Subject: Re: How Deficits Work...
What "wasteful spending"? Very few people who say that can actually point to anything significant. Some will point at piddly little things that annoy them, but are insignificant to the federal budget.

Yes, the tax laws also favor the wealthy. They have loopholes and vehicles that aren't available to the lower classes, which is why the previous poster pointed out that lower income folks pay an effective rate of 14% while the wealthy pay less than 10%.

I'm with Dope1 about hedge funds and day traders, but that's just nibbling at the edges. We need more revenues, and the wealthy are the only ones who can afford it. It's also appropriate since they have reaped most of the benefits from our tax system. I think categorizing it "wealth envy" is mildly insulting. I don't envy them, and I'm sure I speak for lots of people. It's just clear that they are not paying in proportion to their benefit from our society/government. Even Warren Buffet once said he pays less tax than his secretary. That's just messed up.

I have no problem with the wealthy, but they need to pay the lion's share of tax because they have the lion's share of the wealth. While it is true that they already sort of do that, it's not enough. After loopholes, and other deductions, many effectively pay zero taxes. Plus a lot of their wealth is untouchable under current law because it is handed down generation to generation, untaxed. I suspect if you drill down a bit, the top .1% pay practically nothing, while the bottom .9% (of your top 1%) pay most of it. I'll try to verify that. We, as a household, were in the top few percent (not 1%) before we retired, and we were paying (according to TurboTax) about 22% (as I recall).

There is a lot of other stuff we should do regarding the budget. But we're just talking about taxes for the moment. I don't want to go in six different directions and lose the focus (it's hard for me not to type out other ideas and hijack the thread to appropriations and such!).