The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
“A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.” -- Charles Wheelan, "Naked Economics"
Comments
Also, a BOOYAH! Hell ya!
The Bush tax cuts prevented the real estate bubble and the resulting Depression that we're in today
It was too good to be true...
Problem with this video: what Johnson does NOT say is that he wants to replace all of those taxes with the "Fair Tax" consumption tax, supposedly revenue neutral.
It may or may not be, but I had the same concern as to why he didn't give the rest of his usual spiel and say what he was going to do instead.
And Johnson's "fair tax" is regressive no matter how you slice it. On a percentage basis, higher-income people tend to spend less of their income than lower-income people.
And your question "But what good is income without spending it?" is silly. Did you ever hear of investing?
You should look a little closer before you claim that the Fair Tax "is regressive no matter how you slice it." Although this graph does rise less steeply above a million dollars, there is no way it can be described as anything other than progressive.
And your question, "Did you ever hear of investing?" is even sillier. You look at the surface of things, but rarely follow through to consider their consequences.
It would be impossible to invest money if nobody was going to spend that money.
See how that works anonone?