Since when is tax cuts for 98% of Americans a bad thing?

America's epitaph will be, "too stupid and cheap to live."

The average person can't afford a tax increase, not in this economy. The rich can.

You fail Keynesian Economics 101.

Just curious.

That's when.

I do think the middle-class Bush tax cuts should have been extended. But not made permanent.

based on economic triggers. When unemployment gets to 7%, kill 25% of the Bush tax cuts. When unemployment gets to 6.5% kill another 25% and so on. As we approach 5%, wages will naturally go up from supply/demand and people will be in a better position to pay a little more in taxes.

And by setting it to triggers, the Republicans then have a real incentive to help us get the economy working. Right now they have ever incentive to keep sabotaging the economy because 8% unemployment ensures a big worker pool willing to work cheap and not complain.

Instead of Romney's $5 trillion tax cut we're getting Obama's $3.6 trillion tax cut. At the same time we're told that we have to cut the deficit. If we're cutting taxes and cutting the deficit, where do people think the money is going to come from? This isn't that hard to figure out.

You can trace it back to ideas conceived by pseudo economists who's main 'proof' that tax cuts brought any benefit to the economy was a curve on a piece of paper. Keynesian economics rely on the government to reinvest on the working class through better means of transportation, education and by strengthening social programs. The tax cuts should have not been extended, it was all a big rouse by the elite in order to keep their profit margins high. Even if people do spend the money guess where it is all going into? Corporations and from there to wealthy executives, financiers and your average unethical capitalist .

Assholes can sit upon their high horses of faux intellectualism and proclaim that the poor shouldn't have kept this money, but they most likely do so from a state of economic security.

This is Grover Norquist's best day in 12 years. The Bush tax cuts were good for 10 years. These are "permanent". And did anybody notice they completely ignored all the rules that require scoring of the budget impact. Some of those rules are required only when pushing legislation through under "reconciliation". That is how the Bush cuts made it originally, which is why they had to expire in 10 years. By Obama cleverly exploiting the "Shock Doctrine" he was able to finish the job that Bush started.

And that means there is now no opportunity in the next generation to get those revenues back, so any budget balancing will have to come from the pentagon (fat chance of that) or else all the programs we don't want to cut (education, environment, research, highways, social security, medicare, etc.)

Obama has done some good things. This was his worst, and most lasting act, and very possibly the one he will ultimately be most remembered for. The Democrat that signed the death warrant for our modern society.

That is the point of a PROGRESSIVE tax system. The heaviest tax burden should fall on the rich, NOT the average person.

This isn't rocket science. You can balance the budget by raising taxes on the rich and by cutting "defense" spending.

The fact is that the very rich (the 0.1%) shelter a huge amount of income from taxation. It is estimated that there are over $30 TRILLION sheltered offshore -- that it 2 times the nation entire GDP. That money is never taxed at all. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are all sorts of ways to shelter income in fake corporate structures that don't have to be offshore.

Raising the marginal tax rages a few percent does absolutely nothing. it will just give the rich more incentives to shelter income. In every State of the Union address, Obama has talked about this sheltered money, but there wasn't a thing in this "cliff" agreement to deal with any of that. And there will never be an opportunity as good as the one we just let get away.

Punish the tax evaders. The reason things got so bad in Greece is because of rich people evading their taxes, and now those same rich people are raising taxes on working class Greeks.

We're talking about a $3.6 trillion shortfall over the next decade. Even if we get the Republicans to agree to a deal that's a dollar of revenue raised for a dollar of cuts, we're looking at $150 billion+ a year in spending cuts to make up for these tax increases. Where are they going to come from?

What we have is a Republican president and a Republican administration. Even Obama has said it.

They mostly save, not spend, the money.

It is sad that keeping my taxes the same as they have been for years is considered a tax cut. If that is the mentality, then those making over 400,000 per year didn't just get a tax increase. I don't understand the disconnect.