GAO

What Americans need is for the General Accounting Office to release the base figures for each program the government spends money on, the amount of money received from all taxes in an average year, and then show, preferably in simple graphics, the discrepancy. At this point, the people could then see the huge issue with constantly lowering taxes and why corporations getting a steady stream of tax breaks hurts the economy.

America became great because of the huge middle class. They made enough money, were where there majority of wealth was held, and were constantly consuming more items so that the economy was strong. Now, about 25% of that wealth has moved into the hands of the ultra-rich, which means that the middle class has one quarter less of the wealth with which to pay those taxes, while less than 1% has one quarter more of the wealth with which to pay taxes... and doesn't.

If you could make a simple graph that showed the government spends W on the military, X on social security, Y on medicare, and Z on all the other programs (with the ability to break these out), and then showed how much that taxation brings in, you could then ask Americans which programs to cut or successfully lobby for higher taxes.

For example, let us say that America spends 10 dollars on military spending. Then let us say it spends 5 on social security, 3 on Medicare (and related programs), and about 5 on all other programs. That means we spend a total of 23 dollars on the government programs. But, right now and for the last about 15 years, we have only been bringing in about 18-20 dollars on average. So we are spending more than we bring in, regardless of the state of the economy. The government ONLY brings in money via taxes, so either we have to cut those programs or we have to bring in more taxes. This would be a simple way to get Americans talking about that simple necessity: does the government really need to spend so much on the military? Does it need to spend so much on social security and medicare? Does it need to spend so much on all the other, smaller programs? It would allow the people to see and chose what to keep and what to cut or eliminate more obviously. But, I believe, in the end you will still have a discrepancy between the dollars brought in and the dollars spent, so the GAO could then show what a small change in everyone's taxes would do to defray the costs of the programs the majority has decided to keep.

It used to be that, in terms of percentages, the middle class had the vast majority of the money held by the vast majority of the people, so having a small taxation rate was not felt by any one person too much. Taking 15% of $35,000 from 150 million taxable middle-class people was enough to hit or exceed the budget needed by the government. However, since a quarter of the wealth has left the middle class and fewer of the middle-class are currently working, that money has to be made up somehow. Taxation should, quite simply, follow the money; whoever has the money/wealth needs to pay the taxes in order to keep the economy strong and the government functioning. If that money has moved from the middle class, then wherever it has moved to is where the gov't needs to collect the money. Right now, that money is in the hands of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich need to make approximately a quarter more in taxation payments to the government until such time as that money moves to someone else.

It is actually a fairly simple equation. And having one quarter of all of the wealth of America moving from the hands of the majority into the hands of a(n extreme) minority means that you are asking the majority to pay more of a tax burden with a quarter less money. Which, in turn, moves more money to the minority and means the majority has to pay even more with even less... it becomes an endless cycle until there is no middle-class, just the ultra-rich and the poor. And this hurts the entire nation and will collapse the economy.

What made America the strongest nation in the world for so many years was the strong middle class. By having the majority of its people in a position to consume (spend money), you could fund a government without overly hurting any one person with a tax burden. Because of this, people had the ability to move between economic strata and go from poor to middle-class to wealthy to ultra-wealthy. Without this strong middle class and without having the majority of the wealth of the nation in the hands of the majority, movement between economic strata becomes much more difficult, the majority has to pay more and more to keep the government functioning, and the very rich get richer while every other strata gets poorer.

And, with all those tax breaks and incentives the government has given the ultra-rich to create jobs and add wealth to the economy, what have they done with that? Across the board they have kept the money, moved jobs overseas, or fired workers such that we have record unemployment. This is what the ultra-rich have done for going on 30 years now, regardless of which party is in office. All this does is move more money out of the middle-class, making it even harder for the government to function.

Here's my plan: after 30 years of not living up to what the government wants them to do, let us enforce some rules on the incentives we give the ultra-rich to create jobs. If, after 1 year of incentives the ultra-rich do not have demonstrable X percentage of new jobs created, they must pay back the incentive in full, plus interest, and they move to the next higher tax bracket for a year. They can reapply for a tax incentive after all the owed money is paid back and they have paid the new, higher tax rate for a minimum of six months. At that point, the same rules apply. And, the more of a tax break they ask for, the more job creation they must be able to demonstrate. As the economy righted itself and a stronger middle-class was re-established, we'd have to modify the rules to be about economic processes outside of job growth. But we should continue to keep the emphasis on maintaining a strong economic foundation and the middle-class is key to that... as has been proven by over 100 years of American history.

I think, with this plan, you'd suddenly see a lot of support jobs come back from India. I think you'd see quite  a few manufacturing jobs return to America from China, Mexico, and elsewhere. It would be in their best interest to have those jobs here and to give wealth back to the middle-class so that they (the ultra-rich) don't have to pay the taxes. And, frankly, a strong middle-class makes the rich richer, as the middle-class picks up and starts consuming again.

It really is a simple equation in the end.