I appreciate the work that you have put into researching this.
I’m still not convinced that the process doesn’t start at the top and work its way down as opposed to the old tried and true American way of cutting “entitlements” (fucking hate that word) first. I think that it would make much more sense to start by making those who have used all kinds of tax loopholes and defied regulation to shift the burden onto the tax payers (coal plants, Walmart tesla etc.) and essentially have tax payers help prop up their businesses and the government be their piggy banks (defense contractors and Haliburton etc.) than to go back to what we have been doing for so long and cutting programs that actually help improve the way of life gdp and don’t look like real money on paper like snap Medicaid and Medicare.
That’s FDR kind of stuff. And it’s stuff that helps get us back into the black policy and happiness wise which is a metric that no one wants to be added to how to factor the gdp because it would send America to dead last in the world. This place is a prison.
But, separately, I am asserting that the theoretical amount of money we gain is not the right order of magnitude. What you propose by itself would yield revenue, but barely enough to make a dent.
And if I’m wrong, if it’s somehow an extremely large amount of money that’s gained, we run into a more fundamental issue: if we are going to tax such huge percentage of GDP (let’s say over 30%, well above the EU average) getting setup to spend it correctly is very tricky. Historically, such a sharp rise would be a sign of civilizational collapse, especially for a large heterogenous “empire” like the United States (as opposed to somewhere like Denmark, a relatively compact state that developed a high-tax economy gradually).
The idea is good. But it’s just not enough by itself, even theoretically, once borrowing costs explode, which is all-but-certain to happen now. I simply do not agree that tax reform alone is going to fix this.
I appreciate the work that you have put into researching this.
I’m still not convinced that the process doesn’t start at the top and work its way down as opposed to the old tried and true American way of cutting “entitlements” (fucking hate that word) first. I think that it would make much more sense to start by making those who have used all kinds of tax loopholes and defied regulation to shift the burden onto the tax payers (coal plants, Walmart tesla etc.) and essentially have tax payers help prop up their businesses and the government be their piggy banks (defense contractors and Haliburton etc.) than to go back to what we have been doing for so long and cutting programs that actually help improve the way of life gdp and don’t look like real money on paper like snap Medicaid and Medicare.
That’s FDR kind of stuff. And it’s stuff that helps get us back into the black policy and happiness wise which is a metric that no one wants to be added to how to factor the gdp because it would send America to dead last in the world. This place is a prison.
It’s a good idea. Kill the tax loopholes.
But, separately, I am asserting that the theoretical amount of money we gain is not the right order of magnitude. What you propose by itself would yield revenue, but barely enough to make a dent.
And if I’m wrong, if it’s somehow an extremely large amount of money that’s gained, we run into a more fundamental issue: if we are going to tax such huge percentage of GDP (let’s say over 30%, well above the EU average) getting setup to spend it correctly is very tricky. Historically, such a sharp rise would be a sign of civilizational collapse, especially for a large heterogenous “empire” like the United States (as opposed to somewhere like Denmark, a relatively compact state that developed a high-tax economy gradually).
The idea is good. But it’s just not enough by itself, even theoretically, once borrowing costs explode, which is all-but-certain to happen now. I simply do not agree that tax reform alone is going to fix this.