Liberal free for all coming to an end

[tslust]

Originally Posted by transjen

CAP CUT BALANCE IS A TYPICAL GOP FU TO MOST OF AMERICA WHILE TAKING CAR OF THE RICH

First of all, what is considered rich? People who earn $125,000 or maybe people who earn $250,000, or how about obama who gets $400,000?

About 43% (that seems to be the average figure, I saw one number that had it as low as 39% and another put it as high as 51%) of Americans pay NO taxes, with at least ONE IN THREE of these nonpayers actually getting money form the government! Whereas, the top 1% wage earners, "those evil rich" pay 38% taxes. Now that's just on the Federal level. If you add in the local, county, and state it's more like 50% to 60% tax.

My point is: Perhaps instead of focusing on making those "evil rich" pay more taxes, they could simply widen the tax base. Or even better, the democrats are always talking about the rich not paying their "fair share", what could be more fair than a flat tax?

[KittyKaiti]

Originally Posted by tslust

First of all, what is considered rich? People who earn $125,000 or maybe people who earn $250,000, or how about obama who gets $400,000?

About 43% (that seems to be the average figure, I saw one number that had it as low as 39% and another put it as high as 51%) of Americans pay NO taxes, with at least ONE IN THREE of these nonpayers actually getting money form the government! Whereas, the top 1% wage earners, "those evil rich" pay 38% taxes. Now that's just on the Federal level. If you add in the local, county, and state it's more like 50% to 60% tax.

My point is: Perhaps instead of focusing on making those "evil rich" pay more taxes, they could simply widen the tax base. Or even better, the democrats are always talking about the rich not paying their "fair share", what could be more fair than a flat tax?

A flat tax that is too high will throw millions into the poverty zone and tax too low will result in a major loss of tax revenue. I dunno where your statistics come from but does that mean "43%" of adult citizens in the workforce "do not pay taxes"? Or just overall population?

[tslust]

Originally Posted by KittyKaiti

A flat tax that is too high will throw millions into the poverty zone and tax too low will result in a major loss of tax revenue. I dunno where your statistics come from but does that mean "43%" of adult citizens in the workforce "do not pay taxes"? Or just overall population?

I do agree that a flat tax would be hard to figure a correct percentage. Perhaps some sort of sliding scale, starting at 5% for the lowest income bracket and increasing by 2-5% from there.

I would assume that the statistics come from the number of people who filed their taxes.

[GRH]

Another common misconception that the right likes to spread...The old "half the population pays no taxes." Due to the myriad of deductions and credits, it's more accurate to say that a certain percentage of the population pays no INCOME TAX. Nobody (except for kids or people that have no income) pays NO taxes. This percentage that pays no income tax still pays payroll taxes on their earnings as well as a myriad of state and local taxes.

Personally, I don't know where they derive this statistic. My family has never made in excess of $50,000 annually and yet we've ALWAYS had income tax liability. It seems like clever accounting to me to arrive at this statistic.

[Suckslut]

I support the fair tax.

Note: I am not a right wing republican, so you can't attack me for being that.

Here is what the fair tax does.

Eliminate the federal income tax and replaces it with a federal sales tax.

That way, the IRS only has to collect info from all the businesses in America instead of every citizen. (probably 3 million vs. 200 million). This way we can shrink the IRS by about 90%, and eliminate headaches for filling out taxes for most citizens. This replaces the chaotic system we have now with lots of loopholes, deductions, and different tax rates for different kinds of income (work, long and short term capital gains, rent, etc).


The way it is written now is that every purchase would be subject to the federal sales tax, and then the federal government would send a rebate to every family the amount of sales tax that a person subject to the poverty line would pay. So if the poverty line is $12,000 per person per year with the federal sales tax at 25%, the government would send a check to every person for $3,000 a year.

The way I would do it, is that the basic standards such as milk, bread, water, rent will not be subject to the sales tax (so that poor people do not pay a disproportionate share of their income to taxes).

This will encourage people to automatically save. This will help them for retirement and in emergencies such as job loses.

Plus I believe that lots of businesses will start up and come to the US, because we would be one of only a few countries in the world without an income tax.

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by tslust

First of all, what is considered rich? People who earn $125,000 or maybe people who earn $250,000, or how about obama who gets $400,000?

...

My point is: Perhaps instead of focusing on making those "evil rich" pay more taxes, they could simply widen the tax base. Or even better, the democrats are always talking about the rich not paying their "fair share", what could be more fair than a flat tax?

I don't think the government should be in the business of deciding who's "rich". And I agree about flat tax.

[Suckslut]

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

I don't think the government should be in the business of deciding who's "rich". And I agree about flat tax.

What do you think about the fair tax?

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by Suckslut

What do you think about the fair tax?

I haven't looked at it real close, but it looks like there's many advantages to it, like allowing people to keep all their income, promoting savings, being able to tax even illegal aliens, and the elimination of the IRS. Might be a good idea.

But like flat tax or any other fundamental change in the tax system there's going to be a lot of resistance in changing it.

[smc]

This speaks volumes ...

[TracyCoxx]

... if this home is so bad probably need to stop fixing other people's homes, and the able bodied people in this home need to get a job.

[TracyCoxx]

So we possibly have some kind of deal where we raise the debt ceiling by up to $2.5 trillion and we cut a matching amount over 10 years.

Whoopty doo.

That won't mean 10 years from now our debt will be back to where it is now at $14.5 trillion. It means we cut up to $2.5 trillion off of the next $8 trillion we're going to add to the debt in 10 years! So this debt cutting deal actually allows $5.5 trillion to be added to the debt in the next 10 years bringing us up to $20 trillion in debt. And they're all patting themselves on their backs for these huge "cuts". We still have a lot of work to do.

And to add $5.5 trillion they're telling us they're going to have to make huge cuts to defense and entitlements.... ???

[smc]

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

... if this home is so bad probably need to stop fixing other people's homes, and the able bodied people in this home need to get a job.

Typical Tracy Coxx bullshit.

Thank goodness that despite the best efforts of political leaders of all stripes, we still live in a country where there is at least a tiny bit of safety net left to forestall the full effects of the dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest (i.e., rich exploiters) America that Tracy Coxx advocates.

[randolph]

Originally Posted by smc

This speaks volumes ...

Yep, this is where we are heading. Unfortunately, its not just the Republicans ruining the country, the Democrats and Obama are complicit. Instead of pouring billions into the fuckedup financial industry, the government could have taken over the banks and invested in infrastructure and energy efficiency creating new industries and thousands of jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Instead we bailed out the rich and preserved their dominance over congress.
Obama didn't betray, us he conned us. He is just another corporate lackey.
The rich have a strangle hold on us and I have no idea how we are going to break their hold. Elections don't work, voting doesn't work, complaining doesn't work. What would work?
Somehow, develop enough support to raise taxes on the rich back where they were before Reagan. The government would then have sufficient funding to sustain the type of society the majority of Americans want.

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by randolph

...the Democrats and Obama are complicit. Instead of pouring billions into the fuckedup financial industry, the government could have taken over the banks and invested in infrastructure and energy efficiency creating new industries and thousands of jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Instead we bailed out the rich and preserved their dominance over congress.
Obama didn't betray, us he conned us. He is just another corporate lackey.

Obama really didn't do anything here other than agree to sign this latest compromise. He didn't promote any plan of his own and just made veto threats in all this. Some leader.