thinking about taxing

From Seldom Wrong, Never in Doubt:

... our Public Servants will agree to a lot of spending cuts, the elimination of a couple of fiscally insignificant tax deductions or credits, both sides will claim credit for themselves, assign blame to the other, fire up the base by noting the threat that the other side poses, and appeal to the center with fear about the future (Dems) or impatience with the present (GOP).

Sadly this could be said for almost any government human issue. But on the topic, SWNID lists immutable truths regarding taxes:

1. That effective tax rates (how much tax gets collected as a percentage of GDP) matter more than published marginal tax rates (how much of a particular band of income is officially taxed before credits and deductions).
2. That as tax rates declined over the last generation, tax receipts went up and the effective tax rate remained essentially constant.
3. That the so-called "tax breaks for the rich" enacted a decade ago yielded a more progressive pattern of tax collection, as roughly 50% of Our Republic's citizens now pay no federal income tax while the top percentiles pay the largest share of federal taxes.
4. That the tax on corporate jets proposed by the President would yield revenue equal to some tiny decimal of a percent of the federal deficit.
5. That people with control of wealth inevitably alter their economic decisions to avoid taxes when taxes are high.
6. That taxes on oil companies simply make petroleum products more expensive in the future.
7. That, as Milton Friedman pointed out a generation ago, the fundamental problem is not government debt but government spending: whether the government taxes a dollar or borrows it, by so doing the government decides what will be done with that dollar, and over time, governments tend to make poorer decisions about how to invest money than do private citizens. (Why? Because governments make decisions for political reasons, and citizens who handle their own money care a lot about how it's handled. That is, no one takes better care of your stuff than you.)