Senate Blocks Buffett Rule 30% Tax Floor on Top Earners.

[Fr8monkey]

Originally Posted by August

The US Senate is controlled by the Democrats. If they can't get it passed it's not the Republicans fault.

Oh., so I guess the record number of filibusters have nothing to do with it.... The Dems. have a majority but not a super-majority. Republicans use it so Obama will fail so they can get re-elected.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Anyway, we disagree but we're still friends, right?

I hope we all still are.

Originally Posted by August

I've yet to hear any flat tax proponent advocate taxing the poor at any percentage, let alone 20% Mookie. Obviously there is a minimum to what can be taxed. You can't squeeze blood from a stone. If the 20% income tax only kicked in once someone cleared say $25 grand a year would you support it then?

While I like SOME of the merits of a flat tax - I struggle with the above. A person making 24,700 pays no tax - a person paying 25k does? My idea of this is the following - you owe taxes the moment you earn an amount over the federal poverty line + whatever your taxes would be. This would insure that no one gets pushd below the poverty line due to taxation, and would also make sure that anyone making over that amount then would be contributing.

Thus - no one defined as "poor" by federal guidelines would pay taxes - everyone else would.

As for being the least taxed developed nation you say that like it's a bad thing. How will you feel if we become the most taxed developed nation without any meaningful decrease in the poverty level? That's what I see happening if we keep giving in to these demands for ever more of our money.

We have seen what taxes do - Before Reagan, Capital Gains taxes were about 70% - you know - that investment rich person tax.... Anyone remember how great the economy was doing under Carter? Granted - part of that was his failed energy policy as well - but the point still stands. Reagan cut taxes - but yes - he also "raised" them. He eliminated a lot of loopholes - something we should be doing now instead of raising taxes.

Seriously - you raise the tax on a rich person they are just going to hire another accountant to find and use more loopholes. But if you keep the tax rate the same, and eliminate the loopholes - you get more revenue without raising taxes.

Why is this not one part of a solution?

[yubba]

These folks in DC. need to come up with a plan too cut spending and the size of government before they even consider raising taxes at all, they are not even trying. Tax more spend more, crush the system, and expect paradise to come out the other end, what a joke. I don't think Mittens is any better than Obama, at least he ain't a communist and he doesn't eat dog. So what was Obama eat-ing when he was a kid, German shepard pot pie, a slab of lab with a dash of hound, grilled greyhound that runs right through you, or something like noodles and poodles, or a creamed sharpai, does that go with red or white wine ????? MMMMMMMMmmmm honey this lobster tastes just like a jack russell on a stick, praise alluh

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by Fr8monkey

Oh., so I guess the record number of filibusters have nothing to do with it.... The Dems. have a majority but not a super-majority. Republicans use it so Obama will fail so they can get re-elected.

Fr8monkey - Harry Reid won't even let the House budget be voted on. He and the rest of his cronies (who honestly do NOT represent the average democrat) have failed to come up with a budget proposal of their own in 3.5 years.....

So its the Republican's fault that the Senate hasn't even created a budget plan????

[LoBlo]

Originally Posted by Fish

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...p-earners.html

Much truth here

[Fr8monkey]

The Republican plan is easy... Return to the failed policies of the Great God Reagan: Give all the money to the rich and let it trickle down to the dregs that make less than a million a year.

@ yubba: Still reading the racist talking points of the right wing? Most of what you posted was very distasteful!

[August]

Originally Posted by Fr8monkey

The Republican plan is easy... Return to the failed policies of the Great God Reagan: Give all the money to the rich and let it trickle down to the dregs that make less than a million a year.

You know that's a huge exaggeration but in any event it set us up pretty good for the following decade.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Fr8monkey

The Republican plan is easy... Return to the failed policies of the Great God Reagan: Give all the money to the rich and let it trickle down to the dregs that make less than a million a year.

Let's take one example. Bill Gates employs 93,000 people. They are all payed out of the company's obscene profits. You see, for all your claims, trickle-down does indeed work.

The United States Government employs nearly three million people. They are all payed by tax revenues, since the Government generates no revenues and makes no profits. Utah's senior Senator, Orrin Hatch, has a staff of 64 people who are paid a total of about $2 million dollars per year. If we take that as average, then two hundred million dollars are spent every year just paying the staff for the Senators. When John Adams moved the Federal Government to Washington D.C. in 1800 there were 125 Federal employees listed.

It's easy to swing this thread back to the one-sided hate-the-rich theme. What bothers me is that most people who jump on that bandwagon think that taking away the money from "The Rich" will solve the problem, and tend to believe the Government is the Good Guy who can save us all. As I said earlier, the problem isn't with the rich, it's with the Government, and you need to clean that up first.

As the song says: "Tax the rich, feed the poor 'til there are no rich no more." Once you've accomplished that, Fr8monkey, what will your next step be?

I've yet to hear any flat tax proponent advocate taxing the poor at any percentage, let alone 20% Mookie.

Interesting
So when someone writes....

20% is 20%. It's the same for everyone.

20% is not 20% and everyone does not mean everyone.
Thats nice and clear.

So when someone takes the above quote and replies....

Exactly.

.....and then goes on about the evils of progressive tax and how seperating the poor in terms of taxation is class warfare, they are definately not saying 20% is 20% across the board and there shall be no special lower tax rates for those on very low incomes.

Nice to see August insisting that things that were writtten were not written and things he calls for have not being called for at all.

You know that's a huge exaggeration but in any event it set us up pretty good for the following decade.

The reality is that it set you up for a big fall, which is not "pretty good" by any positive standard

[Skybird]

In reply to Haplo, and the thread in general, I copy over some passages from the Soros-thread, since they are relevant here, too: it is the drama from money turning into a traded item as if it were a material good, and that intersts increase the ammount of absrtact money that is not covered by real value and real economy. This forms a mechanism by which more and more money exists, but not more and more real value (leading to bubbles, inflation), and a mechnaism of a massive global as well as inner-national income redistribution from poor to wealthy.

Originally Posted by Skybird

What is money? Money was a tool to exchange goods more easily without needing to carry said goods in reality with you. But then somethign bad happened, money turned from being a tool for trading to being the object of trade itself. It was taken out of the business cycle where it needs to flow to keep business-making alive, it got instead now saved and stockpiled and became the target of the trading intention, not just a tool to ease trading. It became an item, a good. And that was bad. The poorer ones need to lend money, for which they need to pay interests. The interests represent money that has no real value in goods, items or commodities. It started to became abstract value only. The rich started to accumulate this abstract value, and traded it as if it were real, material items and goods. The poor needed to serve their interests more and more, since the credit they took to serve the former credit, accumulated to their existing debts. In other words: the poors' debts rise, due to rising interest obligations, and the rich with their stockpiled money become wealthier over nothing.

Even more - more and more money is in circulation that is "uncovered" by real material asset, value, goods. It is abstract value, that is leased away, produces real interest and thus sucks material wealth from the poor to those having had abstract wealth, but by this afflux become wealthier in real value as well.

Today we have the pohenomenon that natiponal states are almost unable to act anymore, since they have so many debts that they have no money left to form, to create, to cast an inbfluence. The debts' service obligations consume most of the money there is. And with every new load of debts taken, the share of the budget needed to serve interests become bigger:

Take Germany. From 1970 to 2009, Germany trook debts in the range of 1596 billion Euro. In the same time, it had to pay interests for old credits and credits taken during this time, totalling 1562 billion euros. There is a difefrence - only 34 billion of these ammounts of mony were spend on general public purposes and circulated in the general financial economy. The remaing 1500+ billion ended up in the hand of creditors who lend these moneys and earned interests for doing so, they gained a profit for - doing nothing. The public debts meanwhile skyrocketed, which means guarantee for future profits of creditors.

The same mechanism works in the relation between first and third world. The developem ent aid being payed, was sufficient for serving the interests from debts for just a couple of days - the rest of the year the receiving nations needed to increase their debts to get along. That is what made Wetsern develoepemnt aid jjust an alibi lasting for not even 2 weeks of the year:

Helmut Creutz wrote in the mid-90s, that the 4000 million dollar in developing aid that were collected in the industrial nations at that time, were enough only for serving the interest obligations of the third world for a meager 12 days. In oher words: since the poor states need to finance themselves all by themselves for the remaining 353 days of the year, including making new debts, the developement aid that the industrial nations payed, was back with them after 12 days.

Assume you have a system with real values and properties of "1000" material value units. People then get tired to carry around real material items for trading and exchange, and intruduce money - a smuch money as there is real value. So you have money in circulation that also is worth "1000" calculation units. Then there are 100 people who earn too little by their jobs so that they cannot make a living for themselves or their families. They need to take a credit, and pa yinterest. Somebody lends them 100 calculation units for 1% interest. The credit gets payed back, plus interest: + 1 calculaiton units. The overall real material value in that system has not increased, and still is 1000 matwerial value units. But the money in circulation has incrased, there are 1001 caluclation units in circulation now. The dysbalance between real and abstract value has started, and from here on will increase.

The creditors increasingly are wealthy enough to give credits not on the basis of money representing real value, but is abstract value only. In other words: worthless money. They do not face real risk from that. But the dependency of the debtor is increasing, since the constant raise of abstract money increases the money in circulation: that is what inflation is about. Inflation also devalues money that represents material value, so to speak. In other words, the debtor needs to take higher debts.

A vicious circle starts, income inequality starts rising its ugly head. The redistribution from poor to wealthy takes up speed. But there are still two more climaxes ahead:

First, at some time the poor has reached a point where he needs to take debt snot to make a living, but just to service the interest from his old debts. From this point on, things turn cataclysmic. More and more he works for an income not to imporve his situation, but to service his debts - and from some point on not to pay them back, but kjust to keep the intersts in check. Since the ammount of money in circulation is growing and growing, this is a hopeless case, almost. Deeper and deeper he sinks into the swamp.

Obviously, this is where the nations are now.

Second, those who have stockpiled abstract money units as if it were items and trading goods in itself, form a new item category to trade: debts. Debts get collected, packed into sortiments, and get sold as "financial products". A giant bubble builds up, and everybody depends on it to never burst but always grow.

Problem is there is no such thing as eternal processes and constant growth without limits. The bubble represents all the money that has no representation in real material values, assets, properties.

BUMM!

Just a question of time.

The problem of today'S financial misery are people like Soros himself: the wealth of the one, needs the debt of the other - and also needs somebody (except the wealthy of course) to bail the debtor out if he cannot serve his interests anymore. The whole current financial system guarantees a financial redistribution on a massive scale.

Interests is the price you have to pay in order to buy money. Again: money has become a trading item itself today, which is part of the explanation why things went so terribly wrong recently.

In a book from 2011 ("Geld - Der vetrackte Kern des Kapitalismus"), financial journalist Lucas Zeise gave this nice anecdote:

There was a village, that lived by tourism until the financial breakdown 2008. Suddenly, tourists stayed away, and the people living in that vilage had to lend money from each other to survive. But then, one foreigner entered the localo hotel, and demanded a room. He payed in advance with a 100 Euro note. The hotel owner took the note to the butcher becasue he owed him 100 Euros. The butcher took the 100 Euro to the farmer whose cattle he still needed to pay. The farmer took the money to the whore in the village, whom he still did owe 100 Euros. The whore took the 100 Euros to the hotel owner, because she occassionally rented a room in his hotel, and still owed him 100 Euros. When she put the note on the table, the tourist came down the stairs, fetched the 100 Euros off the table, said he had changed his mind, and left. - Well, nobody in the village had won money, nobody had lost money, there were no gains and no losses for anyone. But for some reason everybody was suddenly free of debts.

The big ammounts of mony owned by the few, are a big problem for the money not having money, because the money stockpiled by the rich is missing in the financial cycle. We see it in every richer nation in the West: more and more welath gets accumulated in fewer and fewer hands, more and more parts of the population own smaller and smaller ammounts of the available wealth. The spread between decreasing rich and increasing poor is widening, and with growing pace. That is true inside nations, but on a global stage as well.

The richest 10% of the German people own 60% of all national properties and wealth. The richest 20% own over 80% of the wealth, while the remaining 80% of the Germans share the remaining 20% of wealth. The poorest 50% of the population even need to share just 2% of the German welath.

On a global scale, these relations are even worse: by numbers from 2006, the richest 2% of the world'S population own more than 50% of the global wealth, the richest 10% of the world's population own 85% of the global wealth, the poorer half of the world population (50%), owns only 1% (World Institute for Developement Economics Research, Decembre 2006)

And lets face it, the rich elites cannot compensate the lack of buying power in the huge majority of the population. Stockpiling this money and excluding it from the economic cycle, does damage to the whole, also it devalues the money in circulation by inflation that is the inevitable consequence of borrowing money to pay old interests, paying interests for the new debts, and by this incrasing the ammount of money without increasing real values to compensate and to balance the monetarian increase. This is what especially in America is not being understood, and is underestimated in danger. The damage done by this, is structural, and thus much, much harder to be adressed in the future. The Fed without doubt is one of the most stupid or most desperate institutions on this planet. Look at the numbers for 1st quarter, propagandists said there is a rise in Us economy and jobs. But that Amwrica for the I think 42nd month in sequence had to increase its debtsa and increaing its budget deficit, and that these proclaimed gains were "acchieved" at the cost of making more debts and milking the tax payer - this they forgot to mention.

The situation is such that nations are in a state where it does not make a difference anymore who is in control: his limits are so tight that he cannot form and create politically anyway, debts and costs are strangling any freedom and space for action - this could only be had at the price of: increasiong debts. And that is what parties do. Yesterday I read a piece in Der Tagesspoiegel where the aughtor argued the call for more EU and giving respjnsibilities from nations to the central committee inBrussel is not a sign of strength, but desparation and weakness. More Europe will not solve issues, but increase them, since what is being tried by this shift in responsibilkities, is simply this: to escape responsibility on the national level by handing it over to Brussel instead. It's a big Getaway. What do government mean anymore, if in Belgium they have had no government for more than half a year, Greece being told from outside what to do, and German parties being so indifefrentiated and so arbitrarily in their daily shifting focusses on how to cling to power so that no identity and no responsibility can be perceived anywhere anymore? I think this is the reason why it is common in politics no to just appeal to the emotions of the crowd, to stir up sentiments, where everybody has run out of arguments and sense of reasonbility. Prime example is the hate-filled emotional trench warfare in the US, but in principle it is present everywhere.

And somebody mentioned how filibusters precent congress and senate from deciding. What puts the US aside from the West is that there a minority can delay and even prevent a basic democratic principle: that is that the decision gets formed my majority vote. That is what democracy is about: majority votes. Filibustering is the way to bypass this unwelcomed little detail. If by this the minority has the same power as the majority, then it makes no sense anymore to speak of minorities and majorities. You must not hold a vote in a parliament anymore, if filibustering can prevent it beyond the point where everybopdy is dozing off or votes differently due to shere despair and desiore to escape this masterful exmaple of lacking argument being rpalced by 100% rethorical abuse. Even more, a regime where the many are subject to the power of the few, usually is called a form of a tyrannic or dictatorial regime. You could as well claim that an election result of 40% and 20% fro two parties gives the latter party as many seats as the first. In other words the minority is twice as powerful as the first, by election results.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Prime example is the hate-filled emotional trench warfare in the US, but in principle it is present everywhere.

Like this thread.....

And somebody mentioned how filibusters precent congress and senate from deciding. What puts the US aside from the West is that there a minority can delay and even prevent a basic democratic principle: that is that the decision gets formed my majority vote. That is what democracy is about: majority votes. Filibustering is the way to bypass this unwelcomed little detail.

No Sky, you misunderstand our government. We are - as was discussed - a representative republic - where the representatives are elected by a democratic process. The House operates more as a "democracy" while the Senate has rules in place that prevent a pure "majority rule". This is - much to the chagrin of some - on both sides depending on who has a majority - by design. It protects the people and make it harder for the government to rule by 51% telling the other 49% how to live.

The design helps insure that one party must have a strong mandate from the people - as demonstrated by the # of elected representatives in congress - to enact legislation. The difference between "majority rule" and a filibuster proof majority is a mere 10% - if a party cannot meet that threshold, then it has no strong mandate.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Still, it's the same percentage as the rich man, seems fair is fair.




I think that's one of the big problems of this last 30 years, people expect things to be easy. They're not. People need to deal with it.
Anyway, we disagree but we're still friends, right?

Of course, man!

[Fr8monkey]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

Like this thread.....



No Sky, you misunderstand our government. We are - as was discussed - a representative republic - where the representatives are elected by a democratic process. The House operates more as a "democracy" while the Senate has rules in place that prevent a pure "majority rule". This is - much to the chagrin of some - on both sides depending on who has a majority - by design. It protects the people and make it harder for the government to rule by 51% telling the other 49% how to live.

The design helps insure that one party must have a strong mandate from the people - as demonstrated by the # of elected representatives in congress - to enact legislation. The difference between "majority rule" and a filibuster proof majority is a mere 10% - if a party cannot meet that threshold, then it has no strong mandate.

Now it is set so just 1 person along with 40 others.... 41 senators in all can prevent any progress in the government that represents 300,000,000. That is how a filibuster works.

[CaptainHaplo]

Now it is set so just 1 person along with 40 others.... 41 senators in all can prevent any progress in the government that represents 300,000,000. That is how a filibuster works.

A government that represents 300 Million?

Lets see - you mean a government that refuses to represent the 300 Million don't you?

After all - 60% of the country wants to open up offshore drilling - up from 50% last year - yet the government refuses to represent the wishes of the citizenry....

http://www.gallup.com/poll/146615/oi...americans.aspx

56% of people want Obamacare repealed - and the government instead is fighting as hard as it can to force it upon the people...

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...ealth_care_law

66% of Americans believe that the U.S. "should not make it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens" (CNN, April 2010).
http://www.fairus.org/facts/public-opinion

73% of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track - and its government that has us going down that track....
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...or_wrong_track

Oh - and the clincher....
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. voters feel the federal government has lost touch with the people it represents. Only 20% say the government now has the consent of the governed...
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...f_the_governed

The only thing PROTECTING the people from an out of control government is the safeguards that require more than mere mob rule.....

[mookiemookie]

Rasmussen polls are notoriously biased and inaccurate.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...rmed-strongly/