[speaker001:] yes
[speaker002:] um
[speaker001:] I guess my initial view is our tax burden hasn't gone down in recent years despite our total tax burden despite tax cuts but among industrialized nations we have one of the lowest in in the world and in part of the matter you get what you pay for we're gonna have national health insurance which seems likely it's necessarily gonna involve more taxes uh I suspect they take the view that cutting income tax rates has been good for the the economy that most other countries have a higher share of the tax burden in various kinds of sales taxes uh energy taxes particularly and that to the extent we need to raise more taxes that's the direction we should look
[speaker002:] right well I guess I kind of have mixed feelings um you know you always sit there and out of each pay check so much comes out of it and you wonder you know where's it all going and we have such a huge uh national deficit and
[speaker001:] where it's all going
[speaker002:] and I guess a lot of times there's questions wondering well if it's doing a whole lot of good I know there's a lot of social programs out there that need help but you kind of always wonder well where where's the money going
[speaker001:] well one one one of the big tax that has gone up a lot in this year is the social security tax which in principle is going into into a big trust fund but
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] that is a particularly regressive tax uh it's a tax on the first dollar earnings and Senator Moynihan's uh proposal to to to cut there I think would makes a lot of sense
[speaker002:] I'm sorry I couldn't I couldn't hear that
[speaker001:] I think Senator Moynihan's proposal to to cut the social security tax which isn't really going to going to beef up up up the social security program could make a lot of sense
[speaker002:] right right yeah I agree with that as far as other countries I'm not um I don't keep up on it too much just as far as what you know as what they're doing I know we were in Ireland last year and I know that the tax there is extremely high much higher than we pay here but
[speaker001:] um-hum oh yes
[speaker002:] but as far as other countries I'm not uh up to par on
[speaker001:] I think Japan I think Japan is probably about equal to ours
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and other major countries are higher I had friends were amazed at the sales taxes the classes of things when they went to Canada not so long ago
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and as a whole most other countries have a higher level of cradle to grave government services and it's a real real they're they're real trade-offs there
[speaker002:] right right yeah but and and you sit there and wonder um I guess this doesn't really have to do with taxes but just money in general and and um wondering if you're gonna have enough when you retire to live on
[speaker001:] uh I that that's a scary thing with this no no real knowing about uh the the there's a lot of inflation risk that isn't taken care of in most private pension plans
[speaker002:] um-hum yeah that's true but um are you involved with the legislature up there or since
[speaker001:] no I'm at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] uh they're part of the Commerce Department here in here in in Gaithersburg Maryland
[speaker002:] uh-huh I was just wondering since you said Washington DC and you and you picked this topic I was just kind of curious
[speaker001:] well well I I I didn't pick it uh
[speaker002:] oh you didn't
[speaker001:] I um I like I don't really recall what I may have filled out on the on the form but I I certainly think certainly been given topics different from the ones that I'd mentioned before
[speaker002:] oh did you see I haven't placed any calls did they automatically assign the topic
[speaker001:] yes yes when you place a call topic is given to you
[speaker002:] oh I didn't know that I thought whoever made the call could choose what topic because I haven't made any calls yet I've just received some
[speaker001:] oh you should try it
[speaker002:] oh I didn't realize that okay
[speaker001:] hm
[speaker002:] yeah because it's kind of a it can be a rather controversial subject depending on who you're talking to
[speaker001:] uh many of the subjects are uh and taxes taxes especially um one thing that has kept kept our tax burden high and this will change somewhat in the next few years is the is the level of defense of the defense budget
[speaker002:] exactly
[speaker001:] and that's that same subject