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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
We should be THANKFUL that our dear leader is gettin' jiggy and partyin' it up!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 2:24 PM
ANTIMASON
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Given that wealth can’t be created, Bush TOOK money from the middle class and poor and GAVE it to the rich, Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and oil companies, in the form of war toys, tax cuts, deregulation, etc. He did NOT use it to rebuild infrastructure, increase the buying power of the vast majority of Americans, increase job growth or anything else constructive to the American people.
Quote: Bush designed his tax plan when the economy was booming. He made a campaign promise to the GOP faithful and its aim was to cut taxes for the wealthy, not spur the economy. As a result, the Bush Tax Plan widened the gap between the rich and poor, led to an economy where wages couldn’t keep pace with inflation, and grown our national poverty rate each of the eight years he was in office.
Quote: So Obama is stuck with huge debt, rotting infrastructure, Wall Street gone wild, two wars and the biggest gap between rich and poor we’ve ever seen.
Quote: Thus I ask you and JS: If not by methods he is trying to employ, and being REALISTIC, how exactly do YOU propose he fix those things? If you tell me by “cutting taxes”, the favorite cry from the right, because it didn’t work.
Quote: Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth. which shows that Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic, income or wage growth, nor does it increase job creation. So propose something else that you believe is viable.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 4:56 PM
FREMDFIRMA
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 8:15 PM
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 10:31 PM
SIGNYM
I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.
Quote:that's not true that Bush stole from the poor and middle class. the rich in AMerica pay more in taxes some years then many in the lower class pay in a lifetime. but lets just say that were true.. lets agree that 'theft' is wrong. why is it right for Obama to steal from the middle class and rich, to give to the poor?
Quote:this will forever come down to austrian, free market economics, versus keynesian economics.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 10:51 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Jongsstraw: Signy, It's always much easier to criticize and complain than to offer viable solutions to complex problems. Until one sits in the Oval Office you really cannot fully understand all the facts and multiple nuances of any situation, so it is quite difficult for me or anyone here to know exactly what they're talking about when it comes to offering solutions to problems.
Thursday, June 24, 2010 12:46 AM
KANEMAN
Thursday, June 24, 2010 5:38 AM
Quote:Hey, I agree with you a bit. All government spending is bad. It is taking from person "A" and giving it to person "B". When does Taxation lead to an increase in Buying power?
Quote: I'd suggest doing a little research on Austrian economics.
Quote:When Obama(or any prez) create money out of thin air it causes inflation. Inflation hits the middle and lower class first and the hardest(Think fixed income elderly..inflation lowers buying power but money stays the same)...Inflation is a TAX on the lower and middle class. Why do you think the dollar is worth 7cents compared to a 1917 dollar?
Thursday, June 24, 2010 8:57 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote: tax cuts incentivise investment, which creates jobs, and wealth, and more taxable income
Quote:1. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth. This graph shows the fluctuations of the real GDP growth rate over the period, indicating the performance of the U.S. economy as a whole. It is true that growth increased drastically after the 1982 tax cut, reaching as high as 7.3% in 1984. However, as the Reagan-Bush, Sr. administrations went on and taxes for the rich were slashed even further, growth fell to negative levels during 1991, at the heart of the last recession. And, two of the three years with the highest growth were during the 1950s, when the top tax rate was 91%. Overall, there seems to be no close relationship between the top tax rate and the GDP growth rate, and statistical analysis backs this up: the correlation coefficient between the two variables is 0.03, meaning that there is essentially no connection. (If tax cuts were strongly related to GDP growth, we would see a coefficient close to -1.) So much for upper-class tax cuts boosting the economy; now it's on to median income growth. 2. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth. Again, we see inconclusive evidence for the power of tax cuts. We do see small peaks in median income growth, a good measure of how the average American household is doing, after top-bracket tax cuts in the mid-1960s and early 1980s, but we also actually see income decreases after the tax cuts of the late 1980s, and strong growth after the tax increase of 1993. It is true that in the year with the worst median income decrease (3.3% in 1974), the top tax rate was 70%. However, it was also 70% in the year with the highest median income growth (4.7% in 1972)! Once again, the lack of connection between the two measures is backed up by a correlation coefficient near zero: 0.06, to be exact. And yes, yet again, the coefficient is positive, indicating that income has gone up slightly (though negligibly) more in years with higher taxes. Two strikes. How about hourly wages? 3. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth. Not surprisingly, we have mixed results yet again! Growth in average hourly wages did increase during the 1980s following the first Reagan tax cuts, albeit two years after the cuts took effect. But, just like GDP growth and median income growth, hourly wages decreased following the late 1980s tax cuts, and spiked upwards after the 1993 tax increase. Furthermore, wages grew at a level of at least 1%, and usually much more, all throughout the period when the top income tax rate was 91%. In fact, it isn't until 1972 that we see a wage growth rate of less than 1%. However, if we look at the 19 years of the study period when the top tax rate was 50% or less, we see that 8 of the years saw an increase in wages of less than 1%. Thus, it seems that hourly wages grew more when taxes were higher - indeed, the correlation coefficient is 0.34, indicating a mild positive relationship between higher taxes for the rich and higher hourly wages. This finding flies in the face of the conservative theory. As if that's not enough, now let's see about what President Bush claimed would be the biggest result of tax cuts - job creation. 4. Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation. Here, we see the change in the unemployment rate laid against the top tax rate from 1954 to 2002. Thus, negative values signify a decrease in unemployment -- in essence, job creation. Once again, while the top tax rate trends downward over the period, the annual change in unemployment doesn't seem to trend at all! Although the largest increase (2.9%) did occur in 1975, when the top marginal tax rate was 70%, three of the four largest decreases in unemployment occurred in years when the top rate was 91%. The mixed results do not bode well for those who see tax cuts for the richest as a sparkplug to incite job growth. The correlation coefficient between the variables here is 0.11 -- meaning that there have been slightly more jobs created in years with lower top tax rates, but this pattern is negligible -- nowhere near strong enough to signify a relationship. Overall, data from the past 50 years strongly refutes any arguments that cutting taxes for the richest Americans will improve the economic standing of the lower and middle classes or the nation as a whole. To be sure, the economic indicators examined in this report are dependent on a variety of factors, not just tax policy. However, what this study does show is that any attempt to stimulate economic growth by cutting taxes for the rich will do nothing -- it hasn't worked over the past 50 years, so why would it work in the future? To put it simply and bluntly, Bush's top-bracket tax cut is an ineffective attempt at stimulus that will not cause any growth -- unless, of course, if you're talking about the size of the deficit.
Quote: Most right-wingers on the board focus on stupid stuff- Obama's supposed Kenyan birth, his "muslim" religion, his jug ears, his supposed worshippers, his "gettin' jiggy"... It's hard to get a bead on what is REALLY bothering people bc those complaints aren't real, they're just chaff that people toss up to hide their REAL issues!
Quote: In the 1950s the marginal tax rate on those earning more than $3 million a year (in today's dollars) was 91 percent. By 1990 it was 28 percent. The IRS says that the top 400 richest tax filers actually paid a rate of just 16 percent in 2007 (the latest numbers we have). Yep, the richest earners -- people who took in an average of $343 million each -- probably paid a lower rate than you did. By the way, those 400 people who do so well on tax day have a combined net worth of nearly $1.37 trillion. (According to Forbes Magazine their wealth has gone up on average by more than 16 percent over the past year -- the worst economic year since the Great Depression during which 29 million Americans are without work or forced into part-time jobs. ) How do we even wrap our minds around a number so large? Here's the example that brings it down to earth for me. If we had progressive taxes that reduced their wealth to a trifling $100 million each, we'd have enough money to set up a trust fund whose interest could provide tuition-free higher education for students at every public college and university in perpetuity. Imagine that. Our kids could actually leave college without carrying tens of thousands of dollars of debt on their backs. Could those 400 special people be able to get by on just $100 million a year? I think they might. So why are we so fearful of taxing the super-rich? Here are the arguments I've heard. 1. They've earned it. Really? The concept of "earning" is murky when you consider the array of corporate welfare programs we provide. Oil companies have their depletion allowances. Big sugar farmers have their sweet subsidies. The health insurance industry is exempt from anti-trust laws. 2. Redistribution of Income is Un-American. We already live in a world of massive redistribution. Only it's from the bottom to the top. We still hear about how poor folks game the system and mooch off our hard earned tax dollars. They go to emergency rooms and don't pay. They get Medicaid for free. And many don't pay any taxes at all (mostly because their incomes are so impossibly low). But all of that is chump change compared to the gaming going on at the other end of the economic scale. Just think of all the scams corporations and the rich are running: ever-rising credit card fees, predatory mortgages, usurious interest rates, check cashing ripoffs, monopoly pricing. They turn income into lower taxed capital gains, find offshore tax shelters, collect subsidies for their runaway shops. And then they netted the big one: Wall Street bailouts. Post-baillout, these too-big-to fail companies are getting even bigger. It all adds up to a major redistribution plan -- from the many to the few. During the post-WWII boom we had one of the fairest income distributions in the world. Not anymore. Today the gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time in U.S. history. Here's a telling statistic: In 1970 the compensation ratio of the top 100 CEOs compared to the average worker was 45 to one. By 2008 it was 1,071 to one. You think they got that much smarter? 3. If we tax the wealthy, we'll hinder investment and kill jobs. In theory this sounds good. But we tried this experiment, and it didn't work. When we cut taxes on the super-rich, we got a different kind of investment boom than the politicians and economists had promised. The wealthy literally ran out of investments in factories, equipment and even services. So they flocked to financial investments -- which were supposedly safer and more profitable anyway. The super-rich laid their money down in the Wall Street casino, and helped puff up bubble after bubble. Profits in the financial sector soared. In 1960, the sector accounted for about 15 per cent of all corporate profits. By 2008 (before the crash, that is), it was almost 40 percent. The financial sector crased as the direct result of tax cuts for the super-rich and Wall Street deregulation 4. Government's too big already. We should be cutting the public sector, not raising taxes to expand it. Many people (like those in and around the Tea Party) dislike tax scams by the wealthy, but dislike government even more. Cutting state and local payrolls would actually add to our economic woes. If we fire public sector workers, they'll stop paying taxes -- which will only add to the tax burden on those people who still have jobs. Laid off public sector workers -- and even those whose wages and benefits have been cut -- don't buy as many goods and services. This drop in demand triggers layoffs in the private sector -- and a further slide in tax revenues. In short, public sector cutbacks contribute to an economic death spiral: plummeting tax revenues and ever more cutbacks.
Quote:Quote:Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all. It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?” The typical US taxpayer earns most of his income from salary, wages, and tips. It's what the IRS calls "earned income" - the income you get from actually having a job and doing the stuff that job requires, or earning it the old fashioned way. This is how most middle class, and even upper middle class, families earn their income. It's also the highest taxed form of income. The typical "rich" person, on the other hand, receives mostly "unearned income". This is basically any income that you don't have to work for: interest, capital gains, dividends, rent paid on real estate, etc. Interest is taxed basically the same as earned income. It kind of stinks for the average saver, because your typical bank account interest rate is fairly low anyway, and it gets taxed the same as normal income. Capital Gains and Dividends, on the other hand, get classified entirely separately on your tax return, and get taxed at entirely different - and much lower - rates than your normal income. There are also a number of ways in which you can make a *lot* of money in capital gains without paying any taxes at all. Best of all (from a tax perspective) is real estate. Theoretically, it's taxed as capital gains. But you can make a lot of profit on real estate and pay almost no taxes at all, if you're smart about what you're doing. Furthermore, corporations themselves are taxed in a totally different way than individuals, making it possible for business owners to give themselves all kinds of incredible perks tax free (or nearly so).
Quote:Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all. It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”
Thursday, June 24, 2010 12:55 PM
Quote: http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2009-04-09-compensation_N.htm The pay gap between government workers and lower-compensated private employees is growing as public employees enjoy sizable benefit growth even in a distressed economy, federal figures show. Public employees earned benefits worth an average of $13.38 an hour in December 2008, the latest available data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says. Private-sector workers got $7.98 an hour. Overall, total compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour — $11.90 more than in private business. In 2007, the gap in wages and benefits was $11.31. The gap has been expanding because of the increasing value of public employee benefits. Last year, government benefits rose three times more than those in the private sector: up 69 cents an hour for civil servants, 23 cents for private workers. Labor costs account for about half of state and local spending, according to BLS and Census data. Benefits consume a growing share of that, now 34%. Illinois state Sen. Chris Lauzen, a Republican, says government benefits are unsustainable and unfair to taxpayers who earn less than civil servants. "People will become angrier and angrier when they learn the difference between their pay and benefits and what we give to public employees," he says. Jennifer Porcari of the American Federation of Teachers, a union representing 1.4 million educators and state employees, says BLS figures that show government employees earn higher wages are misleading because jobs aren't comparable. Government jobs, such as teaching, often require more education. Some states are asking unions for help with budget problems. New Mexico employees will pay an extra 1.5% of salary toward pensions for two years, cutting the state's share. Ohio's unions will take unpaid furlough days to save the state $440 million over two years. In the third year, workers will get most of the money back. The wage gap between government and private workers has stayed roughly the same since 2002. Benefits are a different story. For every $1-an-hour pay increase, public employees have gotten $1.17 in new benefits. Private workers have gotten just 58 cents in benefits for every $1 raise. The difference: Companies have ended most traditional pension plans and increased workers' share of health care costs. Government paid an average of $8,800 annually toward employee medical insurance. Private companies paid $4,100. A full-time government worker receives benefits worth an average of $27,830 per year. A private worker's benefits are worth $16,598.
Thursday, June 24, 2010 1:29 PM
Quote:tax rates should be cut across the board. do you agree with that, or are you in favor of progressive taxes that punish success?
Quote:The top 5 percent pay well over half the income taxes.
Quote:During eight years of the Bush Administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion.
Quote:In 1955, IRS records indicated the 400 richest people in the country were worth an average $12.6 million, adjusted for inflation. In 2006, the 400 richest increased their average to $263 million, representing an epochal shift of wealth upward in the U.S. In 1955, the richest tier paid an average 51.2 percent of their income in taxes under a progressive federal income tax that included loopholes. By 2006, the richest paid only 17.2 percent of their income in taxes. In 1955, the proportion of federal income from corporate taxes was 33 percent; by 2003, it decreased to 7.4 percent. Today, the top taxpayers pay the same percentage of their incomes in taxes as those making $50,000 to $75,000, although they doubled their share of total U.S. income.
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