2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

[unofan]

I always thought there were poor people, lower middle class, upper middle class, and wealthy.

Nowadays, "anyone who makes more than me is rich", is that it??

Typical Obama math: $250,000 = $1,000,000 = $1,000,000,000. It's all the same, right?

The GOP is the one who is against progressive taxation. It's rich that you're mad at the President for not seeking an even more progressive tax structure.

Also, I think people making less than me are still rich. The fact that my wife and I can take a week off this April and travel to New England so she can run the Boston marathon and I can visit my alma mater shows we are not hurting financially. Are we obscenely rich like Gates or Buffet? No. But we would not be hurt by an increase in our taxes, either.

Also, upper middle class is just the euphamism for people who are rich but won't admit it.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

I always thought there were poor people, lower middle class, upper middle class, and wealthy.

Nowadays, "anyone who makes more than me is rich", is that it??

If you compare Greenwich, CT, for example (they really are rich there!) with a decent neighborhood in New Haven (well enough off, granted; yet certainly nowhere near "rich"), you'd see what I mean right away.

Typical Obama math: $250,000 = $1,000,000 = $1,000,000,000. It's all the same, right?

Wake us when we have a progressive tax structure. No one in power wants it even though it makes the most sense overall.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

Wake us when we have a progressive tax structure. No one in power wants it even though it makes the most sense overall.

What??? Obama clearly wants all tax rates to revert to 2000 levels except for all the extra taxes and surcharges he added through PPACA. He's made it quite clear that he isn't interested in negotiating anything. He knows that increasing tax rates only on "the rich" won't raise anywhere close to the revenue he craves, and so he is laying out proposals that are guaranteed to let all rates go up. He has asked for additional "stimulus" spending and blanket authority to raise the debt ceiling whenever he feels like it, without Congressional approval and has offered no reduction in the rate of spending whatsoever! what a farce.

So if you are employed, you pay at least 7.65% in payroll taxes, while if you are in the highest bracket your top rate will go to 43.4% or perhaps 51.15% even, and if you are self-employed, your top rate will be around 58%

How much more progressive do you want it to be? 75%? 90%? 110%? 250%?

Why don't we just abolish private property altogether while we're at it, eh?

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

What??? Obama clearly wants all tax rates to revert to 2000 levels except for all the extra taxes and surcharges he added through PPACA. He's made it quite clear that he isn't interested in negotiating anything.

So if you are employed, you pay at least 7.65% in payroll taxes, while if you are in the highest bracket your top rate will go to 43.4%.

How much more progressive do you want it to be? 75%? 90%? 110%?

Why don't we just abolish private property altogether while we're at it, eh?

Where do you get the 7.65%? What about the 6% of money that I don't get paid cause the owner of my company has to account for that in the overhead when he employs me? So, make the payroll taxes I pay 13.65% and you'll be more accurate. And I paid Federal Taxes last year after paying what Romney paid just with my payroll taxes.

There is nothing progressive about Capital Gains taxes (which is what most rich people earn their money on) or payroll taxes (which every middle class American takes it in the shorts on). There's also nothing progressive about property taxes, but that's not Federal.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

Also, I think people making less than me are still rich.

at the rate we're going, anyone with more than two days worth of food in their refrigerator will be "rich"

It's like heroin junkies, insatiable.

 

[Rover]

But catch the gist of Pat's piece -- many are voting with their feet. People who need social services are moving to states that have good SS programs. People who are highly taxed are moving to states that don't tax much. The disturbing trend is that the states that like to provide services may not have enough tax receipts to pay for it. The low tax states may not be willing to support their more profligate brethren through higher federal taxes.

Imagine if the NYSE and NASDAQ decided there did not have to be anyone on the floor to do trading. The traders could be in their house or office in North Carolina, Florida, or Texas making trades and markets. Their income would not be (as it is currently) subject to NYS and NYC tax. And if the trades take place in the "ether", NYS & NYC could not tax a transaction. Since NYC needs Wall Street to support the rest of the city, NYC goes bankrupt (again!). This is not what the Big Blue states (nor the rest of the USA) need or want -- but the trend is there.

The only problem with this is that its the states that have the higher social services are also the "donor" states in terms of federal taxes. Kansas for example is both not providing services nor paying its fair share of federal taxes, while Mass is doing both.

In Pat's conservative la-la land, the rock-ribbed, thrifty, Reaganesque states are the one's getting screwed by paying for overly generous liberal ones. In reality its the liberal ones sending more taxes to the feds to subsidize the conservative states with the exception of Texas which is also a donor state.

 

[unofan]

at the rate we're going, anyone with more than two days worth of food in their refrigerator will be "rich"

It's like heroin junkies, insatiable.

Don't blame me. You Fark Independents (tm) already told us that people with refrigerators and microwaves can't be poor. I'd guess you would term them "lower middle class"

 

[unofan]

What??? Obama clearly wants all tax rates to revert to 2000 levels except for all the extra taxes and surcharges he added through PPACA. He's made it quite clear that he isn't interested in negotiating anything. He knows that increasing tax rates only on "the rich" won't raise anywhere close to the revenue he craves, and so he is laying out proposals that are guaranteed to let all rates go up. He has asked for additional "stimulus" spending and blanket authority to raise the debt ceiling whenever he feels like it, without Congressional approval and has offered no reduction in the rate of spending whatsoever! what a farce.

So if you are employed, you pay at least 7.65% in payroll taxes, while if you are in the highest bracket your top rate will go to 43.4% or perhaps 51.15% even, and if you are self-employed, your top rate will be around 58%

How much more progressive do you want it to be? 75%? 90%? 110%? 250%?

Why don't we just abolish private property altogether while we're at it, eh?

Of course, the payroll tax is capped, so you arent paying it on those higher incomes. Nice try, though.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

yeah but your data is seriously flawed since the advent of S-corporations and limited liability companies. I'd have to look up exact date, let's say early 1990s for now pending clarification.

Up until [1990, say], business owners had personal income on form 1040 and corporate income on form 1120. You couldn't tell from their 1040 how profitable their businesses were, and so their business income never showed up in the statistics.

Since [1990, say] most owners of closely-held businesses switched to S-corporation status or limited liability company status: they now file an informational form 1120S but all corporate profits now appear on their personal income tax returns. You are comparing one set of data that omits ALL business profit to another set of data that includes business profit.

Unless / until you find someone willing to make the necessary adjustments, those graphs and statistics you cite are bogus. Bad data = unreliable conclusions.

Your point is not relevant. The trend since 1990, after your tax changes, has been undeniable.

I just see someone who is trying to avoid facts.

Here's another way to look at it...top 1% earner growth rate a 58% vs. the rest of the country growth rate of 6.4%.

I have no wish to make the affuent suffer. But just have them pay taxes like everyone else on money that their money earns.

 

[joecct]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

Subchapter S came into being in the mid 70's.

On a different subject - dealing with overregulation, we have this example of how to get around the problem... https://twitter.com/shervin/status/274010595978797057/photo/1

nevermnd -- photoshopped. no shadows on horses.. But nice idea....

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

So, there's some opposition to Susan Rice becoming Secretary of State.

You'll never guess from whom, and why...

 

[Old Pio]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

So, there's some opposition to Susan Rice becoming Secretary of State.

You'll never guess from whom, and why...

Racsexist!

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

Racsexist!

Neither, neither, nor the other.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

The trend since 1990 .... has been undeniable.

It seems we may agree on some things and disagree on other things.

First off, for the sake of discussion, let's say that the highest income earners today are earning more relative to the lower income earners today compared to the same ratio from 30 years ago.


The most important question; is this necessarily a problem?


Consider:
> we want to see people with 20 years experience in a field earning more than a newcomer to the same field, no? We want people to get better at their jobs from training and experience, do we not?
> we expect people working full-time to have higher earned incomes than semi-retired people or people working part-time, do we not?
> we expect professionals generally to earn more than people who primarily perform unskilled physical labor, do we not?


I can easily imagine a variety of scenarios in which a wider ratio between highest income earners and lowest income earners is a sign either of neutral events or even positive events: maybe our population is getting older, and so we have more retired people than before; maybe people have become less materialistic and prefer working more relaxed part-time jobs in exchange for a higher quality of life instead of working harrowing full-time jobs with miserable quality of life; maybe for every two low-skilled job "outsourced" overseas, we also create one new higher-skilled managerial / marketing / sales job here as well.


In other words, does it matter whether income ratios are widening? You speak as if it automatically must be a bad thing; and I suggest that you would have to agree that some amount of income disparity is not only inevitable, it actually is desirable as well. (if difficult jobs paid the same as easy jobs, then we wouldn't be able to find anyone to perform the difficult jobs!!


So, the challenge could revert back to you: why do you say an increase in income disparity "must be" a bad thing without even looking at quality of life measures?


However, for now, we could both agree to this statement: "The growth in income disparity could well indicate that one group is benefiting from certain government programs designed to reward them more than the populace in general."

You are saying that somehow the government is rewarding entrepreneurs "unfairly" without really showing any evidence other than citing income disparity. I am saying that the problem with the growing income disparity rests solidly at the bottom end: government programs are not designed to help the people who most need help; government programs are designed first and foremost to provide job security for members of government-employee's unions.

You know the saying "give a person a fish, feed her for a day; teach a person how to fish, feed her for life." I am saying that government programs are not designed to teach people how to fish; because if they did, then people would learn how to become self-reliant, and so the people who have jobs running those government programs would have to find new work elsewhere. Instead, government programs are designed to keep people dependent upon free fish because that provides lifetime job security for the people giving fish away, and it also provides job security for all the career politicians who depend upon campaign contributions from public-sector union leaders in order to keep getting re-elected.

My analysis is not inconsistent with yours as we are talking about two different things at this point. You still haven't demonstrated why increased income disparity "must be" a problem; however in the current situation, I say there is a pretty clear correlation between the increased scope of the so-called "safety net;" increased dependency from the people at the bottom of the income pyramid; and in turn, because the people at the bottom are falling further and further behind, income disparity is widening.

I don't think "the rich" have done anything wrong other than comply with the laws passed by others in order to get elected.

 

[unofan]

My analysis is not inconsistent with yours as we are talking about two different things at this point. You still haven't demonstrated why increased income disparity "must be" a problem; however in the current situation, I say there is a pretty clear correlation between the increased scope of the so-called "safety net;" increased dependency from the people at the bottom of the income pyramid; and in turn, because the people at the bottom are falling further and further behind, income disparity is widening.

I don't think "the rich" have done anything wrong other than comply with the laws passed by others in order to get elected.

So, essentially, you believe Mr. Potter is correct in It's a Wonderful Life . George Bailey was a fool, and Pottersville was better than Bedford Falls. Because your position seems to be that greed for its own sake is the optimal solution to distributing society's limited goods. Except when government workers demand a reasonable wage. Then that's suddenly too much. CEO getting a 20 million dollar golden parachute = put-upon job creator. FDA food inspectors making sure companies don't sell you rotten food? Money grubbing worthless regulator. Never mind that the inspector probably has a harder job with more qualifications.

That movie, by the way, was made in 1946. Amazing how history repeats itself

 

[Priceless]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

So, essentially, you believe Mr. Potter is correct in It's a Wonderful Life . George Bailey was a fool, and Pottersville was better than Bedford Falls. Because your position seems to be that greed for its own sake is the optimal solution to distributing society's limited goods. Except when government workers demand a reasonable wage. Then that's suddenly too much. CEO getting a 20 million dollar golden parachute = put-upon job creator. FDA food inspectors making sure companies don't sell you rotten food? Money grubbing worthless regulator. Never mind that the inspector probably has a harder job with more qualifications.

That movie, by the way, was made in 1946. Amazing how history repeats itself

And the "rich" have absolutely nothing to do with those "other" people who have gotten elected. It's just a happy coincidence that those elected officials lavish them with favorable tax policy.

 

[Rover]

So, essentially, you believe Mr. Potter is correct in It's a Wonderful Life . George Bailey was a fool, and Pottersville was better than Bedford Falls. Because your position seems to be that greed for its own sake is the optimal solution to distributing society's limited goods. Except when government workers demand a reasonable wage. Then that's suddenly too much. CEO getting a 20 million dollar golden parachute = put-upon job creator. FDA food inspectors making sure companies don't sell you rotten food? Money grubbing worthless regulator. Never mind that the inspector probably has a harder job with more qualifications.

That movie, by the way, was made in 1946. Amazing how history repeats itself

Isn't Fishy the poster who has the hots (figuratively speaking...I hope ) for Ayn Rand? That explains a lot although he may wish to ask Paul Ryan what that did for him in the last election.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

So, essentially, you believe Mr. Potter is correct in It's a Wonderful Life . George Bailey was a fool, and Pottersville was better than Bedford Falls. Because your position seems to be that greed for its own sake is the optimal solution to distributing society's limited goods. Except when government workers demand a reasonable wage. Then that's suddenly too much. CEO getting a 20 million dollar golden parachute = put-upon job creator. FDA food inspectors making sure companies don't sell you rotten food? Money grubbing worthless regulator. Never mind that the inspector probably has a harder job with more qualifications.

That movie, by the way, was made in 1946. Amazing how history repeats itself

That appears to be the world we now live in. Greed is good for the job creators, but not anybody else.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

Isn't Fishy the poster who has the hots (figuratively speaking...I hope ) for Ayn Rand?

No, that's someone else. Wol4ine, I think.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...

that appears to be the world we now live in. Greed is good for the <strike>job creators</strike> tax collectors, but not anybody else.

fyp.