Sean are you suggesting the voting rights of the elderly, underpaid and sick should be withdrawn?
Bob
No I am not suggesting anything of the sort, my suggestion would be that everybody pay a little something whether it be $100 or $1000, that way if you raise taxes it affects everybody even if in a small manner.
Right now we have, tax thee, tax he, tax him behind the tree but dont tax me.
A system where 53% of the people do not pay in, but are happy to vote that others pay more while they get more benefits is not equitable, nor apparently is it economialy sustainable. But it does get votes.
Fortunatly I have faith in the basic common sense of the voting public. Kool aid libs excluded, 70% by poll see governement debt and raisng the ceiling as the huge problem facing the country. However the rest of Republican/Tea Party platform is so offensive to the larger public that they cannot bring themselvs to vote that way. Specificaly the anti abortion(anti women) anti gay, anti immigration(anti hispanic 30% of the vote) politcies just alienate too many people. And even if the republicanbs were in would they really spend less, history says no.
There are also kool aid drinkers(30%) who think that large deficits dont matter to a country or we just need to tax more. In reality must we go all the way down the line like europe to learn that chronic deficits lead to statal bankrupcy and the undoing of whatever good the policies which drove deficts accomplihed. Taxing more as done in the usa today leads to the destruction of small and medium buisness, economic vibrancy enbtreperneurship etc, and the growth of large ossified corporate stuctures as in say france.
The solution is a system proposed by thinkers in both parties. A vastly simplified tax code, with minimal if any loopholes.A graduated system with two rates 10% and 25%. At worst this is revenue neutral, however the economic growth makes it extremly positive. So gov gets more money from growth, not from growth destroying tax overburden on the middle and upper middle class.
Current system taxes the middle and upper middle, the lower middele, corporations and capital class pay low to no rates. The lower middle on down are votes for free stuff, and the corporations and capital class are $$$ for the politicians through lobbyists, so the 47% end up paying, its wrong and unsustainable.
There also needs to be a comitemnt to balancing the budget. I can see deficit during a recession and during war, but otherise the system must be balanced. The alternative will one day be forced auterity, and then all those things people voted for wont be there anyway.