Quote Originally Posted by Total_Blender
Many of those who don't pay income tax fit into the following groups:

Minimum wage earners
Full time students
work/study programs
etc

I was in a work/study program a couple years ago and the didn't withold any taxes on me. I paid into Social Security and FICA and that was it. I made about $6.75 an hour which even without taxes was barely enough to pay rent and buy groceries. Now I supervise people in the same program. Would I trade places with them and be back in the program... fawk no.

Also, for high school kids who work minimum wage jobs... why not give them a tax break and let them have a little more money to themselves? We surely aren't going to encourage unskilled/young people to work if we saddle them with a bunch of taxes. If we structure the tax code to where it is more profitable for people at the bottom to work then maybe more people will want to work.

And many of these programs Obama is proposing are meant to make us more economically competetive as a nation. One example is increased education funding/education reform. If we have a better educated workforce we will be more able to compete internationally.
again, i disagree with the methods.

How is taxing our employers to pass on to consumers going to make us more competant with other nations? It is our money we are giving to the government. The government doesnt create jobs out of thin air unless they are using the capitalist ideas of the private sector. Where is this money coming from to make us more "competant". Get my drift?

Government can only make as much as the GDP of our country allows. They just decide how much to take and what to do with it. Other countries are buying our assets like its the dollar tree right now (eg soveriegn wealth funds) and the like. We arent getting more money from the world because our government is taxing us more or less. Its on the american back's to push for better services than any other country.

I dont see obama or mccain holding up japan and saying "give me all your money or the clerk gets it".

dig?