I can agree with you on the banks, and i look to big business much the same really.
For his itemized bit, not really sure. There area always loop holes and amendments to make when it comes to any legislation that covers such a broad specrtum. I can only guess that is what he ment with
" Do this right, and you end up with more tax revenue from high-income people (which allows the "tax the rich" types to be happy) but lower rates (which lets the Tea Party folks claim victory). Making the system fairer should be doable."
On SS, i think he said "higher costs for higher-end retirees." Sounds like it mostly comes down to paying more those who can afford it.
I think his definition of "higher-end" is pretty fungible. The number one reason people move over to itemizing is homeownership. Homeownership doesn't put you in the realm of rich, but he refers to all itemizers as higher-end. He might intend to mean people making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, but the mechanisms he describes are very middle of the road in terms of tax base. On the housing side, even if unintentional due to blindness to th demographics of the tax base, he's pretty clearly striking into households with incomes in the 80-90k range. That's solidly into the heart of the middle class and far from rich.
He uses the same terminology for SS. To give some perspective on that, lets assume your mid 80k household wants to have 1 million by retirement, and didn't reach the mid-80 mark until say 36 or so. Lets say your first real 30k job was at age 26. You'd have to put away roughly 60% of your take home at 3-5% interest to get a nest egg that would give you the equivalent of 80k's take home dollar amount at 3-5% interest. Charging that category of person for SS, but no really paying out would definitely put them in a serious income bind.
Even if you jack it up to the people who JUST make it over the threshold and get raped by the AMT, you have some heavy math to make it all work out even if you get rid of the AMT.
The guy has some generalities spewed out by people he agrees with. They sound like they will only ask the people on his boat to sacrifice something they can afford to. The problem is he assumes everyone on the boat is demographically similar to him.
I don't have an answer either. I do think a useful step one to coming up with an answer would be to create a tax category for sole proprietor businesses and small businesses that enshrine the tax advantages they get by filing business revenue under their income tax. They aren't rich yet, and they are an engine of job creation. By isolating them form the realm of income tax legislation, you can now debate who pays what more honestly because you have eliminated the most problematic category.
A guy making $200k salary at a bank is on a whole different plane of actual spendable income than someone booing $200k of income as a sole proprietor of a business that takes expenses out of their income for running the business. One has a consistent household income of $120k, the other probably closer to $60-70k with lots of peaks and valleys.
Yep, those fanatics and their opposition to unlimited debt ceilings will destroy America, as the FF has planed. unlimited
Dont think you read that or you might have more to say along the real subject..
raz-00
Although I agree with him about the rabid bickering on both sides hoping the other side will be the easiest to blame for... whatever... in the next election cycle's flurry of negative ads.
His forgiving of the banks in this go round is misplaced, and his assertion that we aren't actually facing a debt problem is not correct. His reliance on references to the fact that you would get a bad grade in an economics class for stating otherwise might be true, but I'll also point out the whole planet burned through the emergency measures traditional economics say will fix stuff.
The money supply has ballooned, and and the debt curve has gone asymptotic. You and I and other mere mortals operate on a small fraction of the economy. The majority of it just exists in ledgers chasing other large piles of ledger entries. Nothing tangible is bought or sold with it, but the growth of those ledger entries is primarily dependent on what that fraction you and I dwell in actually does. That fraction is set to become a rounding error.
This is a problem. Economists don't have an answer for it. The banks think it is preferable to their pile of ledger entries taking a hit, at least until next quarter rolls around, and the government would rather argue because if they moved past that, they'd have to argue over things being better after they destroyed the economy as we know it. So why not point fingers and let it destroy itself?
As for the authors solutions... End itemized deductions? Well there goes the mortgage interest tax break. Which means housing plummets more. Which means leveraged bundles of leveraged assets take a sudden massive hit. It also means pretty much every homeowner wants your balls in a sling. Decrease SS payouts, and you have a bunch of voters who can't pay their bills. Not only do you have no re-election, but you also increase housing defaults, and take a lot of money out of multiple sectors of the economy.