Obama Sends $3.7 Trillion Budget to Congress

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3114

Really? That's your source?

Okay, I see what they are trying to say - its a paper on ETR. However, Ryan's tax is an actual INCREASE in straight up income tax along with an elimination of capital gains. Do you understand the impact of a capital gains tax?

So fine, it's a net loss in ETR regarding the wealthy, BUT because of that net loss, one could speculate that there would be an INCREASE in capital investment. That is good news for business and jobs.

What Ryan's proposing is that while indeed there may be a cut to the ETR, there would be far more incentive to get the wealthy to invest their money into industry. In other words, he's proposing a free-market method to redistribute wealth by incentivizing investment into CREATING more weath. Remember: there is no capital gain without capital investment, and when capital gains occur, they occur for all of those shared in that investment (including 401ks and 403bs, mutual funds, etc). Ryan is attempting to incentivize more money to be invested into the economy directly, which would then be able to be taxed as a GROWTH.

All the while, it is merely a SLIGHT increase in the ETR of the middle class except that you're completely skipping the direct benefit it would have to the average middle class employee. While this rate may slightly increase, the ability for companies to increase pay and provide more jobs will also increase.

This article is highly flawed because it's playing with the numbers as though there would be absolutely no economic impact whatsoever.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

oh my. so you are saying that that passage was not a straw man...because you placed it in with other arguments?

Dude - yes, I am saying that. Furthermore I'm saying that you have no idea what a straw man argument is, because if you did you would know it must be an ARGUMENT to be a straw man. That one sentence was not an ARGUMENT. It was a sentence explaining one reasoning I had for the argument.

Get it? (Doubt it)

Pretty simple, though.

so if i write a swear word in between two other words am i not swearing?

Oh man, and the irony gets thicker and thicker...

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by tater

Equal protection under the law is a fundamental concept in the US.

Being rich is not a suspect classification.

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Prove it. With data and charts, please. (Hint: don't spend too much time on it - you can't.)

Actually, let me do the work for you, as it illustrates how your fantasy world narrative is not born out by reality:

Corporate rates:



Personal rates:



What was that about economic ignorance?

I've seen these charts from DailyKos/Democrat Underground or some such idiotic site before. And no...these data sets are incomplete and fallacious. First off, they don't tell you what type of employment they are talking about. Do these charts include government jobs as a part of the scale? Do they also include those people who the government doesn't include in unemployment figures who have stopped looking for work as well. These charts are meaningless without those considerations and more. Sometimes I wonder where people on the left think the money to sustain business operations come from. Instead of reading meaningless charts put together by big government agitators, why not look at the balance sheets of most businesses. Most of these have line items showing expenses. And one of those accounts for taxes. It's really common sense that the higher this is, as an expense...the less capital there is available to grow or sustain operations.

If you honestly think that the more money seized from business by government will actually help that business grow or sustain....then perhaps you are a lost cause. Look at California, where taxes are sky high, and businesses are leaving in droves. My company's HQ ops left California this year, and cited costs and taxes as the reasons to layoff more than 80 people and move operations to another state. But Democrats continue to believe this nonsense that you posted above. I guess Obama is your guy. Keep that obscene bumper sticker on your car...I guess.

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Being rich is not a suspect classification.

So if you've earned a good living, and have gotten rich, you don't deserve equal protection under the law?

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

The rich rule this country - they buy the elections, they set the tone of the national discourse. "Fairness" indeed. Frack 'em.

They're only able to do so because we thought it was a good idea to give the government a lot of power to stop them, which the rich promptly co-opted and used for their own purposes. If you push the issue through any means other than capitalism, they'll take more advantage. It's not fair and it's not right, but very little about life is.

I'm completely with you when it comes to being disgusted over the distribution of wealth, both in this country and the world at large. If I had such wealth, I'd feel morally compelled to give most of it away. Nay, I'd feel morally compelled to give away everything I didn't absolutely need. Then again, I'm not the manager of a corporate empire worth billions.

The owner of my company, Warren Buffet, is one of the richest people in the world. He has personally acknowledged that it's a "crime" that he pays less of a percentage of his income than his employees do, but that doesn't stop him from doing it. I have no idea why he is comfortable with that situation. What I do know is that he has created and supported millions of jobs, including mine. If obtaining vast amounts of wealth is the motivating factor he needs to drag me and others along with him on the path to prosperity, I'm okay with that. Economics is not a zero-sum game, it's not like we're getting less of the pie because the people who bother paying us enough to afford a slice are getting more. The whole pie is getting bigger, for everyone.


Getting back to my original point, the only method of making the extremely wealthy pay their fair share is to set a reasonable and ironclad flat tax via a constitutional budget amendment. Every other power of taxation, no matter how well-intentioned, is just a loophole waiting to be exploited by someone, somewhere, who is smarter and more concerned than you or I.

[tater]

Both of mookie's charts are meaningless. Top MARGINAL rates don't matter in the least, and are in fact impossible to compare over time. How can you compare a tax code with a 70% top marginal rate, and a billion loopholes, with a top marginal rate of 39%, and only a half a million loopholes? You cannot.

No one actually payed the top rates back in the day, just like John Kerry didn't pay anything like 39% when he ran for President, that year he paid ~15%. They had huge top rates because they knew no one was going to actually pay them.

If you look at tax revenues by year, you'll see that they remain remarkably constant, regardless of what the marginal rates do. That's because changes always have the effective rates remain about the same.

US corporate tax rates are really high, but have loopholes. In addition, corporations move assets offshore to avoid the tax because it's cheaper than paying. LOwer corporate rates, with fewer loopholes increase revenues, typically.

[August]

Originally Posted by Armistead

You don't think something is wrong when just 1% hold 40% of all wealth, 20% hold 80%...although more recent studies say 10% control over 90% of all wealth..compare to where we in the past and it should shock you.

Let's get something straight Arimstead. It's THEIR wealth! Private property. What you advocate is nothing less than legalized theft. Politics of the mob. Where will it end?

[yubba]

I'm sure not a fan of re-dis-tra-bu-tion of wealth, which is a commie ploy, some day, I would like to be rich without having to give 80 percent of it away to some illegal immigrant. Shut the government down I say, they don't produce anything any way. The dept of energy doesn't produce one watt of power.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by yubba

I'm sure not a fan of re-dis-tra-bu-tion of wealth, which is a commie ploy, some day, I would like to be rich without having to give 80 percent of it away to some illegal immigrant. Shut the government down I say, they don't produce anything any way. The dept of energy doesn't produce one watt of power.

and thats the carrot they dangle in front of your nose.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

partisan crap

Well, whatever works for you, I guess. Write the Bureau of Labor Statistics if you have a problem with their data. Let me know how far you get with that.

You're digging yourself a hole anyways - the actual U-6 rate of unemployment is going to be much higher than he headline U-3 measure that these charts use. So the fact that there's no-to-negative correlation between tax rates and unemployment is going to look even worse for your side of the argument.

Just stop. if you can't offer rational analysis that's not based in data, then just bow out. Seriously. You just made yourself look very dumb.

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Well, whatever works for you, I guess. Write the Bureau of Labor Statistics if you have a problem with their data. Let me know how far you get with that.

This set of data is simply not useful to make the argument you're trying to make with it. It's fallacious. If you don't understand how the US government has been fudging employment numbers over the past couple of decades, this will be beyond you. The people who put your charts together probably couldn't tell you what types of employment are used, or any other statistical adjustments used to create that chart. However, out in the real world, people who operate real businesses with real capital and real operating expenses can tell you that taxation has a direct result on their employment practices.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

They're only able to do so because we thought it was a good idea to give the government a lot of power to stop them, which the rich promptly co-opted and used for their own purposes. If you push the issue through any means other than capitalism, they'll take more advantage. It's not fair and it's not right, but very little about life is.

I'm completely with you when it comes to being disgusted over the distribution of wealth, both in this country and the world at large. If I had such wealth, I'd feel morally compelled to give most of it away. Nay, I'd feel morally compelled to give away everything I didn't absolutely need. Then again, I'm not the manager of a corporate empire worth billions.

The owner of my company, Warren Buffet, is one of the richest people in the world. He has personally acknowledged that it's a "crime" that he pays less of a percentage of his income than his employees do, but that doesn't stop him from doing it. I have no idea why he is comfortable with that situation. What I do know is that he has created and supported millions of jobs, including mine. If obtaining vast amounts of wealth is the motivating factor he needs to drag me and others along with him on the path to prosperity, I'm okay with that. Economics is not a zero-sum game, it's not like we're getting less of the pie because the people who bother paying us enough to afford a slice are getting more. The whole pie is getting bigger, for everyone.


Getting back to my original point, the only method of making the extremely wealthy pay their fair share is to set a reasonable and ironclad flat tax via a constitutional budget amendment. Every other power of taxation, no matter how well-intentioned, is just a loophole waiting to be exploited by someone, somewhere, who is smarter and more concerned than you or I.

James, I gotta tell you - you put everyone on here to shame with the level of discourse that you engage in. You can have the confrontational partisan claptrap crap that Sea Demon chooses to spew, or you can have the well reasoned and enlightened posts that you make. Just wanted to give you your props.

Now, moving on...

I don't have all the answers. I do agree that something is wrong when the rich keep getting richer - but that's a symptom and not the underlying problem itself. When I'd like to get to the bottom of is why that's the case. My hypothesis is that the rich (whatever definition - top 1%, top 20%, top whatever) have a disproportionate influence on political policy. Policies that unfairly benefit them at the expense of the lower classes.

I see economics as more zero-sum than people realize. Dividend tax cuts, capital gains cuts, etc, really fall into a zero sum sort of definition. Interest rate cuts - supposedly to stimulate borrowing - eat into savers (i.e. retirees income dependent upon bond holdings, savings accounts, etc).

I would like to see more time spent in identifying the underlying problem rather than what's politically expedient and what jives with the political narrative that both sides preach.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

This set of data is simply not useful to make the argument you're trying to make with it. It's fallacious. If you don't understand how the US government has been fudging employment numbers over the past couple of decades, this will be beyond you. The people who put your charts together probably couldn't tell you what types of employment are used, or any other statistical adjustments used to create that chart. However, out in the real world, people who operate real businesses with real capital and real operating expenses can tell you that taxation has a direct result on their employment practices.

Fine. Go pull John Williams' Shadow Stats unemployment data and plot it against tax rates. My point still stands and you're still wrong.

Iit sounds like YOU don't understand the labor measures of unemployment. You know about U6 unemployment and the birth/death adjustment ratio. Bully for you. But don't presume to lecture me on it - I get paid to deal with this stuff. It boils down to: you will not be vindicated by the fact that the U3 data understates unemployment - you will still be completely wrong, but by magnitude of "a lot" vs "a whole lot". Inverse to no correlation is still inverse to no correlation, regardless of the underlying data points!

Tax rates have no bearing on employment. You have not and will not disprove that. Partisan narratives don't trump hard data.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by August

Let's get something straight Arimstead. It's THEIR wealth! Private property. What you advocate is nothing less than legalized theft. Politics of the mob. Where will it end?

You really think 10% of people that now control over 90% of wealth, mostly corporate america did so fairly, based on fair trade law, competition, tax code and proper regulation? That all the billions of corporate PAC's,,are just interested in social causes.

Naw, your right, they don't seek to buy congressional seats

And look where it's got us, now that small percent can't substain our government or debt load.

Don't worry, next generation or so when your kids here in america are working for a few bucks with no benefits or protection in sweat shops, have no health care, maybe corporate america will come back to work in america.