I wasn't saying that income is taxed at that rate, what I was saying is once you have other taxes incorporated besides income taxes, it can add up very fast in terms of the total percentage of your money you pay in the form of tax. I can say firsthand that my family forfeits roughly 48% of our income annually to taxes in one form or another. Whether or not you believe me on this statistic, I don't care, because i'm not putting all my family's economic data on an internet forum.
I am single with no kids, and no house, and I make too much money to deduct student loans, so I have the shittiest deductions possible. Additionally I am in the top quintile of household income and my effective income tax rate is like 28% or something.
As I mentioned before, many of the taxes you listed are deductible from your federal income tax anyway. It seems impossible to me that your family is paying 48% of their income in tax and for your family to be well off enough to be against raising the tax on the highest earners (370k +) AND at least discussing raising capital gains tax. Maybe they run a small business?
To answer you last question essentially yes, we have some operations that could probably be considered a small business.
You cant just list out a bunch of taxes and act as if the number of bullet points is what makes our tax burden so high.
I mean for example, capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes for many anyways. Estate taxes only count when someone dies and another inherits it. How are taxes like those relevant when talking about the tax burden US citizens have to worry about on a regular basis?
The point that I was making is that it isn't 35% when you look at all the taxes incorporated into every day life. It's around 45 - 60% when you look at people who are making 6 figure salaries (future me) while retaining an active role in the market.
This is just untrue. The highest tax bracket taxes at 35% and that is only on every dollar you make after 370k. It is mathematically impossible to be taxed 35% of your income from income tax alone. Using this as your base is just unrealistic.
Many people who are rich (executives, etc) make most of their money off of stock/options or real estate anyway. Gains from these are often taxed at a much lower rate. Many millionaires have gone on record saying that their effective tax rate is more than their secretaries. For example, William Buffet:
I wasn't saying that income is taxed at that rate, what I was saying is once you have other taxes incorporated besides income taxes, it can add up very fast in terms of the total percentage of your money you pay in the form of tax. I can say firsthand that my family forfeits roughly 48% of our income annually to taxes in one form or another. Whether or not you believe me on this statistic, I don't care, because i'm not putting all my family's economic data on an internet forum.
If you're not willing to elaborate on anecdotal evidence that you provided, then you shouldn't provide it.
Fine I'll throw you a couple of bones, but don't expect anything much more detailed than this.
Total income lost to taxes ~= 28% Property taxes / State Taxes (multiple states, multiple properties) ~= 16% Sales tax / gas tax / other misc taxes =~ 4% Total: 48%
Edit: reworded a sentence
So the average tax paid as a % of the GDP in the USA is less than 30% but you claim to pay 48%? I think you are pulling figures out of your arse to be honest.
Even if you aren't it means one of two things. 1) You are a statistical abnormaility and should be ignored. 2) You don't have a clue how to manage money (and should be ignored) -
As a person that claims to be rich, how do you contrive to pay more than 50% more (as a percentage) in taxes than the average of America? In light of this (apparent) ineptidude with money, just how much weight should your words carry in this debate?
Actually, I can't even believe this thread. More than 60 pages in and there are still people ardently defending flat (regressive) tax systems. Most people realised they were a bad idea before cars were invented. Most countries don't have regressive tax systems for the bulk of their revenues but here on TL its raised like its cutting edge debate. It isn't. That horse bolted long ago. Actually, no it didn't - it was flogged to death a century ago.
Some people are advocating no payroll tax and all revenue collection through salestax. Ever considered what this will do to low earners when they go to buy a basket of food? Compared to a high earner he will now be taxed at a much higher percentage. Thats right, the person who couldn't afford it to start with is now getting scalped by the goverment just in buying essentials he needs to survive. How is that fair or efficient in any way, shape or form? Did you think this through before sharing it with us? Do you think this is practical? Do you think it has a hope of getting into legislation without a revolution?
I love TL because of the diversity and breadth of opinions but sometimes enough is enough. Having dollars in your pocket doesn't make you a money expert any more than me flying on planes makes me an aeronautical engineer.
You cant just list out a bunch of taxes and act as if the number of bullet points is what makes our tax burden so high.
I mean for example, capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes for many anyways. Estate taxes only count when someone dies and another inherits it. How are taxes like those relevant when talking about the tax burden US citizens have to worry about on a regular basis?
The point that I was making is that it isn't 35% when you look at all the taxes incorporated into every day life. It's around 45 - 60% when you look at people who are making 6 figure salaries (future me) while retaining an active role in the market.
This is just untrue. The highest tax bracket taxes at 35% and that is only on every dollar you make after 370k. It is mathematically impossible to be taxed 35% of your income from income tax alone. Using this as your base is just unrealistic.
Many people who are rich (executives, etc) make most of their money off of stock/options or real estate anyway. Gains from these are often taxed at a much lower rate. Many millionaires have gone on record saying that their effective tax rate is more than their secretaries. For example, William Buffet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC4s
I wasn't saying that income is taxed at that rate, what I was saying is once you have other taxes incorporated besides income taxes, it can add up very fast in terms of the total percentage of your money you pay in the form of tax. I can say firsthand that my family forfeits roughly 48% of our income annually to taxes in one form or another. Whether or not you believe me on this statistic, I don't care, because i'm not putting all my family's economic data on an internet forum.
If you're not willing to elaborate on anecdotal evidence that you provided, then you shouldn't provide it.
Fine I'll throw you a couple of bones, but don't expect anything much more detailed than this.
Total income lost to taxes ~= 28% Property taxes / State Taxes (multiple states, multiple properties) ~= 16% Sales tax / gas tax / other misc taxes =~ 4% Total: 48%
Edit: reworded a sentence
So the average tax paid as a % of the GDP in the USA is less than 30% but you claim to pay 48%? I think you are pulling figures out of your arse to be honest.
Even if you aren't it means one of two things. 1) You are a statistical abnormaility and should be ignored. 2) You don't have a clue how to manage money (and should be ignored) -
As a person that claims to be rich, how do you contrive to pay more than 50% more (as a percentage) in taxes than the average of America? In light of this (apparent) ineptidude with money, just how much weight should your words carry in this debate?
Actually, I can't even believe this thread. More than 60 pages in and there are still people ardently defending flat (regressive) tax systems. Most people realised they were a bad idea before cars were invented. Most countries don't have regressive tax systems for the bulk of their revenues but here on TL its raised like its cutting edge debate. It isn't. That horse bolted long ago. Actually, no it didn't - it was flogged to death a century ago.
Some people are advocating no payroll tax and all revenue collection through salestax. Ever considered what this will do to low earners when they go to buy a basket of food? Compared to a high earner he will now be taxed at a much higher percentage. Thats right, the person who couldn't afford it to start with is now getting scalped by the goverment. How is that fair or efficient in any way, shape or form? Did you think this through before sharing it with us? Do you think this is practical? Do you think it has a hope of getting into legislation without a revolution?
I love TL because of the diversity and breadth of opinions but sometimes enough is enough. Having dollars in your pocket doesn't make you a money expert any more than me flying on planes makes me an aeronautical engineer.
.... he pays 50% more taxes than the average american because that's the type of taxes that america has...
america doesn't have a fair tax system.
as for all of your falacious babble... we've heard it all before in these topics, and it has all been rebutted read the thread then post.
You cant just list out a bunch of taxes and act as if the number of bullet points is what makes our tax burden so high.
I mean for example, capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes for many anyways. Estate taxes only count when someone dies and another inherits it. How are taxes like those relevant when talking about the tax burden US citizens have to worry about on a regular basis?
The point that I was making is that it isn't 35% when you look at all the taxes incorporated into every day life. It's around 45 - 60% when you look at people who are making 6 figure salaries (future me) while retaining an active role in the market.
This is just untrue. The highest tax bracket taxes at 35% and that is only on every dollar you make after 370k. It is mathematically impossible to be taxed 35% of your income from income tax alone. Using this as your base is just unrealistic.
Many people who are rich (executives, etc) make most of their money off of stock/options or real estate anyway. Gains from these are often taxed at a much lower rate. Many millionaires have gone on record saying that their effective tax rate is more than their secretaries. For example, William Buffet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC4s
I wasn't saying that income is taxed at that rate, what I was saying is once you have other taxes incorporated besides income taxes, it can add up very fast in terms of the total percentage of your money you pay in the form of tax. I can say firsthand that my family forfeits roughly 48% of our income annually to taxes in one form or another. Whether or not you believe me on this statistic, I don't care, because i'm not putting all my family's economic data on an internet forum.
If you're not willing to elaborate on anecdotal evidence that you provided, then you shouldn't provide it.
Fine I'll throw you a couple of bones, but don't expect anything much more detailed than this.
Total income lost to taxes ~= 28% Property taxes / State Taxes (multiple states, multiple properties) ~= 16% Sales tax / gas tax / other misc taxes =~ 4% Total: 48%
Edit: reworded a sentence
So the average tax paid as a % of the GDP in the USA is less than 30% but you claim to pay 48%? I think you are pulling figures out of your arse to be honest.
Even if you aren't it means one of two things. 1) You are a statistical abnormaility and should be ignored. 2) You don't have a clue how to manage money (and should be ignored) -
As a person that claims to be rich, how do you contrive to pay more than 50% more (as a percentage) in taxes than the average of America? In light of this (apparent) ineptidude with money, just how much weight should your words carry in this debate?
Actually, I can't even believe this thread. More than 60 pages in and there are still people ardently defending flat (regressive) tax systems. Most people realised they were a bad idea before cars were invented. Most countries don't have regressive tax systems for the bulk of their revenues but here on TL its raised like its cutting edge debate. It isn't. That horse bolted long ago. Actually, no it didn't - it was flogged to death a century ago.
Some people are advocating no payroll tax and all revenue collection through salestax. Ever considered what this will do to low earners when they go to buy a basket of food? Compared to a high earner he will now be taxed at a much higher percentage. Thats right, the person who couldn't afford it to start with is now getting scalped by the goverment just in buying essentials he needs to survive. How is that fair or efficient in any way, shape or form? Did you think this through before sharing it with us? Do you think this is practical? Do you think it has a hope of getting into legislation without a revolution?
I love TL because of the diversity and breadth of opinions but sometimes enough is enough. Having dollars in your pocket doesn't make you a money expert any more than me flying on planes makes me an aeronautical engineer.
Have you even thought about what my numbers above entail? Like you said before the 30% is an average. We're not near that mark at all like I've mentioned before. Plus owning various properties on high-value land also shoots our rates up dramatically.
1) You are a statistical abnormaility and should be ignored.
You could probably argue this to an extent, most of our investments aren't in the form of stock + bonds, so we really don't reap the benefit of the low capital gains tax.
2) You don't have a clue how to manage money (and should be ignored)
LOL, you don't come out of a recession in decent shape without knowing how to manage money.
Edit: And I don't even claim to be rich, top 15%? Probably, Top 2%? Helllll no. I'm pretty well off but definitely not rich.
.... he pays 50% more taxes than the average american because that's the type of taxes that america has...
america doesn't have a fair tax system.
as for all of your falacious babble... we've heard it all before in these topics, and it has all been rebutted read the thread then post.
Your posts happen to be the ones I disagree with quite a lot (yes I read the thread). Theres a source for everything on the internet so don't tell me that stuff has been rebutted. I'm sure I could find a source on the internet that says wanking cures cancer. That doesn't make it true.
Would you care to point out where my arguments are logically unsound or would you just like to resort to stuff like "read the thread"?
On September 27 2011 09:25 Kiarip wrote: marginal tax rate is already 35% for the bracket you're talkign about that's absurdly high.
On September 27 2011 09:55 Kiarip wrote:
they need to cut spending, because the money is always better of in the private sector.
Don't take the moral highground and talk about fallacious babble when you post crud like that please.
On September 27 2011 08:33 Tien wrote: You can't afford what you can't afford.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for more expenses does nothing but mortgage the future of the country.
Are you trolling? Because your argument assumes that no government can ever reach a balanced budget. Canada had balanced budgets under Chretien's and Martin's governments. Basically, here's your argument.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for roads does nothing but mortgage the future of the country.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for police services does nothing but mortgage the future of the country
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for fire inspection services does nothing but mortgage the future of the country
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for a federal military does nothing but mortgage the future of the country.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for government administrator salaries does nothing but mortgage the future of the country
There's no limit to your argument, only that government services must always be cut. You're adding nothing but an anarchist viewpoint that government must be abolished.
not really... maybe he means that it only applies to a given situation.
since we're already in debt both our government and on average personally, he says that printing/borrowing/taxing more only puts us further in debt as peopel in favor of repaying the government debt.
if the government spends less then it doesn't "mortgage our future"
And having a higher marginal tax rate and getting rid of estate taxes could work to reduce the deficit. I fail to see how taxing more can put people into debt.
Tell me ye soothsayer of economics how much we will have to raise taxes to close that budget deficit to less than 5% of GDP?
And since you want all this burden to be thrown on the evil rich, how much of their taxes must be raised to close this gap?
Do you fiscal liberals magically think you can conjure another 600 billion$ in tax revenue by taxing the rich?
Get your calculator out and do some simple calculations. You can't increase tax revenue that much on the rich without taxing them over 100%.
You'll get MAX 100-150 billion out of these moderate tax increases and allowing Bush tax cuts to expire. You're still 1.2 T dollar short of closing the gap, and 500 billion short of bringing the budget deficit to 5% of GDP.
The obvious answer is obvious. America is spending way more than it can afford. What part of being bankrupt do you fiscal liberals don't understand? Are you recommending paying for all of these expenses by raising the debt ceiling another 5 trillion dollars over 5 years? Are you mad?
The USA has a deficit. That deficit needs to be solved. Punishing the successful does seem to be a solution to closing the deficit gap. Right now, not "punishing" the successful is creating a fiscal mess that is affecting the middle class and poor right now.
um... no what's causing a "fiscal mess" is the regulations which makes our labor uncompetitive.
God, you've been repeating the same line of bullshit over, and over, and over for the last week. It just reeks of someone that just graduated high school and is blaming the government for their inability to get a job. Am I wrong? What economic/academic situation ARE you in that you'd describe our labour as somehow uncompetitive?
There's still PLENTY of businesses operating just fine in the US despite these additional costs. How many posted record profits this last year? Demand for skilled engineers, scientists, management i.e. non-manual labour, is as high as its ever been. Thanks to globalization, mechanization and automation, it's obvious the US is never going to be able to sustain it's own manufacturing sector, with so much cheap labour across the globe and advancements in technology. The only way to bring manufacturing back to the US, without putting half of the US below the poverty line, is for the government to FORCE companies to pay minimum wage to overseas employees, too, which is just as bad.
It's time for the American (and Western in general) workforce to stop sitting around waiting for manual-labour jobs to come back. There's always going to be a certain demand for jobs like plumbers, mechanics and your run-of-the-mill McDonald's burger-flipper, but it's time to accept the fact that supply/demand (depending on how you look at it) for those jobs has gone down and isn't coming back. Sorry, advancements in technology caught up to them. I'd expect the next generation to tell me the same thing if I couldn't develop software with knowledge of the latest and greatest technology under my cap.
Wellfare keeps the system alive. It's one of the most important tools. Just image what people that are unemployed would do if they didn't recevice anymoney / goods to live. I'm pretty sure there will be blood involved. Furthermore wellfare is one of the most effective stimulus a econmy has, because people who are poor will always spent their and support the economy who gave them the money again. Yeah it's wealth distribution, but it negates massive security costs to keep such a large group at bay and this people will reproduce which garanties a workforce that is not getting smaller (the last one is not always postive, i'm not sure how it's in the US). Without welfare you would be seeing "London riots" far more often.
DATS a slippery slope fallacy. not saying there shouldn't be some sort of welfare, but the requirements need to be strict. i know way too many people who don't look for jobs, and are capable of having them that are on welfare its ridiculous.
.... he pays 50% more taxes than the average american because that's the type of taxes that america has...
america doesn't have a fair tax system.
as for all of your falacious babble... we've heard it all before in these topics, and it has all been rebutted read the thread then post.
The average person will not pay 16% of their income towards property tax, or own multiple properties in multiple states. I don't think you can use pillage's family as an example of an average well-off person.
You cant just list out a bunch of taxes and act as if the number of bullet points is what makes our tax burden so high.
I mean for example, capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes for many anyways. Estate taxes only count when someone dies and another inherits it. How are taxes like those relevant when talking about the tax burden US citizens have to worry about on a regular basis?
The point that I was making is that it isn't 35% when you look at all the taxes incorporated into every day life. It's around 45 - 60% when you look at people who are making 6 figure salaries (future me) while retaining an active role in the market.
This is just untrue. The highest tax bracket taxes at 35% and that is only on every dollar you make after 370k. It is mathematically impossible to be taxed 35% of your income from income tax alone. Using this as your base is just unrealistic.
Many people who are rich (executives, etc) make most of their money off of stock/options or real estate anyway. Gains from these are often taxed at a much lower rate. Many millionaires have gone on record saying that their effective tax rate is more than their secretaries. For example, William Buffet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC4s
I wasn't saying that income is taxed at that rate, what I was saying is once you have other taxes incorporated besides income taxes, it can add up very fast in terms of the total percentage of your money you pay in the form of tax. I can say firsthand that my family forfeits roughly 48% of our income annually to taxes in one form or another. Whether or not you believe me on this statistic, I don't care, because i'm not putting all my family's economic data on an internet forum.
If you're not willing to elaborate on anecdotal evidence that you provided, then you shouldn't provide it.
Fine I'll throw you a couple of bones, but don't expect anything much more detailed than this.
Total income lost to taxes ~= 28% Property taxes / State Taxes (multiple states, multiple properties) ~= 16% Sales tax / gas tax / other misc taxes =~ 4% Total: 48%
Edit: reworded a sentence
Obviously it's impossible to analyze this much, but are these percentages calculated, or are you adding them linearly?
You cant just list out a bunch of taxes and act as if the number of bullet points is what makes our tax burden so high.
I mean for example, capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes for many anyways. Estate taxes only count when someone dies and another inherits it. How are taxes like those relevant when talking about the tax burden US citizens have to worry about on a regular basis?
The point that I was making is that it isn't 35% when you look at all the taxes incorporated into every day life. It's around 45 - 60% when you look at people who are making 6 figure salaries (future me) while retaining an active role in the market.
This is just untrue. The highest tax bracket taxes at 35% and that is only on every dollar you make after 370k. It is mathematically impossible to be taxed 35% of your income from income tax alone. Using this as your base is just unrealistic.
Many people who are rich (executives, etc) make most of their money off of stock/options or real estate anyway. Gains from these are often taxed at a much lower rate. Many millionaires have gone on record saying that their effective tax rate is more than their secretaries. For example, William Buffet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC4s
I wasn't saying that income is taxed at that rate, what I was saying is once you have other taxes incorporated besides income taxes, it can add up very fast in terms of the total percentage of your money you pay in the form of tax. I can say firsthand that my family forfeits roughly 48% of our income annually to taxes in one form or another. Whether or not you believe me on this statistic, I don't care, because i'm not putting all my family's economic data on an internet forum.
If you're not willing to elaborate on anecdotal evidence that you provided, then you shouldn't provide it.
Fine I'll throw you a couple of bones, but don't expect anything much more detailed than this.
Total income lost to taxes ~= 28% Property taxes / State Taxes (multiple states, multiple properties) ~= 16% Sales tax / gas tax / other misc taxes =~ 4% Total: 48%
Edit: reworded a sentence
Obviously it's impossible to analyze this much, but are these percentages calculated, or are you adding them linearly?
On September 27 2011 08:33 Tien wrote: You can't afford what you can't afford.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for more expenses does nothing but mortgage the future of the country.
Are you trolling? Because your argument assumes that no government can ever reach a balanced budget. Canada had balanced budgets under Chretien's and Martin's governments. Basically, here's your argument.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for roads does nothing but mortgage the future of the country.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for police services does nothing but mortgage the future of the country
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for fire inspection services does nothing but mortgage the future of the country
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for a federal military does nothing but mortgage the future of the country.
Printing / borrowing / taxing more money to pay for government administrator salaries does nothing but mortgage the future of the country
There's no limit to your argument, only that government services must always be cut. You're adding nothing but an anarchist viewpoint that government must be abolished.
not really... maybe he means that it only applies to a given situation.
since we're already in debt both our government and on average personally, he says that printing/borrowing/taxing more only puts us further in debt as peopel in favor of repaying the government debt.
if the government spends less then it doesn't "mortgage our future"
And having a higher marginal tax rate and getting rid of estate taxes could work to reduce the deficit. I fail to see how taxing more can put people into debt.
Tell me ye soothsayer of economics how much we will have to raise taxes to close that budget deficit to less than 5% of GDP?
And since you want all this burden to be thrown on the evil rich, how much of their taxes must be raised to close this gap?
Do you fiscal liberals magically think you can conjure another 600 billion$ in tax revenue by taxing the rich?
Get your calculator out and do some simple calculations. You can't increase tax revenue that much on the rich without taxing them over 100%.
You'll get MAX 100-150 billion out of these moderate tax increases and allowing Bush tax cuts to expire. You're still 1.2 T dollar short of closing the gap, and 500 billion short of bringing the budget deficit to 5% of GDP.
The obvious answer is obvious. America is spending way more than it can afford. What part of being bankrupt do you fiscal liberals don't understand? Are you recommending paying for all of these expenses by raising the debt ceiling another 5 trillion dollars over 5 years? Are you mad?
I never said it would close the deficit. I said taxing the rich more would work to reduce the deficit. Basically, what you're suggesting is that because the deficit can't be eliminated through marginal tax increases alone, we shouldn't even bother attempting to raise taxes to reduce the deficit. So we should only cut the government. Is your only position that we should eliminate the government from everything?
Obviously it's impossible to analyze this much, but are these percentages calculated, or are you adding them linearly?
The percentages are individually calculated then I added them linearly, because all the percentage calculations are based of the same thing (money lost as a function our gross revenue). For the record the properties we hold are investments for the future, they'll be sold eventually and then that 16% will drop sharply to around 6-8%.
The average person will not pay 16% of their income towards property tax, or own multiple properties in multiple states. I don't think you can use pillage's family as an example of an average well-off person.
He's right in this regard. Most property taxes + state taxes hover around 5% where I'm from, and us owning lots of diversified property doesn't help us a ton in this regard. Still, when the time comes to sell these properties, we'll be making good very money then, even with capital gains taking its slice of the pie.
.... he pays 50% more taxes than the average american because that's the type of taxes that america has...
america doesn't have a fair tax system.
as for all of your falacious babble... we've heard it all before in these topics, and it has all been rebutted read the thread then post.
Your posts happen to be the ones I disagree with quite a lot (yes I read the thread). Theres a source for everything on the internet so don't tell me that stuff has been rebutted. I'm sure I could find a source on the internet that says wanking cures cancer. That doesn't make it true.
it has been rebutted in this thread and the republican nominations thread with rationale, and economic understanding.
you're repeating broken arguments from other people... calling someone out for having to pay high taxes... yeah that's because they don't know how to manage their money properly... because if you're not trying to get into every single loophole you're an idiot, and an anomaly...
if abusing tax loop-holes is the normalcy, then clearly there's a problem in the tax code, and the taxes should just be lowered and the subsidy/corporate welfare/tax credit loopholes should be closed.
instead you have a system that rewards those that are willing to sacrifice their integrity to cheat and evade taxes. it's one of the many moral hazards that your line of thinking brings.
Would you care to point out where my arguments are logically unsound or would you just like to resort to stuff like "read the thread"?
Not when you're posting exactly the same arguments that someone else has posted previously, and i've already spent a lot of time on those more than once. Plus there wasn't much of an argument there in the first place just an ad hominem at the guy yo quoted.
On September 27 2011 09:25 Kiarip wrote: marginal tax rate is already 35% for the bracket you're talkign about that's absurdly high.
that's great you can take things out of context... see what that is a reply to... of course that response is meant to provocate 1 of 2 respones.
1 "oh i dint know it was that high" or 2 "i don't think that's high enough"
and if it's reply 2 i explain my reasoning why i think 35% is too high, and why the spending is too high in the first place, so that it's spending that needs to be cut and not taxes be raised.
you don't address the fact that even 100% income tax on the top 2% won't cover the deficit. Or that if you take all their wealth from them you can't cover the debt.
And you don't yourself provide a guideline based on which you decide whether it's time to tax more or not... so what am i supposed to rebutt? your opinion that it's ok to take money from people that still have any?
they need to cut spending, because the money is always better of in the private sector.
Don't take the moral highground and talk about fallacious babble when you post crud like that please.
[/quote]
i've already made 100s of posts describing in detal why majority of the time the money needs to be in hte private sector, yes there are exceptions, and yes the transition can't be immediate.
I'm sorry that when someone new jumps into the thread and makes another dumb post about how we need to spend more and tax more i'm not willing to write up another 2 paragraphs on why they're objectively wrong.
they are, you quote me saying that, and yet you don't quote pages worth of reasoning i've been providing based on which I can make that generalization, and then you say i make crud statements...
srsly, your first contribution to this thread was to attack someone's money management skills when you don't know exactly what line of work they're in.
The USA has a deficit. That deficit needs to be solved. Punishing the successful does seem to be a solution to closing the deficit gap. Right now, not "punishing" the successful is creating a fiscal mess that is affecting the middle class and poor right now.
um... no what's causing a "fiscal mess" is the regulations which makes our labor uncompetitive.
God, you've been repeating the same line of bullshit over, and over, and over for the last week. It just reeks of someone that just graduated high school and is blaming the government for their inability to get a job. Am I wrong? What economic/academic situation ARE you in that you'd describe our labour as somehow uncompetitive?
good job after every single post you've made has been logically debunked all you have to do is wait a little time, jump into an argument you weren't a part of and pretend it never happeend.
our laborforce ISN'T competitive for the cost of employing it... if it was there wouldn't be such high unemployment. I'm not even gonna give you any information about me, why would I give you ammo for you to try to derail arguments with when know you're wrong and have nothing more to say.
There's still PLENTY of businesses operating just fine in the US despite these additional costs. How many posted record profits this last year? Demand for skilled engineers, scientists, management i.e. non-manual labour, is as high as its ever been. Thanks to globalization, mechanization and automation, it's obvious the US is never going to be able to sustain it's own manufacturing sector, with so much cheap labour across the globe and advancements in technology. The only way to bring manufacturing back to the US, without putting half of the US below the poverty line, is for the government to FORCE companies to pay minimum wage to overseas employees, too, which is just as bad.
This would be true if there were plenty of jobs for people that have degrees... There actually isn't I don't know what job market you're in, but I know for a fact that the job market for engineers isn't all that great. It's only getting harder to find a job year by year. Of course some companies are posting profits despite these additional costs...
How is that a reasonable argument? You cherry picking examples, except you haven't actually picked one you jsut say there's some businesses that are doing well... Sure, some are doing ok, out of how many that aren't? How many companies' stocks can even outpace the commodities price growth in the long run? not that many.
When a company's worth is decreasing with respect to the worth of the resources it uses you know they're having problems.
It's time for the American (and Western in general) workforce to stop sitting around waiting for manual-labour jobs to come back. There's always going to be a certain demand for jobs like plumbers, mechanics and your run-of-the-mill McDonald's burger-flipper, but it's time to accept the fact that supply/demand (depending on how you look at it) for those jobs has gone down and isn't coming back. Sorry, advancements in technology caught up to them. I'd expect the next generation to tell me the same thing if I couldn't develop software with knowledge of the latest and greatest technology under my cap.
..... So what do you want all these people to do? How many software engineers straight out of college do you actually think are being hired? Not that many, it's really hard, and what are they supposed to do if they can't get a job coming out of college with a large debt?
I'm assuming that you're suggesting that we should simply invest more in education if not I don't even know what you're saying. The cost of education is growing while the competitive edge that you get from having a degree is falling...
The real question is has the demand for manual labor actually fell, or did the employment costs simply make it unprofitably to hire anyone.
If you say that these low paying low skill jobs are the jobs of the past why are defending the regulations that are there to defend those that have these jobs? Get rid of those regulations and stop oppressing the unemployed.
.... he pays 50% more taxes than the average american because that's the type of taxes that america has...
america doesn't have a fair tax system.
as for all of your falacious babble... we've heard it all before in these topics, and it has all been rebutted read the thread then post.
Your posts happen to be the ones I disagree with quite a lot (yes I read the thread). Theres a source for everything on the internet so don't tell me that stuff has been rebutted. I'm sure I could find a source on the internet that says wanking cures cancer. That doesn't make it true.
it has been rebutted in this thread and the republican nominations thread with rationale, and economic understanding.
No, that's just not true. Your posts are essentially you saying the same thing over and over again, even though you have absolutely no ground to stand on.
.... he pays 50% more taxes than the average american because that's the type of taxes that america has...
america doesn't have a fair tax system.
as for all of your falacious babble... we've heard it all before in these topics, and it has all been rebutted read the thread then post.
Your posts happen to be the ones I disagree with quite a lot (yes I read the thread). Theres a source for everything on the internet so don't tell me that stuff has been rebutted. I'm sure I could find a source on the internet that says wanking cures cancer. That doesn't make it true.
it has been rebutted in this thread and the republican nominations thread with rationale, and economic understanding.
No, that's just not true. Your posts are essentially you saying the same thing over and over again, even though you have absolutely no ground to stand on.
I get that a lot too lmao.
Can you please properly phrase this argument of yours that I have not touched upon, and I will give you a rebuttal that is worthy of that argument.
God, you've been repeating the same line of bullshit over, and over, and over for the last week. It just reeks of someone that just graduated high school and is blaming the government for their inability to get a job. Am I wrong? What economic/academic situation ARE you in that you'd describe our labour as somehow uncompetitive?
good job after every single post you've made has been logically debunked all you have to do is wait a little time, jump into an argument you weren't a part of and pretend it never happeend.
our laborforce ISN'T competitive for the cost of employing it... if it was there wouldn't be such high unemployment. I'm not even gonna give you any information about me, why would I give you ammo for you to try to derail arguments with when know you're wrong and have nothing more to say.
There's still PLENTY of businesses operating just fine in the US despite these additional costs. How many posted record profits this last year? Demand for skilled engineers, scientists, management i.e. non-manual labour, is as high as its ever been. Thanks to globalization, mechanization and automation, it's obvious the US is never going to be able to sustain it's own manufacturing sector, with so much cheap labour across the globe and advancements in technology. The only way to bring manufacturing back to the US, without putting half of the US below the poverty line, is for the government to FORCE companies to pay minimum wage to overseas employees, too, which is just as bad.
This would be true if there were plenty of jobs for people that have degrees... There actually isn't I don't know what job market you're in, but I know for a fact that the job market for engineers isn't all that great. It's only getting harder to find a job year by year. Of course some companies are posting profits despite these additional costs...
How is that a reasonable argument? You cherry picking examples, except you haven't actually picked one you jsut say there's some businesses that are doing well... Sure, some are doing ok, out of how many that aren't? How many companies' stocks can even outpace the commodities price growth in the long run? not that many.
When a company's worth is decreasing with respect to the worth of the resources it uses you know they're having problems.
It's time for the American (and Western in general) workforce to stop sitting around waiting for manual-labour jobs to come back. There's always going to be a certain demand for jobs like plumbers, mechanics and your run-of-the-mill McDonald's burger-flipper, but it's time to accept the fact that supply/demand (depending on how you look at it) for those jobs has gone down and isn't coming back. Sorry, advancements in technology caught up to them. I'd expect the next generation to tell me the same thing if I couldn't develop software with knowledge of the latest and greatest technology under my cap.
..... So what do you want all these people to do? How many software engineers straight out of college do you actually think are being hired? Not that many, it's really hard, and what are they supposed to do if they can't get a job coming out of college with a large debt?
I'm assuming that you're suggesting that we should simply invest more in education if not I don't even know what you're saying. The cost of education is growing while the competitive edge that you get from having a degree is falling...
The real question is has the demand for manual labor actually fell, or did the employment costs simply make it unprofitably to hire anyone.
If you say that these low paying low skill jobs are the jobs of the past why are defending the regulations that are there to defend those that have these jobs? Get rid of those regulations and stop oppressing the unemployed.
I'm taking this to a PM, for reasons you shall discover.
On September 27 2011 09:47 DetriusXii wrote: Life isn't fair and the middle class doesn't have the income to absorb new taxes. When most of the income of the United States is being captured by the top earners, it suggests that they should be taxed more. If you can show the phenomenal wage growth in the middle class, then maybe they could be a source of government revenue, but middle class families are being stressed by costs that are placed on them that were once subsidized through marginal tax rates. Elizabeth Warren's presentation of the collapse of the middle class.
You're again offering a value judgement that it's unfair to have marginal tax rates. So why not get rid of all marginal tax rates then? Is that what you want? A flat tax across the board for everyone?
well obviously you need a definition of fair.
but there's a reason why flat tax is called the fair tax. anyways i don't want an income tax at all. income tax is bad at its core. they just need a higher salestax.
edit:
and of course spending cuts... on tons of stuff.
you're the one who wanted to bring up objectivity into the equation... your posts have been plenty subjective also.
i don' think that the marginal rate needs to be highered to 35% for everyone... 35 % is too high in the first place... it's a rate that would destroy the livelihood of like the entire middle-class, but somehow if you're making more money it's not a big enough tax?
why are you trying to punish those that are successful...
plus taking all the money from them wont' cover the federal debt, and and taking all income wont' cover the deficit.
they need to cut spending, because the money is always better of in the private sector.
@Kiarip: I keep on saying marginal tax rates need to be increased. You keep on saying that marginal tax brackets on the rich will hurt the middle class. It suggests that you don't know the math to marginal tax brackets and you're confusing average tax rates to marginal tax rates.
i didn't say it will hurt the middle class. i said that even the current level of taxes imposed on the rich would completely wreck the middle class, so how is such a percentages of taxes fair in the first place...
you're the one who brought up objective fairness...
The USA has a deficit. That deficit needs to be solved. Punishing the successful does seem to be a solution to closing the deficit gap. Right now, not "punishing" the successful is creating a fiscal mess that is affecting the middle class and poor right now.
um... no what's causing a "fiscal mess" is the regulations which makes our labor uncompetitive. Taxing the rich won't make them create jobs... if your only plan is to slowly take all their money to give it to the poor, that's fine eventually they'll have no more money left, and there will be no more jjobs than there were before, and there will be no one actually capable of creating jobs.
and what got us into this deficit is spending and not tax-cuts, because even if we took all the money from the top 2% of the population we still wouldn't cover the national debt.
If the Bush tax cuts were not to have been extended, a third of the US deficit would be removed right now. So it seems to suggest that taxing the rich does provide some measure of reducing the deficit.
so would cutting spending.
And now you've brought up the greatest myth of all time. That somehow the private sector is more efficient at spending money than the public sector. Fire fighting services were socialized because the private sector was historically more inefficient.
firefighting is a pretty extreme example. The vast majority of historical proof point to the inefficiency of big government and the way they spend money.
It's a contradiction in your argument and you need to stop peddling that bullshit. I think the private sector is better at making products, but I don't think they're always good to have. Contractors more expensive.
contractors implies that the government was the one spending the money in the first place... yeah, that's mistake # 1 you can't blame the contracters when it's the government who's handling the money roflz.
The link I've just now cited is an example where the private sector is creating a myriad of inefficiencies and the government would have been more efficient by just hiring the contractors as staff. The government is essentially paying to interact with multiple independent administrations rather with their own managements.
all those are example of contractors....
where government hires the private sector to do something... that's not the private sector doing work, that's the government mishandling money...
You claim that fire fighting is an extreme example. What makes it extreme?
well it has to be an insurance based service because the demand for it is very sudden, and it would require an elaborate contract since fires can spread, and being next to an active fire isn't good either...
The thing that makes it most difficult to privatize is the fact that there's already a stigma amongst the general population that it's one of those services that absolutely needs to be provided by the government.
Overall, it's not high on anyone's list to privatize anyways, because at least it's run by individual cities or counties, which is way better than running it state by state, which is in turn much much much better than it being a federal service.
So basically, my "extreme" example is just a good counter example. You said "The free market does everything better than the government does" I provided a counter example. "The free market does everything better than the government does" is therefore invalidated.
EPT
