Conservative talking point proven wrong, of course...

I received another forwarded email today that told an old lie, and I want to say something about that lie.

"100% taxation of the income of every taxpayer in the US would NOT cover annual federal spending."

That's a lie. It's absolutely false, and here are some numbers to throw back at the lying liers who tell that lie.

The GDP of the United States was estimated to be $14.7 Trillion in 2010. The "GDP per capita" was $46,381. (Now, given that this calculates a total population of 316,940,126 people, I'm guessing that some of that is business to business. We don't have that many wage-earners in the US yet. But I'll use the number anyway.)

According to this NYTimes article in February of 2010, the 2010 Federal Budget was $3.8 Trillion. That included a $1.56 Trillion deficit.

If every wage earner, both individual and business, paid the same flat tax rate to the Federal Government, that tax rate would need to be 25.85%, or an average of $11,990 out of that $46,381. Just to pay the deficit would be 10.61%, or $4,922. But of course, if we did that, there would BE no deficit.

Now, 25.85% is a high tax rate for Americans. Especially if they don't have a clue and don't pay attention. Because according to history, that's about right. Especially if you consider that with a balanced budget we could really get serious at creating jobs, rebuilding our crumbling infrastrcture and actually start paying down the Debt. We wouldn't have to sell more bonds than we bring in as tax revenue, and the financial markets would LOVE us. The only people who would hate life would be the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement they serve, because they would be proved wrong, on everything, forever.