$4 gas... question?

I know it financially would not make any difference but I would like Congress, especially the newbies offer some sacrifice on their part. Term limit, no pension, no auto raise, just something to show they are not above the frey and willing to feel our pain.

It's hard for me to understand how they know what is right for me when they are in such a different league.

Hansel wrote: See wealth change for yourself. I just want to clarify here, as I did on another thread a while back, that my opinions and beliefs are NOT rooted in jealousy or envy as many of you seem to suspect. I have a good job with benefits and live a far more comfortable life than I deserve. Why is raising taxes always automatically off the table? Especially at a time of supposed "shared sacrifice?"

Then don't rely on left leaning Soros funded organizations for your information. They get money from OSI.

Raising taxes to solve this problem no different than going to your boss and asking for a raise because you maxed out your credit cards and bought a house and car you can't afford to pay for. Try it and let us know how it works out.

sweet77 wrote: Maybe my math is wrong. im not very smart but i thunk in 1970 you could buy a brand new car for about 2800.00 bucks, now a new car is close to 28000.00 buck thats 100% increase i think now a gallon of gas was about .36 and now its 3.70 which is about 102% increase give or take a few dollars so my question is why is everyone aggravated at the government and oil companies and not at the auto manufactures who have increased there prices just as much

My parents bought a new 21" color tv with the optional remote control(yep you used to have to pay extra for a remote..LOL) back in 1969. That tv cost over a grand... you can buy a pretty NICE one today with that grand!

Technology and option wise, todays $28,000 cars are NOT even close to what we bought in 1970. $2,800 in 1970 bought you a modest car(Malibu,Skylark, etc.). the options were AC, power windows, and maybe an AM-FM radio. Even with the price increase of the cars, it was GRADUAL, not in a few months.

My point is, in the past our econmomy had been based on "cost of living" increases.. usually modest 3-6%/year. And it was pretty even across the board. I DONT see that here...


And your "spot on" with wage increases not keeping pace with the cost of living for the middle class..

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Maybe my math is wrong. im not very smart but i thunk in 1970 you could buy a brand new car for about 2800.00 bucks, now a new car is close to 28000.00 buck thats 100% increase i think now a gallon of gas was about .36 and now its 3.70 which is about 102% increase give or take a few dollars so my question is why is everyone aggravated at the government and oil companies and not at the auto manufactures who have increased there prices just as much and most of THEM took bailout money. once again i dont like to see $100.00 go down the tube just like everyone else but the price of everything has went up. The only thing that i see that is really skewed is the average income in1970 was around 10k a year for an average household ......I think .....i just pulled these numbers off of a census report now the average income is around 43k which once again is around 43% increase if my numbers are right which they could be.... i see something terribly wrong here but what do i know???

wakeboardin2k4 wrote: Enjoying this discussion

...and I am just trying to figure out the $4/gallon gas... which by the way isnt quite there yet... most local stations went to 3.99.9 this morning ... dang they missed an opportunity.

Enjoying this discussion

Hi Ernest,

I am sure that you know more about running and operating a small business than I ever will. I think I follow your argument, and I can find little wrong with it.

I want to make it clear that I am NOT for raising taxes on small business owners. I am also NOT for raising taxes on middle to low income Americans. I am not really even in favor of raising taxes on people who make $1 million a year. I am talking about people who make tens, to hundreds, to even billions of dollars annually paying a lower tax rate than you and I.

Just think about this; if you made $50,000 at year for 50 years you would gross $2.5 million in lifetime earnings. To make a billion dollars you would have to work like that for 400 lifetimes, or 20,000 years. Let's even be generous and say you make $1 million annually... It would still take you 1000 years or 20 lifetimes of working to make $1 billion.

People that make that much money are not even in the same universe as us. Failure to tax them is leading directly to revenue shortfalls as I have pointed out. We have a spending problem in part, not in whole but in part, because we fail to collect from them what we could an I believe should. I stand by that statement and that is where I am going to leave it.

I tire of these endless debates... I am pretty sure that I can see your point of view and I agree in principle and in practice with much of what you say. Can you not see some truth in my position as well? Why does it always have to be one way or the other. We need to cut spending AND raise taxes. It is the only reasonable way forward.

Hansel wrote: emccallum wrote: "Where is this fantasy land you ask? Israel. A nation completely surrounded by enemies and with few natural resources." Few natural resources....including 4-5 billion dollars in US aid! Source: http://www.hotpolitics.com/tax4israel.htm haven't heard a single good argument yet as to why we should not. Ironically all of the rationale I hear against raising the top tax bracket is, at least to me, rooted by first principles in the fact that they are not taxed enough.

WHY NOT? Be selfish for a second. What if the highest tax rate was again 95% on every penny you made over $200K. Circa 1960 it was just that. Would you work hard to make $300K? Hell no! So if everyone making millions and millions was suddenly taxed so that they only made $200K, would they work hard to make a million $. Double hell no. People that create jobs by going out on a limb and building a business have a goal to make lots and lots of money, not just $200K. You can't create very many worth-while jobs on $200K. THINK about the big picture, not just that your neighbor makes more than you! Leave YOUR cave, kill something and drag it home! Don't be mad 'cause your neighbor did it.

did you ever wonder of our alliance with Isreal? we protect them like a little brother...and we send them aid???? whatever happened to paid protection? a little blip on the map, if you ever wonder where your money ends up....

horkn wrote: emccallum wrote: Horkin (and other libtards), Sorry, I just wrote a big *************** check to Uncle Sam this weekend and I ain't happy about it! I'm sorry if you need to resort to name calling. It's the easy way for those that can't argue their point properly to make them feel better. I respect dave (overmyhead) and anyone else that can make their points without name calling. One thing that bothers me is how news and other sources call democrats "liberals", when the mirror image negative connotation term from republicans is repugnicans is not ever used on media? Oh, btw, I do not vote pure democratic. I vote in either direction that I see fit. You might want to state the real source of the data. It's easy to fall for fake "IRS" data.

I could really care less how you vote...its how YOU think we need to take more of someone elses labor I have a problem with.

Sources: IRS data - http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
        Top marginal tax rate - http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

When you state such an ignorant remark as: "I think once the richest people get taxed accordingly, that all the complaining and bickering over these little issues will die out. Once the middle class don't have to pay the majority of taxes it will free up a lot more usable income."

I cannot let that go without a reply. The data is very clear about who pays the bills in our country. For some reason you believe an even larger percentage of "the wealthy's" income should be confiscated so you can have your subsidized whatever. At some point those folks will say enough. Atlas will shrug! A perfect example is my rental property. My property taxes skyrocketed. To the point that it takes 2.5 months of rent to cover just the property tax. Then I pay tax on the income left over, and get minimal deductions for improvements/expenses. Guess who that increase gets passed on to?? The renter. Then everyone complains about no affordable rental property. So, your answer might be: lets get some gvt rent control and really screw up the market! Why not make gvt less intrusive in the rental market?

Listen, name calling aside, republicans are just as guilty as dems, our gvt produces nothing! It is a burden to free markets, and as it continues to print money and call it Quantitative easing (QE). We are getting sold a big fat turd. Our money is going to be worthless.

Their is no way we can tax our way out of this mess. We must hold our gvt responsible and force them to balance their books as we have to balance ours. Both parties. Trust me, I have not been impressed with either party for a long time. I used the term Liberal, as the "social Liberal" not affiliated with a party, but a belief that a centralized State should control many aspects of peoples life (healthcare, education, welfare, utilities, etc.).

I call it like I see it.

gun-driver wrote: Waterdog wrote: Gun driver, Tell us more about making your own bio diesel. How much fuel can you make a week ? Did you build the distiller or buy a pre made one ? The cost of the distiller ? How much room do you need in the garage for the distiller ? Ect... Made my own processor. I make around 40-120 gallons a week.(40 gallons per batch)How much I make depends on our demand and how much time I have. Right now I have a little better than 240 gallons in stock so I make a little here a little there to keep the inventory up. Here's a couple of places to start reading. These guys are the CCF of Bio. http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/forum168/ Some good info on these forums http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/cfrm/f/498605551 This is a good place to get an idea of what it takes to make Bio http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_mike.html#filter

Gun-driver I have been researching biodiesel for the last 6 months and am soon going to set up a little biodiesel maker at home. I have a 119 gallon hot water heater for my set up. Post some pictures of your set up. Its always cool to see other peoples designs

I just got back from a week and a half overseas where there is <7% unemployment, nationalized healthcare, great roads and infrastructure, and one of the lowest rates of national debt in the world.

And they achieve all of this with gasoline at ~$8/gallon, a top tax bracket of 45%, and 2-3 years of near universal compulsory military service (men & women) at their life's prime.

Where is this fantasy land you ask? Israel. A nation completely surrounded by enemies and with few natural resources.

Don't buy the hype...

Horkin (and other libtards),

From the IRS data:

"The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $159,619), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 34.7 percent of the nation's adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes."

Sounds like some think we need more redistribution of wealth. Just remember, what the gvt gives to one group, it must take from another. We dont have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.

Since 1960 the US gvt has never had tax revenue greater than 20% of GDP. Even when the top marginal tax rates were as high as 91%. Yes, 91% in the early 1960's. It tends to stay at about 18% of GDP. People dont tend to stay in one tax bracket. They go up and down based on the economy. Hence, the Laffer curve theory (Zero tax rate and 100% tax rates yield the same tax revenue, nothing). So, grow GDP (NOT by gvt stimulus) and you will grow tax revenue. That is economics 101.

Dont fall for the bobble head talking points you see on MSLSD and CNN! Think about it. If the gvt let me keep more of my money....I would spend/invest it. I might send my tranny to Eric now, rather than wait for it to die and complain that he charges too much!

Sorry, I just wrote a big *************** check to Uncle Sam this weekend and I ain't happy about it!

I think once the richest people get taxed accordingly, that all the complaining and bickering over these little issues will die out. Once the middle class don't have to pay the majority of taxes it will free up a lot more usable income.

Yes, it does all go back to that.

M3Fan wrote: Nice to see some remotely progressive views here on occasion.

Thanks, Just because we like our big V8 ski boats doesn't mean we need to lean to the right all the time.


At some point in the near future, as long as I stay at the company which I work for, I'll be looking at bare minimum getting a much more efficient car. That mean hybrid, maybe a tdi Vdub like Eric, or even a all electric vehicle. Ford's all electric focus will be coming out soon and will have a 100 mile range at least. Having nearly been rear ended yesterday (driving the audi) on my way home has me rethinking taking the bike all the time it's not raining. Had I not been watching everything, the jeep patriot directly behind me that was rear ended by a wrangler would have hit me had I not stepped on the gas and got very close to the car ahead of me. The patriot driver must have let off the brakes and moved forward after getting rear ended. That's the second time since August that I avoided being rear ended in the Marquette interchange area of MKE since I started my new job in August.

If we wouldn't be planning our wedding this summer, I'd probably be get a more efficient car this summer already.