Are You Ready To Pay Far Higher Taxes?

Throughout America, cutting government spending and tax cuts for the Middle Class are very popular concepts. In South Carolina (SC), for example, in the current Republican primary campaign, crowds are wowed by those concepts as politicians promise to deliver on them. Yet for each tax dollar SC pays, it gets back $1.35 and the people love that as well because there is plenty of money to pay for 7 military bases and all the military contracting, which employs thousands of people. SC people favor a "strong defense," and many of them support more military spending.

SC has many people receiving Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and/or other entitlements. Many of them support even more spending for those programs and money as well for those in need, including to help the unemployed. Yet Republican presidential candidates are receiving tremendous support by promising to "cut government spending" (without defining which gigantic spending programs will be cut and by how much) and to provide a "strong national defense" (as military spending continues to grow).

Yet everyone knows the government is running staggering deficits. It is only still afloat because of its borrowing capacity, something it can't indefinitely do. So without cuts that equal the $1.5 annual deficits the government is running, with greater deficits to come from increased military spending, are you ready to pay far higher taxes? Government spending is like the real estate market a few years ago when most of America and the world assumed values could only go up. Then real estate crashed and continues to this day to fall. That's because there was no Fantasyland in real estate and there is no Fantasyland in government spending. We can't have it both ways. We must either dramatically slash government spending or prepare to pay 50% - 60% of our income to federal taxes and another 15% to 20% to state and local governments to make up for their lost revenue from the federal government. Anything else is political nonsense and you and I are too smart for that.

Dick
To learn more, please see, "In South Carolina, a discrepancy on federal spending," The Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-south-carolina-federal-spending-20120114,0,698798.story