FLASH: Confidence Shattered

[xj220]

The reward for good work is more work.

 

[Renegade One]

The reward for good work is more work.

Yes. Is there a question in there?

 

[HercDriver]

The "rich" cover more of the total tax burden than ever before. The "wealthy" aren't worried about tax cuts. The truly wealthy people don't earn a salary. Jacking up taxes on people who make around 100k a year isn't targeting the big bad generational fat cats, it's targeting people who worked hard to earn something so it can get flushed down the toilet by the government. As for the ending wars part, I hope you are joking. Our Nobel Peace Prize recipient President already attacked one (North African) country that had done nothing to threaten us, and was on the verge of starting another war with a Middle Eastern country (that also posed no threat to us) if not for serious opposition from the war mongering republicans.

The rich make more, so they carry more of a burden. If you want less of a deficit, you need more revenue...pretty simple. And the deficit has decreased under Obama as well. And those at the 100 K mark have seen very little increase in their taxes under our current administration.
Lessee... he's ended the war in Iraq, and is ending the one in Afghanistan-his limited engagement in other countries pales in comparison to his predecessor.

 

[xj220]

Yes. Is there a question in there?

Just simplifying what was being said earlier about where work gravitates.

 

[jg54170]

The rich make more, so they carry more of a burden. If you want less of a deficit, you need more revenue...pretty simple. And the deficit has decreased under Obama as well. And those at the 100 K mark have seen very little increase in their taxes under our current administration.
Lessee... he's ended the war in Iraq, and is ending the one in Afghanistan-his limited engagement in other countries pales in comparison to his predecessor.

This is one of the major things that irks me. I am by no means rich but why should you punish success and wealth by making them shoulder more of the burden? I am more in favor of a flat rate tax system....honestly I think it's absolutely ridiculous that I get a big check every tax season.

My take is that we don't need more revenue we need more cuts and less spending on social welfare programs.

Edit: and cut a lot of general waste

 

[Treetop Flyer]

The rich make more, so they carry more of a burden. If you want less of a deficit, you need more revenue...pretty simple. And the deficit has decreased under Obama as well. And those at the 100 K mark have seen very little increase in their taxes under our current administration.
Lessee... he's ended the war in Iraq, and is ending the one in Afghanistan-his limited engagement in other countries pales in comparison to his predecessor.

If you want less of a deficit you need more revenue? If you want to pay for the idiotic spending of our government you just need to take more money from a shrinking subset of the population? You could triple the tax rate on the top 1% or 10% and still not even come close to paying for what we are spending. Of course we could just spend less money and then we wouldn't have to worry about taking from some to give to others. Unfortunately the republicans have been almost crazy with spending as the democrats, which leads to my point. The new boss is the same as the old boss. The new boss still starts wars, still runs Gitmo, and still spies on our own citizens, and is still spending our country into oblivion.

 

[jg54170]

If you want less of a deficit you need more revenue? If you want to pay for the idiotic spending of our government you just need to take more money from a shrinking subset of the population? You could triple the tax rate on the top 1% or 10% and still not even come close to paying for what we are spending. Of course we could just spend less money and then we wouldn't have to worry about taking from some to give to others. Unfortunately the republicans have been almost crazy with spending as the democrats, which leads to my point. The new boss is the same as the old boss. The new boss still starts wars, still runs Gitmo, and still spies on our own citizens, and is still spending our country into oblivion.

You are definitely correct, I used to consider myself a republican but have come to the conclusion that neither the Democrat nor the Republican party are working in my best interest. While I don't consider myself a Tea Partiest I am considering myself more in line with what they want than the Republicans. Republicans have split their own party and continue to drive a portion of us out because they are not doing what we elect them to. I also speak with a lot of Dems feeling the same way about Obama but they are just calling themselves independents...I guess the Dems have no other party to align with so people are falling into the independent category.

 

[BusyBee604]

My take is that we don't need more revenue we need more cuts and less spending on social welfare programs.

Edit: and cut a lot of general waste

The new boss is the same as the old boss. The new boss still starts wars, still runs Gitmo, and still spies on our own citizens, and is still spending our country into oblivion.

It's a total waste of keystrokes....

'There are none so blind as those who will not see"!

Face it, the whole Congress, plus the complete administration is AFU. The chanting that the POTUS can do no wrong, becomes monotonous, and makes meaningful debate impossible. Out!
BzB

 

[Spekkio]

I think you might be confused. The GOP is not stopping implementation of the ACA, just delaying the individual mandate. So we will still have millions signing up, but the pool will be smaller since no mandate would be in place. Hence, as I stated previously, it will be way more expensive.
Think about it this way: No mandate = More expensive....Nope, just to kneecap Obamacare.

No, I'm not confused.

I understand the premise of insurance, and that the more low-risk people who join, the cheaper it is. However, the ACA is not a government single-payer nonprofit system. Like you said, there wasn't enough popularity to push that through even though I think we can both agree it's the mathematically optimal compulsory healthcare system. Thank you US education system producing people who either can't do math or are so afraid of the U.S. turning Canada's horror stories despite never having been to Canada, never having done in-depth research as to why Canada has issues with wait lists, or spoken to an actual Canadian, eh.

The whole point of the employer mandate was to minimize the amount of people who had to use the exchanges for taxpayer subsidized healthcare in order to minimize the tax burden of the bill. The exchanges were supposed to be an alternative to people who either did not have employer based insurance, or whose employers couldn't offer healthcare plans at a reasonable price (which is defined as 9.x% of gross income). In fact, you cannot even sign up for healthcare via an exchange if your employer provides an alternative at less than 9.x% of gross income. The President single-handedly disjoined those two requirements via executive order, which he got away with because at the time his party had a majority in both chambers of Congress.

My disdain for the ACA is that it took our ass-backward pseudo capitalist healtchare system and made participation in it compulsory by law. That doesn't fix any of the myriad of issues that make American healthcare so expensive, such as no price transparency, ridiculous fees on cheap stuff like sline solution, frivolous law suits driving up malpractice insurance, an insane entry cost barrier to the profession, paying for chronic care of people who don't take care of themselves or who have no prognosis of recovery, etc. It just makes it worse.

Insurance is a gamble. If you had been in a car wreck at 20, without insurance it could have costs a lot more than college.

If I got into a car wreck, the estimated bill would be somewhere around $20,000 if I broke a few bones. That is 5 years of healthcare insurance at the current rate. At the current rate, it's not a gamble -- it's a damn near guarantee that I will spend orders of magnitude more money paying into the system than I will get out of it.

Let's put it another way: My renters insurance covers $500,000 in damages and I pay two month's worth of healthcare insurance for it for a year. That's because my renter's insurance doesn't pay utility bills from now until I die if the house burns down. But if I were to get into the aforementioned car crash and get addicted to pain killers, insurance will pay for that medication for years as long as I find a doctor to keep pushing it (and they do).

Dont be hatin' on the old folks.

I'm hating on old folks because they raised a generation by pushing their parenting responsibilities on babysitters and teachers. In turn, they know that their children are going to want to put them into a nursing home the first chance they get, so now they're making me pay for it. If you didn't produce offspring willing to care for you when you're old, then you deserve to be on the street. Don't force me to subsidize 90% of your inflated nursing home care cost and 6 drug prescriptions because you're too much of a bastard for anyone to give a shit about you. Meanwhile, I have to fucking save up $2,000,000 in an IRA to collect $50,000/year in 2013 dollars to retire, not including the additional $3,000,000 I would need to prevent my kids from going into massive debt to attend college at $40,000/year in 2013 dollars.

Fortunately they have the Democratic party looking to pad the pockets of big business owners, redistribute wealth from the "rich" to those who did nothing to earn it, and start wars in the Middle East. Two clear and distinct options for us to choose from.

Yea, I was talking about perception. The difference between a center Democrat and center Republican is just the letter at the end of their name and who their campaign contributors are, which in the end is whose interest they will look out for first. For every whacko Republican who wants to make a federal law banning talking about contraception in schools, there's a Democrat like Sen Feinstein trying to take away guns.

But it does baffle me how people living on $10,000/year in Arkansas don't vote for the party that wants to expand federal education/social funding which would siphon money from coastal states with higher earning economies to states like Arkansas. Likewise, people in those coastal states vote for people who promise to take their income and give it to the guys who want to live in the middle of southern swampland.

So I guess all this proves is grandstanding about guns and abortion generates more votes than economic well being.

 

[Spekkio]

You are definitely correct, I used to consider myself a republican but have come to the conclusion that neither the Democrat nor the Republican party are working in my best interest. While I don't consider myself a Tea Partiest I am considering myself more in line with what they want than the Republicans. Republicans have split their own party and continue to drive a portion of us out because they are not doing what we elect them to. I also speak with a lot of Dems feeling the same way about Obama but they are just calling themselves independents...I guess the Dems have no other party to align with so people are falling into the independent category.

Progressive taxation is fair. A person making $100,000 can afford more taxes than someone making $20,000. And we do need a federal government.

Put it this way: the adjusted marginal federal income tax rate for the top 20% of income earners (>~$90,000/year income) is 20% (that was when capital gains taxes were 15% and the top tax bracket was 35%, though). It goes down to something like 15, 12, 9, and 2 for the next 4 income brackets in decreasing order. Adjusted means what people actually pay after they do all of their deductions.

The kick in the nuts is when you throw in state and local taxes. But people today have more disposable income (which is defined as after-tax money) than ever since the 16th amendment was ratified.

If you want less of a deficit you need more revenue? If you want to pay for the idiotic spending of our government you just need to take more money from a shrinking subset of the population?

Sort of. To shrink the debt, you'd need to do one or more of: higher revenue, lower spending, or grow the economy.

People like to talk about cuts until it's their little nugget on the chopping block. Then voters come out in droves. For example, what if you got told thank you, but your service is no longer required as part of a comprehensive budget cut plan that also moved the retirement age of social security to 70, disbanded the department of education, and revoked medicare part D? You'd probably be a little upset. The net result is that it's nearly impossible to get Congress to agree to make significant cuts that actually matter.

Onto revenue. With increased revenue, Congress always finds something else it needs to spend money on. They spend like a teenage girl in a shopping mall with mom's credit card. So increasing revenue doesn't do anything without some kind of assurance that spending will be frozen.

So that leaves growing the economy, which is what they've been trying to do for the last decade or two.

 

[jg54170]

I get the whole "fair" and "can afford" argument but I disagree. I believe that the government has Taken on so much more than they were intended to. Yes, we must have a federal government but at why shoulder the burden on the successful? A lot of my perspective comes from my father who grew up poor and as an adult worked misc jobs to be able to retire. He took what he learned and made a business in his retirement... Now renting real estate. He now has to pay for all kinds of dead beats that he turns around and has to deal with on a daily basis. Then to be told " you have come from nothin, now dump your purse in the public pot... Oh and while you at it you need to now provide health care for your employees even though you pay them $20 an hour cause you think they are worth that?"


Where is the good in that? It is wrong. He paid them a great wage and is now talking about what to do...how can he still make the company work while providing the wage he used to.

 

[Spekkio]

I don't know your dad's income, but is he better off than he was before? Then the government isn't breaking his back with progressive taxes.

 

[jg54170]

Progressive taxation is fair. A person making $100,000 can afford more taxes than someone making $20,000. And we do need a federal government.

Put it this way: the adjusted marginal federal income tax rate for the top 20% of income earners (>~$90,000/year income) is 20% (that was when capital gains taxes were 15% and the top tax bracket was 35%, though). It goes down to something like 15, 12, 9, and 2 for the next 4 income brackets in decreasing order. Adjusted means what people actually pay after they do all of their deductions.

The kick in the nuts is when you throw in state and local taxes. But people today have more disposable income (which is defined as after-tax money) than ever since the 16th amendment was ratified.

Sort of. To shrink the debt, you'd need to do one or more of: higher revenue, lower spending, or grow the economy.

People like to talk about cuts until it's their little nugget on the chopping block. Then voters come out in droves. For example, what if you got told thank you, but your service is no longer required as part of a comprehensive budget cut plan that also moved the retirement age of social security to 70, disbanded the department of education, and revoked medicare part D? You'd probably be a little upset. The net result is that it's nearly impossible to get Congress to agree to make significant cuts that actually matter.

Onto revenue. With increased revenue, Congress always finds something else it needs to spend money on. They spend like a teenage girl in a shopping mall with mom's credit card. So increasing revenue doesn't do anything without some kind of assurance that spending will be frozen.

So that leaves growing the economy, which is what they've been trying to do for the last decade or two.

The problem is that our elected politicians are not able to make hard decisions. As you mention they will not cut due to voter reaction. They need to make decisions for the greater good.

 

[jg54170]

I don't know your dad's income, but is he better off than he was before? Then the government isn't breaking his back with progressive taxes.

He is better off yes, I will give you that but he is debating piecing the whole thing off and truly retiring. He pays an excellent wage for the area but how do you tell the workers " I am going to pay you less but you now get health care" it's not what the employees want nor what he can afford. While nothing is "breaking his back" it is the spirit that's breaking. It is just sad to see the employees cut lose and the business close shop cause it isn't worth the fight any more.

Could he stay open for a profit? Probably, but is it worth his stress and worry about taxes and policy, it isn't seeming so.

 

[BigRed389]

The rich make more, so they carry more of a burden. If you want less of a deficit, you need more revenue...pretty simple. And the deficit has decreased under Obama as well. And those at the 100 K mark have seen very little increase in their taxes under our current administration.
Lessee... he's ended the war in Iraq, and is ending the one in Afghanistan-his limited engagement in other countries pales in comparison to his predecessor.

This is one of the major things that irks me. I am by no means rich but why should you punish success and wealth by making them shoulder more of the burden? I am more in favor of a flat rate tax system....honestly I think it's absolutely ridiculous that I get a big check every tax season.

Except...the ACTUALLY rich both do and don't carry more of a burden. I say "actually rich", because there is a huge difference between even the top 10% and the top 1%. Warren Buffet paid 11% on his AGI. ELEVEN PERCENT. I don't know what black magic his tax accountants used to do that, since that's well below the long term capital gains rate of 15%...but that's what his tax return shows, and he stands by it as well as a well known proponent of tax reform and increasing taxes on the "super rich."

http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0#table1

However, the top 10% pays 75% of the $865B in total income tax revenue to the Feds.
The top 1% paid $318B out of that ~$600B(~75%). So the Warren Buffets (who are really even smaller than the top 1%) are paying a lower effective rate, but actually are capable of contributing enough to national revenue to make a big difference. Why is that relevant?

If you want less of a deficit you need more revenue? If you want to pay for the idiotic spending of our government you just need to take more money from a shrinking subset of the population? You could triple the tax rate on the top 1% or 10% and still not even come close to paying for what we are spending.

OK we need to cut spending, but how do you close a $1.1T annual deficit (FY12 deficit)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png
We're fucked with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Those aren't going away so we'll have to keep paying. Those aren't even on the table right now.
We have to keep paying off the interest on our debt. Moving on.
There's another slice for "mandatory spending" which seems to comprise Veteran's benefits (fan of those), and the other "welfare" stuff we all love to hate...but it only makes up ~$450B.
The entire discretionary spending + DOD budget is $1.2T.
So if I'm reading this right, we need to figure out how to cut $1.1T from a budget when we only have $1.7T (assuming you can get enough support to touch the "other" mandatory spending categories...or defense).
Well let's see what tripling the tax rate on the top 10% buys us:
If you tripled the tax rate on the top 10%, assuming proportional carryover between 2009 and 2012, you'd see their contribution go from $750B to $2.25 Trillion. So, I'm not suggesting we do that...but clearly the tax rate of the top 10% IS germane to this discussion...since that would more than close the previous year's deficit and let us start buying down our debt.
In contrast, tripling the tax rate of the entire bottom 50% would add about $100B. That's where the supposed growing income gap is taking us.