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Post by Chesapeake on Apr 16, 2011 7:18:38 GMT -5
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Post by theevan on Apr 16, 2011 7:19:04 GMT -5
Heh.
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Post by brucemacneill on Apr 16, 2011 7:33:46 GMT -5
I wonder where they're going to find the adults to have the conversation.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Apr 16, 2011 7:40:19 GMT -5
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Post by Fingerplucked on Apr 16, 2011 7:41:36 GMT -5
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Post by Fingerplucked on Apr 16, 2011 7:49:31 GMT -5
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Post by Fingerplucked on Apr 16, 2011 7:50:54 GMT -5
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Post by aquaduct on Apr 16, 2011 9:41:59 GMT -5
I wonder where they're going to find the adults to have the conversation. It looks like it probably won't be on the Daily Show.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Apr 16, 2011 12:18:31 GMT -5
The Pirates of Capitol HillCorporations are roaring. Wall Street is rolling in cash. C.E.O. bonuses are going gangbusters. It’s a really good time to be rich! If you’re poor, not so much. The pall of the recession is suffocating. The unemployment rate is still unbearably high. The Census Bureau reported in September that the poverty rate for 2009 was 14.3 percent, higher than it has been since 1994, and the number of uninsured reached a record high. And the Department of Agriculture has reported record “prevalence of food insecurity.” So in a civil society, which of these groups should be expected to sacrifice a bit for the benefit of the other and the overall health and prosperity of the nation at a time of great uncertainty? The poor, of course. At least that seems to be the Republican answer. Under the guise of deficit reduction, the Republicans are proposing to not only make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, but to reduce their taxes even more — cutting the top individual rate from 35 percent to 25 percent to “promote growth and job creation.” And they plan to pay for this by taking a buzz saw to programs that benefit the poor, elderly and otherwise vulnerable. But the spurious argument that cutting taxes for the wealthy will somehow stimulate economic growth is not borne out by the data. A look at the year-over-year change in G.D.P. and changes in the historical top marginal tax rates show no such correlation. This isn’t about balancing budgets or fiscal discipline or prosperity-for-posterity stewardship. This is open piracy for plutocrats. This is about reshaping the government and economy to benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless. And it’s not that the rich haven’t already gotten their tax cuts. According to an analysis released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, the average tax rate for the top 1 percent of households dropped by about 20 percent from 1979 to 2007, while the average tax rate for all Americans dropped by just 8 percent over that time. However, in just the period from 1992 to 2007, the tax rate on the top 400 households in America — those with an average annual income of nearly $350 million — fell by more than a third. In fact, the tax rate for these supermillionaires is now less than the tax rate for average Americans. This even though, as the institute pointed out, “between 1992 and 2007, a time in which income for the average household and top 1 percent grew 13% and 123%, respectively, the income for the top 400 households grew fully 399%.” As my colleague Catherine Rampell pointed out last month on the Economix blog, the top 1 percent of Americans earn a fifth of the income and control a third of the wealth. More tax cuts would be gluttony in a time of starvation. That is not America. That is a nation about to be plundered, and a people laid to waste. www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/opinion/16blow.html?_r=1
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Post by brucemacneill on Apr 16, 2011 12:44:57 GMT -5
Well, now that we have the liberal take on things... which we all already knew anyway.
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Post by Village Idiot on Apr 16, 2011 12:50:39 GMT -5
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Post by paulschlimm on Apr 16, 2011 13:39:08 GMT -5
So in a civil society, which of these groups should be expected to sacrifice a bit for the benefit of the other and the overall health and prosperity of the nation at a time of great uncertainty?
A: Both. There is scope on both ends of the line to act in a more decent, responsible fashion I believe. And, yes, that will get me labeled an evil bastard by a lot of people.
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Post by Supertramp78 on Apr 16, 2011 13:54:31 GMT -5
Both should. True. One of the reasons I like the big cuts and tax increased method. Doing either one without the other just shifts the burden to one extreme of the populace.
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Post by Doug on Apr 16, 2011 13:54:01 GMT -5
So in a civil society, which of these groups should be expected to sacrifice a bit for the benefit of the other and the overall health and prosperity of the nation at a time of great uncertainty? A: Both. There is scope on both ends of the line to act in a more decent, responsible fashion I believe. And, yes, that will get me labeled an evil bastard by a lot of people. In a civil society everyone should pay the same tax.
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Post by aquaduct on Apr 16, 2011 14:13:17 GMT -5
Both should. True. One of the reasons I like the big cuts and tax increased method. Doing either one without the other just shifts the burden to one extreme of the populace. Clearly you need both, but the reason I believe we need to focus on spending cuts first is that spending is in the direct control of government. As Jim's charts plainly show, there's very little direct correlation between tax rates and revenue increases or economic growth or anything else. You can increase taxes all over the place and not really have any guarantee of results. Folks can adjust their behavior to avoid taxes or the economy can tank which will knock revenue for a loop even more. It's just impossible for there to be any sort of clearly discernable cause and effect. In that aspect it shares these characteristics with stimulus spending, the money goes out but it's almost impossible to figure out if it's doing any good. Spending is real and is completely within the government's control. A dollar not spent is a dollar not spent and a dollar not borrowed. Period. And cutting spending has the added bonus if done right of killing counter-productive programs that constrain economic activity. Personally I'm hoping that the democrats hold out for tax increases. Between that and crappy programs and failed stimulus spending, we should be able to put the extreme liberal agenda in the proper light and get back to making progress in 2012.
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Post by Chesapeake on Apr 16, 2011 14:36:26 GMT -5
We're not off to a very auspicious start. After promising time and time again that this time they were really serious and there would be no demagoging ("OK Lucy, this time you promise not to snatch the ball away at the last second, right?" "No, this time I'm going to hold it still while you kick, and that's a promise." "You're not kidding this time, right? I mean, it's not like we haven't been here before." "Right, Charley Brown. I've mended my ways. Scout's honor. So go ahead and kick it.), the first thing Obama does after Ryan goes out on a big limb and offers a serious deficit-cutting proposal hitting every political third rail in sight is go on national TV and set the tone for the Democratic response by savaging it as something that, among other atrocities, will gut Medicare. To hear him talk, the GOP has gone to war on the elderly.
Not that there isn't any hyperbole coming from the other side. The current GOP talking points seem to be all about how all the Dems want to do is raise taxes - and how the Dems will do so over the bodies of an army of dead elephants.
So much for joining hands and jumping over the cliff together.
Same rhetoric, different year. But this time we really do seem to be aboard a fast train for Armageddon.
If I had to handicap it, I would say that as of now the GOPers have the better argument. Judging from the Dems' current talking points, it appears they think the Medicare part is the GOP's weakest link. But by exempting the current crop of seniors and near-seniors, and targeting generations that already don't believe Medicare (or Social Security) will be there for them as strong as it is for their elders, Republicans avoid a serious revolt among seniors in 2012. And, off-hand, I can't think of a single election that has been won by somebody promising to raise taxes.
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Post by brucemacneill on Apr 16, 2011 15:09:52 GMT -5
"And, off-hand, I can't think of a single election that has been won by somebody promising to raise taxes. "
Ed Rendell, (D) of Pennsylvania promised to raise taxes if elected and after he was in office raised taxes. Pennsylvania now has a Republican governor. You should have heard the moaning, by Democrats, when Rendell actually did what he said he'd do. Me, I left the state. Rendell then became Democratic Comittee Chairman, supported Hillary and got Obama elected, so he's left that post and works for NBC now I think.
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Post by omaha on Apr 16, 2011 15:30:44 GMT -5
A few thoughts:
- The idea that something as complex as the tax code can be represented by a single number (the top marginal rate) year by year is nonsensical. There's more to the tax code than a number.
- Anytime someone talks about "the rich", he is almost certainly lying, deliberately or not. The US has tremendous income mobility. When someone says something like "the top 1% of earners in 2010 made 40% more than the top 1% of earners in 2000", that doesn't mean that the same people are involved. All it means is that it takes more money to be in the top 1% in 2010 than it did in 2000. But the IRS keeps comprehensive data on this and the actual number of individuals who stay in the top percentages of income is quite small. In 2020, there will be more people in the top 1% that are currently in the bottom 20% than there will be people who stay in the top 1%.
- The idea (that Obama is pushing) that someone else can be taxed to pay for generous programs is corrosive to society. Obama is saying that the "average" person should, over a life time, expect more from government than he puts in. That should be shameful. Unless we restore the notion that carrying one's own weight is a civic virtue, this debate will be lost.
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Post by Village Idiot on Apr 16, 2011 15:49:37 GMT -5
So in a civil society, which of these groups should be expected to sacrifice a bit for the benefit of the other and the overall health and prosperity of the nation at a time of great uncertainty? A: Both. There is scope on both ends of the line to act in a more decent, responsible fashion I believe. And, yes, that will get me labeled an evil bastard by a lot of people. No, this won't label you as an evil bastard. You already have been. ![8-)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/cool.png) I've always been interested in Jerry Brown's 13% flat tax rate that he proposed when running for president in the early 90s. I don't know much about this kind of stuff, and would be interested in anyone's opinion on that.
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Post by Russell Letson on Apr 16, 2011 15:56:36 GMT -5
Anytime someone talks about "the rich", he is almost certainly lying, deliberately or not. Just a little point of semantic precision: If one utters an untrue statement without "deliberately" understanding it to be untrue, it's not a lie. One might be unwittingly or ignorantly repeating someone else's lie, but that's not the same thing as knowingly lying. That's part of the reason "You lie" used to be the kind of fighting words that could get you killed.
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