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On August 06 2011 20:14 Blix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 18:53 Kaitlin wrote:On August 06 2011 17:37 RaLakedaimon wrote:
Job markets so fucking shitty I wonder if things can pick up one day, sad to see things just continuing to get worse because we all choose to pick horrible leaders, or maybe there just is never a good alternative to those shown to us. Hate to see all of us average Americans having to deal with shit like this since we aren't the ones that got any benefit before our economic downfall. May not be right but fuck I hate rich people in this country. The richest 1% of the country pays more in income taxes than 95% of the country, combined. How much is enough ? I would be interested in the source for this statement.
Found some info (google is your friend ^^)... Appears that the top 1% has about a third of the wealth, the top 5% (including the top 1%) has about 2/3 of the wealth and the bottom 95% has about 1/3 also. So if each person has the pay the same tax%, then it is very logical that the top 1% pays the same or more than the bottom 95%... As they both have the same share in the wealth.
I'd say your statement is a very clever spin on the immense wealth inequality in the US...
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On August 06 2011 20:26 Necrosjef_ wrote:
What's funny is the typical American reaction to this.
"We own the rest of the world blah blah blah"
"Credit rating agencies are stupid"
"China kills baby girls"
The thing is the rest of the world isn't so easily misdirected as you guys are. Time to face up your mistakes and be prepared to be homeless. No one is going to bail you out, no one cares about you, you brought this on yourselves and damn you fucking deserve it.
Credit rating agencies are stupid. Well, maybe not stupid but intentionally misleading. They've known for a long time that the US credit rating shouldn't be AAA.
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Good for the stock markets to come falling down, because we need more strength in currency markets which have been taking a bad beating with the inflation recently
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
It was bound to happen, but given how a lot of countries are still just as fucked, if not more, than the US, investors will still be drawn to them. It'll certainly affect them, but not too much imo. It just sounds like a huge, cataclysmic news because it's unprecedented.
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expected and fair but i think AA+ is still to good 
sry but if they rate greek and other countrys that bad then usa is like A or A+ max
anyways bad for world economy but expected after this republican desaster "we not allow more money" thing ... say thanks to the tea party !!!
ps: also isnt true that the rich pay 95% of the taxes they nearly pay enough for their money there is NO rich taxes (republicans not allow it) so the most money is paid by the poors (alot more people) ...
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On August 06 2011 19:19 Mauldo wrote:
How is that even fair. How. And when the Democrats want to close enough tax loopholes to help make up a trillion dollars in revenue (a move that, if you read the New York Times article I link below, Reagan did when he found out back during his time in office that GE and other huge corporations were dodging taxes by loopholes and other means) the Tea Party holds everyone up with a bunch of "Well then fine, let's let America default." And when they're told that might crash the American economy, and along with it the world's economy, they shrug. They want to start a global great depression because a few millionaires and billionaires might have to actually pay the taxes they were supposed to pay when the tax code was written up.
Please , the US has been on a downward spiral long before the tea party came to be.
In fact if you recall it was Clinton who was in power when Glass-Steagal was repealed back in 1999 , that is where the majority of the current economic crisis stems from.
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On August 06 2011 20:29 Blix wrote:
Found some info (google is your friend ^^)... Appears that the top 1% has about a third of the wealth, the top 5% (including the top 1%) has about 2/3 of the wealth and the bottom 95% has about 1/3 also. So if each person has the pay the same tax%, then it is very logical that the top 1% pays the same or more than the bottom 95%... As they both have the same share in the wealth.
I'd say your statement is a very clever spin on the immense wealth inequality in the US...
I have touched on this before , a large part of the issue with increasing income inequality in the USA is due to offshoring of factories and now white collar jobs to cheap labour locations like China , India & Mexico.
People didn't want to listen though , sad how so many people still think offshoring is somehow good for the US economy.
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If you ask my opinion, the world isn't going to see a day when US manages to pay off that debt, not a chance.
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The problem in the USA is, in essence, that the rich are too powerful and completely dominate the political process. Just look at Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission which is just insane.
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On August 06 2011 20:26 Necrosjef_ wrote:
What's funny is the typical American reaction to this.
"We own the rest of the world blah blah blah"
"Credit rating agencies are stupid"
"China kills baby girls"
The thing is the rest of the world isn't so easily misdirected as you guys are. Time to face up your mistakes and be prepared to be homeless. No one is going to bail you out, no one cares about you, you brought this on yourselves and damn you fucking deserve it.
I've never heard the first one.
Credit rating agencies are stupid.
And what?
On August 06 2011 21:04 [SuNdae] wrote:
If you ask my opinion, the world isn't going to see a day when US manages to pay off that debt, not a chance.
I don't follow this stuff too closely. Has there ever been any real goal of eliminating the debt in the recent past? All I've heard was discussion that involved bringing the budget back to a surplus/bringing the total deficit back to appropriate levels in line with national GDP.
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On August 06 2011 19:40 Evilmystic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 19:19 Mauldo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 06 2011 18:53 Kaitlin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 17:37 RaLakedaimon wrote:
Job markets so fucking shitty I wonder if things can pick up one day, sad to see things just continuing to get worse because we all choose to pick horrible leaders, or maybe there just is never a good alternative to those shown to us. Hate to see all of us average Americans having to deal with shit like this since we aren't the ones that got any benefit before our economic downfall. May not be right but fuck I hate rich people in this country. The richest 1% of the country pays more in income taxes than 95% of the country, combined. How much is enough ? And yet they own how much capital? I look at it this way; play Final Fantasy VII. You can level up materia and sell them for a huge profit if you pick the right one. Let's go with the "All" materia. It sells for 1.7 million gil at max level. Sell ten of these, and you have 17 million gil. But honestly, how much gil do you need in the damn game? Half of that? The extra is just laying around. Why not increase their taxes to where that money is actually used, instead of the money being "invested" into "jobs" that these richest in America "create" while actually cutting thousands upon thousands of jobs and giving themselves millions in bonuses because they "earned it". This happened because S&P saw what the American people is starting to see. When you've got Boehner and the rest of the sane (or as sane as you can get in Congress) Republicans being held by the balls by the Tea Party freshmen into demanding unrealistic cuts without any new taxes it's absurd. Why not raise taxes to pre-Bush levels? How about pre-Clinton? All of those would be lower than when Reagan was president. I leave the thread with this. I worked for two months the summer of 2010 (I would have this summer, but no one would hire me in this marvelous Reaganomics economy) for a factory. I made around 2000 dollars before taxes. In federal and state and local tax I lost around 400 dollars before the temp agency took their cut. Around tax refund season I got 132 dollars back. So I paid a good 250 dollars in taxes. Okay, whatever. I accept that. I know it's not much compared to what people with actual, regular jobs pay. But really, if I pay that much, won't the bigger corporations pay more? As in, more than 250 dollars in taxes? GE, a multi-national and multi-billion dollar company, reported 14.2 billion dollars in international revenue and 5.1 billion dollars in revenue that occurred here in the United States. How much did they pay in taxes? Zero dollars. 0. Null. Not even a cent. Not only that, but the United States paid them 3.2 billion in tax refunds. They paid less taxes than I did, and they got a tax refund how many times higher than I did? They paid fewer taxes than every middle-class and poor person in the United States. How is that even fair. How. And when the Democrats want to close enough tax loopholes to help make up a trillion dollars in revenue (a move that, if you read the New York Times article I link below, Reagan did when he found out back during his time in office that GE and other huge corporations were dodging taxes by loopholes and other means) the Tea Party holds everyone up with a bunch of "Well then fine, let's let America default." And when they're told that might crash the American economy, and along with it the world's economy, they shrug. They want to start a global great depression because a few millionaires and billionaires might have to actually pay the taxes they were supposed to pay when the tax code was written up. Closing tax loopholes isn't raising taxes. It's stopping the cheats from cheating us anymore. But, you know, they "create jobs" with that money. Tell that to the numerous unemployed in this country. Especially explain that to the numerous "99ers," the people who have gone over their alloted 99 weeks on unemployment benefits. Because they're just lazy assholes who want to starve. That sounds about right. New York Times article on GE income taxes Gonna quote something from your source: Show nested quote +“In a rational system, a corporation’s tax department would be there to make sure a company complied with the law,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official who now is a scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “But in our system, there are corporations that view their tax departments as a profit center, and the effects on public policy can be negative.” That's a very strange look on corporate goals actually. Maximization of profits and minimization of expenses are main goals of any business and they will use every legal way to reach these goals. Blaming corporations for that is ridiculous.
I personally disagree with not blaming them for certain actions, the way I see it is that if a person is being an asshole but keeps perfectly to the law, he is still an asshole regardless.
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The whole concept of "the rich pay all the taxes in the U.S." is only true when a great many facts are omitted. First of all, look at how we are taxed. I live in Florida so I pay 6% sales tax, also a large chunk of what you pay for gasoline is taxes, many "luxuries" such as cigarettes and alcohol have large taxes on them, I pay 3 separate taxes on my income (Federal income tax, medicare, and social security), any bill my home generates such as electricity, cable, telephone ect., when you look closely there are anywhere from 5 - 15 taxes and charges from the government. Obviously, you can see how many of these taxes would be paid much more by the masses than by wealthy individuals. Many places in the US have state, county, or city taxes on income as well. So if you ignore all of these and only count "federal income tax (not medicare and social security)" than the statement becomes closer to truth. But also remember than many wealthy individuals have armies of tax attorneys, accountants, and can use the huge loopholes on corporate taxes to avoid paying most of their tax liabilities. They are experts at hiding their actual wealth from taxable income. Likewise, the U.S. government has become expert at hiding the amount of taxes the average person pays, by taxing you a little bit, 50 times. I'd bet almost any U.S. citizen you asked would find it impossible to figure out exactly every penny they've paid into the government in the last year.
Basically, it's is a lie and it's been told over and over so people have begun to accept it as truth. Their is a great book I read called "rich dad, poor dad" and it goes into some detail about corporations functions with regards to taxes and the history of income tax in the U.S. But the rich DO NOT pay 90% of the taxes in the U.S. they just have the biggest soapboxes to spew that kind of propaganda.
The huge problem in the U.S. is that corporate interests are running and ruining the country. People want to believe that the people in charge have the same morality as the rest of us, they don't. People want to believe their vote matters, it doesn't. I don't believe in a two party system, where the two parties actively shut down any attempt for new parties to get a foothold, that we have any real choice. We just shuffle the same shit around every few years and we still end up with shit. Think that I'm crazy? Take a look at this http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list This is just the tip of the ice burg.
The whole mortgage crisis, take some facts into consideration. First of all the federal reserve banks board or directors is made up by top people from central banks in the U.S. The "FED" as it's often referred to IS NOT owned or managed by the federal government. So these private individuals control the money flow and base interest rates in the U.S. The banks appraise the value of houses so they have control over this variable in the market as well. The banks are also the same people who decided to give out bad loans. Can't be approved for a 120,000$ loan? No problem, well just give you two 60,000$ loans. My point is the major banks in the U.S. control most of the variables in the U.S. housing market, interest rates, the loans, and the value of the homes. How does this bubble happen if they didn't do it on purpose? Vast incompetence?
You're probably wondering "why would they do that?" Well look at whats happened. The banks end up with all the money you paid towards the loans, they end up with the house, a ton of smaller banks go bankrupt and the larger banks buy them up at discount prices thus gaining all of their assets, then the government takes your tax dollars and hands it to the poor struggling banks, so they don't fail all because the average American won't pay his bills. Or at least that last part is how it's often presented.
Here is an interesting quote. Some food for thought.
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependent on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class." - Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
“Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws."
- Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
Wondering what has happened to America's middle class? It's simple, Free trade. Anything we used to produce here can be produced much cheaper in a country with people who will work for just a few dollars per day, with no unions or benefits. The U.S. used to have taxes or tariffs on imported goods from countries like China and Mexico. These taxes were to protect the American worker, so we could compete on even footing in our own markets with imported goods. Free trade only benefits corporations. They produce products for next to nothing, import it to the U.S. and make billions. This is what has happened to Americas middle class. Now we all work in the "service industry". The U.S. economy is just recycling the same money around over and over. The few areas where our country is still competing globally, are drying up fast.
Basically, America has been sold out for profit. Our government is corrupt beyond repair, and most Americans are so blind and ignorant to how badly themselves and their children are being betrayed that they will actual fight and argue to uphold a system which is going to abuse them and strip them and their families of any wealth and rights they have. America's economy is a time bomb, it is going to utterly collapse and fail and no one is going to be there to bail us out. It's just a matter of when, but in most of our lifetimes we will probably see our currency collapse. Then people will wake up one day and realize that America doesn't produce enough food to feed itself, enough clothing to clothe itself, enough gasoline to run our cars, or have the manufacturing base to produce any major exports. Our only major export is our currency, and if it ever ceases to be valued by other countries we are utterly screwed. Note that when I saw major exports I am saying that in comparison to our imports, I do realize that there are a handful of things we do export. But, they are a drop in a very large bucket.
It's only a matter of time. We don't have the will to change or fix things. Our media is biased, corrupt and most people believe the lies that are being fed to them. I know I'm horribly pessimistic, but I feel that this is the reality and gravity of the situation.
Once we had some moral, honest leaders, I'd like to share some of thier thoughts. Because I'm sure most people reading this post think it's laughable and I must be nuts.
"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States" — Sen. Barry Goldwater (Rep. AR)
"This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President [Wilson} signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized....the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill." — Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. , 1913
"From now on, depressions will be scientifically created." — Congressman Charles A.
Lindbergh Sr. , 1913
"The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board as ministers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money" -- Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923
"The Federal Reserve bank buys government bonds without one penny..." — Congressman
Wright Patman, Congressional Record, Sept 30, 1941
"We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it". — Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932 (Rep. Pa)
"The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.
There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the
International bankers — Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. Pa)
"Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are the United States government's institutions.
They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers" — Congressional Record 12595-12603 — Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency (12 years) June 10, 1932
"I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs....I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." — John Danforth (R-Mo)
"These 12 corporations together cover the whole country and monopolize and use for private
gain every dollar of the public currency..." — Mr. Crozier of Cincinnati, before Senate Banking and Currency Committee - 1913
"The [Federal Reserve Act] as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the
currency... I do not like to think that any law can be passed that will make it possible to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency." — Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., 1913
Most of these qutoes are 70-100 years old, funny how accurate many of them are. Wake up america, we don't need "change" we need a revolution. We are only at the beginning stages of a long and painful downward spiral.
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On August 06 2011 18:53 Kaitlin wrote:
The richest 1% of the country pays more in income taxes than 95% of the country, combined. How much is enough ?
a) No, they don't.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html#Data
(Which is a conservative anti-tax organization that happens to be your own source. These are more up to date #s).
The richest 1% pay 38.02% on income taxes (on 20.00% of income).
The bottom 95% pay 41.82% on of income taxes (on 65.27% of income).
b) Income Taxes =/= Taxes.
Total tax burden is a lot closer than income tax burden, because while income tax is a progressive tax (that is, it taxes richer a higher % than poorer), that is not true of all taxes (such as sales taxes, payroll taxes, etc).
See Citizens for Tax Justice (pdf). If you will note, once total tax burden is taken into account, the gap is much closer.
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Russian Federation266 Posts
On August 06 2011 21:35 Bartuc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 19:40 Evilmystic wrote:On August 06 2011 19:19 Mauldo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 06 2011 18:53 Kaitlin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 17:37 RaLakedaimon wrote:
Job markets so fucking shitty I wonder if things can pick up one day, sad to see things just continuing to get worse because we all choose to pick horrible leaders, or maybe there just is never a good alternative to those shown to us. Hate to see all of us average Americans having to deal with shit like this since we aren't the ones that got any benefit before our economic downfall. May not be right but fuck I hate rich people in this country. The richest 1% of the country pays more in income taxes than 95% of the country, combined. How much is enough ? And yet they own how much capital? I look at it this way; play Final Fantasy VII. You can level up materia and sell them for a huge profit if you pick the right one. Let's go with the "All" materia. It sells for 1.7 million gil at max level. Sell ten of these, and you have 17 million gil. But honestly, how much gil do you need in the damn game? Half of that? The extra is just laying around. Why not increase their taxes to where that money is actually used, instead of the money being "invested" into "jobs" that these richest in America "create" while actually cutting thousands upon thousands of jobs and giving themselves millions in bonuses because they "earned it". This happened because S&P saw what the American people is starting to see. When you've got Boehner and the rest of the sane (or as sane as you can get in Congress) Republicans being held by the balls by the Tea Party freshmen into demanding unrealistic cuts without any new taxes it's absurd. Why not raise taxes to pre-Bush levels? How about pre-Clinton? All of those would be lower than when Reagan was president. I leave the thread with this. I worked for two months the summer of 2010 (I would have this summer, but no one would hire me in this marvelous Reaganomics economy) for a factory. I made around 2000 dollars before taxes. In federal and state and local tax I lost around 400 dollars before the temp agency took their cut. Around tax refund season I got 132 dollars back. So I paid a good 250 dollars in taxes. Okay, whatever. I accept that. I know it's not much compared to what people with actual, regular jobs pay. But really, if I pay that much, won't the bigger corporations pay more? As in, more than 250 dollars in taxes? GE, a multi-national and multi-billion dollar company, reported 14.2 billion dollars in international revenue and 5.1 billion dollars in revenue that occurred here in the United States. How much did they pay in taxes? Zero dollars. 0. Null. Not even a cent. Not only that, but the United States paid them 3.2 billion in tax refunds. They paid less taxes than I did, and they got a tax refund how many times higher than I did? They paid fewer taxes than every middle-class and poor person in the United States. How is that even fair. How. And when the Democrats want to close enough tax loopholes to help make up a trillion dollars in revenue (a move that, if you read the New York Times article I link below, Reagan did when he found out back during his time in office that GE and other huge corporations were dodging taxes by loopholes and other means) the Tea Party holds everyone up with a bunch of "Well then fine, let's let America default." And when they're told that might crash the American economy, and along with it the world's economy, they shrug. They want to start a global great depression because a few millionaires and billionaires might have to actually pay the taxes they were supposed to pay when the tax code was written up. Closing tax loopholes isn't raising taxes. It's stopping the cheats from cheating us anymore. But, you know, they "create jobs" with that money. Tell that to the numerous unemployed in this country. Especially explain that to the numerous "99ers," the people who have gone over their alloted 99 weeks on unemployment benefits. Because they're just lazy assholes who want to starve. That sounds about right. New York Times article on GE income taxes Gonna quote something from your source: “In a rational system, a corporation’s tax department would be there to make sure a company complied with the law,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official who now is a scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “But in our system, there are corporations that view their tax departments as a profit center, and the effects on public policy can be negative.” That's a very strange look on corporate goals actually. Maximization of profits and minimization of expenses are main goals of any business and they will use every legal way to reach these goals. Blaming corporations for that is ridiculous. I personally disagree with not blaming them for certain actions, the way I see it is that if a person is being an asshole but keeps perfectly to the law, he is still an asshole regardless.
But as long as being an asshole is not illegal, i see nothing wrong with it.
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On August 06 2011 10:21 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +The Tea Party is certainly to blame because they took their 20% in the house and refused to compromise in any way. They forced their agenda by refusing to play ball with their own party, let alone the democrats. The Democratic Party is certainly to blame because they took their Congressional majorities and refused to even introduce a budget bill to negotiate on for over 600 days. They forced their agenda (manufacture a crisis) by refusing to even bring the ball to the playground, all so they could blame any negative consequences from this brinksmanship on Tea Party intransigence. Well they got their crisis, too bad they misunderestimated what the results would be. Show nested quote +USA= only country where you can use "intellectual" to slander a politician @_@ In other countries they use other terms to mean the same thing. USA = only country with so many intellectual achievements that is generally viewed as stupid.
How on earth do you know this? Have you even been outside the us?
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On August 06 2011 11:00 DeepElemBlues wrote:
Turns out, banks and governments can't avoid the consequences of grossly distorting the market with debt piled on debt piled on debt, decades and decades of it. Keynes would personally be appalled at how his theories have been altered from "spend in bad times, save in good times" to "spend in good times, spend in bad times." Keynes was never for that. He understood that you can't deficit spend endlessly, if you do it too much in good times you won't be able to do it enough in bad times without doing worse damage.
This is the core of the problem right there.
Sadly politicians believe it's more important to be re-elected rather than making the correct decisions.
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
The democrats of the last 2 years and the Repubs for the 8 years before that completely fucked things up.
Bad beat run of 10 years of incompetent leadership.
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On August 06 2011 21:34 Sokalo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 20:26 Necrosjef_ wrote:
What's funny is the typical American reaction to this.
"We own the rest of the world blah blah blah"
"Credit rating agencies are stupid"
"China kills baby girls"
The thing is the rest of the world isn't so easily misdirected as you guys are. Time to face up your mistakes and be prepared to be homeless. No one is going to bail you out, no one cares about you, you brought this on yourselves and damn you fucking deserve it. I've never heard the first one. Credit rating agencies are stupid.And what? Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 21:04 [SuNdae] wrote:
If you ask my opinion, the world isn't going to see a day when US manages to pay off that debt, not a chance. I don't follow this stuff too closely. Has there ever been any real goal of eliminating the debt in the recent past? All I've heard was discussion that involved bringing the budget back to a surplus/bringing the total deficit back to appropriate levels in line with national GDP.
During Clinton (Democrat what an irony, even though with Republican dominated legislature) times, when US had pretty big surplus there was a goal to repay a debt and it was somewhat reasonable even with early 2000 economic problems, but two wars and tax cuts killed any such possibility and current depression just expanded the whole problem to current clusterfuck.
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On August 06 2011 21:35 Bartuc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 19:40 Evilmystic wrote:On August 06 2011 19:19 Mauldo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 06 2011 18:53 Kaitlin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2011 17:37 RaLakedaimon wrote:
Job markets so fucking shitty I wonder if things can pick up one day, sad to see things just continuing to get worse because we all choose to pick horrible leaders, or maybe there just is never a good alternative to those shown to us. Hate to see all of us average Americans having to deal with shit like this since we aren't the ones that got any benefit before our economic downfall. May not be right but fuck I hate rich people in this country. The richest 1% of the country pays more in income taxes than 95% of the country, combined. How much is enough ? And yet they own how much capital? I look at it this way; play Final Fantasy VII. You can level up materia and sell them for a huge profit if you pick the right one. Let's go with the "All" materia. It sells for 1.7 million gil at max level. Sell ten of these, and you have 17 million gil. But honestly, how much gil do you need in the damn game? Half of that? The extra is just laying around. Why not increase their taxes to where that money is actually used, instead of the money being "invested" into "jobs" that these richest in America "create" while actually cutting thousands upon thousands of jobs and giving themselves millions in bonuses because they "earned it". This happened because S&P saw what the American people is starting to see. When you've got Boehner and the rest of the sane (or as sane as you can get in Congress) Republicans being held by the balls by the Tea Party freshmen into demanding unrealistic cuts without any new taxes it's absurd. Why not raise taxes to pre-Bush levels? How about pre-Clinton? All of those would be lower than when Reagan was president. I leave the thread with this. I worked for two months the summer of 2010 (I would have this summer, but no one would hire me in this marvelous Reaganomics economy) for a factory. I made around 2000 dollars before taxes. In federal and state and local tax I lost around 400 dollars before the temp agency took their cut. Around tax refund season I got 132 dollars back. So I paid a good 250 dollars in taxes. Okay, whatever. I accept that. I know it's not much compared to what people with actual, regular jobs pay. But really, if I pay that much, won't the bigger corporations pay more? As in, more than 250 dollars in taxes? GE, a multi-national and multi-billion dollar company, reported 14.2 billion dollars in international revenue and 5.1 billion dollars in revenue that occurred here in the United States. How much did they pay in taxes? Zero dollars. 0. Null. Not even a cent. Not only that, but the United States paid them 3.2 billion in tax refunds. They paid less taxes than I did, and they got a tax refund how many times higher than I did? They paid fewer taxes than every middle-class and poor person in the United States. How is that even fair. How. And when the Democrats want to close enough tax loopholes to help make up a trillion dollars in revenue (a move that, if you read the New York Times article I link below, Reagan did when he found out back during his time in office that GE and other huge corporations were dodging taxes by loopholes and other means) the Tea Party holds everyone up with a bunch of "Well then fine, let's let America default." And when they're told that might crash the American economy, and along with it the world's economy, they shrug. They want to start a global great depression because a few millionaires and billionaires might have to actually pay the taxes they were supposed to pay when the tax code was written up. Closing tax loopholes isn't raising taxes. It's stopping the cheats from cheating us anymore. But, you know, they "create jobs" with that money. Tell that to the numerous unemployed in this country. Especially explain that to the numerous "99ers," the people who have gone over their alloted 99 weeks on unemployment benefits. Because they're just lazy assholes who want to starve. That sounds about right. New York Times article on GE income taxes Gonna quote something from your source: “In a rational system, a corporation’s tax department would be there to make sure a company complied with the law,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official who now is a scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “But in our system, there are corporations that view their tax departments as a profit center, and the effects on public policy can be negative.” That's a very strange look on corporate goals actually. Maximization of profits and minimization of expenses are main goals of any business and they will use every legal way to reach these goals. Blaming corporations for that is ridiculous. I personally disagree with not blaming them for certain actions, the way I see it is that if a person is being an asshole but keeps perfectly to the law, he is still an asshole regardless.
Problem is corporation is not a person. Groups of people behave as assholes if the structure of the group allows it as responsibility is spread between the members of the group. This allows even groups consisting of pretty good people to commit even very evil acts. That is why giving corporations same rights a person has is a road to hell as in case of most people even if the law has holes their moral compass and peer pressure will keep them from doing bad things. Groups of people (corporations, governments,...) have no such mechanisms to not do evil stuff and need to be well regulated to prevent such things
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