http://modernmarketsinitiative.org/topics/effects-of-a-financial-transaction-tax/ they raise a negligible amount of money with a great amount of negative unitended consequences.
Much like a speeding ticket, taxes deter what ever behavior is fined/taxed. Argue all you want, but the best growth in US history was when we had no income tax..
Yes you are correct that we have a spending problem in the US. Republicans have been just as responsible as anyone. Running a country on a credit card has never been sustainable as history has proved.
We have now a real and recent case where you can see what happens when taxes get raised. On January 1,2016 Belgium introduced a tax of 33% on profits made on all stocks that were hold less than 6 months. Losses could only be deducted in the same stocks so no deduction from profits made in other stocks. In reality this meant that losses were not deductible. Due to this criminal system real taxes were much higher than 33% in reality. The Belgian government calculated that these taxes would generate for them 34 mio Euro of income in 2016. End September and beginning of October, the government checked the figures and came to the following conclusions: Trading volume went heavily down. Brokers had much less income from orders placed by clients and as a result they will pay much less corporate taxes. Other taxes linked to trading orders went down too. Traders moved abroad (and will never come back). Result: instead of 34 million Euro profits, the government got a loss of income of around 100 million Euro in less than 10 months. They decided to stop the tax end of this year as it worked contra productive. France introduced a millionaires tax too, a few years ago. They abolished it quickly when they saw the results. Many millionaires left the country and will never come back.
No, It shuts its government down because one side refuses to borrow more money and the other side refuses to cut spending.
I have also been giving serious thought to moving out of the country since my business is basically location independent. As if 8 years of Obama was not enough, here we have Hillary who seems even more anti business. For reasons unknown to me, she wants to increase the pain and punish hard working business people, forgetting the fact that we are the ones creating the bulk of jobs across the country. This country is going the way of Europe really fast. We are going down the road of pursuing all the same dead end policies. For any business person who is mobile, which is more the case nowadays (with the internet, etc), I encourage you to look for greener pastures.
For decades it was normal that people stayed in the country they were born. Nowadays you should first find out where you, and your children, have chances for a good future. And for the biggest part of Western countries it will not be where they were born anymore. On top of that Americans have a "more favorite position" as they are "allowed" to pay taxes on their world income till 10 years after giving up their nationality. I still remember that we were told that the US was the country where everything was possible and everybody wanted to go to. Something things can change. And then it is better that you change something too. Or you get slaughtered sooner or later. But probably more sooner than later.