The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People! » progressive taxation Grassroots Journalists, Bloggers and Experts capture and report news from around the world. Become a citizen journalist with Toonari Post today! Sat, 15 Mar 2014 19:17:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:00:59 +0000 New York, U.S.A. – Despite their passion and fury, contemporary Americans are remarkably clueless about how their tax system works.  ”In a recent poll, a majority of Americans either think that Social Security tax and Medicare taxes are part of the federal income system or don’t know whether they are or not. More than six out of ten think that low-income or middle-income people pay the highest percentage of their income in federal taxes. “Neither is correct,” according to Len Burman and Joel Slemrod, authors of Taxes in America (OUP).


Most economists agree that in the long-term we need a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, because the long-term budget is so out of whack. But right now we’re in a very delicate recovery and there is legitimate concern that substantially raising taxes and cutting spending can cancel the recovery or slow it down.


  • Why is the fiscal outlook so dire?
  • Is progressive taxation class warfare?
  • Do we tax capital income the same as labor income?
  • How do we tax capital gains and dividends?
  • What makes a tax system fair?
  • Why not run deficits forever?
  • What is the “starve the beast” theory?
  • What are sensible tax reform ideas?

Author Joel Slemrod says “I think of it more as approaching a mountain, and there are good ways and bad ways to go up that mountain.”

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