Neither of those options mention anything about reducing government spending and inefficiencies. That’s a HUGE part of fixing the mess we’re in now, moreso than regulating/de-regulating WS or fiddling with tax codes.
I’ll have to check, but I thought I read somewhere that said we could tax the top 1-5% at a rate of 100% and it would never pay off the debt.
Regardless, this post ignores the fact that we haven’t had a free market in over 100 years.
More tax cuts for the rich, yay!
Neither of those options will fix anything, the debt is too high and not payable, except if they pay it with printed money. This will cause record high inflation and interest rates that will cut off growth due to companies not being able to get loans to build products. This will cause record high unemployment at roughly 50%.
@QuantumStorm - I agree. I’d like to see our military budget cut drastically, considering we already outspend the next 26 countries combined and have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury (and Pluto, even though that little fucker isn’t even a planet anymore).
@grim_truth - Nobody’s saying “tax the wealthy, that will fix everything.” But it’s a start. And it will do a helluva lot more than when Republicans were trying to cut NPR out of the budget.
@MrTrololo - I know it’s ridiculous to ask this of someone with trolling in their name, but care to back that up with facts and stats?
@GodlessLiberal - I think some of the biggest problems aren’t the lack of regulations, but the wrong regulations that were set in place. We keep hearing of the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act as the reason why the housing market crashed, when in reality it was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that caused it. Until we actually look at the root causes, there’s no point in looking at fixes. Anything else is just putting a bucket under a leaky roof. Not any good until you plug the hole and make sure you understand how the hole showed up so you can take the proper steps to prevent it from happening again.
the solution on the right side. the solution on the left side aka trickle down economics has not only not worked, it crashed the economy…twice. the first time being the Great Depression when income disparity was identical to that which we again saw in 2008. without a strong middle class made up of people who can afford to buy things thus fueling the economy our economy cannot sustain itself. even the economic adviser who originally convinced Reagan that trickle down was a great idea admitted he was wrong. even Alan Greenspan who was the economic czar for decades admitted after 2008 he had been wrong. Romney’s plan would give further tax cuts to the rich and raise taxes on the middle class. it’s the worst scenario i could imagine unless of course you’re Mitt Romney and his people.
@TheSutraDude - We should just join the 1% and then we won’t care.
@GodlessLiberal - haha. actually there are some 1% people who do care. Bill Gates is one. even the big oil execs told Congress during a hearing they (the big oil companies) don’t need the tax loopholes they’ve been getting yet Congressional republicans have refused to do anything about it.
@GodlessLiberal - usdebtclock.org shows total debt. We have to factor in “unfunded liabilities” which most people conveniently miss. Add that into the total debt per paying US taxpayer and the amount is about $1,300,000 each. Both parties have been responsible for this debt bubble that we are currently in. The dollar is also in an asset bubble. Ditto with bonds, bonds are in a bubble that’s going to pop. The democrats would never have taxed enough to support the programs they want, and the republicans could never cut enough to justify the military spending they want. In the future there will not be money for either of those things. People will ask, “how could this happen?” And then expensive lessons will be learned. Until then, we’re going to stumble on by propping up a busted economy with deficit spending. When Investors wise up to the fact that the dollar’s value is based on credit — and that credit is not payable, then we will see the horrible situation I have described happen. I advise everyone I know to get into a very cheap house that costs the same as nominal rent. When the bust comes, you’ll probably be able to live there for free after you loose your job for a few years until the bank can sell it, if they can sell it.
@TheSutraDude - You’re right, it was all the republicans fault. Especially during the time the dems held the majority in the house, senate, and the white house. Oh wait….
@grim_truth - right now it is the republicans who have posted a record number of filibusters, a record by far. dems have had a lot to do with creating what became the economic crash and even between 2008 and 2011 blue dog dems voted with republicans. but when we need solutions put in place, while republicans ask “where are the jobs” they’ve blocked even infrastructure proposals that would put countless people to work and do much needed fixing. it’s normally agreed upon by both sides.
@TheSutraDude - Dems took the majority in 2008. I could be mistaken, but was there even one single proposal put forth by a democrat to close the tax loopholes you spoke of that the “Congressional Republicans have refused to do anything about?”
Infrastructure only creates temporary jobs. We need sustainable jobs. (Though I do agree (as do most) that too many of our bridges are in need of repair.) Many economists argue that’s what caused the great depression to go on for so long. Jobs that were not sustainable, and out of control spending. (That spending still hasn’t been paid back.)
I think what most folks refuse to understand (both sides) is that there is no one fix. There is no possible way to recover this nation by bits and pieces. We have to look at the big picture and right now, it needs a total revamp. Much of it lays upon ourselves as citizens. When we want more than we can afford, and are willing to spend more money on products that are disposable, all the while demanding higher pay, it was inevitable that jobs would head overseas. A nation that has no industry cannot possibly survive.
we just need to dump the economic system that thrive on debt..
otherwise… the best solution only can delay the inevitable…
@grim_truth - dems took control in 2004 but since they didn’t have a super majority in the Senate republicans have been able to filibuster practically everything since 2008. one moderate republican resigned yesterday citing his frustration that Congress has become so partisan, laying most of the blame on his own party.
yes infrastructure jobs would be temporary but there would be many and many would last years. this would put people back to work which would mean far fewer on unemployment and these people would have money to spend which would help jumpstart the economy and yes we do need road and bridge repair desperately.
i agree with your third point except for the inevitability of outsourcing. Lehman Brothers began outsourcing about 2 years after 9/11. at the end of the year of the first wave of outsourcing the CEO’s year-end bonus went up by $5 million to $22 million for “saving the company money”. top execs also saw huge jumps in their bonuses. the truth was however, outsourcing lost money. 80% of the work we got back from overseas had to be fixed or totally redone by us. managers were told to “scrub the numbers” which means make the numbers look better. they did that at the end of every shift every day and night. those of us who had to fix and redo the work were ordered never to complain about it. meanwhile the waves of outsourcing more and more jobs continued right up until the end because contracts with the overseas firms had been signed and things just got worse. something else that factored in was overseas employees were hired untrained. we trained them. once they got the training and worked for 1 year, sometimes less, most of them left with their new skills for greener pastures so we had to constantly train new people. we all know what it’s like to call for technical support and get someone from overseas that reads possible solutions from a script. imagine what it’s like for untrained people to have to turn around complex graphics presentations in a few hours because the bankers always needed them right away. and morale when down the tubes. first of all we’d come in on any given day to learn a bunch of fellow employees were given their walking papers. on top of that when bankers called upset that their jobs weren’t ready as promised we were not allowed to tell them they were sent to India and needed to be redone. if i was fixing a job i had to get on the phone with the banker and take the blame.
@TheSutraDude - You’re speaking of outsourcing of servicing jobs, which may or may not work. I was speaking of manufacturing jobs heading overseas.
@GodlessLiberal - good post what I would like to ask is based historically do you really think we SHOULD cut the Military? Or just cut back on the wars we are in?
@grim_truth - even so we were giving companies financial incentives to outsource jobs. Obama’s begun turning that around by giving companies financial incentives to hire at home and for bringing jobs back from overseas. at least i think he was able to get that legislation through. American workers are not going to work in sweatshops for $1 an hour to compete with Thailand while many of these large business owners, execs and CEOs make more money than they’ll ever be able to spend. and again if the middle class can’t make a living income with disposable cash left over to spend there won’t be much of a consumer base for businesses to sell to.
@Kris0logy - i’ll offer my unsolicited opinion. if we must go to war it should always be as the very last resort. in my opinion going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was justifiable after 9/11. the Bush administration lied to us about its justification for going into Iraq. to add insult to injury, when asked during one of his daily morning press conferenceshow long the invasion of Iraq would lastRumsfeldanswered “4 to 6 weeks, 2-3 months at the very most”. something that still makes me wonder is why Rumsfeld ordered special forces to stand down and let Bin Laden slip into Pakistan when the forces had Bin Laden surrounded. the special forces commander and soldiers involved were livid over that order. that in combination with the Bush administration quietly putting Bin Laden relatives visiting in the U.S. on a flight home before authorities were given an opportunity to question them about the whereabouts of Bin Laden. that pissed people in the FBI off. i don’t know what the reasoning was for either of those Bush decisions but it’s always seemed fishy to me.
as for making cuts in military spending Pentagon Generals are for the cuts. because new technology has made military operations less expensive we can and should make cuts. i believe it was in the 70s when studies found the military was paying ridiculous prices for things like hammers at $70 each and toilet seats at $300 each. i believe or at least hope that was cut out and if so would have justified cuts in military spending right there. that was back then though. right now we spend more on our military than the next 28 countries spend combined on their militaries. that includes China.
@TheSutraDude - Thanks, I was always considering that every time we’ve cut we’ve regretted it. Like Pearl Harbor…& some other times….do you think cuts will still leave us prepared just in case putin decides he is god again?
@TheSutraDude - ”yes infrastructure jobs would be temporary but there would be many and many would last years.” very true. furthermore the entire future economy rests on infrastructure, so there’s excellent long-term reasons for infrastructure spending as well.
@Kris0logy - you’re welcome. nobody can say for sure but i would rather side with Pentagon Generals on this matter than the likes of Paul Ryan who called them liars because in his/Mitt Romney’s plan military spending would grow with no specification of how that growth will be paid for. Paul Ryan walked back his accusation the very next day that the Pentagon is lying. Russia, which btw Romney advisers still refer to as “The Soviet Union” which hasn’t existed for 30 years, does not have anywhere near the military power the U.S. has. that does not necessarily mean they couldn’t defeat us. i suppose if Lithuania was clever enough they could defeat us. the very real threat to the U.S. which Pentagon Generals have also acknowledged is economic. Bin Laden’s plan was not to defeat us militarily. it was to bring us to our knees economically so that we could no longer maintain ourselves as a nation. the Bush administration almost realized Bin Laden’s dream for him.
any money we spend unnecessarily on military weaponry is money we don’t spend on educating our children, research and innovation, aid to growing businesses, infrastructure, etc etc.
@complicatedlight - yes that’s a good point too re “the entire future economy”. the more our roads and bridges, subways and transportation falls apart and is unable to keep up with demand the worse things will be for future generations.
I agree with everything but the euphemism “middle class”. We live in a “christian” nation where our leaders aren’t even allowed to hint at helping the poor.
Long after all these politician’s have passed on to their eternal reward….our great grandchildren will be fighting in the streets for scrapes and blaming us.
I’ve never understood how the concept of we don’t have enough money, so let’s tax the rich more made any sense at all.
Now, if you want to talk about removing tax loop holes or something… let’s discuss that. But let’s tax the rich more because we need money just plain old doesn’t make sense. When Obama first ran he had this neat tax website where you could plug in your income and see how much money Obama was going to save you versus what McCain was going to save you. Only McCain was the one saving me money! I was married back then, one family income (squarely middle class, if not lower middle class for CA) with three kids and Obama’s taxes were more for us. I can assure you we were not among the rich, not even damn close back then.
What “tax the rich” more means to me is the same thing as the Bully in school who doesn’t get what he wants in his lunchbag so he steals other kids’ lunch money.
@TheSutraDude - Oh, I agree. Tax breaks need to go away altogether. Esp for sending jobs overseas. What folks have to remember is, people will always buy what they need. That’s why you see businesses that provide that always doing well. I grew up in an industrial area. A good amount of factory jobs. Some sucked, some were ok. That was the drive. Take the first job you could get. It would pay just enough to get by. No extras. The incentive was to work hard to either get a promotion or a referral to another plant that paid better and had lighter work.
I think one thing we need to do to bring jobs back home is to also focus on the trade defecit. If another nation installs high tariffs on our goods, we do the same to them. We don’t do that now, and I think that’s one thing that hurts us.
I also think we need to really cut gov’t down. Why in the hell do we have a Department of Homeland Security? Isn’t that the same purpose of the Department of Defense??? It’s those kind of double coverages that we need to eliminate to save this nation more money.
@TiredSoVeryTired - Run for the hills! It’s the apocalypse! We agree on something! lol
@TiredSoVeryTired - Mitt Romney pays a 14% tax rate (at least on the only two years he’s willing to disclose). The average receptionist pays well over double that rate. THAT is the extent most of us who say “tax the rich” mean.
@GodlessLiberal - How does Mitt Romney pay only a 14% tax rate? Now, if you want to suggest closing up tax loopholes, then I agree. But tax the rich cuz we need more money makes no sense. The tax loop holes shouldn’t exist whatever the state of our economy.
@TiredSoVeryTired - No, more like get rid of the existing tax cuts that we can’t afford. You can’t cut taxes and increase spending at the same time, it’s one or the other. And the deficit isn’t purely a result of increasing spending, it’s also a result of tax rates being pretty much the lowest they’ve been in a century while expenditures are at an all-time high.
It’s also worth mentioning that if we taxed the upper and middle class appropriate to what we’re spending we wouldn’t be engaging in trillion dollar wars and healthcare costs would’ve gone down a lot sooner than they will be.
@TiredSoVeryTired - Because he makes his money from investments which are taxed at less than half the maximum rate work is taxed. Because sitting on your ass and getting richer is hard work.
@agnophilo - I like keeping taxes lower… there are some things we all need to pay for (roads, infrastructure, military, education, etc.) but I’d rather go with spending less on what we don’t all need (arts, research, foreign aid, space exploration) in the short term.
Okay, so we don’t actually need to tax rich people more, we need to possibly increase taxes on investment income…. which I’m not so sure I’m necessarily okay with. If I work 8 hours a day for a year, save half my money and invest that… why should I be “double taxed” on it?
@TiredSoVeryTired - [If I work 8 hours a day for a year, save half my money and invest that... why should I be "double taxed" on it? ] You would only be taxed on the GAIN you made on that invested money. And if it wasn’t for the capital gains tax, people like Mitt Romney who make their money simply by buying something (stocks, businesses, etc) and essentially running a chop shop on them wouldn’t pay any taxes at all. It’s also taxed progressively, so you working your full-time job and not making it into a high income bracket, there’s a chance that you could actually pay zero CGT.
@GodlessLiberal - Okay, so there possibly needs to be a reworking of the tax tier for investment income. I can see that as possible… and/or working something out that is more fair as far as amounts invested. Ya’ll who firmly believe that, should label it as such. Because lots of people hear “let’s tax the rich more” and really that doesn’t sound fair or the American way.
But still a very complicated issue. If John Q. RichGuy invests his inheritance and doesn’t pay as much taxes on it, I still don’t feel like that is unfair because whoever earned the money in the first place (his parents) paid taxes on it. You shouldn’t pay taxes on inherited money… but I do reckon it is still income once you invest it and perhaps… we should be taxing investment income differently.
@TiredSoVeryTired - You seem to think that taxes are a controlling factor in your personal spending power/financial well being. They really aren’t. You can pay greater federal taxes but have greater spending power in an economy with lower inflation rates, higher real dollar values, greater personal/family income, etc. Federal taxes are just one factor to consider, and I would argue a relatively unimportant one, particularly for the lower-upper class types like myself.
There is pretty much 0 evidence that over the last 100 years conservative economic policies have benefited anyone, including the ultra wealthy, more than liberal ones have. Every single meta-study I have seen that has attempted to do a multi-variate analysis on true spending power has found that conservative economic policies just don’t work very well, including the “low-tax” administrations/Congresses.
Your blogs and every other content is so entertaining and useful It makes me come back again. Roof systems
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Comments (41)
Take over Mexico and use them as slave labor!
Neither of those options mention anything about reducing government spending and inefficiencies. That’s a HUGE part of fixing the mess we’re in now, moreso than regulating/de-regulating WS or fiddling with tax codes.
I’ll have to check, but I thought I read somewhere that said we could tax the top 1-5% at a rate of 100% and it would never pay off the debt.
Regardless, this post ignores the fact that we haven’t had a free market in over 100 years.
More tax cuts for the rich, yay!
Neither of those options will fix anything, the debt is too high and not payable, except if they pay it with printed money. This will cause record high inflation and interest rates that will cut off growth due to companies not being able to get loans to build products. This will cause record high unemployment at roughly 50%.
@QuantumStorm - I agree. I’d like to see our military budget cut drastically, considering we already outspend the next 26 countries combined and have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury (and Pluto, even though that little fucker isn’t even a planet anymore).
@grim_truth - Nobody’s saying “tax the wealthy, that will fix everything.” But it’s a start. And it will do a helluva lot more than when Republicans were trying to cut NPR out of the budget.
@MrTrololo - I know it’s ridiculous to ask this of someone with trolling in their name, but care to back that up with facts and stats?
@GodlessLiberal - I think some of the biggest problems aren’t the lack of regulations, but the wrong regulations that were set in place. We keep hearing of the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act as the reason why the housing market crashed, when in reality it was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that caused it. Until we actually look at the root causes, there’s no point in looking at fixes. Anything else is just putting a bucket under a leaky roof. Not any good until you plug the hole and make sure you understand how the hole showed up so you can take the proper steps to prevent it from happening again.
the solution on the right side. the solution on the left side aka trickle down economics has not only not worked, it crashed the economy…twice. the first time being the Great Depression when income disparity was identical to that which we again saw in 2008. without a strong middle class made up of people who can afford to buy things thus fueling the economy our economy cannot sustain itself. even the economic adviser who originally convinced Reagan that trickle down was a great idea admitted he was wrong. even Alan Greenspan who was the economic czar for decades admitted after 2008 he had been wrong. Romney’s plan would give further tax cuts to the rich and raise taxes on the middle class. it’s the worst scenario i could imagine unless of course you’re Mitt Romney and his people.
@TheSutraDude - We should just join the 1% and then we won’t care.
@GodlessLiberal - haha. actually there are some 1% people who do care. Bill Gates is one. even the big oil execs told Congress during a hearing they (the big oil companies) don’t need the tax loopholes they’ve been getting yet Congressional republicans have refused to do anything about it.
@GodlessLiberal - usdebtclock.org shows total debt. We have to factor in “unfunded liabilities” which most people conveniently miss. Add that into the total debt per paying US taxpayer and the amount is about $1,300,000 each. Both parties have been responsible for this debt bubble that we are currently in. The dollar is also in an asset bubble. Ditto with bonds, bonds are in a bubble that’s going to pop. The democrats would never have taxed enough to support the programs they want, and the republicans could never cut enough to justify the military spending they want. In the future there will not be money for either of those things. People will ask, “how could this happen?” And then expensive lessons will be learned. Until then, we’re going to stumble on by propping up a busted economy with deficit spending. When Investors wise up to the fact that the dollar’s value is based on credit — and that credit is not payable, then we will see the horrible situation I have described happen. I advise everyone I know to get into a very cheap house that costs the same as nominal rent. When the bust comes, you’ll probably be able to live there for free after you loose your job for a few years until the bank can sell it, if they can sell it.
@TheSutraDude - You’re right, it was all the republicans fault. Especially during the time the dems held the majority in the house, senate, and the white house. Oh wait….
@grim_truth - right now it is the republicans who have posted a record number of filibusters, a record by far. dems have had a lot to do with creating what became the economic crash and even between 2008 and 2011 blue dog dems voted with republicans. but when we need solutions put in place, while republicans ask “where are the jobs” they’ve blocked even infrastructure proposals that would put countless people to work and do much needed fixing. it’s normally agreed upon by both sides.
@TheSutraDude - Dems took the majority in 2008. I could be mistaken, but was there even one single proposal put forth by a democrat to close the tax loopholes you spoke of that the “Congressional Republicans have refused to do anything about?”
Infrastructure only creates temporary jobs. We need sustainable jobs. (Though I do agree (as do most) that too many of our bridges are in need of repair.) Many economists argue that’s what caused the great depression to go on for so long. Jobs that were not sustainable, and out of control spending. (That spending still hasn’t been paid back.)
I think what most folks refuse to understand (both sides) is that there is no one fix. There is no possible way to recover this nation by bits and pieces. We have to look at the big picture and right now, it needs a total revamp. Much of it lays upon ourselves as citizens. When we want more than we can afford, and are willing to spend more money on products that are disposable, all the while demanding higher pay, it was inevitable that jobs would head overseas. A nation that has no industry cannot possibly survive.
we just need to dump the economic system that thrive on debt..
otherwise… the best solution only can delay the inevitable…
@grim_truth - dems took control in 2004 but since they didn’t have a super majority in the Senate republicans have been able to filibuster practically everything since 2008. one moderate republican resigned yesterday citing his frustration that Congress has become so partisan, laying most of the blame on his own party.
yes infrastructure jobs would be temporary but there would be many and many would last years. this would put people back to work which would mean far fewer on unemployment and these people would have money to spend which would help jumpstart the economy and yes we do need road and bridge repair desperately.
i agree with your third point except for the inevitability of outsourcing. Lehman Brothers began outsourcing about 2 years after 9/11. at the end of the year of the first wave of outsourcing the CEO’s year-end bonus went up by $5 million to $22 million for “saving the company money”. top execs also saw huge jumps in their bonuses. the truth was however, outsourcing lost money. 80% of the work we got back from overseas had to be fixed or totally redone by us. managers were told to “scrub the numbers” which means make the numbers look better. they did that at the end of every shift every day and night. those of us who had to fix and redo the work were ordered never to complain about it. meanwhile the waves of outsourcing more and more jobs continued right up until the end because contracts with the overseas firms had been signed and things just got worse. something else that factored in was overseas employees were hired untrained. we trained them. once they got the training and worked for 1 year, sometimes less, most of them left with their new skills for greener pastures so we had to constantly train new people. we all know what it’s like to call for technical support and get someone from overseas that reads possible solutions from a script. imagine what it’s like for untrained people to have to turn around complex graphics presentations in a few hours because the bankers always needed them right away. and morale when down the tubes. first of all we’d come in on any given day to learn a bunch of fellow employees were given their walking papers. on top of that when bankers called upset that their jobs weren’t ready as promised we were not allowed to tell them they were sent to India and needed to be redone. if i was fixing a job i had to get on the phone with the banker and take the blame.
@TheSutraDude - You’re speaking of outsourcing of servicing jobs, which may or may not work. I was speaking of manufacturing jobs heading overseas.
@GodlessLiberal - good post what I would like to ask is based historically do you really think we SHOULD cut the Military? Or just cut back on the wars we are in?
@grim_truth - even so we were giving companies financial incentives to outsource jobs. Obama’s begun turning that around by giving companies financial incentives to hire at home and for bringing jobs back from overseas. at least i think he was able to get that legislation through. American workers are not going to work in sweatshops for $1 an hour to compete with Thailand while many of these large business owners, execs and CEOs make more money than they’ll ever be able to spend. and again if the middle class can’t make a living income with disposable cash left over to spend there won’t be much of a consumer base for businesses to sell to.
@Kris0logy - i’ll offer my unsolicited opinion. if we must go to war it should always be as the very last resort. in my opinion going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was justifiable after 9/11. the Bush administration lied to us about its justification for going into Iraq. to add insult to injury, when asked during one of his daily morning press conferenceshow long the invasion of Iraq would lastRumsfeldanswered “4 to 6 weeks, 2-3 months at the very most”. something that still makes me wonder is why Rumsfeld ordered special forces to stand down and let Bin Laden slip into Pakistan when the forces had Bin Laden surrounded. the special forces commander and soldiers involved were livid over that order. that in combination with the Bush administration quietly putting Bin Laden relatives visiting in the U.S. on a flight home before authorities were given an opportunity to question them about the whereabouts of Bin Laden. that pissed people in the FBI off. i don’t know what the reasoning was for either of those Bush decisions but it’s always seemed fishy to me.
as for making cuts in military spending Pentagon Generals are for the cuts. because new technology has made military operations less expensive we can and should make cuts. i believe it was in the 70s when studies found the military was paying ridiculous prices for things like hammers at $70 each and toilet seats at $300 each. i believe or at least hope that was cut out and if so would have justified cuts in military spending right there. that was back then though. right now we spend more on our military than the next 28 countries spend combined on their militaries. that includes China.
@TheSutraDude - Thanks, I was always considering that every time we’ve cut we’ve regretted it. Like Pearl Harbor…& some other times….do you think cuts will still leave us prepared just in case putin decides he is god again?
@TheSutraDude - ”yes infrastructure jobs would be temporary but there would be many and many would last years.” very true. furthermore the entire future economy rests on infrastructure, so there’s excellent long-term reasons for infrastructure spending as well.
@Kris0logy - you’re welcome. nobody can say for sure but i would rather side with Pentagon Generals on this matter than the likes of Paul Ryan who called them liars because in his/Mitt Romney’s plan military spending would grow with no specification of how that growth will be paid for. Paul Ryan walked back his accusation the very next day that the Pentagon is lying. Russia, which btw Romney advisers still refer to as “The Soviet Union” which hasn’t existed for 30 years, does not have anywhere near the military power the U.S. has. that does not necessarily mean they couldn’t defeat us. i suppose if Lithuania was clever enough they could defeat us. the very real threat to the U.S. which Pentagon Generals have also acknowledged is economic. Bin Laden’s plan was not to defeat us militarily. it was to bring us to our knees economically so that we could no longer maintain ourselves as a nation. the Bush administration almost realized Bin Laden’s dream for him.
any money we spend unnecessarily on military weaponry is money we don’t spend on educating our children, research and innovation, aid to growing businesses, infrastructure, etc etc.
@complicatedlight - yes that’s a good point too re “the entire future economy”. the more our roads and bridges, subways and transportation falls apart and is unable to keep up with demand the worse things will be for future generations.
I agree with everything but the euphemism “middle class”. We live in a “christian” nation where our leaders aren’t even allowed to hint at helping the poor.
Long after all these politician’s have passed on to their eternal reward….our great grandchildren will be fighting in the streets for scrapes and blaming us.
I’ve never understood how the concept of we don’t have enough money, so let’s tax the rich more made any sense at all.
Now, if you want to talk about removing tax loop holes or something… let’s discuss that. But let’s tax the rich more because we need money just plain old doesn’t make sense. When Obama first ran he had this neat tax website where you could plug in your income and see how much money Obama was going to save you versus what McCain was going to save you. Only McCain was the one saving me money! I was married back then, one family income (squarely middle class, if not lower middle class for CA) with three kids and Obama’s taxes were more for us. I can assure you we were not among the rich, not even damn close back then.
What “tax the rich” more means to me is the same thing as the Bully in school who doesn’t get what he wants in his lunchbag so he steals other kids’ lunch money.
@TheSutraDude - Oh, I agree. Tax breaks need to go away altogether. Esp for sending jobs overseas. What folks have to remember is, people will always buy what they need. That’s why you see businesses that provide that always doing well. I grew up in an industrial area. A good amount of factory jobs. Some sucked, some were ok. That was the drive. Take the first job you could get. It would pay just enough to get by. No extras. The incentive was to work hard to either get a promotion or a referral to another plant that paid better and had lighter work.
I think one thing we need to do to bring jobs back home is to also focus on the trade defecit. If another nation installs high tariffs on our goods, we do the same to them. We don’t do that now, and I think that’s one thing that hurts us.
I also think we need to really cut gov’t down. Why in the hell do we have a Department of Homeland Security? Isn’t that the same purpose of the Department of Defense??? It’s those kind of double coverages that we need to eliminate to save this nation more money.
@TiredSoVeryTired - Run for the hills! It’s the apocalypse! We agree on something! lol
@TiredSoVeryTired - Mitt Romney pays a 14% tax rate (at least on the only two years he’s willing to disclose). The average receptionist pays well over double that rate. THAT is the extent most of us who say “tax the rich” mean.
@GodlessLiberal - How does Mitt Romney pay only a 14% tax rate? Now, if you want to suggest closing up tax loopholes, then I agree. But tax the rich cuz we need more money makes no sense. The tax loop holes shouldn’t exist whatever the state of our economy.
@TiredSoVeryTired - No, more like get rid of the existing tax cuts that we can’t afford. You can’t cut taxes and increase spending at the same time, it’s one or the other. And the deficit isn’t purely a result of increasing spending, it’s also a result of tax rates being pretty much the lowest they’ve been in a century while expenditures are at an all-time high.
It’s also worth mentioning that if we taxed the upper and middle class appropriate to what we’re spending we wouldn’t be engaging in trillion dollar wars and healthcare costs would’ve gone down a lot sooner than they will be.
@TiredSoVeryTired - Because he makes his money from investments which are taxed at less than half the maximum rate work is taxed. Because sitting on your ass and getting richer is hard work.
@agnophilo - I like keeping taxes lower… there are some things we all need to pay for (roads, infrastructure, military, education, etc.) but I’d rather go with spending less on what we don’t all need (arts, research, foreign aid, space exploration) in the short term.
Okay, so we don’t actually need to tax rich people more, we need to possibly increase taxes on investment income…. which I’m not so sure I’m necessarily okay with. If I work 8 hours a day for a year, save half my money and invest that… why should I be “double taxed” on it?
@TiredSoVeryTired - [If I work 8 hours a day for a year, save half my money and invest that... why should I be "double taxed" on it? ]
You would only be taxed on the GAIN you made on that invested money. And if it wasn’t for the capital gains tax, people like Mitt Romney who make their money simply by buying something (stocks, businesses, etc) and essentially running a chop shop on them wouldn’t pay any taxes at all. It’s also taxed progressively, so you working your full-time job and not making it into a high income bracket, there’s a chance that you could actually pay zero CGT.
@GodlessLiberal - Okay, so there possibly needs to be a reworking of the tax tier for investment income. I can see that as possible… and/or working something out that is more fair as far as amounts invested. Ya’ll who firmly believe that, should label it as such. Because lots of people hear “let’s tax the rich more” and really that doesn’t sound fair or the American way.
But still a very complicated issue. If John Q. RichGuy invests his inheritance and doesn’t pay as much taxes on it, I still don’t feel like that is unfair because whoever earned the money in the first place (his parents) paid taxes on it. You shouldn’t pay taxes on inherited money… but I do reckon it is still income once you invest it and perhaps… we should be taxing investment income differently.
@TiredSoVeryTired - You seem to think that taxes are a controlling factor in your personal spending power/financial well being. They really aren’t. You can pay greater federal taxes but have greater spending power in an economy with lower inflation rates, higher real dollar values, greater personal/family income, etc. Federal taxes are just one factor to consider, and I would argue a relatively unimportant one, particularly for the lower-upper class types like myself.
There is pretty much 0 evidence that over the last 100 years conservative economic policies have benefited anyone, including the ultra wealthy, more than liberal ones have. Every single meta-study I have seen that has attempted to do a multi-variate analysis on true spending power has found that conservative economic policies just don’t work very well, including the “low-tax” administrations/Congresses.
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