Yes

Oh boy. I'm not at all suggesting we confiscate all of that wealth. I'm attempting to illustrate for you in real numbers how ridiculous the proposition is. If confiscating all of their combined wealth won't fix the problem, how is tapping into an additional couple of percentage points going to make a difference.

How so? Please fill in the gap that I am missing here. Just how much additional revenue are you able to extract from the top tax brackets? How long before that is able to balance our annual deficit? What sort of time frame would you be looking at before we can even make a payment on the principal of the debt, much less pay it down to some reasonable level of our GDP?

If $4.5 trillion won't do it, how much would?

I don't believe it to be immoral for a government to tax. I don't believe it is wise to increase taxation on anyone until we've got a handle on spending.

Then you would have to argue in favor of the present system, which is so utterly complex that you either need to purchase software or professional assistance to properly calculate what you owe. This is where the truly wealthy, as opposed to high wage earners, are able to avoid paying what I'm guessing we'd both consider their fair share. Democrats and Republicans picking winners and losers all the while hiding these actions in a tax code that makes the Linux kernel read like a pamphlet.

If you honestly would like to see the rich pay more than they do today, the only feasible way is to have a tax code that we can all understand. Otherwise, the wealthy can never be touched by any increases in the tax rates. They'll pay their way to new loop holes and deductions through political donations and lobbying efforts.

I honestly don't think I fully grasp the ramifications of Mr. Cain's 999 plan, but I would hardly call it absurd. It's certainly focused in the right direction, as there can be no justification for the present complexity other than to continue to let both parties hide favors to special interests.

$4.5 trillion. According to that wonderful xkcd graph, that's the combined wealth of all the billionaires. Confiscate all of it, leave nothing behind. You would have balanced the annual deficit for the next couple of years. At which time we'd be in exactly the same position we're in right now.

To be clear, I really like a government that pays for stuff. I love my library, parks, police, fire department, schools and all the things that public moneys fund. I want to see that continue on into the future for my children. We can not continue to spend like we have in the past and insure the very same services we would both like to see our government provide. To do that is going to take more than name calling and taxing a percentage point.

Also, I am also not saying that tax increases shouldn't be considered. The real problem with that is the tax code is so impossibly complex, there's truly no telling who is going to pay what money. As you may have read in the news recently, GE just filed 57,000 pages worth of tax returns that showed they owed nothing from their billions of dollars of profits. They did this legally!

If anything, we need to lower the taxes on the rich and corporations dramatically... then remove all deductions and loopholes. You might start getting to some numbers that make a real difference then. Even after all that, if we don't also get a handle on how much is being spent we're still in a huge mess.

Thanks for that link. Great chart!

So what exactly would you propose happen to that income?

A) The wealthy keep what they've earned (The vast majority did not inherit)
B) Politicians get to decide what is "enough" money for a person to have and cut them off.
C) Forcibly extract more of their money out of the economy and into the government.

Really? Poor people hire people to work for them? Poor people invest in businesses and start up ventures? Exactly how do the measure "work harder"?

They don't pay a lower rate. They pay next to nothing for "income tax", which is because that's not where they get their money. That's the really insane part about calling for raising the taxes on the rich by tweaking on the income tax. Folks like Buffett don't get a paycheck like the rest of us. They are paying corporate and capitol gains tax. Messing with the income tax hits high wage earners... think doctors, lawyers. Income tax does not impact in any way the top 1%.

A simple Google search can show anyone genuinely interested in the matter that the wealthiest are paying for the bulk of the revenue already: "What percent of taxes are paid by the wealthy"?

As for seriously looking at a "tax increase" I would personally have 2 major requirements before even briefly considering this.

1. There must be real spending cuts in the very next budget.
- a. No 10 year projections. 1 year projection for those cuts.
- b. Not capping growth. Cuts. Real departments closing doors or laying people off.
2. Taxes must be increased on all of us across the board.

Neither side can do these things because neither are serious. This is all political theater while the problem is passed to the next congress.

The problem is both sides of the "raise taxes" and "cut spending" battle is that both are a bit flawed.

There are simply not enough taxable dollars in that lofty 1% realm to honestly make a difference. It makes for great popular sentiment as it supposedly impacts those "other" people. I also haven't heard a single viable argument as to how it is better to have that money get into the hands of a government that has shown a complete inability to manage money rather than let that money continue to flow into the economy. It's not like the 1%, 5% or top 10% of the income brackets are just hoarding their cash. That's the very same money that's needed to get the real economy going.

The "cut spending" folks aren't actually all that serious either. They're talking about 10 year projections, which anyone who has watched a little c-span knows damn good and well only last until the next election cycle. Nobody is seriously talking about social security or removing tax dollars from the medical industry. Nobody is seriously talking about drawing down our military deployments around the globe. All the rest of the budget is pennies in comparison.

If both sides got everything they're looking for in some grand compromise it wouldn't matter. We have so over spent our capacity to generate revenue we'll likely need to drive up that debt limit again before the next election cycle. So long as the dollar remains the reserve currency of the planet we can continue to print money for our problems. Well, until the rest of the planet decides we really can't pay our debts.

Probably talking about this one. I don't own an Asus tablet, but that sure looks like the kind of app/device combination that was being looked for.

"blame the poor minorities and the liberals..."

Couldn't be further from the truth. My anger isn't with folks that were trying to purchase as nice a home as they could in the given situation. Nor do I feel that if the banks were totally unregulated would everything have just worked out peachy. My anger is directed at those that manipulated the rules under the guise of "helping the poor", which in fact caused more harm than if they had left the established rules in place. The only folks that made out with all the regulatory changes were those banks, at least initially, that you're so angry with.

We have officials that are supposed to insure that the institutions who handle our money do so in a responsible manner. Those officials let us down, tweaked the rules, and completely screwed our economy. Where the hell was the SEC? How about all those finance committees in congress? Why was the Federal Reserve bankrolling the whole mess with record low interest rates when they knew it would create a huge bubble?

Getting all worked up in a froth about bankers being greedy is like screaming at the sky for being blue, or the ocean for being wet. The part that wouldn't make any sense at all is if the banks weren't greedy. This is why changing long established rules for the integrity of our financial system was a really bad idea, and it is clear when looking back on what happened when things changed. The banks didn't suddenly change what they were doing by themselves. The rules changed, which screwed us all, especially the lower end of the economic ladder.

Quite clear. You had a long standing regulation that prevented financial institutions from holding savings deposits while also investing the stock market revoked by both parties during the Clinton years. You also had a law passed in the Carter years to make it easier for people who couldn't (and as we can now see, shouldn't) have been granted a mortgage provided one. This law got itself teeth during the Clinton years to aggressively push these high risk mortgages out there, or the banks would suffer fines. All of this backed up by federally created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who then started bundling these high risk loans with AAA credit loans. All the while, anything that had once been considered wise lending practices were thrown out the window.

You're half right. It is the system, as in our government, that is ultimately responsible to hold the banks accountable. Not only did it fail in this duty, it actively pushed policies that created an artificial bubble that had no choice but to collapse.

Okay, so here's the part I really don't understand. Why are people complaining about the banks, when at every bad turn that led us to where we are was put in place by the government? Why aren't these folks called "Occupy Congress", or how about "Occupy Fannie Mae"?

The "bankers" have zero authority to "take" anything from you. Your government is the only entity that has that power, and it used it to re-supply those institutions that it had otherwise bankrupted with a set of really bad policies.

I get why folks are angry... just not why they're angry at what amounts to middle men in this mess.

I'm not all that clever, but it would seem that you have missed the entire point. The Constitution was meant to be vague in certain areas. This is where Federal, State, County, and City Laws come into play, to get into the specifics.

Are you worried that the sodomy police are going to break down your door or something? If a state has a law against it, that's the business of the government of that state. Murder, rape and theft aren't covered in the Constitution either. I don't believe any level of government needs to be concerning itself with sodomy, but neither do we need to have it explicitly granted as a right in the frame work of our nation. That'd be just silly.

As for abortion, only the most convoluted twisting of language can turn that into an issue of privacy... which is how Roe vs. Wade was decided. If that were the case then no laws regulating medical procedures could ever exist, which we know do. Abortion clearly has many facets to it, but privacy isn't one of them.

It resolves quite a bit actually. Without any ambiguity it explicitly states that the if the Constitution doesn't cover it, it is the responsibility of the states to come up with their own laws. You may not like the results of that, but that doesn't mean it's a difficult concept to grasp.

The constitution was meant to be a frame work to describe how this new government may enact laws. The enforcement is in allowing for a set of checks and balances to ensure that no one branch of government can operate without the approval of the others. You seem to be talking about it as though this is a description of criminal law.

Again, this isn't criminal law. Unless you are referring to the bits about treason. The notion of penalties truly has no business in any Constitution.

Not true. Case in point, recently the House of Reps threatened to cut funding for the military actions going in on Libya. Regardless of whether or not you agree with this, they have direct recourse for something they see as being in violation of the Constitution. Every branch has powers to hold other branches accountable to the Constitution and federal law. Just because the House decides not to utilize it's power of the purse in this case does not mean it doesn't exist.

Yeah... that sort of comes with the ability to write the laws the court is responsible for interpreting.

If you were looking for a collection of laws to be enforced then you won't, nor should you expect to, find that in the Constitution. Unfortunately you get some cruft in there like the 18th and 21st amendments doing things that federal law should have been used for. The Constitution is supposed to be the frame work by which the laws are created, not the container of the laws themselves.

Here ya go:

Perhaps we should put in a very clear right to privacy

Okay:

such as the right to contraception, to interracial marriage, and to abortion, perhaps

Sounds good, how about we toss this bit into there as well:

instead of having a non-elected Supreme Court cobble that together.

If there is a flaw in the Constitution, it is a lack of checks on the court. I honestly don't know how you could set it up differently.

How do we know that this hasn't already happened?