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Your Tax Bill Would Need to Double to Close the Deficit

From WalletPop. We're already paying upwards of 40% in combined state/federal taxes--I TOLD YOU we're being Europeanized.

"In order to close the 2010 deficit, joint filers would need to pay at tax rates of 24.3% to 84.9% versus the current 10% to 35% we actually pay.

"Assuming deductions, exemptions and credits were kept the same as they are now, Congress would have to raise each personal income tax rate by a factor of almost two and a half to erase the 2010 deficit," William Ahern, Tax Foundation director of policy and communications, wrote in his report titled, "Can Income Tax Hikes Close the Deficit."What would this type of hike actually mean for your pocketbook? Average tax payments would have to rise by almost $10,000 in 2010 to erase the deficit. For example the average tax filer making between $75,000 and $100,000 would pay $11,164 more in taxes."

What I wrote about Europeanification back in 2008: "Welcome to Fair Tax Lite. This same sort of thing will happen if the Fair Tax plan gets enacted, only it will cover everything, not just food and energy.

We are making up for the severe loss of state revenues (property taxes from foreclosed homes) through increased taxes on increased prices paid for food and energy items. This is a small part of what the Fair Tax plan would bring us, and it would play right into the hands of those wishing to join Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.--the Europeanification and metricizing of this continent, the Euro-ing of the dollar to the Amero, and the firm latch to currency values for any kind of discounts—see my previous article on the death of the coupon.

The whole time I lived in Italy, I never saw a coupon or sales flyer from any store. Through friends and neighbors, people got the word about where to shop and what to do for lower prices. Mass mailings and newspaper circulars just don’t exist there, and this is probably the same for all of Europe. Guess what’s NOT coming from a store near you in the future?

What we can do about it: say goodbye to all that wretched excess that some will say made America great, and go lay in a store of flour, rice, beans, and powdered milk while you can still find them. Plant and use a Victory garden to fill out the rest, and the victory will be over food inflation. Find other sources or learn to live without those things that will go or already have gone into hyperinflation mode—plenty of people live just fine not consuming meat, dairy, eggs, wheat flour, etc., due to food allergies or personal preference, and so can you.

Learn to live without a car, or at least cut back car use drastically. Reroute your shopping and living so you’re either closer to work, or closer to shopping if you have good public transportation to work (since you won’t be carrying much to work, riding the bus or train there would work out better—lugging bags of groceries with a couple of small children in tow, and/or a sick cat to the vet just doesn’t fly on a public bus or train).

Take a look at what the Amish are doing: using gas- and battery-powered lamps for light, employing copious use of generators, hydraulics, and solar power (through skylights, solar tubes, and panels to recharge batteries), using ice to cool, feeding leftovers to a family pig or two (for slaughter, of course), subsistence farming and gardening, outsourcing electricity-consuming things like bookkeeping and computer needs, outsourcing any transportation other than horse and buggy, and relying on lots and lots of manual labor to get seemingly ordinary things done—you might say less mechanization and more perspiration.

For a better idea of how this “techno-less” life would be, here’s a book recommendation: Better Off—Flipping the Switch on Technology. It tells of one young man’s adventure as he transitioned from the high-tech, convenience-laden world of today to a simpler, more meaningful way of life. Along the way, he discovered that “labor-saving devices” don’t really save that much labor or time.

These will be the "good ol' days" as far as prices go. If and when you see prices dip, stock up...same goes for stocks and mutual funds as well as food and energy. Your retirement account will need all the help it can get now.

If you ever needed an ego boost or just wanted some positive recognition for being frugal, it’s coming. If you ever wanted an excuse for frugal living, this is it. If you aren’t frugal yet, now is the time—better late than never. This is why we frugalites hoard, and hoard money in particular: to take advantage of the soon-to-be-incredibly-marked-down excess at rock-bottom prices. We're bottom-fishers.

The bottom rung of Third World countries are always going to be hurting for food, redundant retailers are always going to be hurting to stay in business, and thieves are always going to be hurting for money, but if you concentrate on your own personal economy (stay out of debt and pay all bills on time and in cash), teach a man how to fish (as it were), practice your own “fishing”, and get and stay prepared, this too shall blow over in time. Who knows? You may even come out on the other side a better person--a better, wealthier, and wiser person as you enter the next leg of the economic cycle.

Lather, rinse, repeat--this will be happening all over again in about 30 more years. Make sure your children and grandchildren remember and learn from this experience."

More on Europeanification: "If gas and food prices get high enough, we'll cut out the retail middleman altogether and either grow/hunt/fish our own food, or go to the large outdoor farmer's markets that will have sprouted up in place of the defunct grocery stores (or at least in their parking lots). Like in Europe, whatever manufactured foods that can be sold over a counter without electricity will be there too, like bagged pasta, rice, and beans, as well as loose bulk (but you'll likely be buying it in kilos and not pounds). Selection by brand will have largely gone out the window, as the vendor will have likely bought the cheapest type of bulk food for resale—the only real selection left will be price and which vendor to buy from. "Stores" will become luxury places to shop, featuring refrigerated and high-end gourmet items, and no discounts available. Just think—-bread, meat, eggs, milk, and cheese will be considered high-end due to price.

The future of most food sales (and many other things) will actually be a huge step backwards, technologically speaking. Many middlemen and structures will be cut out of the buy-sell process, and the coupon won't be the only thing dying. Our only discount will be the value of the dollar--the higher the value, the more we can buy.

For FUTURE reference (literally), a kilo is 2.2 lbs., and a pound is roughly half a kilo. You want a pound of something? Just ask for a half-kilo. We WILL get here one day, and you might want to prepare your kids and grandkids for this. We would've gotten here a lot sooner, but America is stubborn about adopting the metric system (and getting rid of the penny). As soon as the NAFTA superhighway goes through, and Mexico, America, and Canada become one big country, then we will be forced into going metric for simplification purposes, because we're the ONLY country not on the metric system now. Our new currency will be the Amero, and dollar-to-Amero conversions will also yield "discounts" when the Amero value is up, but only until we completely convert to the new currency. Then, we will be completely reliant on global currency rates for any "discounts" after that. Welcome to the REAL world! Europe's been doing it for years now with the Euro.

There will be no coupons, rebates, electronic discount cards, or websites to save us then—-those will be a pleasant memory, along with tax refunds and newspapers."

I tried to warn you two years ago. It's coming--maybe not all in one piece, or maybe not tomorrow, but it's coming. The plans have been in an Oval Office desk drawer for years, just WAITING for the right opportunity.

Posted by Cute at 8:31 PM

Labels: economy, financial (non-tax), politics, taxes