Government Subsidies in this country are egregious, We supplement things like farming that seem to be doing great on their own. As if that wasn’t bad enough we are giving these subsidized goods to countries like Jamaica where they flood local economy’s with super cheap American goods preventing local business, farmers in particular, from becoming self sufficient. Cutting foreign aid sounds bad but in reality is one of the best things the United States could do for the global economy.

Good post. Keep it up.

I am aware of the Laffer curve. It’s kind of hard to tell where you are on the Laffer curve. If you are past a certain point, your point is true where you reduce taxes and revenues increase. However, if you are on the other side of the slope then increasing taxes increases revenue, too. (For example, Sweden has up to a 70% tax rate and is definitely at the point where less tax rate = more revenue, but even that is not assured).

If it were really up to me, we would have government for defense (of our actually shores, not across the ocean), maintaining our infrastructure, and regulating specific industries like power and oil. Let the states control the rest.

Repeal Bush tax cuts and tax the rich (Save $2,954 billion). That’s huge! I believe in everyone being taxed the same — no caps, etc. — and this is as close as I could come.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1% of households currently pay 27.6 percent of all federal taxes. More than they paid during the last year of Bill Clinton’s administration before the Bush Tax cuts.

Placing more of a tax burden upon the wealthy will only encourage them to become more creative in finding ways to reduce their income so as to avoid paying increased taxes. The wealthy also have the option of moving income offshore avoiding taxes completely.

If you want to see this country’s economy flourish the best thing you can do is to reduce taxes over all. When people have the opportunity to keep more of their money they are encouraged to do more with their money. As the economy grows so does the income in real dollars of the U.S. Government.

We get caught up too much with percentages and statistics. Raise taxes by a percentage point and the real dollars collected fall. Reduce taxes by a percentage point and real dollars increase.

Increase social security taxes for the wealthy (Add’l revenue of $536 billion). One of the things that really annoys me is that social security tax is only taken out of the first $102,000 worth of earnings. So for the people out there earnings millions of dollars a year, they are taxed as much as the guy earning $102,000 per year. That’s ridiculous. The plan in the game raises it to $180,000… if it were up to me, I’d remove the cap completely.

The Government is already misbehaving with social security. One of the reasons that the social security tax is capped for the wealthy is that they have provided for their own retirement. Something that any working stiff can do (as you well know).

What you’re proposing is socialism, and in my opinion we’ve already got too much of that in this country. The solutions are simple when individuals accept responsibility for their actions and their life. Too many people in this country believe that the government should take care of them. What? they need somebody to change their diaper? This country was built by people who believed that they were responsible for taking care of their life and that the government was responsible for building and protecting the infra-structure so that would be possible.

There are many areas in the U.S. budget where we are spending too much money. You’ve got some good ideas there. Increasing taxes on anybody is not the answer.

What it really illustrates to me is that there are really four things that you can adjust to have a significant impact on the budget. Everything else is small potatoes. Those four are defense, healthcare, social security, and the national debt. Everything is just really small stuff.

I’m also not a fan of raising the capital gains tax rates. Even if you just own index funds, the fund buys stocks, and stock increases are capital gains.