From Laurie: "So to me it looks that is we want to decrease the deficit the first step should be to raise taxes."
Of course she bases this premise on another one of Kevin Drums likely misleading charts.
Here is the OECD USA Page and the trend for the USA, which intuitively does not make sense to me.
Apparently to this source our total government spend right now is $8.1 Trillion, of which we steal ~$1 Trillion from our kids. So our revenues should total $7.1 Trillion. Now google says our current GDP is $19.39 Trillion... Which would mean our Tax Revenues as a percent of GDP would be 7.1/19.4 = 36.6%...
Now the US Federal Only Spend is $4.7 Trillion minus that pesky $1 Trillion brings us to $3.7 Trillion in Tax Revenues. So 3.7/19.4 = 19.1%.
Where as the US Federal spend is 4.7 /19.4 = 24.2%...
Now this source indicates Federal revenues per GDP are currently ~17.3% of GDP. Does anyone really think that our local and state taxes are much smaller than our Federal taxes? (ie 24.3% OECD number - 18 Fed number = 6.3%)
Of course she bases this premise on another one of Kevin Drums likely misleading charts.
Now the US Federal Only Spend is $4.7 Trillion minus that pesky $1 Trillion brings us to $3.7 Trillion in Tax Revenues. So 3.7/19.4 = 19.1%.
Where as the US Federal spend is 4.7 /19.4 = 24.2%...
Now this source indicates Federal revenues per GDP are currently ~17.3% of GDP. Does anyone really think that our local and state taxes are much smaller than our Federal taxes? (ie 24.3% OECD number - 18 Fed number = 6.3%)
8 comments:
so maybe you should complain about OECD rather than kevin drum if you don't like the graph I linked to.
Tax revenues have reached a plateau
I trust the data provided by this organization rather than your rough estimates.
Are you arguing that the USA has effective tax rates similar to other developed countries? Do you have any data about this?
Laurie,
I think our "Total Tax / GDP" is in the ~36% range. That would put us as approximately an average country.
It is the countries above the 36% point that spend more on Dem Socialist offerings. And we spend more on military/ world peace.
I am not sure what OECD is neglecting to count? Maybe the payroll taxes? Other?
At least folks define how they come up with their revenue numbers.
So they say 33% Revenues as compared to GDP
And 36% Spend as compared to GDP
So if we are really at 33% because all of our state and local fees, taxes, etc, not 24%.
Then that means we are about the same as Canada and the UK.
And less than Germany, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and France.
Why does this seem odd to you?
My problem with Kevin is he just preaches without questioning...
I am choosing to believe OECD numbers rather than yours. The idea that USA has lower than average taxes seems intuitively correct to me.
More correctly, you prefer to believe the OECD numbers than other sources and basic math...
I will look deeper into the OECD data if I can, so far no luck. Though this is an interesting report.
They say the US taxes are:
Federal: 44.5%
Social : 23.0%
State : 18.3%
Local : 14.2%
Or 67.5, 18.3, 14.2
Where as this source shows:
Federal and SS: 49%
State: 28%
Local: 22%
I think there are lots of ways to reduce the deficit. One way is to stop doing the things that rack up costs. The two most expensive things we do are having children and growing older. We need to stop doing that or at least reduce the spending those two things seem to generate.
--Hiram
Other than public schools, having kids should not cost tax payers much.
And people getting older really does not need to cost tax payers much either.
We make a choice to spend more money on these groups than we probably should.
I am fine with:
- making Parent(s) accountable for feeding, housing and providing healthcare for the kids they choose to bring into this world. And if they will not or can not, maybe someone else should adopt the child(ren). And certainly the citizen should not be allowed to make and keep more of them.
- discontinuing social security and medicare… Old poor folks can just go on welfare / Medicaid / disability like other poor folk.
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