January - March 2012
Get a Grip: It’s Only Money
“Read my lips: No new taxes.” --
So spoke President Bush, the elder, in the years crossing the time between Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
In a posting from The Atlantic on Yahoo Finance, a recent report of the McKinsey Global Institute states that institutions and households in the United States own assets worth 58.1 trillion dollars. That is more than one quarter of the 200 trillion dollar value of all assets owned world-wide by all economic participants. US Households alone own 27 trillion dollars worth of the world’s total assets.
Since World War II marginal tax rates on the highest US annual incomes have fallen from a high of about 90% to the current low of about 35%. Yet demands from some US citizens for no new tax increases threaten the viability of Federal programs like these:
- Social Security
- Medicare and Medicaid
- Aid to public hospitals
- Aid to education
- Aid to the disabled
- Aid to the poor
- Aid to the unemployed
- Bank guarantees for student loans
- Bank guarantees for home buyer loans
To avoid cuts to the above listed programs revenue to fund them must be maintained. Without raising the national debt there are only four ways to solve any future funding problems of these programs:
- Collect more taxes
- Cut tax deductions and credits
- Cut other government programs
- Reduce benefit payments
So what kind of society do we want to have in America? The choice is ours. The time for decision is now. Demand what you want from our politicians.
