It really is hard to believe that there are still people thinking that revenues go up linearly with income tax rates. It was demonstrated long ago that there is a rate at which revenue is optimum. Beyond that rate, revenue falls off. It is not even counterintuitive. It is obvious that if you raise taxes enough, you discourage investment in new or expanded businesses (there is less return on your investment and less likelihood of success since your potential customers have less to spend). Experience tells us that the optimum top rate is about 28%. We need to lower our rates to that level to pick up more revenue. Better yet is to cut government spending down to constitutionally acceptable levels and eliminate the income tax altogether. Then you will see prosperity.

The misunderstandings shown in this letter and related comments are frightening. Of course SS is a Ponzi scheme. Current benefits are paid by current workers. The money us older folks paid is long gone, taken by the organizers. Are you entitled to your benefits-sure, but where will it come from when the main pile of money has been stolen. To redeem those bonds in the 'trust fund' means taxing it away from the people all over again. Raising taxes on the rich as a fix is also foolish. It is killing the goose that lays golden eggs. We know from experience with many tax rates over our history that any top income tax rate over about 28% reduces revenue. It does not increase revenue. Best idea now to increase income tax revenue is reduce our current 35% top rate to 28% and get the states of KS and MO to eliminate their income taxes.

The government can not create jobs-not real ones anyway. They can take taxpayer money and hire people to do useless work but that is not a gain for society. Stimulus and government make work is like trying to raise the water level in a pool by taking a bucket of water from the deep end and pooring it into the shallow end. BTW, there is also a hole in the bucket. It cannot work. The best thing the government can do is get out of the way. Less taxes, fewer foolish regulations, some control of frivilous lawsuits and some respect for the productive. It is terrible to go around claiming that the rich do not pay their fare share when they are paying almost everything. Any increase in the top marginal rate right now, in a recession where everyone is scared anyway, will produce LESS revenue. Yes, raise rates and further discourage investment and get less, not more revenue. This is well know economics. Once you are above about 28% top rate, further increases cost you money. Our current top rate (with the famous Bush tax cuts) is 35% federal plus about 6% state income tax in KS and MO. They are looking at raising it to 39% plus the same state rate makes 45%. That is way past the 28% optimum revenue rate. A substantial tax cut is in order.

If Buffett is foolish enough to send in extra money to the IRS, let him. But when he advocates taking money at gun point from others, he is no longer a nice guy. He just moved to accomplice to armed robbery. We all know that the government is spending money wildly, doing mostly harm to society. That wild spending must be stopped, not abbetted by higher taxes.

The letter writer has rediscovered the "broken window fallacy". It is a classic parable used in some economic text books to illustrate how foolish it is to assume that spending makes wealth. But don't feel bad. So called economist Krugman believes it as well. He was sorry that last weeks earthquake did not do more damage and will probably bemoan this weekend's hurricane as a failure since it did not do enough damage to cause spending to rev up the economy. He actually suggested that the government get everyone scared about an alien invasion so we could spend mountains of money preparing to defend ourselves. Google "broken window fallacy" with the " to learn more.

I do not agree with any of the alternate tax schemes. Each has its own failings built in. Just remember the basic law of taxation: When you tax something, you get less of it. Revenue estimates of the effect of raising income tax rates on high income people always assume that no changes will occur in income levels. That is ludicrous. The higher the incremental rate a person sees for his efforts, the less effort or risk he is willing to accept. It is basic economics. When you tax something, you get less of it-like income. Based on historical evidence, government revenue is maximized with a top tax rate of 28%. Today's top income tax rate is 35% (41% if you live in KS or other high tax state) and that is way high. If you want more revenue, you lower rates to 28% and the economy will grow and all will be better off. If your true goal is some sort of social equality then raise rates and let's all be equally poor. Just don't tell me that raising rates will bring more revenue-IT WON'T.

End the drug war and empty out big chunks of both Federal and state prisons. Those people and the gurads that keep them in can get back to real, productive work.

If you had the capital to build a refinery, you would still not be able to build a refinery. The men with the guns will stop you. There is a reason that normal market forces have not caused new refineries to be built-NO PERMITS from the government. There have been no new refineries approved in over 3 decades. Like most of our current problems, high gasoline prices are caused by government idiocy backed up by its guns.

The trust fund holds $2.5 trillion of treasury bonds. Where would we get the money to pay those off at once? They will get paid off as SS needs the money to fill its own deficit by borrowing from someone else. Even if it was a pile of cash, it would not last much past 2025. Then the Ponzi scheme of SS will blow up anyway.

Wow, totally eliminate an entire major party based on traditional Democratic scare tactics-not a very good idea. But then it has worked for the Dems for many elections with our dummed down, public school educated population. Not all Republicans are the same so I suggest you spend some quality time actually looking at them instead of responding in a Pavlovian way to slogans. Ron Paul stands away from all the others and is right about just about everything. Take an unbiased look, please-for the good of the nation and the future of our children.

Taxing the wealthy is a nice talking point if you are a Karl Marx disciple. I notice that liberals and progressives in general do not fully understand incentives. They believe that you can increase income tax rates on the wealthy and they will continue to produce wealth at an unchanged rate so the government gets more income-simple-but not reality. High incremental tax rates are a disincentive to produce more wealth. We have lots of history with various income tax rates and their effect on revenue. It should be obvious that a 100% rate will produce absolutely zero revenue. No one will lift a finger to earn money if all the earnings go to the government. Our experience shows us that the optimum rate that maximizes government revenue is between 25 and 28%. Anything above that discourages investment and work. Today's super duper low Bush tax cut rate is 35% plus state income taxes. Rescinding those tax cuts makes it 39% plus state income taxes. We need to reduce rates to get more revenue, not raise them.

Obama is doing a very poor job, if your standard it the effect on the nation. In fact, he is doing pretty much the same poor job as W. They are following the same failed economic theories of the late lamented J.M. Keynes. For those who pay attention to history, this is a replay of the Hoover/FDR period where FDR continued to blame Hoover for the Depression while continuing to act on the same nonsense Keynesian theory. (Keynes was alive at the time and was giving personal advice.) Our economy will get better very quickly if we throw out all our Keynesian textbooks and retrain all those PhDs in Economics with a little reality. 1.One does not create wealth by printing money. 2. An economy does best with a stable money supply. 3. Government bureaucrats cannot be trusted to run anything more complicated than a lemonade stand.

It should be pretty obvious to anyone not burdened by a PhD in economics that when there is more money chasing the same goods, prices rise. Thus the main advantage gold has over cash is that the government cannot arbitrarily print more of it. Now back in the old days, cash was a warehouse receipt for a specific weight of gold. ($20.67 got you one ounce) Then the dollar was good as gold. That went away and now the dollar is just a dollar with no rights to get anything from the issuer.That is called fiat money. It is money because the government says so. All fiat money systems eventually inflate to worthlessness. That is because the people running the system cannot resist the temptation to print more to satisfy whatever needs they deem are important. You really should read a history of the Weimar Republic hyper inflation. It is not a fairy tale, it really happened between 1921 and 1923 and led to the rise of Hitler in Germany. And YES, it can happen here!

To answer the letter writer, I recall an old saying defining how we stay free There are 4 boxes that protect our freedom. Use them in order. 1. The soap box (freedom of speech and press) 2. The ballot box 3. the jury box (reference to jury nullification) 4. The ammo box Only a fool would voluntarily give up any of these protections. Have you noticed how they are taking these away, little by little. The ballot box has been made nearly useless by the two party system and a series of elections where both candidates were horrible. They have successfully convinced several generations of Americans through public school dumbing down that juries cannot judge a law bad or unconstitutional but just the facts. Now they are going after free speech and gun ownership based on one incident. If I had to choose between them, I would keep my guns and the absolute right to have them from the second amendment. The government would find it hard to deny speech rights to an armed populace.

Rep King should be thrown out of office for mental retardation. Did he even think through his proposal for 60 seconds before spouting it off as a proposal. How are we to know when we are within 1000 feet of one of our masters? Can a congresscritter drive down our street in a car and then have the police follow up and arrest everyone living on the block who was unaware that our august master was in the neighborhood and did not throw their guns out of the window as he approached.

When I hear anyone suggesting that crime would be lower if we took guns from civilians and then claim that is good reason for gun control, I just shudder. I shudder at the ignorance demonstrated by that stance. Two big points-First, crime always goes UP when the citizenry is disarmed for the obvious reason that criminals have a much easier time of it. Whether you believe in the deterrence effect or not, history tells us crime gets worse. Secondly, do you really want to live in a country where only government employees have guns? This displays an appalling ignorance of history. There were multiple genocides in the twentieth century. Each was preceeded and enabled by gun control. The fact is you cannot do a genocide before you have disarmed the victim class. Do you really want to enable a genocide here? And don't give me the "it can't happen here" nonsense. The only reason it can't happen here is widespread gun ownership. Take that away and it suddenly can happen here.

I am of the opinion that Assange and Manning deserve the Nobel peace prize and the heart felt thanks of all US citizens. They deserve that prize far more than Obama who got it while escalating the Afghanistan war.

I have always considered it a horrible waste of police manpower to spend time entrapping prostitutes. They pay a small fine and are back on the streets before the cops finish the paperwork. How about we admit it is none of the governemnt's business and save the money wasted on enforcement theatre.

Ryan, a factual correction. Congress does not dip into the SS trust fund from time to time. They do it everyday. Every cent received goes into the general revenue fund of the treasury, every payment made to beneficiaries is paid from the treasury. Then someone makes a bookkeeping entry adding or subtracting from the "trust fund" based on the money in and out. At least since the Viet nam war, the SS surplus was recorded as an increase in the national debt but at the same time, it was reported as income to the treasury that reduced the reported deficit for the year. Yes, I know that is gibberish but that is what they do. If you look back over the years, you will see that the reported deficit is always less than the increase in the debt from year to year. Thus proving once again that FIGURES DON'T LIE BUT LIARS FIGURE, especially government figures.

While everyone might care about the long term good of this nation, some are all wrong in their methods. If you choose to allow the excuse of ignorance for advocating damaging policies, that is your right. I am more interested in fixing the problem, not the blame. Government intervention in the form of high taxes, stimulus, regulation and such hurts the economy and nation badly. The politicians that favor these might mean well, but they are very, very wrong. We have the best growth and prosperity when taxes are low enough to be negligable in business plans, when regulations do not stifle innovation and when people are free to live life as they choose. Forcible wealth transfers with high taxes do not only discourage wealth creation (if you tax something, you get less of it), it represents an immoral action similar to armed robbery.

The alleged $4 trillion trust fund is not a store of value. The government can only make good on that debt by reborrowing or retaxing that money. The money you paid throughout your life is GONE. This is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. The only difference between social security and Bernie Madoff's fund (besides the size of the theft) is that Bernie used fraud and Social Security uses a gun to keep the money coming in.

Isaac: My question is when did marriage become the business of government. Before about 1830, there was no such thing as a marriage license. Marriage was a religious function, entirely under the control of the churches. The only reason to institute a government licensing system is to deny licenses to some. In this case, marriage licenses were invented to deny licenses to mixed race couples. So NO, there is no reason to deny licenses to same sex couples anymore than there was a reason to deny licenses to mixed race couples. Both should be granted as a matter of freedom. And since they should never be denied, why have licenses at all? They are no longer useful once they cannot be denied.

Indeed, I heard the car insurance comparison argument all throuth the health care debate. Of course, car insurance is to protect others that you may hurt. That does not apply to health insurance. And yes, car insurance is a state matter. The state has significantly more authority over your life than the federal government does. Anyone who doubts that should read the constitution. The federal government is quite limited if they were obeying the rules. If it appears different to you, you now see the tyranny that we have been living under.

It is an inherent right of jurors to veto bad law, whether it is generically wrong like MJ prohibition or special circumstances make punishemet foolish in a single case. I did not make this up. It comes to us from our English legal roots and dates to the Magna Carta of 1215 AD. It is clear that our founders expected this to continue. After all, it is just another leg of their theory of Checks and Balances where the actions of any branch can be overridden by another. They actually expected the jury to be the power to overrule unconstitutional laws, rather than the courts. The courts took that power in an 1803 decision but that did not take the similar power from jurors. History is full of examples of laws that were repealed, or were ignored because it had become nearly impossible to get a conviction from a jury. The run-away slave law comes to mind.

It is a great help to our democracy to know all the things our government is doing in our name. Do you really want to be kept in the dark? If it wasn't for the release of some other purloined information, we might just have a destructive cap and tax system in place right now. We were saved from that disaster by a data release.(Climategate) The more data becomes public, the better off we are. The writer's assumption that this is obviously immoral is a senseless statement. Governments routinely lie, cheat and steal from citizens. They get away with a lot of this because we don't know what is going on. Assange and Bradley Manning should be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. Their activities will probably shorten the two current idiotic wars and maybe prevent some future forays into insanity. They deserve it a darn sight more than Obama did.