It isn't about parties, it's about policies.
The Republican party who balanced the budget was not the Republican party of W. Under Clinton, the Republicans were closer to the Libertarian mindset when it comes to government taxing and spending. Ross Perot types basically ("it's the economy, stupid!")
W. got elected under those same concepts but hoodwinked the US population. He promised to be the type of Republican that balanced the budget, controlled spending, and lowered taxes. Turns out, he was a Christian Conservative. 9/11 increased his approval ratings tremendously and that was the point at which "Christian Conservatives" hijacked the GOP and turned it into the mess it is today.
If you look at the current Republican Party, it actually is far closer to the concept of fascism than the Republican Party has traditionally been. Fascism is about controlling social issues as much as possible, government and military closely tied together, and tax incentives for the wealthy. Fascism is about keeping the working class under strict control, removing the middle class, and giving more power to the wealthy in order to create a truly dichotomous society. The current Republican Party has at its core dictating social issues; telling citizens how they should live their lives and making those dictates law. It's also about increased military spending and fewer checks on military power. It's also about increased invasion of privacy and destruction of personal freedoms. It's about increased tax loopholes for the rich and increased cost of living for the poor (in order to suppress the ability for poor to increase in class status). It is not about decreased regulation in business; it's about increases in regulation in order to foster the formation of monopolies and to decrease competition in order to collect power in a centralized few corporations.
The Democratic Party still has a lot of stupid ideas about regulation of business but at least they are more for increasing personal freedoms.
What we really need as a nation though is a Libertarian (btw, Bob Parr is NOT a Libertarian). Someone who will remove the regulations that limit competition and not only allow but enforce monopolies and dualopolies. Someone who will eliminate much of the personal income tax. The class which spends the largest amount of money proportionally on consumer products is the middle class. Consumerism boosts the economy. If you make sure the middle class has more money to spend (i.e. paying fewer taxes) you increase consumer spending and boost the economy. It has been shown that tax breaks to the rich do NOT spur the increase in jobs directly. When a rich guy suddenly makes more money doing the same thing he always did, that money gets invested in assets and not spent. Those investments do NOT improve the economy because they are essentially locked away. A small portion may in some cases eventually wind up creating a job or two, but not anywhere near what increased spending by the middle class would yield. Increased spending creates higher demand for products which then creates higher demand for production and thus more jobs. Increased investments are just free money to the board of directors and shareholders.
Under our current tax system, the richest pay the lowest percentage of income tax proportionally. This is when you combine all taxes paid; sales tax, real estate, income, and capital gains. The reason is that they use the lowest percentage of their income (of the classes) for consumer purchases, and the vast majority of their income is capital gains; which is taxed at a mere 15% (compared to the 25%+ income tax the middle class income tax bracket gets). Additionally, there are many ways to avoid taxes altogether with capital gains, but virtually none for employment income. Charitable Remainder Trusts for example allow the wealthy to avoid capital gains entirely on sale of assets and to collect the money from that sale tax free as long as at least 10% remains i the CRT. That essentially further reduces the capital gains to well below 10%.
The proportionally highest tax paid is by the middle class; especially those who just barely qualify for AMT. Between income tax, real estate tax, sales tax, etc. they tend to pay over 40%. The richest in the nation pay less than 15% of their total gross income.
A better tax system would have a higher capital gains tax and remove tax shelters like the CRT. Capital gains is free money. It's money that is gained that isn't representative of any kind of value added to society. Personal income however is representative of money received in exchange for work; work that benefits society directly. Income from employment is not income, it is an exchange, it's sale; you sell your time for a certain amount of money. Income from capital gains is pure income and not an exchange of anything; it's free money, on par with gambling winnings. Decreasing the taxes on personal income would not only give more money to people who would spend it on consumer products (thus improving the economy further and increasing the number of jobs), but it would also allow employers to lower the salaries while simultaneously allowing the employees to actually increase take home pay.
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