I believe your premise: “No nation has ever taxed it’s way into prosperity” is completely wrong. Government’s that invest create better economies than government’s that don’t. For example, some southern states are so starved for resources that their education systems suck, their infrastructures suck and their economies suck. The rich hoarding their money does not create healthy economies. As Paul Wellstone said “We all do better when we all do better.”

Yes, tax burdens fall disproportionally on the rich. So what? Taxing the poor is not effective and starving the government of money creates ineffective governments which undermines our values, our economy and our potential for growth.

OF COURSE a surplus is a good thing. It means we balanced the budget and had a little extra. Am I gonna cry because some mulit-millionaire is out a fraction of a percent of his wealth? Fuck no. There is no more patriotic act than supporting your country financially.

You seem to be implying that government is not necessary, which is insane.

John Kerry was promising to raise taxes on everyone earning over $200,000 the last time he ran. I also heard him a few months ago complaining about “tax cuts for the rich”, low paying jobs, and jobs going over seas. I’d like someone to exlplain to me how raising someone else’s taxes provides us all with a net benefit.

More Americans work for small businesses than any other kind, and I am small business owner. The day they announce a tax cut, it does nothing for me. It takes time for me to save the money. When I do, most of it will be invested in growth and upgrading equipment, both of which puts people to work. When you multiply me by all the small businesses in America, I believe THAT is what booms an economy.

Americans have had “tax cuts for the rich” pounded into them by a mostly liberal media for how long now? When I hear that, what I really hear is “tax cuts for the employers.” I ask you something. How do you raise an employer’s taxes AND expect them to hand out raises and increased benefits?

Even if a wealthy person only invests in the stock market, I believe that provides a net benefit. Stock prices are based on supply and demand. I also believe that far more stocks are held as long term retirement investments via mutual funds than by individuals who are trying to make a quick buck with single stocks. It’s a volume thing. The more people who are in, the more the value goes up for everyone. The more the value goes up, the more those drawing out for retirement have available to spend on goods and services, again, putting people to work to PROVIDE those goods and services.

Instead of focusing on partisanship, let’s just focus on nuts and bolts/what works and what doesn’t. As far as I’m concerned, there are two parties. The liberal one and the more liberal one. The Republicans are nowhere near where they need to be but, tax raising Democrats aren’t the solution, either. Even the Republicans didn’t stand up the last time around and say “Look at how our tax cuts brought us out of Bill Clinton’s recession. Let’s do it again and again until it doesn’t work.”

Who thinks that the government having a surplus at the end of Clinton while the private sector was headed into a recession was a GOOD THING? Where should that money have been?

I think the estimated 10-12 million illegals in this country should have any legal American crying for a national sales tax to remove the automatic earning advantage an illegal has when no deductions are coming out. I’m sure it will break everyone’s heart when a drug dealer has to pay income tax and FICA on his next BMW purchase.

First, why don’t you talk about the staggering amounts of money the Republican party spends of corporate wellfare. Look at the tens of billions the Republican party gave away to the pharmacutical and insurance industries in the recent Medicare Reform Bill. To me that is more obscene than the growth in military spending. Its staggering to see how much of our money the Republicans gave away in exchange for large political contributions. This is just one example of a cancer that is eating away at our political system. Until we reform campaign finance, the politicians have an incentive to trade billions of our dollars for millions in campaign contributions so they can buy elections with politicals ads to an uninformed & apathetic electorate. We need to hit both the methods of political fundraising and pork barrel legislation at the same time. Any proposal to alter the uninformed and apathetic electorate would be silly & totally impractical so I will refrain from that line of thought.

Second, I do not think universal health coverage provided by the federal government will work unless we come up with a totally different approach. The inefficiencies of government distribution of our collective wealth makes it prohibitive. In lieu of something along the lines of Hillary Clinton’s proposal from the early nineties, I would prefer to see some direct subsidy to the hospitals for treating uninsured patients. We still need to leave the privately created mechanisms in place (for the most part) and also allow for a profit motive that will keep the human and financial capital flowing into healthcare.

Third, I do not think the rich should pay so much more as they do today. The bottom 50% of income earners pay virtually nothing. The bottom 75% pay less than they draw out. That means that the top 25% of income earners pay for everyone. Lets set aside the arguements of equity, fairness and my discomfort for other people getting comfortable leaving their hands in my pockets just because they are deeper. Lets look at the corrosive effect this has had on our political system. When 75% of the eligible voters take more than they contribute, how motivated do you think they will be to hold politicians accountable for the obscene waste in pork barrel bills and inefficient distribution of governement resources? That is why I support a less “progressive” and more flat tax structure. Until more people feel the pain of bad government, nothing will change. Self interest will be at the heart of any true reform.

Fourth, I think crime is an issue with many sides. For the sake of brevity, I will try to reduce it to two. The flow of new people into criminal behavior should be combated. I agree 100% with you that better education is a key for this to happen specifically because better educated people are more likely to earn a better income and more likely to provide a stable family environment for their children. In time, the increase in stable families will decrease the numbers of new criminals. As for the existing criminals, however, we have to sometimes be willing to cut our losses. More prisons should be built and hard labor should be the rule. Work these guys long and hard to pay for their keep and allow the extra revenue to flow into more prisons so we can keep these guys there for the full term. When you can get out in less than 5 years for armed robbery, its hard for me to think we have a credible deterrent for criminals.

Fifth, I want to give you another way to look at controlling costs in healthcare. I work for a medical equipment company so I have some direct knowledge in this area. We should spend more time on disease management and assisting the seniors (by far the biggest healthcare spenders) in staying in their homes longer. When a person goes into a nursing home and their funds are exhausted, medicare will easily pay 25 to 30 K per year for their being warehoused in a nursing home until they die. No quality of life for the senior and a big additional costs to the federal government. If a few relatively inexpensive items such as a raised commode seat, lift chair, power chair or walker can allow this person to get around in their own home longer, then you have saved the federal goverment a lot of cash and allowed this person to stay in their home and remain independent longer. Second, with degenerative diseases like diabetes and respiratory problems such as COPD, the biggest avoidable cost is noncompliance. When a diabetic does not check his blood suger, take his insulin, montitor his diet, etc, then he speeds up the larger healthcare costs such as kidney failure, amputation, blindness, etc. Similar things happen on the respiratory side. By spending a disproportionately smaller ammount on the front end in training, education and compliance monitoring, we could save hundreds of billions of dollars and add years of quality life to millions of people suffering from these degenerative medical conditions. Private insurance companies are aware that disease management is the next reveloutionary step in healthcare, but they are still years away from understanding how to properly implement it. Medicare is so clueless that they could not find the issue if you beat them over the head with it. An issue like disease management cannot be implemented by a government organization or even a major insurance company such as BlueCross. Its best implementation will come from people at the local level working under a string of carrots laid out by the private insurance comapanies and the federal goverment. If you want, I could go into greatter detail with you on this subject.

Sixth, is another idea about controlling healthcare costs. Sorry, but this is a big issue to me. : ) Why not reform our legal system so every sleezy lawyer out there does not have the incentive to run up legal costs unneccisarily. I am not talking about the ridiculous big awards like the tobacco suits. I am talking about a systmen where ambulance chasers and other crooks who happen to be lawyers know exactly where the line is for a settlement even when everyone knows the suit us baseless. If you bring lawsuits under control and regulate the legal industry better, then you will cut down on healthcare insurance, workers’ compensation, auto insurance, general liability insurance, etc. This will not only save the federal goverment billions of dollars by lowering healthcare costs, but it will also put huge sums back into the hands of everyone through lower insurance premiums. Isn’t creating more discretionary income for working people at the heart of most “liberal” tax policy? If so, then why not have sympathy for helping payors of insurance premiums by reforming the legal system.

Sorry if this seems a bit disjointed and sorry for my spelling and grammer errors. I did this in a rush on my lunchbreak while eating a sandwich. Hopefully, the content will make the other problems with my response a little more tolerable.

Take care and keep it up.