yea really, now everyone is a Marxist.
Actually it is VERY HARD to get charitable deductions to make a difference if it is your only itemization. You have to give A LOT to charity on a middle class income to do that. For single people the standard deduction was $5,800, $11,600 married. So .... if your single and give $6000 to charity have at it, or married and give $12,000 to charity. Most middle class people are not giving that much to charity (in fact it beats what many contribute to their own retirement accounts which of course aren't itemizable
). See what I mean most of these deductions only make any sense at all to the middle class if you are able to itemize.
Yes they may get a world with no government benefits, but I'm not sure most will actually like it when they do. Now there is plenty, plenty, of government involvement that I can do the unintended (only I suspect it's not) consequences analysis on. Like the government basically owns the housing market by now. Was that necessary? Were private (at least nominally private aka the banks) lenders really some horrible horrible thing for the housing market? I dont' think so. Was there perhaps some freezeup in lending, yea but more so, noone is going to lend at conditions that keep current housing prices (especially in bubble markets) propped up. Enter the government. Was this a bailout? Yes I think so. Ok but back to my point, the things that are going to get cut are ultimately not things like this, it's ultimately social security and so on. People will have a world that no tax revenue funds, but will they like it? The ultimate truth is most people have not saved enough to do retirement alone with no social security. A few may have pensions (oh the irony if the right wing charge to cut ends up being mostly cheered for by those with government jobs!! who aren't even making it in the private sector), most people even the savers (and many arent' savers), but even the savers will not likely end up accumulating enough on the only sometimes matched 401k and so on to do retirement alone. So how to you fund the government if noone is willing to pay taxes? 30% like I said is not much more than my only middle class income is paying, is somewhat progressive. Now if the entire charge to defund government was aimed: we'll do the least damage to the poorer people in society while doing so, then hmm, as in first we'll defund everything benefitting the richer people, these farm subsides to giant agribusiness they have to go first, department of energy subsidizies to fossil fuels have to go first, etc. etc.. Then I think the poor would still be hurt by government defunding but if at least the aim was to do the least damage to them while attaining libertopia it would be one thing. But that's not the way it is going to play out. In fact the average persons money has alrelady been stolen in so many ways but they dont' know. The BIG ENTITIES have ALREADY been bailed (the banks etc.) with money we did not have (on debt, on money creation). And now there will be nothing left for joe schmoe poor or middle class, and we'll make sure no taxes will even be paid so that there will be anything left.
Where was the outcry on NDAA? Oh I know many people were against it in principle and that is good, but even then how much did they do? I'm sure a few did a lot, most did not do much. I wrote my congress people, the president, called them, went to a protest (in which everyone left etc.
). I didn't do enough, how many even did this? The ACLU is in one constant never ending battle for our civil liberties these days (and I don't just mean some lefty issues the ACLU may get involved in, I mean REAL civil liberties fights, on what I would almost universally consider civil liberties). How many know? How many care? But 30% taxes are the epitomy of government tyranny, reallly? Taxes especially very direct ones (not hidding somewhere 50 miles deep within the tax codes) even compared to another way the government takes your money (inflation and money creation) are benign. It's much easier to just plan to hand 30% over to the government in taxation than it is to plan for say hyperinflation or even long run ordinary run of the mill high inflation (hey maybe especially for the middle class but hey).
[ETA: social security and medicare are currently self-funded through payroll taxes though (and if the cap was raised on the income subject to Social Security taxation, Social Security could be self-funded under current conditions pretty much indefinitely. So then you ask what is worth still funding in the Federal government that isn't self-funded? Food stamps, unemployment, welfare, other general aid, regulation of environmental/worker protections, national parks, green policies (at current far outweighed by non-green policies), medicaid. I'm not sure this actually amounts to that much money. Minimal defense? Well fine it should be less than most other countries in the world pay for theirs since it's been overfunded for years, so drastic cuts.]
Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
Well I'm 20%. I just looked at a paycheck. So it came out to 19.6% I have paid so far of my income for federal taxes when you include SS and medicare (I am currently contributing 12% to my 401k - I don't expect anyone to be impressed by that, I'm not, I could do better. But taxes would be higher without that). That's overall, not marginal. I consider my income middle middle class for living in California (it's not cheap to live here, I mean sure this income might be ALL THAT somewhere in the country but ...).
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