Obama's "New" plan to reduce the deficit

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The Boy Prince's new plan is not the least bit new. It goes back to the tale of Robin Hood. Steal from the rich and give the loot to the poor (after taking a handling fee, of course). Which I suppose is marginally better than stealing from the poor and giving the loot to the rich.

How about neither. Let those who earn what they earn honestly keep their earnings and use them as they see fit.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 20 Sep 2011, 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can't stand the journalistic dishonesty going on over this.

Things I don't hear being said.

1. IRS docs prove that the top 1% of wage earners in the US pay 40% of all federal income taxes. Who's not paying their "fair share" again?

2. The nonsense from Warren Buffet about his secretary paying a higher tax rate is because he does not pay himself a salary. INCOME TAX is always higher than CAPITAL GAINS TAX (what Buffet does pay). This is because your investments represent money you EARNED and already was taxed on. Paying higher taxes on capital gains reduces the incentive to invest in US markets, and if this gets taken too far, it will ruin the hope of the average person to realize a windfall when selling of possessions or investments for their retirement nesteggs.

3. Established economics prove that 0% tax rate = $0 revenue. 100% tax rate = $0 revenue. The key is a tax rate that maximizes revenue without hindering economic participation. The OMB is denied the ability to consider the likely economic impact on people and how it may change their spending/earning/investment behaviors. So, if Obama wants to jack up taxes, his projections of revenue gained is tainted because it refuses to consider that when taxes go up, people change their behavior to negate the impact on their lives.

1. So what? We have a progressive taxation system and have for almost 100 years.

2. Why distort Buffet's position and ignore other parts of it? He called for adjusting capital gains rates as well. And also noted that it didnt discourage him from investing even when it was much, much higher in the 70s.

3. It's a bell curve, who is to say that you know where the inflection points are? We did just fine with higher rates in the past.

4. Pain is going to be felt by everyone in time. To imagine otherwise is fantasy prone thinking.

its just a dog and pony show.
3 trillion dollars over the next 10 years is nothing. we have to figure out how to get a 20 trillion dollar cut over the next 10 years to get back to sustainable debt levels. --Or Ron Paul can just start printing sovereign money and kick the federal reserve off the planet.

"The key is a tax rate that maximizes revenue without hindering economic participation"
---flat taxes.
when the government is spending money it doesn't have coming in, that is among the least fair methods of taxation.
A handy way of thinking about taxes is like how the TCP/IP routes around broken routers.
The drug trade for example is a key component in keeping the dollar strong, which is why we let Afghanistan grow drugs.

speaking of handling fees, take a look at how JP Morgan makes money off food stamps.

When you've got mega corporations making record profits and at the same time they're laying off workings, cutting wages, and reducing or eliminating benefits, then you can see how we've had a bit of a reverse Robin Hood situation here. CEO salaries are way up and so are food stamps applications. Something's gotta give.

Anyone hear about https://occupywallst.org/ ? I don't know if this protest is actually going anywhere. It might just be silliness. But still, a good amount of the 99% are pretty pissed off.

How wonderfully disingenuous of you.

"Wage earners" is limited to income from salary. It does not include dividends, interest or capital gains. It excludes pension income. Furthermore, that 40% figure is tax exclusive of social security premiums--since middle and lower income earners pay disproportionately higher amounts in social security premiums, this drives up their effective tax burden. Finally, you neglect to demonstrate how much of US income is earned by this percentile.

Income tax is progressive, and deliberately so. It is not enough to claim that the top 1% are paying 40% of the tax, when in fact, they are taking 14.8% of all income and paying 22.7% of federal tax--a much less dramatic statement. And more factual, to boot.



Again--disingenuous. Capital gains tax does not tax the adjusted cost base. When I use $100 of after-tax money to buy an investment that I later sell for $150, I am only taxed on the $50 capital gain, not on the $150 sale price. Furthermore, if I have borrowed the money to buy the investment, then I can raise my adjusted cost base. By paying, say, 6% interest on that $100, then my capital gain falls to $44.



You seem to be making the assumption that we are at the equilibrium point on the Laffer curve. Incidentally, Laffer himself credits Keynes with the idea of the Laffer curve (Oh, the irony!)

Looking at the US in comparison with other OECD nations, you overtax your corporations and undertax your citizens (good politics makes for bad policy, alas). If we were talking about corporate tax rates, I would certainly agree with you that further increase would be regressive. But I do not believe that the evidence demonstrates any conclusion about where your personal tax rates are in relation to the equilibrium point for individuals.

Last edited by visagrunt on 20 Sep 2011, 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Who you callin 'Boy'?



Interesting qualifier.

Define "earn honestly"?

Within the bounds of the law and without threat of physical force and without fraud.

ruveyn

Ah, so legal == moral.

Nice post.

$3 trillion over 10 years is essentially just pissing in the wind and completely pointless too even discuss. We need to reduce the debt not the deficit and you can only do that by completely eliminating the deficit. Reducing the deficit by $3 trillion means nothing when we'll still be adding $10-15 trillion to the debt during that time on top of our $15 debt we're already sitting on. This is a hole we we're never going to dig our way out of.

1. If we would stop sending our jobs over seas and get the american people working again that would cut the deficit.

2. Ending the war on drugs we spend millions a year because of the war on drugs our goverment doesnt care if we ruin our lives using them just as long as we pay our taxes.

3. Ending any trade agreement we may have with other country america is a big place we dont need supplies from any one.

4. Stop looking for ufos our goverment spends billions a year looking for them an we havent found a damn thing.

5. How about this just stop the wasteful spending all together.

Morality is subjective. The law is definite.

Morality is doxa, not l;ogos.

ruveyn

he has no credibility with anyone. Not with independents, not with those right of center, and certainly not with those on the far left, and we constitute the majority.

Typical of a liberal; he wants to spend more than save.

Some of Microsoft's early success was based on stolen code.

They literally pulled a damaged paper tape out of the trash and then set to work replacing the missing bits and fixing the bugs - it was an unfinished version of, iirc, a BASIC interpreter.

You never hear Gates or Ballmer talk about that. But Allen admits it readily.

Allen says that the very first time they ran the code was also the first time they demoed it to a customer.

They made money on the back of someone else that they didn't pay. They literally stole the program.

Except that it wasn't actually illegal to steal programs at the time.

We are ignoring Warren Buffet's position because the tax hikes Obama and he are advocating wouldn't raise the amount Buffet had to pay by one dime.