A Call for Higher Taxes Part III - Time to do your Patriotic Duty, America!

*** UPDATE - Cross posted at Flopping Aces ***

Ok, I've tried. I really have. I've thrown out ideas for tax increases that will help, rather than harm our economy. I've proposed tax increases that will actually help grow the economy while providing revenue and I've also suggested a new tax to allow 6.5 billion entitlement free riders to pay their fair share. Nobody in Washington is listening or seems to be taking our growing budget deficit seriously, so it's time for an extreme measure - we pay for the deficit. Now.

Even though our federal debt continues to grow in both dollars as well as percentage of our GDP, the mere suggestion that we should not spend more than our grandchildren will ever be able to repay is branded as heartless extremism. Since we can't prevent the government from spending ever more of out money, it's time to buck up and accept that, to paraphrase Chris Berman, we can't stop our elected leaders; we can only hope to contain them.

How much is the federal debt right now? Current numbers have us just under $14.350 trillion dollars, and the adult population of the United States around 232,458,000. Just over 47% pay no federal income tax and the rest of us fall into various tax brackets based on level of income. Here is my proposal - every American pitches in and helps to pay for the debt - no exemptions, no loopholes and no exceptions. Everyone will feel some pain as the entire nation joins in this shared sacrifice.

In the table below I created a draft proposal for how much each American should be charged. Here are my assumptions:

• It starts with some basic reference info that I took from various government sites - total debt, population, tax brackets and how many people are in each


• Everyone's share is based on the lowest dollar amount on their income tax bracket - no point in punishing the people at the bottom of each to subsidize those at the top


• No children - my numbers are based on what the U.S. Census counts as an adult


• For the people who pay no taxes I gave them a base rate of $20,000/year for several reasons. First, since multiplying any number by zero gets you zero we had to start somewhere, and their vast numbers will skew any efforts to spread the pain among all Americans. Naturally, they will want to share in the sacrifice so I picked an arbitrary number that will help them feel the pain without causing too much pain.


• I further penalized the top tax bracket by assuming an income of $10 million per year. This takes some of the burden off of the middle and lower classes and it's money that they don't need anyway. This would need to be further bracketed so as not to cripple people who are just reaching the $1M mark, but this is a starting point.


• The columns to the right explain all of my calculations so that you can see exactly what your fair share is.
  

Now take a look at what you or your family needs to pay - painful, eh? A quick look at the bill that Sister Babe and I would be on the hook for is enough to make me squirm, but hey it's time to join our fellow Americans and do our patriotic duty! In terms of implementing this, I have a few ideas:

• No, nobody will be expected to pay all at once. Any individual can set up a payment plan with the treasury


• Every person's payment status will be shown publicly on the web in a national switchboard - no income or bracket info, but just the name and status - Paid in Full, On a Payment Plan (interest free, it is our money after all), Refused to Pay (which will lead to incarceration), Unable to Locate, or Exempt. This will be great for keeping people honest, as the blogosphere will have a field day monitoring the likes of politicians, bank executives, union leaders, oil company leadership, etc.


• Yes, I did just say exempt for that last category. Although there should be no exceptions, it is understood that some people will be unable to pay - the incarcerated, institutionalized, hospitalized, etc. Each exception will have to be reviewed on a case by case basis. No group waivers like Obamacare - this time privilege does not get you special treatment.


• How do we fund these waivers? Easy. The funds are deducted directly from the campaign funds of the individual's Senator or Representative who approves the waiver. Any shortfalls will be taken from the national party's campaign coffers. Yes, this punishes politicians disproportionately but they carry a disproportionate share of blame for the debt.

This is the last of my tax proposals that have no chance of seeing the light of day. If Sister Babe and I were to get handed a bill for our share, it would kill any discretionary spending by us. Vacations, dining out, going to the movies, even our most basic expenses will need to get scrutinized. And this will have the macro effect across the country crippling the industries that I just mentioned. And of course, as we further punish business owners beyond what this administration is already doing, we'll see even less hiring as every dollar of disposable income gets assimilated by the Treasury. The effects on our economy would be absolutely ruinous. Basically it's like the tax cuts that Dubya enacted in 2000 to get us past the internet bubble recession, only in reverse. Think of this as the ant-stimulus. But at least we'll be doing our patriotic duty!

And this proposal is not a substitute for your already existing tax bills - we're doing this exercise because this debt represents how much we've outspent what we're already giving our government. This also won't be the last time we see such bills. Any time the federal government runs a deficit the people will be hit with additional one time surcharges based on the schedule I've listed above. We would feel a lot of pain, but it would wake everybody up, and I'll bet that once those bills come people will start paying attention to how their money is being spent. And at long last most of America will finally understand that calling for some sanity to government spending is not an extremist position.