When you spend a few trillion bucks you don’t have, at some point you need to come up with a plan to pay that money back. If you don’t, you look bad and no messianic cult figure ever wants to look like he doesn’t know what’s up. If you are a working stiff you have two ways to get money to pay off your debts, earn more or spend less. If you own the printing press like the Federal Government you have another option, create inflation. For example, if you printed enough money to cause inflation to rise by a factor of ten you could pay back a trillion dollars of debt with money that is in reality only worth 100 billion. The down side of that is that milk ends up costing thirty-three dollars a gallon.
Another thing a government can do to raise revenue to pay off their debt is expand the economy. That one is tough when you have just bought GM, AIG and are getting ready to nationalize health care. Corporate types aren’t too keen to expand their businesses when Uncle Sam is looking to control them.
A third option is to raise taxes. When President Obama was still candidate Obama he promised not to raise taxes on the middle class. At least I think that’s what he said, or did he say income taxes? Then too, there was a little vacillation on what was meant by middle class. Was it earners over $250,000 or $150,000?
If President Obama were to take all of the money from the top five percent of all folks in the country I’m not sure he could raise the eleven or twelve trillion needed to pay off the debt. Since he has painted himself into a corner with the income tax pledge he has asked a blue ribbon panel to come up with some ideas for raising revenue. Here are their recommendations:
The Ambition Tax: It’s really not fair that you are willing to do more that someone else. That un-levels the playing field and gives you an advantage over lazy people who live around you. Take a second job and you pay more! Start a business and meet your new partner, Uncle Sam. You go back to school to try to get ahead, pay up sucker!
The Tax Tax: If you can afford to pay taxes you obviously have money. If you have money you can afford to pay more. The more you have already paid the more you can afford to pay. I know it sounds like circular logic but circular logic works because circular logic works!
Gun Tax: The second amendment has a loophole so big you could drive a national debt through it! By taxing guns and bullets we could suck dry the coffers of the NRA and gun owners. The beauty of this is that when the economic crisis is over the gun nuts and the NRA will be as broke as GM!
The Flush Tax: People who eat too much could be spending less money on food and more on the government. This proposal would have the government put flush meters on all toilets and charge surtax per flush. This would have the added benefit of decreasing carbon emissions.
The Talk Radio Tax: Since liberal talk radio is an oxymoron and limited to the publicly funded NPR we can eliminate the competition and raise a ton of cash by taxing ads places on talk radio shows.