I'm not going to try to respond to most of your post. I was s truck by the portion quoted above however, because I disagree with it so profoundly. How can you say the "progressive tax systme" has been nearly destroyed. I forget the exact statistics, but the top 10 or 15 percent pay the vast bulk of taxes. The bottom 47-50% pay virtually nothing in income taxes. Yes, they pay employment taxes, but those are a form of insurance and forced savings. Would you be happy if the top 10% paid all the taxes? And what is so special about a progressive tax code anyway? Is there any other thing in life that I am charged based on my income? College tuition maybe. The Roosevelt era 90% marginal rates that progressives wax so nostalgic about were paid by no one. Tax evasion and legal loopholes meant that the super rich probalby paid less then than they do now. People have options, particularly the rich and talented. Not working is an option. Not starting a business and not employing anyone is an option. How a tax policy that encourages that is good for working people escapes me. I also fail to understand your point that a return to the good ole days of steeply progrssive taxation will restore the middle class. Reducing taxes didn't eliminate their jobs. Unions, costly environmental regulations, a litigation-mad society, etc all made it attractive for employers to take good jobs and move them to other countries. Free trade made it possible, not tax rates. You seem to imagine that the middle class can be rebuilt through government programs. There isn't enough money, even if that made any sense. As it is, the government is strangling employers through Obamacare and regulations. Obama wants to let in millions more immigrants and grant amnesty to illegals already here. How is that going to help people who are unemployed already?
The top robs the middle and pays off the bottom to look the other way? I guess that's how we arrived here
"How can you say the "progressive tax systme" has been nearly destroyed. I forget the exact statistics, but the top 10 or 15 percent pay the vast bulk of taxes. The bottom 47-50% pay virtually nothing in income taxes. Yes, they pay employment taxes, but those are a form of insurance and forced savings." Well you are arguing that since 40%+ pay zero income tax that our system is very progressive with the bottom bracket being zero % However these non-payers don't have any affect on the progressiveness of the income tax, since they don't pay income tax. Reagan reduced the top bracket by 42% and raised the lowest bracket by 3% resulting in a low bracket of 15% and a top bracket of 28%. These were only 13% apart, consequently nearly all of the progressive nature of the income tax was eliminated. I'm not in favor of going back to a top marginal rate of 90% as we had under Eisenhower, just something progressive enough to help reverse the meritless income redistribution that occured under neo-liberal economics. I don't know what the top bracket should be to do that. Most likely it would be around 35% and in any case no higher than about 40%. And I don't know where that top bracket should kick in. The idea, Beltway, is to get those non-income tax payers back squarely into the middle class where they can afford to pay income taxes the same as you and I. I want them to give us a hand in paying for our government. "Would you be happy if the top 10% paid all the taxes? And what is so special about a progressive tax code anyway? " No I wouldn't be at all happy with that. I want to see as large a fraction as possible of the adult population able to afford income taxes, and to pay them. "I also fail to understand your point that a return to the good ole days of steeply progrssive taxation will restore the middle class. Reducing taxes didn't eliminate their jobs. Unions, costly environmental regulations, a litigation-mad society, etc all made it attractive for employers to take good jobs and move them to other countries. Free trade made it possible, not tax rates." I can't give you a good answer. Not now anyway. I can tell you that labor is no better or worse behaved than is capital. Both have rights, or should, and a balance is needed. Not one or the other. I did not explain why reducing progressiveness of our tax rate brackets harmed the middle class. That's actually very complicated, and that is by no means the only aspect to neo-liberal economics that has proved to harm the middle class. It is fair that you take me to task for ignoring the details. Maybe later if I have enough time. Instead of wrecking our environment trying to compete with those that wreck their own, I want to see our competitors take just as much responsibility for the environment as we do. (Getting them to do that is doable.) I can't comment on the litigation problems you mention, I haven't thought much about them. "You seem to imagine that the middle class can be rebuilt through government programs. There isn't enough money, even if that made any sense. As it is, the government is strangling employers through Obamacare and regulations. Obama wants to let in millions more immigrants and grant amnesty to illegals already here. How is that going to help people who are unemployed already? Yes, the middle class can be rebuilt through government action. In fact without government action it won't happen. There is more than enough money. Just by bringing our medical costs in line with other nations for example, we would release 1.8 trillion per year, consumed very unproductively by the medical sector, for use elsewhere in the economy --education, infrastructure, deficit reduction, immigration, justice and penal reform. I addressed in another long post, and in another thread a long time ago, how the result of moving 1.8 trillion from the medical sector to other sectors could be accommodated without undue harm to those now in the medical sector. Not a trivial matter, but it must be done. There is more than enough money, but it is in unproductive and inefficient places. Making major changes in the economy requires very long range planning. These things must not be be done precipitously. I don't want to discuss Obama care or immigration policy here, but I understand your concerns..