Why Aren't The Rich Paying 50% in Taxes?

Tax Day (April 18) is fast approaching, which means anxiety and night sweats for about 99 percent of taxpayers.

And bitching and moaning by those at the top of the income pyramid about how they aren't forced to pay more in taxes. Secretary of State and cattle-futures queen Hillary Clinton, super-investor Warren Buffett, and best-selling author Stephen King have all recently carped about how rich folks like them should be paying more in taxes. King recently told a Florida rally, "As a rich person, I'm paying 28 percent in taxes. What I want to ask you is, Why am I not paying 50?"

Such rhetorical questions miss the point when it comes to the country's balance sheet. The U.S. doesn't have a revenue problem or a tax-rate problem. We've got a spending problem. Since 1950, revenue from all sources has averaged around 18 percent of Gross Domestic Product, despite top tax rates that have fluctuated from over 90 percent to the high 20-percent range. So despite all efforts to jack up revenue (or reduce it), that's what the government can expect to work with. Yet spending has averaged about 20 percent of GDP - and is currently at a whopping 25 percent of GDP, a figure not seen since World War II. President Obama's budget plan forecasts spending at 23 percent of GDP over the next decade while Rep. Paul Ryan's GOP plan calls for 20.5 percent. There's your deficit right there, folks.

But King, Clinton, and Buffett can always pay more in taxes to retire federal debt held by the public. Just go to http://treasurydirect.gov and make a voluntary donation to reduce the national debt held by the public. So far in calender 2011, Treasury has pulled in an $125,000! Which means there's only about $8.99 trillion to go.

Written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie. About 2 minutes.

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[kshackleton]

How about we just make sure that everyone pays less tax?

[DevoutSkeptic]

No one should have to give half of their wealth to the government to be wasted on wars and welfare...

[Smokey13900]

Everyone should just pay the same percentage of taxes. And no one should complain about their taxs, heck the government wants to spend more then everyone should pay at least 50% of taxes or more to stop the dept from increasing. Or government can stop spending right now, and everyone can pay a 20% tax rate. But thats not for me to decide, it is the peoples choice, they decide what will happen not government.

[Zac6230]

@garith21 ok then show me the pile of bullshit

[JaysGOP]

The better question is why 46% of people in the country don't pay taxes at all? And the reason they don't pay 50% tax, by the way, is that that would severely decrease the incentive for innovation and investment, causing the economy to stagnate. Though I wouldn't expect the OWS retards to understand the subtleties of the Laffer Curve.

[KiwiTomCrawford]

here in nz the highest tax rate is 33% (for people earning more than 70k a year)