[Alarti0001]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yes, because paper money has had a much better history of success... No paper currency has survived longer than about 40 years. The US dollar has just crossed that threshold. Unlikely it will last another 40. Since you're a historical expert about the period of the articles of confederation, certainly you must know about the Continental, our nation's first experiment with paper money. The experience with that paper money is why the founders required money be backed by gold or silver, so that we wouldn't make such a horrible mistake again. And is it just a coincidence that poverty had decreased steadily during the period of the gold standard, and has flattened out and even increased slightly since we went off it?

You do not need the supply of money to grow at the same rate as the economy... Do you just read talking points from Paul Krugman? This argument has been refuted into irrelevance. If the economy grows faster than the supply of money, goods will become cheaper. You may need smaller denominations of currency, but you don't need a larger supply of money.

Finally, let's investigate your claim that if the top 100 companies paid 30% in corporate income taxes, we'd have a balanced budget. The market cap of the top 100 companies totals to $13.3T. We can assume the P/E is between 10 and 15, so let's put it at 13.3 to make it easy. That means these companies have 1 trillion dollars in earnings. Let's assume they currently pay 0 in taxes, which is a bit unlikely, but I'll give it to you. Raising the tax rate to 30% would increase tax revenues by $300B. This is only a small chunk of the $1.1T deficit. The actual tax rate of the largest corporations is about 18.5% right now (see source below), so your increase to 30% would lead to a $115B increase in federal revenue, which is 10% of the deficit. Way to solve the budget deficit buddy.

Info on corporate tax rates:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/03/news...axes/index.htm

I'm down for removing 115b per year out of our deficit.