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Taxes!
Sinister Cheshire
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'll not argue that he's been a great president, but some of these need some clarifications:
2) Tax breaks were for everyone. The lowest tax bracket was reduced from 15% to 10%. This effects everyone who pays taxes, reducing their marginal burden by 33%.
3) Opposed embryonic stem cell research. Not stem cell research. Big difference.
7) Are you talking about Kyoto? Our last President also refused to sign it. The Senate (even in Democrat hands) did not ratify it.
11) FEMA has some culpability in the poor response, but a majority of the blame lands on locals politicians who diverted funds for levee repair, failed to mobilize public transportation for evacuation and spent more time blaming others than admitting their disaster plans were a clusterfuck.
Tax breaks only began for everyone. This is the same strategy the republicans always pull. give a tax break so the middle lower class dont whine, but build up the upper rich class.
the tax break was progressive. It increased on a percentage, going up every year. People in the lower to middle class got their $300 back, but due to their income, the percentage increase following this was negligible, and their following tax breaks will be nothing more in comparison. Meanwhile, the upper class, due to their income, will continue to recieve increasingly higher tax breaks until the year 2010 when Bush's tax cut program expires.
opposing embryonic stem cell research is laughable. They claim it kills a life, but what the right wing doesnt seem to notice is that the embryonic stem cells are taken from embryos which are going to be disposed of anyway. And once started, many stem cell lines can be grown indefinetly.
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Nope, not a joke. But I agree it's not enough of a tax break. I'd like to see more. I was just refuting that the tax breaks were for the rich only. The greatest relative reductions were at the low end of the scale. For the middle class, who generally move beyond the first tax bracket into the second or third, they received additional cuts.
Did you intentionally ignore our points or do you fail at reading comprehension? The tax breaks didn't actually end up putting more in people's pockets considering ALL OF THE SOCIAL SERVICES THEY LOST. If you give me 150 bucks as a tax break but then reduce the worth of the services you provide to me by 300 dollars, I've effectively lost 150.
That's pretty much what happened and trying to paint off the tax breaks as anything other than handouts to the mega-rich is bullshit.
What he is saying is that the lowered taxes only effect a small portion of what they pay, since the first 7500ish is tax free (other then payroll taxes), and that they are receiving substantially less than what they got in tax breaks in benefits from the government due to cuts in domestic social spending.
Quite the contrary. I'm not mega-rich. I received more in breaks than I lost in services.
My parents might qualify for being "poor". Their tax breaks netted them more than they lost.
Across an entire nation of people, you will find those who gained and those who lost. My point was simply that they weren't "for the wealthy". Note that I did not refute your assertion on the cuts of services. I just think it's disingenuous to use class warfare rhetoric.
My position is that they didn't do enough. I'd like to eliminate a couple of tax brackets, reduce the burden at the low end of the earning scale and reduce expenditures at the government level in different areas. For instance, I think they student loan cuts were a horrible idea. I think cuts to the NEA would be a better place to make some money.
Fuck you. I'm sick and tired of being accused of "class warfare" every fucking time someone points out "hey, the rich benefited more from these tax cuts than the poor and middle-class by a couple of orders of magnitude, and the poor and middle-class are getting totally fucked over by the cuts in services." No, that's not fucking "class warfare." If you want to see some fucking "class warfare" check out the goddamn French Revolution. That was "class warfare." This is just the goddamn fucking truth.
:roll:
Don't tell my mom that. She'll be pissed. At the time of the cuts, my mom was 48.
The "rich" also pay more taxes by a couple orders of magnitude. I would say that class warfare, as a method of debate and rhetoric, is most certainly what is happening here. No, it's not the French Revolution, but what is? I'm always shocked when people say "the rich got all the tax cuts!". The rich pay most of the taxes! I'm not sure why that shocks people.
And when the rich happen to oppose the tax cuts?
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article878645.ece
How about this list of economists who oppose it?
http://www.epinet.org/stmt/2003/econlist_final_db.html
For a partial transcipt of why, look here:
http://archive.epinet.org/real_media/030210/transcript.html
Basically, the rich are already historically rich. They don't really need to get any richer (and when Buffett opposes getting richer......well, that says something). For some odd reason, I don't feel like corporate executives really need more money, especially with their compensation skyrocketing.
Not only do the tax breaks help the rich more the services cut hurt the middle and lower classes ALOT more. Even the middle class relies heavily on loans for colleges and they eviserated the federal lending programs to make way for these tax cuts.
He didn't use the term but Bush's tax ctus are basically trickledown Reagonomics all over. The theory that when rich people are richer they inevitably help everyone else.
Wait, are you saying a rich person opposes it?! Well then, that solves it in my head.
But what happens with the non-rich do support it? Is my opinion less than a wealthy person?
And talking about the billionaires isn't really representative of who these "rich" people are. The top two income tax brackets (33% and 35%) start at $188,450 for a married couple. A doctor and a stay at home mom count for that. How about a car salesman and his teacher wife? What about a small business owner? A majority of the people being labeled as "the rich" aren't the millionaires.
Edit: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 13,000 economists employed in the US. If 450 are against it, that's 3.5%, hardly a majority.
Getting mad because people of high income are getting their percentage knocked down a little more than middle income is retarded, because the high income people were already at a higher percentage anyway. So if you compare the 15% for high income versus 15% for low income, the rich are already spending a lot of cash for the government. Why should they pay 25% when low income pays 15%? This kind of logic is dumbfounding. If you can't fund within your means, don't spend so much money! Stop taking it from people and then using the "oh well they have enough money already" argument, because that's what we call bullshit. Medicare, social security, welfare. Who's really funding these??
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
How do they benefit more? They do not receive social security, medicare, welfare, WIC, SBA loans, grants for education....
Most social programs benefit the poor.
Because if you take 20% of my income, it hurts me a fuckton more than taking, say, 80% of Warren Buffet's income hurts him. Not only does it reduce my standard of living tremendously, it also makes me way more likely to do things like, say, mugging Warren Buffet in order to pay for my food or medical care.
Second, if you don't see how Warren Buffet benefits more from this country being the United States of America instead of Thunderdome, you're fucking retarded.
Okay Robin Hood. Taxes aren't about HURTING people. They are about keeping our system of living running in an orderly and proper fashion. What we need government for: defense, trade, transportation, law enforcement. Once those things are out of the way, states can do whatever they need on top of that.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
I don't think that was the argument. imbalanced may say it was, but that's not how I read it.
Instead, I think the issue is more akin to how much money do you have left to spend? When the highest marginal tax bracket was at 90+%, people kept little of their money at that end, and could not put it to use to the same degree as the money made earlier. If you keep increasing taxes on the wealthy, there is less money to spend in the economy. Remember the luxury tax? Yacht makers (middle-class workers) were laid off because the super-rich stopped buying yachts.
We can argue all day on whether they needed another yacht, but the workers paid off would likely say that they needed the work.
Because even under a flat tax system, there are people that are exempt from taxes. You want to save some cash in government? The IRS is three times the size of the FBI. Chew on that for a bit.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
Are you ignoring deductions, like for children and other things? Anyway, my parents certainly made over $188,450 together for the duration of the Bush tax cuts. They didn't receive anything of significance from the Bush tax cuts; then again, even if they got a few thousand bucks, it wouldn't matter because their expenses were ALREADY COVERED BY THE MONEY THEY WERE MAKING.
What Buffett is saying is that the money could be far better used providing social services for the poor since an upwardly mobile, educated lower class is far more beneficial to the upper-class than a few (thousand) extra bucks in the pocket. The tax cuts make even less sense when put in the context of war spending along with the deficit.
Btw, did you note the number of Nobel laureates who signed that? Yeah, that's pretty goddamn significant.
Using Buffet as an example is not really a fair comparison.
To be in the top 10%, you need only make $99,000 a year. That represents 13 million people.
There's already a huge imbalance.
A flat tax gets rid of all deductions, loop*holes, credits, and exemptions. That alone saves millions of dollars.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
And where would people hide all these loopholes??
"Households pay tax on their labor income using a 10-line individual postcard. They do not need to worry about reporting dividends, interest, and other forms of business/capital income. Those forms of income are taxed at the business level, thus obviating any need to tax them at the individual level since that would violate the principle of no double taxation.
"The individual postcard is so simple that a third-grader could file a family’s tax return in about five minutes. Each household would report wage, salary, and pension income on Line 1, which should be easily available from W-2 forms. Using Lines 2–5, the household then would calculate its personal allowance, which is based on family size. The personal allowance on Line 5 is then subtracted from Line 1 to determine taxable income. This amount is reported on Line 6. The amount of tax is calculated on Line 7. This amount is then compared to the amount of tax withheld on Line 8, which then leaves either a tax payment or a refund."
"Complexity is a hidden tax amounting to more than $100 billion. This is the cost of tax preparation, lawyers, accountants, and other resources used to comply with the Internal Revenue Code. The Internal Revenue Service even admits that the current tax code requires taxpayers to devote 6.6 billion hours each year to their tax returns."
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
And yet the richest taxpayers are still able to hide their funds in offshore accounts, shelters, and various other frauds. I'm sure that if the IRS were cut in half this wouldn't have any negative ramifications for our ability to force the richest members of our society to pay their dues to the government.
Those numbers are AGI, so it takes into account those things.
Now, what would happen if your parents took that $2000 and bought something with it? Tipped the waitress more? Donated it to charity? There's evidence that those types of activities would be better for the economy than giving it to the government. I'm sure the waitresses would appreciate it.
As for me, when I got my $300 check from the first round, I took my family to dinner and I tipped 25%. That helped the cook, the waitress, the hostess, the owner, and the busboy.
Nobel prize means little to me. It's too politicized, and has lost it's luster.
Now why would taxpayers hide their funds in offshore accounts, I wonder? Oh that's right, because they're being raped of their money on a government level. You want to stop that, you give them incentive.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
Hahahahahahahah. Yeah, they are being raped.
It also meant little to nothing to the overall economy.
Taxes based more on income than on discretionary spending and consumption are pretty bad for the economy. Why would you want to move from the current clusterfuck to something that's even worse (but simple!)?
Where the fuck did this principle come from? All taxation is double-taxation.
And you don't think any loopholes would be written into this new system? Do you believe in the tooth fairy, too?
There's no better incentive than less enforcement, especially when you can pay 0% as opposed to whatever the flat tax is. If they can hide it, they will, especially if you make it particularly easy.
Because it's fair. Our government shouldn't punish the people that do well in this country.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
http://www.ctj.org/html/gwb0602.htm
No, I don't believe in the tooth fairy any more than I believe Universal Healthcare can work on a country of our sheer magnitude. It seems ironic, huh?
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