Prosperity My Ass

Democrat's Prosperity Problem - George Will, WaPo

This is bunk, absolute bunk. Will talks about the growing wealth in the country when I can see every day that isn't true. My parents have seen the last few years of tepid income as have the rest of the merchants in the shopping plaza where their store is. It's not that the economy has tanked but the fact remains we're still drawing in mid-90s gross income while we have seen our inventory costs rise. The doubling of gold and platinum prices have caused all sorts of problems for them. While I agree that the tax system is fundamentally broken I don't agree for the same reasons nor to I want the same solutions that Will does. I think instead we need to see a serious effort to simplify taxes while easing the tax burden on the middle class. This means increasing taxes on the rich. This also means flattening out the tax curve, particularly for corporations, as the gift of tax breaks for businesses has led to corporations counting on such breaks. I think it would prove amazingly beneficial if we could remove the majority of tax breaks on businesses while lowering the corporate tax, thus providing the benefits of lower taxes for all. The problem is when you start messing with the tax code you run into the problem of a) powerful corporate interests; and b) the difficulty of providing the same tax revenue to the government while lowering taxes as much as possible. Now I think we could come up with a fairer tax system, even with the current political climate, but I sincerely doubt that such a system would even make it out of committee.