well I am willing to learn. Are you saying that the founders were in favor of a graduated income tax? That would be news to me - I thought the wanted to fund the govt through tariffs.
They were in favor of graduated taxes, not flat taxes, and specifically warned against allowing the poor to exist as it was a threat to the stability and education of the nation. (In fact, Jefferson warned against allowing extravagant wealth.)
Nobody likes taxes. The Democrats just seem to think that it's unfair to constantly hammer the next generation with fake tax rebates and more debt. This is called "paying the bills."
That's exactly what Obama wants to do: his famous tax cut is actually a check sent out to those who pay no taxes, or a tax rebate to those who do. But, what he doesn't want to admit in his speeches, although clearly stated in his published plans, is that after the whole thing is done (checks, rebates, tax hikes, etc) the overall tax burden on the American economy will be raised by $trillions. Which, of course, will set us back many years. Oh well.
He's not talking about a tax cut overall. Well the tax burden will increase, although not by trillions unless you're discussing a long term time frame. But that's the nature of voting in the Republicans and doubling the national debt.
Of course, we had 9/11 and two wars to finance too. You may like them or not, but there they were, our elected officials thought they were a good idea (not I though, on moral grounds.) Nevertheless, what matters for the long run is growth and employment, and Bush's average numbers there look great, even better than Clinton's. But, the question now is whether to elect (not Bush but) McCain who wants to cut entitlements - and from that reduction in spending balance the budget. Sounds good to me, everyone wins.
9/11 didn't cost a trillion dollars. One war was not a bad idea, the other was optional and is the expensive one. The Republicans decided to "finance" the wars by using off-budget emergency appropriations so the Republican debt they ran up doesn't include the war costs. I really don't see how you can say that. The unemployment rate hit a five year high. Plus, if you use the methodology of calculating inflation that was used under Carter, for example, the inflation rate is almost 10% and the real (U6) unemployment rate is 10.7%. How's that? You don't think that costs will just be displaced?
I note you did not really answer the question about a graduated income tax. If you are having a discussion about taxes - but you are not discussing income taxes - then you are not really talking about a graduated income tax. Graduated property taxes and tariffs are far different animals. A discussion about a graduated property tax is not a discussion about taking larger chunks of persons income as the make more money. The property tax pays for local govt services an income tax is a way to steal a mans work and give it to others.