As I posted in the "Fiscal Cliff" thread.
IIRC, and someone can check my math. If we raise taxes on the "rich" (those making $250,000 a year or more), per the CBO that will raise $65 billion dollars in 2013.
Federal Spending is estimated at $10.5 billion. Per day. So getting the "wealthy" to "pay their fair share" gets us a week's worth of federal spending.
And Obama is proposing spending $202 billion more in 2013 then we did in 2012.
I'm really convinced that the problem is NOT on the revenue side of the ledger.
However, I will also point out that the CBO uses "Straight Line" analysis. Meaning that they don't take into account that people change their behaviors in response to changes in tax rates, nor the compounded "downstream" effects that Myself points out in his posts. You would have thought they would have learned from the 1991 Luxury Tax fiasco
When it was over, 25,000 workers had lost their jobs building yachts, and 75,000 more jobs were lost in companies that supplied yacht parts and material. The U.S., which had been a net exporter of yachts, became a net importer as U.S. companies closed. Jobs shifted to companies in Europe and the Bahamas. The U.S. Treasury collected zero revenue from the sales driven overseas.
Back then, Congress told us that the luxury tax on boats, aircraft and jewelry would raise $31 million in revenue a year. Instead, the tax destroyed 330 jobs in jewelry manufacturing and 1,470 in the aircraft industry, in addition to the thousands destroyed in the yacht industry. Those job losses cost the government a total of $24.2 million in unemployment benefits and lost income tax revenues. The net effect of the luxury tax was a loss of $7.6 million in fiscal 1991, which means Congress' projection was off by $38.6 million. The Joint Economic Committee concluded that the value of jobs lost in just the first six months of the luxury tax was $159.6 million.
http://lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams92.1.htmlSo let's do it again!!! In the middle of a recession !!! What could possibly go wrong ?
