Part of the problem in recent years has been this idea that we can fund government based on the backs of the insanely rich. It can't work long-term and since the long-term is now, it won't work now either.
There is no choice but to fund a huge portion of the budget on the backs of the very rich (depends how you define insanely) depending on the distribution of income. The portion of income taxes paid by the top 1% has always climbed when income inequality has climbed, and vice versa. In reality, taxes can come from whereever income comes from in the economy. In a more egalitarian economy economically, the portion of the tax base composed of the very rich will naturally decline. A larger problem than whether the higher or lower incomes bear a greater tax burden is the share of taxes that are dependent on highly cyclical money streams such as capital gains or property.
Of course, but that does not mean taxes on the very rich could not (or will not) be raised further. It was in 1932 under Hoover that the maximum tax bracket began its upward surge, at first from 25% to 63%. This was one of the largest tax increases in modern history. And it was not repealed by Roosevelt, who had his own budget protection concerns.
Well, there is a difference between actually moving your life, your activities, and your family to another country and changing one's place of income or residence for legal purposes, yet still spending a large amount of time away from one's 'legal residence'. The latter could be called tax evasion. With regard to movements between states... well, that is one of the advantages of federal action over state action. One commenter during the debates on the stimulus mentioned that states should not use the money they receive to try and attract businesses if that would only mean businesses moving away from other states- it would not serve national purposes.
Hardly 'easy'. Going after a massive group of people, even illegals, would be extremely costly and almost certainly mistaken. In the 1920s anti-immigration legislation was passed, but in the 1930s a sharp drop-off in net immigration occured without any additional xenophobia from the government-- for obvious reasons. I think this is what sbane is saying. If the jobs aren't there "they'll leave." That's exactly what happened in the 1930s-- millions left (some for the Soviet Union, of all places), millions simply never came.
Trying to forcibly remove people from the labor force on the basis of social class (which, basically, legal status is one form of) is also a pretty dangerous precedent, particularly in depressionary economic times. There are always some people at the bottom of the totem pole. Mass deportation is a recipe for complete meltdown of civil order, and it only possibly (emphasize possibly) makes sense if you assume civil order is going to melt down anyway-- but there is no evidence that such an outcome is inevitable right now.
The amount they pay in taxes in no way makes up for the amount they take up in state services.[/quote]
Which is a function of both their illegal status and their low income. Due to the former, they pay taxes at a much lower rate than the general population. And due to the latter, they are in lower brackets, have less money to spend, and are less likely to have preexisting health insurance or a cushion for other social services. But trying to remove them would be even more costly in the states where they actually represent a substantial enough portion of the population to make a significant impact on state expenditures. The 'solution'- though it is really only the least bad of many bad options- bring them into some sort of legalized status so that they may pay taxes at higher rates, and impose a fee for this legalization to give a one-time boost to revenues (and still allow those unwilling to pay the fee or unable to, to return to Mexico of their own volition if they cannot find work).
Why should the difference between being a citizen and being a non-citizen be the difference between a rioter and a bum? Try to drag them out of their dwellings and dump them across the border would guarantee massive unrest. Not doing so, I fail to see how such unrest would necessarily occur, particularly only within the illegal populations. If things really got that bad, you would see unrest spread among legal populations too.
