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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

This posting ran last October 2008. Let's look at it again shall we? And these projections were without health care for all!


This is old news. Apparently it needs to be repeated over and over. This is the "tomato that is going to eat Philadelphia". Of course I speak of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And still we go on, year after year, one year indistinguishable from the next, and nothing happens. Kinda like claiming staring into a bug zapper every evening all night long is your major accomplishment in life.

Read the following, if you can, from the May 2008 Congressional Budget Office report "The Long-Term Economic Effects of Some Alternative Budget Policies" :
"How would the economy be affected if the projected rise in primary spending under CBO’s alternative fiscal scenario (from about 18 percent of GDP in 2007 to about35 percent in 2082) was financed entirely by a proportional across-the-board increase in individual and corporate income tax rates? Answering that question is difficult because the economic models that economists have developed so far would have to be pushed well outside the range for which they were initially developed. Any numerical estimate would be very speculative and heavily dependent on the model producing it.
Nonetheless, tax rates would have to be raised by substantial amounts to finance the
level of spending projected for 2082 under CBO’s alternative fiscal scenario. With no
economic feedbacks taken into account and under an assumption that raising marginal
tax rates was the only mechanism used to balance the budget, tax rates would
have to more than double. The tax rate for the lowest tax bracket would have to be
increased from 10 percent to 25 percent; the tax rate on incomes in the current
25 percent bracket would have to be increased to 63 percent; and the tax rate of the
highest bracket would have to be raised from 35 percent to 88 percent. The top corporate
income tax rate would also increase from 35 percent to 88 percent. Such tax
rates would significantly reduce economic activity and would create serious problems
with tax avoidance and tax evasion."
Now go back to work and pay up sucker!

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