Debt

Overmyhead,

    You forgot to add in the EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT, that lower income people get. If you look at the income tax pages I think it goes up to around 40,000 for a family. Talk about redistibution of wealth. People that qualify for it get approx triple of their Federal withholding back as a tax return. So the bottom feeders are not paying anything but they are allowed to legally steal money from anyone that does pay taxes. Thank you to all the scummy politicians that voted for this scheme!!!
       

You can say that again. I got to see my hero Ronny Reagan speak in Fairfield CT in 87. God bless Ronny and what he did for us after Jimmy Carter. It feels a lot like groundhog day but I don't see another Ronny coming to lift us out of the dark this time!!! Real men are fiscal conservatives and work hard for what they have.

Jones my source for the 1% is the IRS web site. I agree we should close loopholes and level the playing fieldThen we need to lower the overall rates maintaining our current collections so our businessescan compete. I can't say what percent your boss paid, but was his total dollars paid higher than yours?

ononewheel wrote: skicat2001 wrote: Bush spent in his last year 2.1 trillion, and this year alone Obama has spent over 6.0 trillion dollars and sking for more. We want straight cuts across the board, way it should be, economy strives on that. Rich make more money, hhhhhhmmmmmmmm and they hire people. Damb Obama rama almost got away with they wanted to cut Medicare, Medicade, Social security and Veterans pay for a month or 2 because we cant pay our bills. And now they want to borrow more... Geeezzzz P.S You save money, you save money, you save money, U dont freeking borrow more to pay bills. Freeking igornant... Name ONE time the rich have hired more when they make more money.................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Reread history.   Trickle down economics does not exist Do you know about Herbert Hoover? This was exactly what he thought and it lead to a very poor outcome. Really, get back to me on that one. . If you really are from the tea party I will understand why you feel this way. psssst....(you do not have to admit on here you really just hate the fact we have a black president)

One'r or whatever dooo,

Rich that own corporate america hire people. When they pay overrising taxes, it is a huge trickle system down the private sector for hiring americans. For example, there is a huge homebuilder here in Houston, that haD over 1,000 employees that now has under 500 and has had to stop building because of hire taxes, bad housing market, economy etc on and on...

Cheveron last week here in houston laidoff another 237 people because of the economy and lack of jobs turned to the lousina gulf coast where they had streamline of work but because of rising costs for corporate america, cheveron is just one that they have to lay off people.

It does not work in all, but most good dividends and economists for high end jobs pay large attention to what the economy, poloticians, taxs, wall street that COMPLETY AFFECTS THERE BOTTOMLINE!!


And please do not ask me that again, I do not hate his skin color, but I am a racist in one way. HE IS FREEKING MUSLIM. Yes i dislike muslims, the irratic ones!!


And I hate, dislike, LEFTY LIBERAL AMERICA!!! OBAMA POLOCIES WILL NOT AND DO NOT WORK. FK THE SOCIALIST COMMUNISTICK POLOCIES AND THE HORSE THEY ROAD IN ON!!!!! GO TO RUSSIA

and to think life was so good during the Reagan years!!!! Go figure!

And furthermore he's not really even black.
He's merely kind of a dark grey.

Ive been afraid to ask this but since I have already been called a racist this week... what the heck. If a white person (not me, this is mearly an intelectual exercise)were to hate Obama, only because they feel betrayed by his white half, are they still a racist?

timmy mcveigh, white trash pos, is that racist? not really
although his views are not far off for some here

ononewheel wrote:     Reuters notes that Microsoft’s tax rate last year was just seven percent, due to the company’s extensive employment of tax havens:     Microsoft is straightforward about the core reason for its lower tax bill: It is increasingly channeling earnings from sales to customers throughout the world through the low-tax havens of Ireland, Puerto Rico and Singapore…The change is fueling its shrinking tax bills. According to its 2010 annual report, by keeping a good chunk of foreign earnings away from the U.S., Microsoft has accumulated $29.5 billion overseas — and that is before the impact of its last financial year. Microsoft joins a slew of corporations that take advantage of tax havens to drive their tax rates down. Google, for instance, paid just a 2.4 percent tax rate last year thanks to its use of tax havens. At the same time that its sheltering income all over the world in order to avoid taxes, Microsoft is part of a coalition lobbying for a tax holiday that would allow corporations to bring money they have parked in tax havens back to the U.S. at a dramatically low tax rate. The holiday would cost nearly $80 billion, while a similar holiday approved in 2004 did not deliver any of its promised results.

Thanks for making my argument. Microsoft is a multinational corporation. They can have business centers wherever they would like, and the tax revenues will go to the host country. If the US wants tax dollars its tax rates must be competative with other countries. When we grow govt. we chase away the tax dollars we need to support it. Then we deficit spend hurting our credit rating, pay more interest, raise taxes chase away more revenue.......and the cycle continues. Detroit is a mini study in this concept, they are knocking down whole innercity neighborhoods and converting them back to farmland because everyone has left. Each time they raise taxes they reduce their collections, and chase revenue sources out of state. I dont want the whole US to be a big detroit. This is very easy to see if you are not blinded by your own philosophy.

There also oseems to be some confusion between revenue and cost. A cost is something you write a check for. Unrealised revenue is not a cost. If I make 10 grand less this year, it does not change my bank balance unless I continue to spend like I was still making it. It is my spending that is the cost.

OverMyHead wrote: Jones wrote: These are TAX RATES. Where is your source that says the top 1% of earners actually pay 35%? Gates and Buffett have both said, after deductions not available to the middle class, they pay a lower percentage than those making less that $100k per year. My former boss who cleared over a million a year paid a lower percentage than me. Like I said, loopholes need to be closed

Tax rates are just the starting point for everyone. Then you start taking deductions and credits or whatever has been in the tax code by our lawmakers. I get child credits, home interest deduction.....Very few pay their posted percentage. I would greatly prefer a lower flat tax with no loopholes, unfortunatly our law makers need to mess with the system to feel useful and increase their power.[/QUOTE]

So would I and that was exacty the point of my post. I just read, a new report from the IRS came out that said out of the 235,413 taxpayers who earned $1 million or more in 2009, 1,470 of them paid no taxes.

Joe you are correct about most governments and the way they were created, except ours. It was created on the rights of the certain inailiable rights of the individual. websters defines a right as something to which one has a just claim: as a : the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled <voting rights> <his right to decide. by the very neture of a right, one persons right cannot take away from anothers. That is the difference between a right and a entitlement. Our constitution does not grant rights, that was assumed. It mearly limits the power of government to infringe upon our individual rights. The government has the ligitmate power to tax each of us for the neccesary services it supplies(National defense,federal highways, FDA, OSHA,even the EPA0. That is the whole point of what our government was created for. Our constitution as the founders wrote it did not intend the government to re-distribute wealth. That is the job of charity, not government. The reality is that out of envy we have a tendency to abuse and dicriminate against a minority of our population, placeing increasing burdens upon them. This group has always been the life blood of this country providing vital tax dollars and jobs. There is a lot of wisdom in old sayings, such as do not bite the hand that feeds you. why would it continue to feed you if you cause it pain and do not appreciate it. I picture feeding a horse an apple over a fence when I hear this saying. I remember as a kid doing just this, we would ask to take an apple with us on a walk just so we could give it to the horses. The field we went by had two, one took the apple very gentle, the other roughly and greedily. As a 5 y/o guess which horse I picked to feed? Human nature applies to everyone including multinational corperations, the people that run them react with human responses and they will only take being crapped on for so long before they take steps to avoid it.

Joe, you made this statement which is true, but I think not the way you intended.

My biggest laugh is half of the people in the country complaining about the 50% of americans not paying federal income taxes are part of the 50% not paying federal income taxes.

The IRS says that the top 1% of income earners pay 40% of the federal taxes. the top 5% pay 60% of the burden. Thats the IRS, the ones who cillect the check. I believe them. Dispite what anyone would like to believe that is where are money comes from. So when you state thase not paying taxes are complaing about people not paying enough taxes you are absolutley correct. We have people paying nothing but getting full advantage of the neccesary services of govenrment and the re-distribution that occurs with our current system, and yet they complain that those who contribute to the system don't contribute enough. Kind of leaves some teeth marks.

You are still trying to oversimplify complicated problems.. federal income taxes are not the only taxes in the country, they simply the only that are not regressive. Those 50 percent you say pay nothing would tell you quite correctly that between property taxes, gas taxes, airline taxs, state income taxes, non income tax federal payroll deductions, and sales taxes they pay a very substancial portion of thier income in taxes. A lot more than the 15% the average billionaire pays.. ok with all the regressive taxes i just mentioned the billonaire might pay 20%.. Average working guy in that bottom 50% he is paying more than 20% in regressive taxes. And he doesnt need a navy to protect his oil platforms from pirates, or an army to go out and fight wars to protect their ability to do international business.

So keep worrying about the billionaires who somehow have all done better than ever in the last decade, and keep believing that a corporation acts like an individual they don't.. the collective can't be trusted like an individual.   

History already settled all these questions.. no you cant tax the rich at 70 percent and have an economy that grows.. and no you cant tax the rich at 15% and keep the government from imploding.. but the country did pretty darn good with the tax rates we had under reagan.. including the rich and corporations. Reagan had a cold war to win with that funding rate and therefore ran deficits but in peacetime with a divided and basically centrist government that rate proved capable of keeping the roads and the bridges from falling down.

And the fed can in fact keep the economy on the right path.. oh the horror the big bad fed.. you just cant use the fed to prop up the economy to try and make tax cuts look good like happened after the bush tax cuts.. because you will create a housing boom due to cheap money. and when it buts you wont be able to use the fed to help out because you will already have lowered the rates to zero..   but dont worry because then you can blame it on on the "crazy american hating liberals" who inherit the mess..

Everyone should do themselves and the country a favor and elect people that are intelligent, hard working, well educated, and reasonable and send them to work on the peoples business.. not find whatever moron from either side that is the most unyielding in thier doctrine..

Oh and you can argue that bush worked with against a democratic congress and therefore was also a net centrist government.. but his handlers used 911 to get whatever they wanted and pushed us way way way to the edge of where the country does nothing but move money from the working class and put it in the hands of the ultrarich investing class.

Joe, you are correct that I try to break the problems down into simpler pieces to make them manageable. It is a big complicated system.
The navy protecting oil wells is a little left field. The oil companies pay billions in taxes, then make profits which their emplouees and shareholders pay tax on, just to produce the oil that the navys ships patrol with. I think it all kind of works out ok for everybody. You are correct that you cannot expect to collect 70 percent from the rich. you can tax them at 15 % though, you just need to watch your spending. There is a often cited study that looked at federal government over the last 50 some years spending. For every dollar of increase revenue the government gets it spend $1.50. That is where our deficit comes from. we should have had a balanced budget amendment the day the country was formed. I can understand building some debt in a extreme cirumstance and then when it is over tightening the belt to pay it off. I have done that myself a few times. But as a nation we spend in all circumstances never tightening the belt afterwards. It is time to tighten the belt, the govenment uses base line budgeting and automatically plans on an 8% increase each year. This is beyond the rate of recent inflation. If you are having growth you can increase a little beyond inflation but we are not growing right now. The beauty of baseline budgeting is you can call growing the government by 5% a 3% cut. We need to freeze governmnet spending and let the economy catch up. I would take a straight acroos the board freeze military included. Every can feel the pain and take their "fair share" till the deficit is gone. Then we could start over with a balanced budget.

JoeinNY wrote: You are still trying to oversimplify complicated problems.. federal income taxes are not the only taxes in the country, they simply the only that are not regressive. Those 50 percent you say pay nothing would tell you quite correctly that between property taxes, gas taxes, airline taxs, state income taxes, non income tax federal payroll deductions, and sales taxes they pay a very substancial portion of thier income in taxes. A lot more than the 15% the average billionaire pays.. ok with all the regressive taxes i just mentioned the billonaire might pay 20%.. Average working guy in that bottom 50% he is paying more than 20% in regressive taxes. And he doesnt need a navy to protect his oil platforms from pirates, or an army to go out and fight wars to protect their ability to do international business.

Joe, yes and no....Property taxes are paid but the low income get property tax refunds each year, the rich do not. Even renters who do not directly pay their property taxes get a renters credit. State taxes in my state are based off the federal form. Pay no fed you pay no state. Sales taxes are exempted on the basics like food and clothing, a large percetnage of a low incomes spending. Airline??? not so much. Gas yes unless they do most of their commuting on subsidised public transportation, non income tax taxes, that would be paying for their own retirement... Yea thats pretty unreasonable to expect. It is easy to oversimplify.

OverMyHead wrote: By the way Joe, I like it when you speak up. You generally do not follow the talking points. You make me think!

Does the navy protect the wells? Or is it the coast guard? Both?