A good "revenue enhancement" idea

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Industry specific excise taxes are in general not a good thing.  Exceptions would be if they are intended to discourage a specific activity, or to fund related government activities.  I can't see that there is any reason to discourage movie theatres or other forms of distributing audiovisual materials.  Even if we were to use such a tax to fund cultural programs (a dubious use as I see no reason to have the federal government spending its money on the arts) a 20 percent excise tax would generate way too much for such programs.

However, it is no surprise that CARL thinks having the tax code pick winners and losers is a good idea given his prior opposition to the closing of industry-specific tax loopholes.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Its also interesting to note that he makes an unfounded allegation of some supposed opposition on my part to closing industry-specific tax loopholes.  Cite please?

I was under the impression that you supported the Nyquist position that the debt-ceiling package contain only spending cuts and no increase in tax revenues via the closing of tax loopholes.  If you do support for eliminating tax loopholes then name some tax loopholes you support eliminating.  That would be much easier than trudging through your posts for something I'm doubtful I would find in your posting history.  All you need to do to prove me wrong is list any tax loopholes you've supported eliminating.

Or are you going to chicken out as you've done with spending cuts when you've said you support eliminating the deficit with spending cuts while at the same time refusing to specify which spending cuts you would make to get us even a tenth of the way to that goal.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

was I the only one to think CARL was going to propose a deportation tax on illegals?

I didn't.  I can't see CARL ever admitting that immigrants could ever be an economic benefit under any circumstances whatsoever.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Through essentially fraudulent accounting, the American film industry has essentially made itself free from corporate (and individual) income taxes.

The film industry is hardly the only industry to do this.  That's one reason why I favor changing corporate income taxfrom a tax on net income to gross income.  It's a lot harder to pull off the accounting gimmicks.

By imposing what is essentially an excise tax (we have those on gasoline), we will getting revenue for the government which would not be achieved unde the income taxes.

Excise taxes are effectively a industry specific gross income tax.  Rather than targeting specific industries, taxes should be as broad as possible so as to spread their burden as evenly as possible and to cause the least disruption to the economy.

P.S. - FDR enforced anti-trust laws, including on the film industry (this was before WW 2).

While it happened after FDR, the anti-trust laws in a very real sense ended the golden age of Hollywood.  By forcing theatre chains to divest themselves of their studios, they altered the economics of film-making so that studios could no longer be in the business of nurturing talent.  Same thing happened when the TV networks were forced to largely divest their in-house production arms.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The very fact that so many people come here illegally is proof that our immigration system is broken.  Simply stepping up border enforcement will not solve the problem. Nor will a slight increase in legal immigration.  Any small increase in legal immigration will be filled mainly by skilled persons, but for the most part illegal immigration serves to meet an economic need for inexpensive semi-skilled physical labor that is not met by the legal workforce.  We can either revamp our immigration system to meet that need, or we can continue to have illegal immigrants.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I thoroughly reject your advocacy of amnesty.

Who said anything about amnesty?  What is is needed is a significant increase in the level of legal immigration, both permanent and guest worker (for the seasonal physical labor that it is unrealistic to expect permanent residents in a society as well off as our own to provide) so that we can satisfy our economy's demand for semi-skilled physical labor without having a permanent group of people who can never fully integrate into our society.

As far as amnesty is concerned, the most I would advocate is not penalizing adults for previous illegal immigration if they apply for legal immigration, and for giving those who came here as young minors illegally because their parents brought them the means to become legal.  But even that level of amnesty is not a necessary part of immigration reform.

Wholesale amnesty for illegals that would give them a head start on becoming legal is not something that should be considered.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

We do NOT need more 'guest workers' as there is already high unemployment in this country (particularly for those with limited job skills) as experience has shown us.  When a business is compelled to terminate a significant number of illegals, they are inundated with job applications from Americans seeking unemployment.

Yup, from Americans seeking unemployment checks, not from Americans seeking employment, as a number of the jobs are sufficiently physically demanding that getting American employees is difficult or even impossible, as the farmers of Georgia have found out to their distress.  Also many of those jobs are seasonal labor, not permanent jobs. They also offer little to no opportunity for advancement.  For seasonal physical labor, a guest worker program makes sense.

What is happening is that some employers prefer to hire illegals as they can intimidate them to ignore environment and safety laws, which they would have problems getting American workers to flout.

Here is one area we do agree on.  Solving the illegal immigration problem will require strict enforcement of employment laws.  Where we seem to differ is that you seem to think we need to focus on the employees, while I think we need to focus on the employers.  Unless we return to the days when we ignored civil rights, no employee-focused approach will work well enough to do much.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

By the way, while it is possible you simply missed this, your non-response does leave the impression that you are ducking the issue.

Its also interesting to note that he makes an unfounded allegation of some supposed opposition on my part to closing industry-specific tax loopholes.  Cite please?

I was under the impression that you supported the Nyquist position that the debt-ceiling package contain only spending cuts and no increase in tax revenues via the closing of tax loopholes.  If you do support for eliminating tax loopholes then name some tax loopholes you support eliminating.  That would be much easier than trudging through your posts for something I'm doubtful I would find in your posting history.  All you need to do to prove me wrong is list any tax loopholes you've supported eliminating.

Or are you going to chicken out as you've done with spending cuts when you've said you support eliminating the deficit with spending cuts while at the same time refusing to specify which spending cuts you would make to get us even a tenth of the way to that goal.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

You have consistently ... supported more taxes and higher taxes.

Yada, yada, yada.

I presume by "more taxes" you mean "new additional taxes" and by "higher taxes" you mean "higher tax rates", for unless you don't intend both to mean increased tax revenue, it appears you need to visit the Department of Redundancy Department to renew your redundant license of redundancy.

The only new taxes I would support would be a carbon tax, with offsetting cuts in other taxes, as a superior way to deal with energy independence/greenhouse gases than the bureaucratic nightmare that cap and trade will be and replacement of the current corporate income tax system with one that taxes gross income instead of net income.  So while I do favor some new taxes, I favor them as replacements for the ones we already have.

If we keep our current tax structure as it is, I don't favor passing any law that would increase tax rates, just closing tax loopholes.  If you want to call the ending of "temporary tax cut" passed by the GOP in 2001 a tax hike, go ahead.  All starve the beast has done these past ten years is raise the deficit and debt. If it caused either party to show spending restraint, I don't see it.  Unless we cut spending, we must raise revenues.  Tax and spend is bad; but borrow and spend is worse.  Any serious spending cut must affect one or more of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Defense.  There isn't enough spending in the rest of government to solve the deficit gap.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

People that are debating Carl deserve a medal. It's such a dirty job that not even the Mexicans won't accept it, but I guess somebody has to do it

This is why Dave has anointed Ernest to be the forum's Sisyphus.  It keeps the rest of us sane.

"You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane."

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

First, you now claim to only support a "carbon tax" as part of the more taxes.  I note that you have not stated how high the new (more) taxes would be.

If you want a look at a more concrete carbon tax proposal, take a look at the one I proposed and got passed back in 2007 when I was active in Atlasia.

It called for gradually phasing in a carbon tax that at the end of a 10 year period would be $50 per ton of emitted CO₂, or in more consumer graspable terms that would be roughly $0.45 per gallon of gasoline, $0.05 per kWh of coal-fired electricity, or $0.025 per kWh of natural gas-fired electricity.

Your "greenhouse gases" fixation is laughable.  Of course your solution is "more taxes" rather than encouraging nuclear power.  So, your supposed concern is absurd, and your solution of more taxes is your answer to just about everything.

Oh, how do you propose encouraging nuclear power?  The simple fact is that nuclear power is not at present economically competitive with fossil fuel power.  The only two ways of bridging the cost difference by government action are to either subsidize nuclear power or to make fossil fuel electricity more costly.  I can't believe that you favor subsidies, and of the two methods to raise fossil fuel costs, a carbon tax is far simpler to implement than the ludicrous cap and trade scheme with its bureaucracy and questionable carbon offsets.

Finally, if you were to look at facts, the problem is that expenditures have increased dramatically over the past few years.  In 2000 (when the nation was relatively prosperous), federal government expenditures accounted for approximately 18% of the GDP, whereas today they account for approximately 25% of the GDP.  So, what we need is to cut spending, not have more and higher taxes, as you advocate.

Then cut the spending.  Despite your claims, I'm not opposed to spending cuts.  Indeed, I've proposed larger cuts here than you have because I've been willing to propose specific cuts in the big four segments of the budget. Even if the rest of the budget were zeroed out, we'd still have a deficit.  But if sufficient cuts cannot be made, then increasing tax revenue to close the deficit gap must be done, preferably by beginning with the elimination of tax loopholes and simplifying the tax code.