Again With the "Giveaway" meme

The guy who comes along and stops taking as much money from you as the previous guy isn't "giving" you money. He's taking less of yours for himself.

So if the top 1% pays 31% of the tax burden (it does on the Federal Level), and say, you drop it to 28% of the tax burden (which Romney isn't proposing, but we'll get to that in a minute) ... he isn't giving them money. They're still paying the bulk of the taxes relative to their numbers.

The whole idea of tax breaks is actually a way for the government to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. Of course, I'm pretty sure from reading their writings that the Founders did not intend for the tax code to be used to manipulate markets at all. I'm all for eliminating tax "breaks" for anyone altogether if the tax code is revamped to a more equitable [read "flat"] structure. If everybody knows up front how much they're going to have to pay in taxes on what, then they'll know how much they need to make to get by or to live the life they want to live, and they have a goal to shoot for. But I digress. This isn't going to happen any time in the near future. Still, steps toward it would be welcomed.

Taxes should not be used to punish or reward, because those in power will use it to punish those they don't like and reward those they do. Humans are predictable beasts. The founders were well aware of this, which is why they wrote they wrote the Constitution they wrote. To limit opportunities for the excesses of power.

Romney's proposal is to lower tax rates for EVERYONE but eliminate a lot of loopholes, especially for the upper class. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction (almost 180 degrees from the direction favored by Obama). It still has a progressive element to it (people making less than 200K won't lose the loopholes on the scale that people making more than 200K will) -- and the rich will still pay the bulk of the taxes -- but the "breaks" take some of the manipulation out of the equation - and the way Romney sees it, the rich will still bear the same proportion of the total tax burden. They'll just have fewer ways of hiding or protecting income.

IE, fewer opportunities to cheat.

Saw a great cartoon the other day -- mostly words. Had a picture of Obama, and the caption read "So we'll put money into the economy by taking it out of the economy and putting it back into the economy and tax it on the way through. Yeah, that should work."

Which is pretty much what the hyper-Keynesians are saying. I think even Keynes would be apalled at what these people are doing.

Romney is saying basically the same thing JFK said in December of 1962. They're not calling JFK a radical. And it is true. Romney is no JFK. For one thing, he doesn't sleep around on his wife, and I'm pretty sure his brother hasn't gotten off scott free after drowning a woman in a drunk driving accident and then not reporting it while he worked on his alibi. But he is saying the same thing JFK said ... and which Congress took him up on the following year with much success. But like I said, we're to believe Romney is a radical for proposing it ... because he's a Republican.