> Right now you're just making up numbers so I can't really debate your point.
No, I'm not, and it's a bit disrespectful of you to say so. You could have verified what I was saying with a mere sixty seconds of fact-checking on your own.
I was talking about receipts, just like earlier in the paragraph. What tax it comes from really does not matter for the purposes of this discussion. Receipts would have had to increase somewhere on the order of 10-20% during the Bush years for that period to have a balanced budget. That's according to this chart (http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/growth-federal-spend...). Now, this is from a conservative think-tank, so take that with whatever grains of salt you will, but this is consistent with spending charts I have seen on non-partisan sites.
We weren't talking about balancing the budget we were talking about eliminating the debt and you didn't say 10-20% you said 5-10%. So do you have a source for the 5-10% or am I right that you just made that number up?
I don't mean to flame but I based my statement on facts not a desire to disrespect you. Namely the Total U.S. tax revenue which was $2.1trillion. 10% of that is $210 billion which is less than half the interest on our national debt
(btw - The U.S. deficit for 2011 was $1.5 trillion)
For the record I'm not trying to be holier than thou. I've absolutely guesstimated (aka "made up") numbers in the heat of the moment. But when someone called me on it I didn't try to be indignant about it
Typically "eliminating the debt" is interpreted as building a modest surplus. No one is claiming it can be completely done away with immediately. That simply requires balancing the budget + a few percent. It's true that my 5-10% number was an estimate, as was the 10-20% number; that is not the same as making numbers up.
Even the estimate that is most generous to your position is more than sufficient to support my argument. It could be twice again that amount (40%) and still not reach the levels of unworkability you posited in your original post, considering a number of other countries are under burdens more than 60 or more percent above the United States'. You can pick all the nits in the world but that fact remains.
If we managed to increase that by 40% that would generate an extra $840 billion per year.
(Keep in mind that's massively generous because that would mean a 40% increase in everyone's taxes not just the top earners)
The total debt right now is $14.7 trillion. Even the most conservative CBO estimates had us adding $700 billion per year to the debt (usdebtclock.org) and those were very conservative estimates.
So your 40% increase doesn't even deal with the deficit. Much less the debt or the unfunded liabilities.
And that's assuming you could get that. My original point was people will subvert the tax code when tax rates get high enough to justify accountants and lawyers to do so. That's why a 90% tax rate didn't produce dramatically more revenue per capita.
No, I'm not, and it's a bit disrespectful of you to say so. You could have verified what I was saying with a mere sixty seconds of fact-checking on your own.
I was talking about receipts, just like earlier in the paragraph. What tax it comes from really does not matter for the purposes of this discussion. Receipts would have had to increase somewhere on the order of 10-20% during the Bush years for that period to have a balanced budget. That's according to this chart (http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/growth-federal-spend...). Now, this is from a conservative think-tank, so take that with whatever grains of salt you will, but this is consistent with spending charts I have seen on non-partisan sites.