Well folks, here is Dean's tax plan. Let's see if we can have a rational debate about this. It looks to me like Dean wants to raise taxes on the poor by 50%!!!!! That's pretty steep. CAPITAL GAINS: Current (15%) vs. Dean plan (20%) DIVIDEND TAX: Current (15%) vs. Dean plan (39.6%) HIGHEST INCOME BRACKET RATE: Current (35%) vs. Dean plan (39%) MIDDLE INCOME TAX RATE: Current (25%) vs. Dean plan (28%) LOWEST INCOME TAX RATE: Current (10%) vs. Dean plan (15%) Source: Stephen Moore (Club for Growth) OpEd piece in Wall Street Journal 1.02.04 Dean is also calling for a reinstatement of the marriage penalty and a permanent reinstatement of the death tax (which takes 55% of estate value). As Stephen Moore (Club for Growth) wrote recently in an OpEd piece in the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Dean promises taxes as a first resort. He would raise them on virtually everyone who has a job and income tax liability... he would raise taxes on 109 million Americans by roughly $1.5 trillion over the next ten years."
Source: Club for Growth Let's look at real-life examples of what the Dean tax might mean for you. Under current law, a married couple with one child and a $40,000-a-year income pays income taxes of $1,503. Under the Dean tax, that family would pay $2,935--or just about double. For a family with two kids and an income of $80,000 a year, the extra Dean tax costs $1,780 a year. What Mr. Dean has never had to answer to in the Democratic primary, perhaps because the other candidates are too embarrassed to ask, is how a presidential contender whose campaign is dedicated to relieving the economic squeeze on working class families, believes that socking these folks with a $1,400- to $1,800-a-year tax hike will make their financial situation less stressful. For the first time ever, he would eliminate the cap on payroll taxes. Henceforth, all income of more than $87,000 a year would pay a 15% payroll tax. This means the Dean tax plan raises the small-business tax rate from 38% to 55%. If you are a self-employed worker with an income of $125,000 a year, which in high-cost-of-living states like California and New York is hardly rich, Howard Dean wants to raise your taxes more than $8,000. Of course, by reinstating the marriage penalty and bringing back to life the death tax permanently, Mr. Dean's tax proposal would add greatly to the complexity of the tax code. By raising income tax rates by roughly five percentage points on everyone and by calling for a more than doubling of the dividend tax, he sends us back toward the era of punitive double and triple taxation of saving and investment income. In many ways then, the Dean tax is "the anti-flat tax." It gives us higher tax rates and more IRS complexity, and requires several million more families to file IRS 1040 returns every year. I'll close this post with a quote from Jack Kennedy "higher tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance the budget, nor enough jobs to put Americans back to work."
It will be interesting how all of this plays out. 50 years from now, I'm sure we'll be able to look back and watch the before / during and after of this slow moving national economic train-wreck. There are a lot of variables that are being affected. At some point, we're not going to be able to turn one of these knobs far enough left or right to correct the runaway trainwreck from occuring. It seems like just yesterday we were sitting in a huge surplus and now that entire thing is GONE -- with a very fast growing deficit to replace it. One more major terrorist action and game over -- General Franks version of what will happen to our constitution goes out the window as the US enters its Marshall law period.
Interesting. I've heard the term used before but I checked Google and really couldn't find anything about it. Perhaps I am using the term wrong, but I was always under the impression that marshall law refers to a goverment run under the military -- generally enforcing strict rules such as curfews, rationing, etc.
aphexcoil- I have heard the term used many times. I also associated with military rule making. I somewhat assumed it was related to the Marshall plan for the post world war II reconstruction effort in Germany. But I never looked it up so I could easily be wrong.