be done with municipal or state bonds. Those can be paid back using the 1-2% tax.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this. The truth of the matter is that government should hardly EVER be involved in anything except police work, justice, and overall needs such as national highways.

If that’s all they did, and truly that is all we need, then they wouldn’t need so much money or employees. Oh, one more quick thing.. welfare makes people lazy.. I grew up on it and it’s the worst. My Mother never worked because she didn’t have to and grew accustomed to the lifestyle that welfare provides. If we didn’t have welfare, people would work harder to make it, and if we didn’t have so much damned tax on us.. well people would be richer in the first place.

I better stop now before I get too carried away. ;)

Fair Tax all the way!
Check out http://www.fairtax.org

My apologies if I misunderstood. You said “we don’t need taxes” but it sounds like you meant to say we don’t need income taxes. A tariff is just a tax levied on imports.

I’ve heard people bring up the argument that we used to run solely off of tariffs. The problem is that the government was MUCH smaller then, and good luck ending all of our entitlement programs that take up a majority of the federal budget. Not to mention the devastating effect that instituting tariffs would have on our economy. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act anyone? That led to a little thing called the Great Depression.

I wouldn’t be totally opposed to pay as you go roads. It would certainly limit traffic congestion. Do you believe government should fund education? How about law enforcement and fire departments? If not, how would individuals pay for the last two?

Thanks for the discussion.

I didn’t say the government shouldn’t have money. There were tariffs before the 16th amendment. The government operated for over a hundred years without taxes on everyone.

I’d be OK with pay-as-you-go roads as long as I wasn’t paying taxes up front for their construction. It’ll certainly be more inconvenient, I’ll grant you that. I’m sure technology today would make it very easy to pay for driving on a road. After all, if it’s convenient to pay and use, you’ll use the road more and the owners will make more money.

You’d think with $3,000,000,000,000.00 you could make a lot of people happy. What’s congressional approval at now? Is it above 20% yet? It doesn’t matter the size of the federal budget, so few people shouldn’t be allowed to spend that much of other peoples money without their consent.

I agree with some of what you say in principle, but disagree in some ways as well.

I believe that the amount of tax revenue collected by the government should be drastically reduced, but I also recognize that the government needs money to operate. Even though I oppose the single largest expenditure of our federal budget (which is social security, by far), I do not oppose the collection of my taxes altogether. I think that most people agree with many of the services it provides such as roads, law enforcement, fire departments. Are you in favor of pay-as-you-go roads? I’m not being antagonistic, I’m genuinely curious, some people are. But to say that we don’t need taxes at all is a bit extreme to me. At the very minimum, we need a basic framework to enforce property rights and settle disputes.

I do agree that individuals can spend their own money more effectively than the government, and believe that there should be fewer government programs for this reason. As you say, the government will never spend money the way everyone wants it to be spent. Since you can’t please everyone, it would be better to let them choose more things for themselves (choice and competition in education is one example that I believe in).

Also, in regards to your “greater good” comment, I study constitutional law, and believe that the “promote the general welfare” clause of the constitution is grossly misunderstood. However that is another topic.

I just can’t believe people enjoy paying taxes. How many people really agree with everything the government does with your money?

Does everyone here like continuing to pay for the war on iraq/drugs/poverty? Think of what you could do with a 30-60% boost in your income.

The “greater good” is a lie.

I believe that we all feel the same about our living standard regardless of what we earn. We want to at least maintain it or notch it up a little. The angst that I feel about keeping what I’ve worked for is similar to yours and is similar to Warren Buffet’s.

Policy should proceed from that fundamental understanding and we should not attempt to shift the tax burden onto the other guy.

Furthermore, I think elected officials should have tools to encourage economic behavior that will foster the greater good. If we determine that saving is to be encouraged then there should be some leverage available like tax sheltered savings accounts. Or, if spending is key to a vital economy, then the tax code can be used to encourage that.

I know I’m begging the question about what changes to make but we should talk about what we’re aiming for before we go about establishing policy.

1. Abolish the AMT. Now it only serves to penalize middle-class workers in high-income/high-cost states.

2. Fix the marriage penalty. My husband and I pay slightly more in taxes because we’re married and don’t have children.

3. Remove the cap on student loan interest deductions. If we were single, we could both deduct our student loan interest, but the cap means that only one of us can. Also, we live in a high-cost state. We both have higher degrees, but his came at a steep cost. Because of these degrees, we have good incomes, but pay more in taxes and more in student loan payments to earn that pay. Basically, we’d probably be better off working low-salary jobs and not having student loans, but then we wouldn’t really be helping the economy grow. We’re caught in a catch-22, and the student loan interest cap only makes it worse.

4. Simplify the childcare deduction. Let parents deduct the whole amount, not a fraction of a fraction of the cost up to a max.

Question for the fair tax advocates: the new/used distinction seems like a huge loophole. Seems like I could incorporate a corporation, and any time I need something, have the corporation buy it tax free, then sell it to me “used”, and I would avoid all taxes. Or similarly, someone like Amazon.com could “use” everything in their inventory to avoid charging the tax. Is there a mechanism to prevent this?

Check that out.

I agree with the fair tax though. The more you spend, the more you pay.

This is what makes the fair tax so great. There would be no more payroll taxes of any kind. People would get to take home what they make. On top of that you would receive a check every month that would compensate for your spending up to the poverty line. This means poor people would pay no taxes. Just as you pointed out this would be an automatic 7.65% increase to employees and a 7.65% to employers. The self employed would see an immediate 15% increase in pay. I recommend everyone read the fair tax book. Even if you do not agree it is an interesting read.

I also hate how the income tax is structured to penalize earners. Mu husband makes a very good salary. I don’t mind paying taxes on it. However I quit my low-paying job in my low-paying profession cause after taxes I was bringing home very little. Basically I am being penalized because my husband makes a large salary. So I’m encouraged to not work and have my 2 master’s degrees sit at home. In a consumption based tax folks are encouraged to work and prosper because their work is not taxed – their desires are taxed.

Payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare).

When the government tells you that half of Americans aren’t paying any income taxes, they are talking about income taxes. But one of the reasons pay doesn’t go as far as it could is due to the fact that you’re losing 7.65% (a flat tax, to be sure) off the top. That’s not counting the other 7.65% your employer is chipping in. If the payroll tax wasn’t around, you’d get a 15% raise without any additional cost to your employer.

Is it a separate taxing system? Yes – but only for collection purposes. As we all learned a few years ago, there is no lock-box. For years, the excess money collected over benefits paid out has been spent on other governmental expenses.

In order to really help people with their tax burden and have a truly productive national discussion, we must talk about all the taxes that are taken from their pay checks; not simply those we choose to call “income taxes.”

Don’t you know? “Rich” people are evil! Anybody who is rich must have done something immoral to achieve their wealth. That’s the only possibility. It isn’t possible that they have a unique skill set that is in high demand, or developed a product that benefits millions of people. Nope, wealth comes only from pure evil. The people who are incapable of taking advantage of the enormous educational opportunities in this country, and have not improved themselves to the point where they are able to contribute to society and be compensated accordingly are the ones to be revered. The people who pay for all of those people’s services definitely should be punished.

BTW, the same is true of big, successful companies as well. If a company has done well, it does not mean that it has been pleasing its customers so much that they continue to return and buy/use their products/services. It means they are behaving unfairly. We should punish them too.

@Kevin

75,000 should be the top tax bracket that qualifies as a “luxurious” lifestyle, with no exemptions or deductions!? I’m not sure where you live, but for most people that is definitely middle class. Many public school teachers make more than that. Too me that isn’t quite high enough to warrant being punished yet. It’s not quite to the evil level. I wonder where you got the number 75,000 from? Did you come up with that on your own, or did you borrow that from a well known presidential candidate that made the same statement? For the record, I’m slightly below that line as well.

I hate people with the mentality that the government is somehow doing you a favor by letting you keep more of the money that you earned.

and as long as we are changing things, stop handing money out to bums and stop the wars (iraq/afghan/drugs)

maybe we will be in a better place before this all collapses. can we get some economists or something else in charge and not all rich lawyers?