The Democrats have it wrong

The total personal net income in the US last year was about $14Trillion. The top 1% of households received about 40% of that income, or $5.6Trillion, a $37Million average household income after taxes. And that is for just one year. The wealthy do indeed have the money to pay more in taxes.

 

I'm not real sure about your numbers and how you are using them but whatever, it still stands, it aint your money and it aint the government money so what business of it of yours? Which basically comes to the root of the problem, greed of those that don't have it and trying to use government that can confiscate for them. Pretty much same old story, lets have a bigger more powerful government for those that want what others have, except those people actually made the money legal and the likes of some is to use the power of government to take it for them, no better then the bankrobber and thieves. In fact I have more respect for thieves then I have for the likes of you that would drag society down to its lowest denominator to get what you want.

 

The lowest common denominator...
What is that, the pathological disregard of social conscience, the greed and selfishness to think that you have zero obligations to a society that allows you to be successful and garner great amounts of wealth while demanding from that same society the safety and security that guards your gains?

Or is it something else?

 

I demand nothing and expect less, I am saying that those that want security and on the same hand want to confiscate wealth of others is dragging our society down to its lowest common denominator.

Once again, it aint your money it aint DC's money. Stop spending money you don't have and "we can get along". Otherwise there is no common ground.

 

Let's make a list.

Germany, England, France, Sweden, Japan.

And now it's your turn to tell us why these high tax high productivity nations with high living standards should be imitated.

 

If you truly stand on your own with no obligations and no expectations and no demands from the rest of society you must be living in Mogadishu.

If you expect to live safely in your home and drive safely on the streets and go about your business without fear then you are in a web of social cooperation that requires everyone to do their part regardless of how they personally feel about it.

You are blind to what society creates for you, your expectations of it and the demands you make on it. If a society is to exist that enables you to be your extremely selfish and uncaring self it is populated by a great many extremely tolerant people who think far differently than you do. That they give you such latitude is generous to a fault because your aim is to destroy the entire web of social cooperation and consciousness that makes your comfortably self-centered existence possible.

 

I hate to inform you that Germany, England and France all are in the middle of some serious financial issues, something about riots and civil unrest unfolding. Well Japan has been like a yo-yo over the last few decades and now well hope them the best!

I made another comment in another thread towards you, something about the dumbing down of America, you surely are not dissappointing me!

 

Depends upon what you actually think that the government does, building roads okay I'm with you on that one. If I need a job I nor my neighbors for the most part wouldn't go running and expecting a job from the government (or from the almighty Obama) or even think they have anything to do with it.

The great experiment was that people perform within their own lives, not a large federal system, that is what I'm dissaproving of and those that promote such nonsense. If the individual seeks out large government as their daddy and mommy then they get what they deserve and likely will be the first victims of such folly.

 

How people come to such absurd conclusions and then post them without any documentation to support them is beyond me.

The numbers cited reflect the GDP of the United States which is the "gross profit" from private enterprise and not all of the net profit (income) that is tranferred to individuals. Much of this gross profit is re-invested by corporations and enterprise and is not transferred to any individual and cannot be considered to be personal income.

We must also deduct all taxes paid from the GDP as that deducts from the gross profits reflected by the GDP. In short, if the GDP is $14 trillion but $2.5 trillion is given to the federal government in taxation then the net income (i.e. net GDP) becomes $11.5 trillion as that taxation is paid from the net profits which are a component of the gross profit as reflected by the GDP. This is further reduced by State taxation.

As an exercise in math we can take the following numbers and calculate roughly what the combined net earnings in the United State were for 2010.

I would suggest that some people need to sharpen their pencils and when we look at taxation we need to seriously address the fact that 38% of households pay zero in income taxes with many reflecting a negative tax obligation.

It isn't that the wealthy don't pay enough but that the average income earner doesn't pay enough in taxation.

 

I agree completely and if Americans want these benefits of government then they should be willing to individuall pay for them as opposed to expecting someone else to pay for them.

A national minimum tax should be required from all working Americans to pay for the fundamental expendatures of government that are necessary to provide the basic services of government. We can argue about what those services entail but obviously national defense is the most important of them and all Americans should pay for national defense equally based upon a per capita tax that is equal for all.

Of course if ALL working Americans were required to pay for national defense we might reach the conclusion that fighting wars in foreign countries is not required for the actual defense of the United States and would end those wars immediately.

 

The wealthy ALREADY carry most of the tax burden. The wealthiest 1% actually earns 19% of all income but pays 37% in income taxes. (i don't know where you're getting your stats). The top 5% earns 33% of income but pays 57% in taxes. However, the BOTTOM 50% earn 13% of all income but only pays 3% in taxes. The system isn't fair as is and using populist class warfare rhetoric isn't going to make it any better.

http://www.american.com/archive/200...zine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes

 

Growth of the DJIA is one thing, but high unemployment hung around for many years after the stock market crash. FDR's policies helped to alleviate that in the short term. The fiscal spending of WWII helped to put an end to the high unemployment afterwards.

Link please. And I'll note that the fiscal expansion of the 35-40 years (and in many ways much longer past that) after WWII was very real.

What is there to cut but military spending and corporate handouts? Maybe many of the farming subsidies could be cut, too. Past that, there isn't much left to cut without seeing lower growth in the coming decades.

As an American taxpayer, I demand that those who benefit the most are taxed on the billions they take in. Cut the loopholes for corporations, and raise the taxes on top income earners with the rest having their taxes raised after the recovery has become sustainable growth. If there's places to cut spending without harming growth, fine. I'm all for it. But leave SS/MC alone, with the possibility of lowering eligibility ages for Medicare. And in the meantime, we need to have another stimulus bill, so that the economic growth can come to this country. Without it, the deficits remain high (and higher with many of the GOP spending cuts, if they get their way).
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/...ly-makes-the-long-run-debt-problem-worse.html

 

What is the unfunded liablity of Medicare/Medicaid we are looking at over the next 20 years, 700 trillion? Yea lets not touch that too scary.

 

Unemployment was at it's peak in 1933 when FDR took office at about 29% but March of 1933, the same month FDR took office, also was the official end of the Depression as the GDP once again began to expand.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_US_unemployment_rate_in_1930
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html

If we compare the GDP growth to the drop in unemployment between 1933 and 1940 it correlates almost exactly with the growth of the GDP by the private sector.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctpnpa/growth.pdf

Private enterprise, not government spending, results in job growth.

The national debt at the end of WW II was about $275 billion and dropped slightly in 1948 but went back up to over $275 billion in a couple of years following that small dip.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...tack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s

We're still paying the interest on that debt today and we've paid over $800 billion on this debt since 1950 based upon simple interest calculations. If we use compound interest calculations because the interest is being paid for with more borrowing the amount would be $4.99 trillion. We could compromise on the actual cost of the WW II debt at roughly $2.5 trillion which would be somewhere between simple interest and compound interest calculations or simple state that the residual interest on the unpaid WW II debt has cost Americans a lot of money and continues to cost us money today.

In part we agree and then we disagree.

First of all the wealthy don't have the income to balance the budget in spite of what many would like to believe. As we saw from the extension of the Bush era tax cuts allowing them to expire would have resulted in only $70 billion in additional revenue from the wealthy but would have resulted on $300 billion in additional revenue from the middle class. With 38% of Americans having no income tax liability or creating a negative income tax liability it is time for them to step up to the plate and start paying a reasonable amount for the benefits of government. Asking Americans to positively contribute to the funding of our government is not too much to ask.

Of note I opposed the extension of the Bush era tax cuts which would have resulted in $360 billion in annual revenues. I now support allowing them to expire at the end of 2013.

Corporate tax "loopholes" are actually something I'm addressing in another thread as it relates to "Big Oil" and I'm actually attempting to find out what they are. So far they appear to be ligitimate tax deductions for expendatures or relate to income earned outside of the United States that do not involve the United States economy at all. These are valid tax laws that apply to all corporations and not just to "Big Oil" so I have yet to find a ligitimate "loophole" that can be eliminated. Allowing deductions for expendatures is not a loophole. Contributions on that thread would be appreciated.

http://www.politicalforum.com/budget-taxes/197386-big-oil-tax-loopholes-what-they.html

I do oppose any subidies for private enterprise. If the government is writing a check, which is an expendature, to a private corporation then I hold the position that it shouldn't be allowed, ever. I opposed TARP and the bailouts of the banks and the millionaire that owned the banks. I opposed President Obama bailing out the auto industry. It did not stop GM and Chrysler from going bankrupt and was a waste of taxpayer money.

Social Security/Medicare expendatures are a serious problem that must be addressed. They are funded with dedicated FICA/Payroll taxes and not general revenues. Currently they are reflecting huge deficits and rapidly consuming the last of the Social Security Trust Fund. When all of the US Treasury securities in the Trust Fund are redeemed these two programs go bankrupt. The problem is simple in that it simply reflects that there was never a financial foundation for these programs that would support them long term. As many of noted in other threads they were basically a Ponzie scheme that was destined for failure since its inception The programs need to be addressed and the sooner the Congress does this the better off Americans will be in the long term

Fortunately there is a "Social Security/Medicare" program that is highly successful, financial sound, and provides significantly better benefits than the general Social Security/Medicare program most people relate to. It's called the Galveston Plan and it has existed since 1981 (conceived in 1979). It is not "perfect" and certainly "lessons learned" have been implemented over the years but it does serve as a "beta test" for what can be done for Social Security. Here are is a summary of some of the differences identified in 2005 when comparing Social Security to the Galveston Plan:

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba514

There was a comparative "analysis" by the Social Security Adminstration which is, of course, inherently biased to the existing Social Security program. I do recommend reading it as well as many of the facts related to the Galveston Plan are cited. I will address two of the "issues" one of which was identified in this report and one which was ignored.

http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v62n1/v62n1p47.pdf

The "problem" that the SSA identified is that the Galveston Plan benefits are not adjusted for inflation. Of course inflation is nothing but the institutionalized theft of the assets from Americans and this problem could be easily resolved by monetary policies that don't create inflation. In short, the US government is the primary problem with the Galveston Plan.

The omission is that the SSA adminstration failed to address the fact that Social Security cannot afford to continue to pay benefits that include inflation adjustments. In fact Social Security is going to have to reduce benefits by at least 25% in the future based upon current financial projections. A 2006 CBO analysis reflects expendatures far exceeding revenues in the future and that projection is out of date today as the expendatures are greater than were projected at that time. Instead of expendatures exceeding revenues in 2018 they exceeded revenues in 2010.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/96xx/doc9649/08-20-SocialSecurityUpdate.pdf

Bottom line is that Social Security and Medicare need to be seriously addressed. I would say that the first thing Congress should do is compare it to the Galveston Plan which is successful, financial sound and provides superior benefits to our current Social Security program. Ignoring that which is successful and continuing to follow a path proven to be a failure is silly. Using the successful Galveston Plan as a foundation for a complete revision to Social Security and Medicare and improving upon it will provide the social benefits that were behind the creation of Social Security and Medicare in the first place and will actually increase the benefits to Americans.

 

The stats are on US personal income only and are from here:

http://www.bea.gov/Index.htm

So what??? 14 Tillion, 11Trillion. It is pretty obvious that there is more than enough personal income in the US to support fully funding the government adn its social programs.

You argue that it is unfair that those whose income exceeds their living expenses pay more in taxes than those whose income does not. And go further in arguing that to make the tax system "fair" those with lower incomes should be required to reduce their already low standard of living further to pay their fair share in taxes.

I see nothing fair about that. In fact it seems decidedly unfair to require low income earners to reduce their standard of living so those whose income exceeds their already advanced standard of living can pay even less in taxes.

 

Well, you are presenting an argument for regressive taxation that completely ignores living expenses. You are essentially arguing for a reworked poll tax, where people are taxed regardless of income or the cost of living.

My view is different. I think that a fair tax would recognize that people have living expenses and the tax scheme should not unfairly burden those just trying to get by when others have excess income that can be taxed without causing an undue burden on their living expenses.

 

A fairly worthless link as I was unable to find any relevant information on the many links that one would have to explore. Perhaps a direct link with and a quotation is in order. I could provide this link and it's fairly worthless as well.
http://www.usa.gov/

The GDP reflect gross domestic product and not net income. Only net income is taxable and it is substantially less than the gross domestic product.

I hate to bring reality into the discussion but simply addressing high income does not reflect wealth. If that were the case we'd never see millionaire filing for bankruptcy and we know that happens all too often. It also ignores that wealth can be acquired without high income. Many average Americans accummulate over a million dollars during their working career and, in fact, the average American requires several million dollars just to retire today if they hope to maintain their lifestyle.

Of course I didn't say that Americans had to pay their "fair share" of taxes to support the government but instead that they should pay something to support our government. The fact that 38% of Americans pay no income taxes or actually generate a negative tax where they recieve more as a refund than they paid in reflects they aren't contributing at all. Even the poor in America have a better standard of living than most middle class individuals in other countries. That is an undeniable fact.

Finally completely misrepresenting what I states is intellectually dishonest. I support the increase in taxation for the wealthy that is scheduled to occur at the end of 2013 when the extention of the Bush era tax cuts are due to expire. I also support the end of the Bush era tax cuts for the middle class that are due to expire. The expiration of these tax cuts will not adversely effect anyone's standard of living.

We couldn't afford these tax cuts during the Bush adminstration where he doubled the national debt in only 8 years nor can we afford them today under the Obama adminstration. I will put forward virtually the same proposition that Obama's Deficit Commission came up with. If we want to extend these tax cuts beyond 2013 then the Congress should come up with $740 billion in annual expendature cuts to support the continuation of these tax cuts.

 

Only because the taxes have been lowered to the other end of the Laffer Curve to the point of being too low to funnel money to the poor.

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2011.pdf
The poor are picking up the slack for the wealthy, which makes it completely stupid.

Nothing wrong with helping out others. I also give to charities. Of course, if the conservatives would stop mucking up the economy, there would be less need amongst the poor.

It's spending too much in some parts of the budget, but not enough in others.

Absolutely untrue.

Then get out of the way of blocking raising taxes, to lower the deficits, and get out of the way of raising spending on what works to help get the economy growing again, so that more revenues can pay down those debts. We were on the road towards paying down debt when Clinton left office, and the GOP went and spent without paying for it.

 

Not as much as you imply. Net personal income was about 12.7Trillion out of a GDP of 14.8trillion in 2010. That is after taxes.

If US workers got paid better they could pay more in taxes. Also, why are you comparing the US poor to the middle class in other nations? Are you saying that the US should engage in a race to the bottom so the poor in the US should live comparably to the poor in somewhere like Columbia, or China, or maybe Somalia? How low are you willing to go?

I also support that but it is quite unlikely given the fanatical resistance of the Tea Party types and their stranglehold on the republicans.

Anyone who believes that caring for the poor, the old, and the sick is un-affordable with our 14Trillion economy is basically insane.

 

While i would certainly argue for a flat tax at a rate that wouldn't be much higher than most americans are taxed as of now, the stats also go to debunk the populist rhetoric about the rich not shouldering their share of the tax burden. A flat tax would not do much to hurt most americans (who are taxed at 25%) and would give them MORE money for living expenses.

Besides, your fair tax proposal would do MORE to hurt average americans than a flat tax would, PRECISELY because you're taxing them on their cost of living. You argue that the fair tax would not burden the poor while excess income would be taxed, however the fair tax essentially is a national sales tax on consumption. Everyone pays, and it would actually hit the poor the most, because they would pay for every transaction they make in the economy. Not to mention the economic impacts that would result from taxing consumption in our consumer economy...

 

Of course the Democrats have it wrong. There isn't a single credible school of economics that advocates tax hikes during a recession. The progressive retards are just making it up as they go along.

One day Obama says we need to extend the Bush-era tax cuts to grow the economy and the next day he wants to raise taxes in order to grow the economy. Which one is it?

Really, these progressives are just idiots. They fabricate their own reality and then smear anyone who dares to question their fantasies.

 

To create jobs, demand must go up, and for that to happen, the money supply must be expanded. Cutting government spending, and/or raising taxes will do exactly the opposite, and therefore the unemployment rate is going to go sky high. A similar situation happened in the 1930's when Roosevelt had deficit budgets, but in 36-37, he gave in to the popular outcry of balancing the budget, the result was a double-dip recession.

 

I typed out a response to this post and the post wouldn't go through (which seems to happen often on Politicalforum.Com in several responses I made to John Locke). So I'll skip the bulk of it, and ask if there's any better info on the Galveston plan. And note that other privatization schemes around the world to do away with similar programs to Social Security have largely been failures (Chile and Argentina are two, if memory serves). And then, there has to be some more recent info on the plan, as many "safe" bonds have not been because of the GOP's housing bubble wreaking havoc in local and state bond markets.

 

A more recent review is available and is more up to date but is also misleading to a greater or lessor degree.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...-cain-touts-alternative-social-security-used/

As I have noted the Galveston Plan should be as a model but modifications to it based upon lessons learned would be needed. The primary reason is that the Galveston Plan is financially solvent because it was based upon solid financial principles.

One of the primary lessons learned is that a similiar plan should be more like a 401K plan where the individual can actively participate and the investment options are not limited to only guarenteed investments. They should be "conservative" investments to a large degree but should also be age-adjusted because the accumulation of assets when someone is young creates far more wealth over the long run. As we know from 401K plans during the years from 2000-2010 they averaged a return on investment of over 8% even with the recession which dramatically reduced stock values. The earlier calculations for the Galveston Plan were at only 5.5% return on investment and that additional 2.5% makes a considerable difference over the long term.

In the comparison they state that the Galveston Plan does not provide a safety net for low income workers but then Social Security only averages about $13K/yr in benefits and benefits for low income workers when they retire are between $7K-9K/yr which is below the poverty level. Social Security does not provide above poverty retirement level income for low income workers who typically have no other forms of income when they retire. Suviviors and disabled workers benefits are substantially less than this with disability benefit averaging less than $500/mo as I recall and survivior benefits at about 65-70% (not sure on this being completely accurate as I'm working from memory).

Additionally the evaluation does not take the future lack of funding for Social Security into account. As I noted the CBO projects a 25% shortfall in revenues related to expendatures. That means that based upon the current laws Social Security beneficiaries will receive 25% less in payments. If Social Security benefits are reduced by 25% then the average payment will fall below the "official poverty level" which is actually less than a person can live on to start with.

Next the evaluation notes the low interest rates on bonds right now but fails to acknowledge that this is because the Federal Reserve has artificially reduced the return on investment for government securities. Were it not for Federal Reserve interventionism the "cost of money" would be back at the typically 5% level. So they are citing a reduced return on investment that is being caused by a government authorized entity. In short they cite low interest rates that are because of government interventionism. Get rid of the interventionism and the interest rates are much higher based upon the free market.

Finally, they cite the fact that the Galveston Plan is not adjusted for inflation which is once again caused by government interventionism in the market. The government causes inflation and there are no justifiable reasons for it. It literally robs the value of labor that is stored in money by individuals. It is government theft and nothing else. Stop the government imposed inflation and end the problem.

Once agian I don't propose adoption of the Galveston Plan but instead a similiar type program to replace Social Security where the advantages of the Galveston Plan and 401K type plans are merged. 401K plans are the most successful personal retirement plans there are today and they work for all income levels. It would have the advantage of being fiscally sound and with less negative government policies and interventionism would provide substantially better benefits.

It's either that or watch Social Security degrade over time and eventually go bankrupt as that is the only projected future for Social Security unless draconian increases in FICA/Payroll taxes are imposed.