Tax Day Ramblings

Isn't it ironic that the reason Tax Day wasn't Friday the 15th this year is that Friday was holiday in D.C. because of a Saturday Holiday declared for Emancipation Day? 

It's not just "It's The Spending, Stupid" (or... or.... or....)  It's the stupid spending, too (or...  or... or...)

The evil-party meme that all we have to do to balance our budget is tax those evil rich is really getting a lot of air play.  As I wrote the other day,

A few months ago, when the debate over raising taxes on incomes over $250,000 was going around, the Secretary of Treasury, TurboTaxTim himself, said it would add about $30 billion for this year and $700 billion for 10 years.  $700 B, not 10 times 30 or $300 B?  They must be assuming some wild growth.  For this year, $30 billion from those taxpayers is 2% of the projected deficit of $1.5 trillion.  Really makes a difference, doesn't it.  Repeat after me: "It's the Spending, Stupid".

One of the under-reported (by which I mean "never-reported") aspects of the "Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy" is that they increased the percentage of the tax burden paid by the wealthy to levels never before seen in our history.  The top 1% pays nearly 42% of the total tax burden!  The morons on the bottom should be trying to thank those people, not take more of their stuff!

Our ruling class shows a fundamental failure to understand the difference between tax rates and tax revenues - or they think their stupid constituents don't understand it and take advantage of that.  Hauser's law is called a law because it has always worked.  At the left end of that chart, the top tax rate on incomes was up nearly 90%, at the end of the white area, the rate was closer to 30%, yet the revenues were constantly around 19% of GDP.  You can see the sharp divergence of income and spending when Obama took office.  The decrease in income is probably due to the extreme depth of this depression. 

On a day when Standard and Poor's downgrades their outlook on the US from "stable" to "negative", indicating an attitude that we don't take our debt seriously, what are we to do?  What's the sense of having a debt ceiling, if every time they get close to it, they just raise it?  What if we just cut spending? 

John Galt Fla over at Shenandoah puts the Paul Ryan plan under the microscope and shows how the numbers just don't work out.  (H/T, WSRA)  Unfortunately, his recommendations fall short in my estimation, and some of the numbers "just don't seem right" (Social security with a surplus?  Didn't that go away last year?).  All of his recommendations are cuts to discretionary spending, and as I understand it, you could shut down every last Federal agency except Medicare and Social Security and still not fix things. 

This chart is not that different than this year (remember, the evil party didn't submit a budget for this year - what they've been haggling over is the 2011 budget.  If you borrow about 40 cents out of every dollar you spend, you'd better consider cutting your spending by 40%.  If you ever want to pay off the debt you have, which is essentially 100% of GDP.  

So Ruger has announced their SR1911?  From what I see, John M Browning (PBUH) would be pleased.  For me?  I don't know... I am strangely drawn to 1911s until I pick them up.  One of these may be more in line for my safe.   Or one of these, if I'm ambitious.