New York State Budget Relies On Entertainment Tax

einer writes "Facing a budget shortfall, New York State Governor David Paterson crafts a budget that taxes iPod music downloads and other 'digitally delivered entertainment services.' On the chopping block is $700 million in school aid and $3.5 billion in health care subsidies."

Comments

paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily there is more than enough tax payer's dosh to keep us fp'ers employed

Re:paying the fps

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

That's always the case, say the politicians.

They will lose more votes cutting services just a little bit than by adding another straw to your back, which is to say, cutting funds to people who get money from government.

I can't imagine why businesses are fleeing overseas, with all this bread-and-circuses genius floating around like turds tied to balloons choking things more and more each year.

Even if you think every single law and every single payment level is needed, sooner or later the arteries clog and the heart stops, choked with a hundred balloon angioplasty stents.

The politicians won't grow balls, so you have to grow them for 'em.

Re:paying the fps

[tripdizzle]

I can't imagine why businesses are fleeing overseas

The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, so businesses move overseas to avoid that. If we lower the rates, the businesses would probably come back here, and those tax rates would actually start generating some revenue, rather than forcing business overseas and producing no revenue.

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought there were a lot of loopholes to get large companies out of paying the 'highest tax rates in the world'
Maybe I should stop listening to politicians...

Re:paying the fps

[Cheerio Boy]

I can't imagine why businesses are fleeing overseas

The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, so businesses move overseas to avoid that. If we lower the rates, the businesses would probably come back here, and those tax rates would actually start generating some revenue, rather than forcing business overseas and producing no revenue.

WHAT!? Logic in the US tax system?? Unheard of!

A better plan would be to tax bananas because suits are sometimes called "monkey suits" and therefor by taxing bananas we'll be taking money from the sale of each suit to a CEO.

/sarcasm

You're right of course. If we lowered the corporate taxes AND closed most of the loopholes those taxes would definitely produce a but better.

Re:paying the fps

[Hijacked Public]

And there are. But you should stop listening when someone attempts to argue that they'll raise corporate tax in lieu of income tax and that that will benefit you the individual.

Corporate taxes are paid by you, the individual, in the form of increased prices for goods and services. For a corporation a tax is just like any other cost. Labor or utilities or copper. The primary difference between tax and most other costs is that aside from the above loopholes there is little incentive to compete with other businesses to reduce tax, or to innovate, or to be more efficient than the next guy.

Re:paying the fps

[smooth wombat]

The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world

Hogwash. This table shows otherwise. Unless you think every business in the U.S. is taxed at 35%, the U.S. corporate tax rate is somewhere in the middle to lower end of the scale. And that does not include VAT.

What you did was take the combined corporate tax rate in the U.S., not the range of taxes corporations pay.

Further, using The Tax Foundation's figure of combined rates (which is what you're using), they use the example of Sweden who has a lower combined corporate tax rate than the U.S. That's nice, except they fail to mention that in Sweden, if you use the combined personal income tax, the top rate is 60%. Way above anything we in the U.S. pay. Even the uber rich.

Corporations leaving the U.S. has very little to do with corporate tax rates. The biggest reason for relocating overseas is cheaper labor. There are very few Americans who want to work in a factory for $8/hour putting widgets together. If there were, food processors wouldn't be hiring illegal immigrants in droves.

Re:paying the fps

[Sir_Lewk]

Sounds oftly similar to good ol' "Reaganomics" to me ;) A pity support for that reasoning is praised fanactically by all the right wing nutters, turning others off from it.

Re:paying the fps

[tripdizzle]

So because people on the right like it, that reason alone makes everyone else dislike it? sounds like ideological jealousy (because they couldn't figure it out) or just elitism claiming they know whats better for the people, so we are going to take everything from you and hand it out as we see fit.

Re:paying the fps

[Sir_Lewk]

No, I'm just saying the nutters wreck it for the rest of us. People (rightfully) filter out whatever the extreme right is screaming about, just like they (rightfully) filter out everything the extreme left is ranting about. It's just a shame that some good ideas get lost in the crossfire, on either side.

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

That worldwide-tax.com table sucks. For example, it suggests you'll pay up to 29% income tax in Canada, when, in fact, that's generally where most people will start. Here's a tax calculator for Canada that is accurate. Put, say, $50,000 into it and you'll see 31% taxes in our most populous Province. It also doesn't take into account that many countries don't tax based on the family income, but individual income.

With that much variance, I can't even begin to imagine how badly the corporate taxes are off...

Re:paying the fps

[Hognoxious]

The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, so businesses move overseas to avoid that.

That isn't the whole story, personal tax rates also matter. One is paid by the company before the dividend is paid, the other by the shareholder afterwards.

Looking at this (plus a lot of assumptions about what exemptions apply or don't). Take take one dollar of profit. For the US, that'll leave about 69 cents as dividend, and then you'd take off another 19, leaving roughly 50c.

For Austria that'd be 1.00 - 25% leaving 75c. Sounds good, but then after personal tax it would be 75 - 47% leaving about 40c.

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, they're killing the goose that lays their golden eggs. Selfishness got the best of them -- they just couldn't resist trying to force out a few more golden eggs. But now the goose is so worn out from the demands of the selfish farmer, that she's dying.

And to think I used to be under the assumption that selfishness has no place in government. How naive. Looking at the outrageous growth of the US government over the past century, measured both in revenue and power over the people, I'm starting to think that selfishness in government is the norm, not the exception.

Re:paying the fps

[Retric]

It's a tax on profit so it's not a cost. If your costs go up you need to increase the cost, but if your price maximizes your profit then a change in the tax rate on profits will not change the price you charge because that would reduce your profit.

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, so businesses move overseas to avoid that. If we lower the rates, the businesses would probably come back here, and those tax rates would actually start generating some revenue, rather than forcing business overseas and producing no revenue.

McCain, is that you? The election is over you know.

Re:paying the fps

[lysergic.acid]

part of the problem is that the tax brackets do not reflect the distribution of wealth in our society. we have tax brackets all the way up to ~$350K a year, but then we stop distinguishing between people who make $350K/year and people who make $1M/year and up. this bracket system puts an effective tax cap on the super-rich who possess the bulk of the national wealth.

by creating $1M/year, $2M/year, $4M/year, etc. brackets and introducing a wealth tax on billionaires we could reduce the tax rate among lower income brackets. and by removing the tax cap and introducing a progressive tax system for corporations, that would further decrease the tax burden on the middle and lower classes.

of course, we still won't see any benefit from our tax dollars so long as we keep allowing social programs to be cut and public infrastructure to be neglected. meanwhile, what tax funding is available gets poured into the MIC and corporate bailouts/subsidies. worst of all, Americans seem content to stand by and watch as all this happens, and even letting politicians buy their votes with promises of tax cuts.

Re:paying the fps

[Hijacked Public]

A swing and a miss.

Re:paying the fps

[Hemogoblin]

You're assuming elasticity of movement to tax rate is high. Can you cite some papers and experts who have validated this claim?

I could easily claim the opposite: lowering taxes will only attract companies in the long term, if at all, resulting in lower taxes in the short run and large budget deficits leading to financial distress due to lack of liquidity and even more costs. I'm not providing any evidence either, so who should people believe?

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

Business exist to profit, not to provide the government a stream of revenue.

Re:paying the fps

[Retric]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand You can't become rich selling a single apple for a 10 billion $ because nobody is going to buy it.

Assuming a classic demand curve an increased sales tax will drive down demand, but the customers that are left care less about price so the price you charge to maximize profit goes up more than the sales tax. However, with a tax on profits the price that maximizes profits does not change because there is no change to the demand curve or your costs. Basically, if you would have made more money charging more you would have already done so and if you would have made more money charging less you would have done so independent of the tax on profits.

PS: The real impact is on investing which can impact long term pricing as well as the amount of tax evasion.

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that investments are evaluated based on the after-tax cash-flows they can generate (pre-tax profits being ultimately a theoretical concept) so raising tax rates means that investment projects have to make more money.

In other words, raising corporation taxes doesn't necessarily affect shareholders because prices may rise to compensate. Nobody will be able to stick to the old prices to undercut them, because nobody else will be able to find investors who don't care that they will only be paid in post-tax dollars.

It's very hard to judge the ultimate economic effect of various taxes. Very hard. I'm not one of those cod-libertarian "We need the FairTax! It's got fair in the name so it must be fair." people but I have to admit that the effect of taxes can be difficult to predict.

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

See Laffer's Curve, and ask GM, they are profiting everywhere except in the US, they just dont bring their profits over here, because once they do, they are taxed, they leave them separate so they can remain profitable overseas, while being in the red here and getting bailed out. GM US = retirement and health care provider that also makes cars

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, its me. Like the Republicans finally let me run, but its a year where Republicans are doomed, so it was worthless. I think they just did so I could get this run for president thing out of my system. I am not sure if I am going to pull a Liebermann, or just quit and let actual conservatives run the party.
I still cant believe anyone bothered to vote for me. I was just the Obama-Lite option, or McCain: Diet Obama

Re:paying the fps

[Anonymous Coward]

Wealthy people would just move their assets and shift the nature, timing and sources of their income. Alternatively they could just renounce their citizenship and establish residency for tax purposes in a lower rate country. Some EU countries have surprisingly low taxes on investment income for instance and an EU passport is at least as convenient as a US one.

State and city tax avoidance is far easier because citizenship is not a factor. A NYC resident could just move to Florida, Texas, NH or another state with no income taxes. It is common for business owners to move to Florida just before selling their company for instance.

New York is in trouble because they were used to huge tax receipts associated with the finance industry and the highly paid employees that worked in it. Now those taxes are gone for at least five years due to offsetting past losses. The generous benefits promised to residents, however, live on. Seriously, NY taxes/spending grew by 41% 2000-2007 AFTER inflation.

Taxing the wealthy will just chase away the small population of net tax payers in a state full of people who use far more services then their tax dollars support. Progressive tax schemes sound great but it is extremely hard to fund services out of the wealthy. Joe Average basically can't get much more in services than he pays in taxes. There are so many Joe Averages and so few richie-riches.

Re:paying the fps

[maidix]

That's an interesting philosophy. Let's assume we continue going in this corporate-focused method of government. By that logic, then, it would make sense for the vast majority of Americans to simply expatriate from America, to a nation that will offer a better deal. There are some places in the world that will still tax you to the hilt, the way we are taxed to the hilt in America (with a whole plethora of taxes, at all levels of commerce and government)... the difference is, you'll get something in return. Why should we be shamed into being patriotic, while everyone thinks it's just savvy for corporations to screw America for the sake of the bottom line?

The interesting thing is, under the Bush administration, you can no longer escape your tax burden by expatriating -- at least, not for a long time. I wonder why they would make such a restrictive, oppressive law governing individuals... essentially, we are "owned" by the government, even if we leave forever... but when it comes to corporations, they'll use the carrot instead?

Re:paying the fps

[Hemogoblin]

Well yes. See this guy:

"Just about everyone can agree that if an increase in tax rates leads to a decrease in tax revenues, then taxes are too high. It is also generally agreed that at some level of taxation, revenues will turn down. Determining the level of taxation where revenues are maximized is more controversial."

Pecorino, Paul (1995), "Tax rates and tax revenues in a model of growth through human capital accumulation", Journal of Monetary Economics

My point is that the original post was assuming we're on the "high-tax" area of the laffer curve, which is what he hasn't provided any evidence for.

Re:paying the fps

[hedwards]

That's going to require a citation. The reality is that they don't move offshore because of the local taxation, they move offshore because they don't have to pay any taxes of any sort in the US on income derived over seas. Providing they don't bring the money back into the US.

If it were that bad here you'd see far more corporations moving offshore than you do. As it is the main reasons are that nations like China don't allow their workers to have high wages and don't bother to enforce regulations that are in place. You're not going to beat that by placing the corp tax at 0%.

Ever wonder why the Chinese own so much of the US debt? It's just a place to park the cash that keeps the yuan under priced relative to the dollar and to keep wages comparatively low compared to those in the US.

Re:paying the fps

[JesseMcDonald]

That's only part of the story. The rest is that the increased tax drives the marginal suppliers out of the market, decreasing both supply and competition. Demand remains the same, so the lower supply forces an increase in the revenue-maximizing price for those that remain.

Re:paying the fps

[mangu]

by creating $1M/year, $2M/year, $4M/year, etc. brackets and introducing a wealth tax on billionaires we could reduce the tax rate among lower income brackets

That has been tried before, in several countries. In the UK there once existed a 98% income tax bracket. It never works.

What you seem to forget is that the difference between the very rich and us is that the rich have more options than we do. If you earn enough money, you have so many different ways to spread that among different organizations that it becomes immune to control by the state. How would you propose to collect those taxes, by declaring war on tax evaders?

Re:paying the fps

[jwhitener]

The argument that lowering taxes on corporations somehow benefits the consumer is misguided. This is yet another argument that essentially can be placed in the 'trickle down' category.

'Trickle down' will never work, has never worked, and relies on the assumption that corporations will somehow pass on increasing profit in order to help the consumer.

Corporations will always charge as much as a person is willing to pay.

If an item costs X to produce, and sells for Y, and a we lower taxes and provide incentives so that the cost of production is X/2, you really believe that corporations will sell the item at Y/2?

Of course not. If the item still sells at a good volume at Y, the corporation will just bank the profit, give big bonuses to their corporate leaders, or invest the money.

Re:paying the fps

[CrimsonAvenger]

So because people on the right like it, that reason alone makes everyone else dislike it? sounds like ideological jealousy (because they couldn't figure it out)

What's really sad is that supply-side economics (aka "Reagonomics") was used before Reagan to justify a massive tax cut. The name John F. Kennedy ring any bells?

Re:paying the fps

[FourDegreez]

This is one of the greatest fallacies commonly repeated in these debates. How do people arrive at the conclusion that the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates? Take the highest federal tax bracket, add it to the highest state tax bracket, and call this number "the corporate tax rate on companies in the US." Nevermind there are states with a zero tax rate. Nevermind that the GAO reports that in a given year between 60 and 70 percent of all companies pay zero federal taxes. There are so many tax breaks that almost no company pays the full amount. In fact, a number of companies end up with a negative tax rate. Yes, a negative tax rate. Not only do they pay no tax, they get paid a rebate from the IRS. Please, don't repeat the fallacy that US companies pay the highest corporate taxes. And question the sources that tell you they do.

Re:paying the fps

[jedidiah]

Businesses benefit from, and profit from, the services that governments provide (just like anyone else).

Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[eldavojohn]

Simple solution if you think this is unjust highway robbery targeting the technically gifted: Find a friend or family living in a different state and get their address. Call your credit card company and add their name and address to a billable location for your credit card. Then when you set up your credit card information on iTunes or Amazon or whatever, list their address as the billing address. They can't apply the tax even if you are downloading in NY.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[FooAtWFU]

Simple solution if you don't have someone to do this to: Head over and shop music the old-fashioned way, in New Jersey.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[L0stm4n]

Or shop with a pirate on your shoulder ;-)

http://torrentfreak.com/firefox-pirates-take-over-amazon-081203/

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[aesiamun]

Did you forget that an entire state is attached to that hole they call New York City? Some of us live in the middle of the state...with NY State already taxing Amazon purchases, the drop of education money and the 18% tax on non diet soda, I have a feeling NY doesn't want people living here anymore. :(

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[docgiggles]

Does it matter? How much tax can there possibly be on a 99 cent song download. If this is passed, the feds could get the same idea. I am in favor of it because I don't know anybody who actually pays for music anymore, much less uses iTunes. Your average schmo will end up donating $5 to help schools stay afloat. Not a huge deal.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

The average schmo already pays money in order to keep the public schools afloat.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[MightyYar]

They'll be losing me next year! Honestly, why do people stay in this high-tax state? I lived in PA before and the state took 3% income tax. That's an ADJACENT STATE! NY takes 7%, for reference... New Jersey has this radically progressive tax schedule where the poor pay 8x less than the rich, so it's difficult to compare with New York.

To be fair, sales tax is lower by 2%. Of course I live in the city, so pay an additional 3 or 4% income tax and 4% sales tax - but the situation was similar in Philly.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Money from schools typically comes from property taxes. The city of Minneapolis wanted to pass a $200 increase per year property tax so we could "prop up" the schools. It boggles the mind when you realize that they have less facilities to run and even less enrollment year after year. Most of the money they asked for wasn't even budgeted to anything specific. They are strapped for cash yet there is plenty of money for TV and radio commercials to urge people to "vote for kids."

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone pays money to keep schools afloat. Its called a property tax.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

>>>with NY State already taxing Amazon purchases

They are not allowed to tax Amazon because amazon does not lie within New York's jurisdiction. Ditto if I were to sell an item to you directly - I'm in Pennsylvania and not bound by NY Laws and therefore not obligated to collect tax to pay the NY Legislature. The NY politicians can kiss my shiny-metal ass.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[hal9000(jr)]

>>>with NY State already taxing Amazon purchases

They are not allowed to tax Amazon because amazon does not lie within New York's jurisdiction. Ditto if I were to sell an item to you directly - I'm in Pennsylvania and not bound by NY Laws and therefore not obligated to collect tax to pay the NY Legislature. The NY politicians can kiss my shiny-metal ass.

Sigh, until a case is made to a higher court, yes, NY State can and does tax on-line orders.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Coopjust]

Amazon is charging tax on Amazon orders placed by NY residents despite the fact that Amazon has no facilities in NY due to an unconstitutional law that hasn't been challenged yet. It says if you have an affiliate in the state (like, affiliate links), you are liable to pay tax.

Newegg.com started doing it too, but two months later they sent an email to NT residents that stated (in a nutshell), "We looked at the law with our lawyers and there is no way NY could ever win this. They'd be stupid to take it to court. Therefore, we're going to stop taxing NY customers again."

Somebody has to take this law to court. The problem is, no one has the balls to.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it matters. It's a slippery slope. If you let them institute a seemingly inconsequential tax on a music download, then before long, they will be taxing everything you upload or download on a per bit basis. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. repeat it. repeat it. repeat it. repeat it.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you are dead wrong. Interstate commerce is a little difficult to understand, but the reality is that any time you purchase goods that are DELIVERED in New York, as a New York State resident you are obligated to pay tax on that delivery.

As internet commerce has grown, the states have been steadily closing this loophole. Some more aggressively than others, but expect this to be the case everywhere considering the massive budget shortfalls most states are facing.

Also, I hate to say, but its not entirely fair to blame New York City for its high taxes. Most of the tax revenue collected in NYC gets disbursed around the state. Nobody makes any friggin money except people who live and work in the city, and its a constant war between city and state government over how city taxes get apportioned. As a city dweller, my taxes would be significantly lower if we did not have to fund government infrastructure upstate. But then, there wouldn't BE any government upstate if the city stopped footing the bill.

Both New York and Connecticut are in serious trouble with the banking failure. We've lost more than 300,000 of the highest paying jobs in the world, which were responsible for almost 20% of the respective states income tax collections (both corporate and personal). The result is catastrophic, and now we have to pay the piper for years of unchecked and unregulated growth.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Hijacked Public]

And Amazon or some other online retailer will have to be the ones to do it.

While it is fun to imagine powerful corporations ratifying our collective will as directed by their testosterone level, for them it will come down to a simple business decision. If the impact of complying with the law (or the risk of not) is greater than the cost to litigate it, they'll litigate it. Imagining any other motivation for a business is self deceit.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[ghetto2ivy]

You are absolutely right. NYC should join Long Island and Westchester and become its own state. That way the NYC "hole" won't have to continue subsidizing all of upstate NYC.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[ichthus]

You having to pay a "usage" tax is different than the merchant having to collect sales tax to pay your state government.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[D Ninja]

To be fair, sales tax is lower by 2%. Of course I live in the city, so pay an additional 3 or 4% income tax and 4% sales tax - but the situation was similar in Philly.

Except, if you live OR work within the Philadelphia city limits, you pay a 4.x% wage tax. Not fun, and pretty stupid as the city still doesn't have a real budget to work with.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[poetmatt]

Umm, my memory isn't perfect, but didn't the Newegg situation take care of this case?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

Well they're not taxing mine. If I'm forced to collect the 7% sales tax through some automated system, I will, but then I'll refund it directly back to the NY customer. And I will NOT be filing any kind of tax form with New York.

New York is welcome to send the police to Southern Pennsylvania to try to arrest me. Good luck with that. The PA Militia (read: rifle-toting rednecks) and PA National Guard does not take kindly to foreign invaders, so I'm think I'm relatively safe.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

NYC sucks down more dollars than any other city.

Businesses rarely buy the buildings in New York City - they are usually given gratis while the New York State taxpayers shoulder the burden.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Another business with affiliates, CBD.com decided that rather than charge NY tax, they cut off all affiliates in NY. The revoked my account even though (according to their affiliate newsletter) I had been one of their top earners.

So, instead of increasing sales tax revenues, the state lost some income taxes.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Red Flayer]

Hmm... have you tried this?

First, sales tax is assessed based on delivery address, not billing address. This may be hard for NY to deal with, since online delivery means they'll need to map IP address (or customer account) to physical address.

Second, by doing that, you're committing tax evasion. You are responsible for use tax on those items you use that are taxable where you use them, but you bought them where they were untaxed, or taxed at a lower rate. Sure, this is often overlooked, and states (and cities) have a hard time enforcing it...

I just thought I'd mention those two items, since you were promoting tax evasion in your post... wanted to make sure that anyone choosing to follow your advice is aware that they would be committing a crime.

On a personal note, I think it's immoral to evade taxes anyway, since assuming you live in NYC, you're reaping the benefits of government services while freeloading off of those who actually pay their taxes.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[operagost]

Now I see what the problem is. NY is taxing the hell out of the entire state to subsidize Albany and NYC (causing businesses to leave and inflicting a permanent recession on central NY) and NYC residents think it's exactly the opposite!

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

the technologically gifted shouldn't be troubled; thepiratebay is only a click away. this tax only affects those who prefer damaged goods (ie, DRM-infected wares).

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[MightyYar]

Yeah, I remember the city wage tax :) I lived one block from the Philly city limits to avoid it! Really counter-productive. At the very least they should have reduced the rate for residents to keep people from fleeing the city. Then again, Philly politicians don't really have all that much say since Harrisburg pulls the strings. It's similar in New York, where New York City lost their local control when they spent themselves into bankruptcy in the 70s.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[MightyYar]

They get to keep Buffalo, though, right?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[rwven]

Or you could just buy some itunes giftcards which have song credits.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Attila Dimedici]

NY State argues that Amazon "affiliates" (I don't remember the exact term that Amazon uses for these business partners) that are located in NY represent Amazon and therefore Amazon has a physical presence in NY and therefore must collect NY sales tax. Amazon is challenging this interpretation in Federal Court.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[gerardrj]

Since there is no tax on the purchases now and this would require new legislation so the tax could be any amount. Your $.99 download could be taxed $.51 suddenly making your songs cost $1.50 each and erasing almost any hope you'll buy online.

The thing that bothers me most about the inflammatory language used by the politicians regarding the urgency of the issue and the hot-button programs they say they have to cut to make the budget balance. In my home town of Mesa, AZ the idiot mayor and most of council were saying the budget was a mess, all these bonds were coming due, roads needed fixing and we had to close the libraries and lay off lots of police and fire personnel to balance the budget. One council member was level headed and came up with a budget that balanced the budget (or nearly so) and only cut non-essential services such as after school art programs and the funny one... slicing the monthly cell phone stipend for the council members from $3,000 to $500, over $200K in savings for the year. The council voted strongly against the centrist, level headed plan and the alarmist budget went to a public vote. Since this was all televised as a "town meeting" and many people saw that there was no 'need' to cut police and library personnel the majority budget was soundly defeated.
To this day I think the mayor and council sill get an obscene allowance for cell phone and car usage.
The biggest idiocy was that most of the council claimed the city didn't know the bonds from 14 years ago were coming due. How stupid or willfully ignorant do you have to be to not know that your budget needs to account for several million dollars of debt service?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[scubamage]

Further I think this opens up another issue... those who pirate materials could be tried for tax evasion. Exactly how they nailed Al Capone. They couldn't get him on other things, but they could get him on that. I was always under the impression that taxes are paid based on the geographic location of the point of sale.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[pete-classic]

I think it's immoral to evade taxes

That's a bit simplistic, isn't it?

What if the tax money was being used to torture puppies? Would it be okay to evade that? What if it was some other thing you find highly morally objectionable? Be it blowing up some country you have no quarrel with or doing embryonic stem cell research. (I understand that the electorate is generally divided into either-or camps on those two topics, but I think both are a bad idea.)

I understand that NY isn't doing any of these things, but there's always something.

The fundamental reason that I believe that taxes (and corresponding spending) should be absolutely minimal is that it forces people to fund things they may find morally objectionable under threat of loss of liberty. I think liberty should trump having our personal needs met by the state.

-Peter

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in New York and I can't stand how they tax every f'ing thing possible. For instance, we have a mortgage tax in the state. If you purchase or refinance a property you are subject to paying 1.05% to 1.8% of the mortgage amount as a New York State Mortgage Tax. Only one other state in the country has a state mortgage tax. Property taxes are also out of control in comparison to other states and constantly rise out of control. For instance if you own an average sized house in Westchester County just 30 minutes north of New York City, don't be surprised to see a property tax bill of $10,000 to $30,000 / year.

I'm waiting for NY State to start taxing taxes. It's only a matter of time.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Theoboley]

So with that being said... Would you rather see your property taxes go up, or a measly small tax on a .99 cent song download?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . they have less facilities to run and even less enrollment year after year.

Even if they have fewer facilities to run and lower enrollment year after year, I'm in favor of the increase. Perhaps if the children learn English, the rest of the community will as well.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

I wonder why these politicians (New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland - they are all in trouble) never had the idea to "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" and "cut spending"?

It's as if the don't know how to do what every American family does every day - pinch pennies & cut spending.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[LouisJBouchard]

That is exactly what is going on, although I have to add that most of the politicians are from Downstate NY and most people there thing Upstate means Albany (forget about Syracuse, Watertown, Binghamton, Rochester, and Buffalo).

This biggest way this issue shows up is the issue involving taxing tobacco and gas on Native reservations. Looks like Paterson is going to try again not realizing the mistakes of Cuomo and Pataki. The last time they tried to tax sales on reservations, it lead to quite a bit of blood shed on both sides and embarrassment for the governor. Part of that issue too is that all major transportation arteries in Upstate NY run through an Native reservation of some sort or another.

Glad I left NY years ago. Have no plans to move back.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[wcbarksdale]

New York City pays $11 billion more in State taxes than it gets back in funding despite being the economic engine of the State.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[jgtg32a]

That would require going to NJ, so I'm not so sure about that.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[DarKnyht]

Except they tax those too. TN charges a use tax when you purchase with a gift card on iTunes.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahah are you kidding? The State takes MUCH more money out of NYC than what we get back. You enjoy a lot of my tax dollars in addition to being additionally taxed on the city level. NYS would have the economic power of Iowa if it wasn't for that leech of a city New York City. Also are building purchases really the strongest point you can make? Lets talk property taxes on both businesses and residential spaces. Lets talk everything from sales tax to payroll taxes. Even though wall street fucked up there are still roughly 6 million our of 19 million people in our state paying a shit load of money that goes to the rest of the state.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[tompaulco]

What if the tax money was being used to torture puppies? Would it be okay to evade that?
Apparently not. Part of my tax money is used to kill babies, but I still have to pay it. I'm sure that tax money is used for a lot of things that we disagree with, but we are still required to pay them.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Chris Mattern]

Good thing you cited an unbiased source on that.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[NiceGeek]

Indeed. Care to substantiate that?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the tax money was being used to torture puppies? Would it be okay to evade that?

Not that tax money. Tax money for any other purpose, yes.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[corbettw]

Yeah, it's not like Pennsylvanians have ever mounted armed resistance to taxes before.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[lgw]

They'll be losing me next year! Honestly, why do people stay in this high-tax state?

I personally find California's tax rates outrageous, but the different in income more than offsets. I suspect the same is true for some New Yorkers.

However, I'm moving back to a no-income-tax state the moment I retire.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[falcon5768]

It always amazed me how NY could be totally blind to the fact that on any given day ANYWHERE in the top 3/4ths of NJ you would find a shopping mart half full of NY cars. Even after they eliminated tax all together on some stuff in NY you guys just like pour over the river into Jersey on the weekends to shop shop shop at the malls.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[berashith]

I love the diet soda bit.

I cant decide to be pissed that diet soda is being somehow promoted as healthy, or to be pissed that the govt feels that the tax code is in place to modify behavior instead of produce revenue.

I guess this way the people screaming about the stupidity argue about which is more stupid, and no one presents an agreed to coherent argument.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[STrinity]

I know that was a joke, but even with the tax, it'd be cheaper to shop online.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[blockhouse]

But when you retire, you won't be making any taxable income, right? I don't think you've thought your clever plan all the way through.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Beefaroni]

ya they have us over a barrel in Ohio... and they are always broke. my village also has a school tax on top of that. guess what, they got a 4% salary raise this year. now they say they need a new school since the neighboring school system crippled their economy with one (or what is left of their economy). crazy, Taft chased our industry out of here, and yet the schools think we have more money hidden somewhere.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? What state? I'm pretty sure that's very illegal.

Maybe you mean foetuses. Foeti?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Dan541]

Or you could just download for free and avoid this injustice.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[rwven]

Buy them at walmart.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Shakrai]

It's as if the don't know how to do what every American family does every day - pinch pennies & cut spending.

Paterson is trying to do that. I commend him for his efforts even though I work for a health care facility that receives >90% of our funding from Albany. We could be in for some hard times if the cuts are aimed at OMH. But I don't care -- New York State has ignored fiscal reality for far too long and it's time to rein in spending.

Whether or not the legislature actually goes along with it is a different matter altogether. I foresee another late budget and a lot of fighting in Albany in the months ahead. At least they won't be able to blame partisan politics this time -- the Democrats control both chambers now -- it will just be good ole fashioned greed.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Shakrai]

New York is welcome to send the police to Southern Pennsylvania to try to arrest me

They'll do worse than that. They'll send lawyers ;)

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Shakrai]

New York City pays $11 billion more in State taxes than it gets back in funding despite being the economic engine of the State.

Speaking as an Upstater let me make you an offer: Find your own water supply and keep your convicted felons in downstate facilities and we'll refund you all of that money. Oh and stop trying to impose your gun control agenda on the rest of the state.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Gr8Apes]

Interstate commerce may only be regulated (and taxed) by the feds. It's directly in the Constitution, IIRC. The state can make a law that says the buyer has to pay tax on something delivered from out of state. I'm unclear how that isn't a run-around on the interstate commerce bit though. Guess one of these days I may ask a lawyer.

Both New York and Connecticut are in serious trouble with the banking failure. We've lost more than 300,000 of the highest paying jobs in the world, which were responsible for almost 20% of the respective states income tax collections (both corporate and personal). The result is catastrophic, and now we have to pay the piper for years of unchecked and unregulated growth.

You know, I actually have trouble bringing up any sympathy for that. Those same highest paying 300K jobs are a large part of the reason we're in this financial crisis we're in. So I'm glad those responsible for once are paying the piper. I'm just sorry the rest of the world has to suffer as well.

As for the city and state spending beyond its means, that's the voters' fault. (They did vote in the folks who ran with unbalanced and unrealistic budgets, correct?) I'm upset that I'm having to pay the piper without ever "enjoying" any of the illicit proceeds.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Dan541]

So if your grandmother lives in Canada you should pay Canadian taxes too?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[wastedlife]

Why would you pay the NY State tax on online sales when you don't live in NY? I think you misunderstood. They are forcing Amazon and online retailers with any "referral or affiliate" presence in NY to charge the tax for shipments to residents of NY. They are doing this because no one claims the "use tax" on their tax forms for online orders. I believe this and any other state's "use tax" needs to be ruled unconstitutional and stopped. States aren't allowed to put a sales tax on goods purchased from another state. Changing the name to Use Tax doesn't change the fact that it is an illegal sales tax.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Otto]

No. Newegg caved. Amazon, on the other hand, is still suing New York state over it, IIRC.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[pete-classic]

Not talking about what you're required to do, talking about what's moral.

Do you fit into my statement above? That you think it's okay to collect taxes to pay for our invasion of Iraq, but not to fund things that involve abortion? Or are you like me, and don't really feel okay about either?

-Peter

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[wastedlife]

Whoops, sorry, reread your posts and realized I'm the one that misunderstood what you were talking about. Do you have any "affiliates" of your business located in NY? If so, the NY State law requires you to collect taxes from your customers located in NY and pay the State. As to what relationship constitutes an "affiliate", you'd probably need to consult the law in more detail or check with a lawyer.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Gorobei]

Honestly, why do people stay in this high-tax state?

A bit of paradox, I agree. But easily resolved: the high tax states tend to be high income states, and higher incomes mean people want to outsource most stuff (high incomes imply more specialized skills, so that makes sense.) So, in extreme cases, like sections of Manhattan, people outsource:

1. Cooking. Restaurants and catering save time, and let you have a smaller kitchen to boot.
2. Cleaning. Maids go it better at a better price.
3. Child care. Nannies save time.
4. Security. Why bother to lock your door, etc, doormen, etc, are cheaper and better than alarms and owning guns.
5. Shopping. Sure, you pay more, but it's easier to delegate quality control to an agent.
6. Driving. Cabs, limos, subways. Easier and better.
7. A ton of other stuff.

All this complexity requires more infrastructure costs (management does not scale linearly,) so you need a lot of policemen, judges, restaurant inspectors, train supervisors, etc. Hence, taxes go up in a non-linear fashion.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[DarKnyht]

And... Pay them same tax unless you want to drive across the state line to go to Walmart.

But who am I to complain, we have no Income Tax.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

For instance if you own an average sized house in Westchester County just 30 minutes north of New York City, don't be surprised to see a property tax bill of $10,000 to $30,000 / year.
Pray tell what does an average size house in West Chester County cost? Then talk about taxes.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[tompaulco]

Like most people, I think taxes for things I approve of are great, while taxes for things I don't approve of are awful. Of course, I am a hypocrite. But then so is everybody else.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

>PA national guard

WTF, would someone please explain to an ignorant foreigner why a state has a national guard?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[pete-classic]

Ah! But there is another choice!

After years of wondering why the other guys are so stupid when it comes to policy I realized that maybe I'm not so smart either. In fact, I realized that maybe we, collectively, shouldn't be telling each other, individually, what to do.

I can almost guarantee that I do some things that you think are a horrible idea. And it's likely that you do some things I don't like, too. But I realize that I'm not the best person to make those choices for you.

I think this applies equally to money. Doesn't it?

The Libertarian Party is the most mainstream expression of this idea that I'm aware of. Next time, why don't you vote against this sort of hypocrisy? You strike me as the kind of guy who isn't really comfortable doing things because "everybody else is doing it".

-Peter

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[JesseMcDonald]

I think it's immoral to evade taxes

That's a bit simplistic, isn't it?

It's not just simplistic, it's insulting. How can it be immoral to attempt to nullify or counter someone else's immoral actions (in this case, theft)? If the GP has a problem with "freeloading" then I would advise doing what his/her best to minimize reliance on such programs. Keep in mind, however, that we aren't responsible for their existence or the manner in which they inhibit the private supply of similar goods and services.

When the other side stops forcing people to accept their services, and employing force to grant themselves a greater or lesser advantage over potential competitors, then we can talk about the immorality of avoiding agreed-to payment. Until then the GP is just advocating further punishment of the victims of these crimes.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[JesseMcDonald]

You are indeed required to pay, in the sense that refusal will be met with force. That doesn't make refusal immoral, however, which was the point under discussion.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[CptNerd]

Six letters: AFSCME. And four more: SEIU.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Golddess]

Perhaps, in relation to your sig, the government really is your daddy, when you are an employee of theirs that is.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[mabhatter654]

the issue is that it's not the job of an out-of-state company to collect those taxes people in New York owe. That is an unfair tax burden to have to file tax paper in every state you might sell something to online.. it's a burden brick and mortar stores don't have to follow. Imagine if they could go to the first exit on the interstate outside NY and demand they file NY tax forms because NY drivers can drive there.

I think they should go after bank/credit card companies. There is more legal grounding because they have to have presence in your state to offer banking services and follow your state's laws. Visa/Mastercard banks are allowing people to skirt the laws when they know the true address of the person shopping. I think it would be a small thing to implement sales tax right at your credit card bill. It's mailed to your house address, so there's little room for dispute. It's better to chase companies IN the state than companies that just deliver to the state.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[mabhatter654]

nope. iTunes cards add cash to the account. That is then charged off like a credit card with sales tax included.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[steelfood]

In a word: unions.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[mjwx]

so I'm think I'm relatively safe.

Safe certainly is a relative term vs. armoured cars and helicopters.

Besides, they will just start out by using the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. The Lawyer.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[mgblst]

Only in the US would they call someone from their own country foreign. I guess a different state is as far as some people travel.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[d20_techie]

Except that some states (and the Fed) do in fact tax your retirement as an income if it is not from an excempted source (read TSP, IRA...etc.). My father(asshole) pays taxes on his Military Retirment and GCS Retirment. The same Gov't he served for 50 years says he earned this money and then turns around and says, "Oh, but we want some back. Thanks!"

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

Well it's no different than someone in the EU, who lives in France, calling Germans foreign. The United States is the same deal where I am considered a non-citizen of New York, and therefore not subject to foreign NY law.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

Okay here's the deal:

Amazon.com has a place for people like me to sell online. New York claims that because some of those persons are from NY, that makes amazon have a presence in NY, even though those people are completely independent from amazon. Same applies to Ebay. Therefore NY wants amazon/ebay to add a 7% tax to all NY sales.

My argument is that I'm not amazon's employee - I'm independent and represent no one but myself. Furthermore I'm not a New York citizen, therefore NY has no authority over me. Furthermore: "it's taxation without representation" - I'm being taxed by a foreign body who does not represent me & for whom I never voted.

I am not going to collect and submit sales tax forms to NY on April 15, 2009. If they want to sue me, or issue a warrant for my arrest, go right ahead. I'll throw the papers in the trash and make sure never to visit NY State.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

>>>>>PA national guard

>WTF, would someone please explain to an ignorant foreigner why a state has a national guard?

For the same reason why France, Germany, and Italy have national guards. I don't know if you've ever studied the American Civil War, but you'll probably note that the army is divided into State-based units, such as the Maryland 2nd regiment, or the Massachusetts 3rd, or the Georgian 5th.

The modern U.S. army has eliminated most of that to create a seamless whole, but the States still maintain their own private armies (national guard) and militias (their citizens).

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

This is the REAL conflict in America.

It isn't Republicans versus Democrats. It's city versus countryside, and it's been going on since 1989. Most people in the country (and suburbs) want minimal taxation and government to "butt out" of their affairs. Meanwhile city folk what free handouts like subways, hospitals, new baseball stadiums - they want to be treated like children being cared for by daddy government.

Country - independent
City - dependent

That's what almost all politics in America boils down to.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[electrictroy]

Not quite but if amazon has people (like me) selling used books, and they live in Canada, then by New York's flawed argument that gives amazon a "presence" in Canada and liable to Canadian sales tax.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Shakrai]

I blame it on the Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. Sims they ruled that all state legislative districts (even State Senate districts) have to be roughly equal in population. Prior to that ruling most State Senates were configured geographically like the US Senate -- which tended to keep the cities from dominating the countryside. The lower house was then configured for population in the same manner as the House of Representatives.

I'd really like to know why it's permissible for the US Senate to violate "one man, one vote" but not for upper houses in state legislatures to do the same. This is a mini version of what the smaller states feared when the Constitution was first being drafted -- they'd be dominated by the larger states because they would never be able to equal them in population.

In NYS it's particularly offensive. Upstate has 40% of the state's population and 0% of the statewide offices. This whole state is run from New York City and the rest of us are just left behind. I'd love to see the Sims ruling reversed. Hell, it might even be unconstitutional anyway: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[wastedlife]

Thanks for clearing that up. As I said in my first rant, this NY State law is unconstitutional and I sincerely hope Amazon or some other big online retailer brings this through the US courts. Also, I feel the "usage tax" that many states have for out-of-state purchases is equally unconstitutional. Just curious, if you run a shop through Amazon, are you sure they aren't charging the tax themselves and paying it to NY state?

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Ihmhi]

And New Jersey has insane property taxes - not to mention the cost of homes.

I saw a home in PA... 3 bedroom, 4 bath, driveway and an acre of land. It was going for $200,000 (and this was BEFORE the housing slump). In NJ that would go for $800,000 minimum.

I live in a small house... maybe 1,000 square feet on both floors, a driveway, and a small backyard (~200 square feet) and the property taxes are something on the order of $6,500 a year.

Sleazy

[qoncept]

"Let's propose tax cuts where it'll hurt em so they'll favor our new tax."

Re:Sleazy

[QuantumRiff]

Thats just how government works. If your facing a budget shortfall, do you lay off some people that do manual data entry, and maybe hire a programmer to automate it on a quick contract, possibly cut some small programs that only effect a small percentage of the taxpayers, or do you THREATEN TO LAY OFF 2/3 OF THE HIGHWAY PATROL, SO YOUR CHILDREN WILL NOT BE SAFE!!!!

Which one do you think gets voter attention? I agree, its shitty. Oregon did do that a few times. In the east part of it where I lived, the nearest cop might be 4 hours away. Sure changes your thoughts on gun ownership...

Re:Sleazy

[icebrain]

the nearest cop might be 4 hours away. Sure changes your thoughts on gun ownership...

Heck, four miutes away is too far when you need the police. Fact is, the police rarely make it to the scene of a crime in time to do anything but take a report, render first aid, or find the body. And really, they aren't even required to respond at all.

Anyways, back on subject... I'm surprised NYC didn't adopt the same tactic used by many rural Georgia towns and start cracking down on moving violations. Just lower a few speed limits, throw in a red light camera or two, and find a few willing police officers and judges... and you too can fund half your city's budget through traffic fines on out-of-town visitors!

On the positive side

[truthsearch]

Well, on the up side he's trying to raise more money through products rather than income taxes. I'd prefer the taxes on ipods, cigars, gasoline, and luxury cars to income tax increases. Of course if it hurts NY businesses (I don't think it will), then it'll hurt in the long run. But the state needs to stop bleeding money immediately.

Re:On the positive side

[Fastfwd]

Why not use income taxes for services that apply to everyone like education and health?

I agree that other things like road maintenance should be taxed on products like gas.

I am Canadian so taxing the income is just normal to me.

Re:On the positive side

[aesiamun]

18% tax on non diet soda? You support the so called obesity tax?

Re:On the positive side

[Andy Dodd]

I do. It reduces medical insurance costs for everyone in the long run, gains the state money, and is easy enough to avoid - just drink diet.

Of course, I'm diabetic so I've been drinking diet soda only for over a decade.

Re:On the positive side

[johnsonav]

It reduces medical insurance costs for everyone in the long run...

So you support taxing anything which might cause higher medical costs for the insured, in order to discourage its use? Why not just ban it outright?

Re:On the positive side

[truthsearch]

How much does the state spend on health care, including state employee health plans, public hospitals, etc.? And how much of that could be reduced if people didn't consume extremely unhealthy and needless things like soda?

When the state is in economic crisis and can't pay the bills, yeah, I'm all for this kind of tax. When the budget is balanced and the economy is stronger, then I'm not as much for it.

Re:On the positive side

[MightyYar]

I stopped that fight a long time ago. Sin taxes are here to stay, since they work for the people who wish to control the behavior of others. First alcohol, then cigarettes, now freaking sugar. As if having a bunch of saccharine coursing through your veins is healthy.

Re:On the positive side

[zehaeva]

I happen to be allergic to most artificial sugars, specifically the ones used in diet sodas. Should I really have to pay a tax on a beverage when the alternative is to go to the emergency room unable to breath cause my throat has swollen its self shut?

Re:On the positive side

[d3ac0n]

Sooo... You didn't just notice the glaring HOLE in your own statement there?

Allow me to quote it for you:

gains the state money, and is easy enough to avoid

How is the state going to gain money if it's so easy to avoid? You see, taxes like this idiotic one ALWAYS neglect to take into account the resulting human response to the new tax. People will simply drink less sugary soda and more diet, or will drink iced teas and juices. In the end, the "Obesity" tax will do NOTHING to stop obesity, and will collect almost NO money. It's a waste of time that serves only to intrude more Government into people's lives.

Re:On the positive side

[Nursie]

Wait, aren't these EXACTLY the sorts of things that we Europeans with our socialised healthcare are warned about?

When the government controls healthcare they decide access! They'll decide you can't do things, they'll tax stuff, they'll restrict your behaviour based on health grounds because they don't want to support/pay for the consequences!

And now it looks like you're getting those laws anyway without the benefits...

Sucks to be you!

Re:On the positive side

[aesiamun]

Yes soda is the culprit. Tax everything with processed sugar then, not just soda. Hell just tax everything that isn't a nonprocessed vegetable!

Re:On the positive side

[larry bagina]

bleeding money. Interesting. Let's say you had a gaping leg wound that was bleeding, well, blood. For this analogy, assume you're a hemophiliac and the bleeding won't stop on it's own accord. Would you get some blood packs and inject them into your arm? No, you'd stop the bleeding (and inject blood if needed). Raising taxes doesn't stop the bleeding; cutting spending does.

Re:On the positive side

[rhsanborn]

What about those of us who are capable of moderating our caloric intake and can drink regular soda at the same time? You can keep your nanny state, tyvm.

Re:On the positive side

[truthsearch]

You can't drink water or juice? You're actually claiming that you are forced to drink regular soda. You somehow suffer without it. Seriously?

Re:On the positive side

[Ioldanach]

The state's money bleeding problem is because we're spending so much, maybe we need to cut back on the special interest programs.

Re:On the positive side

[Hal_Porter]

The CO2 used in soda also causes global warming.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

How about we just apply 18% to all food (including your diet soda) to discourage overeating. Would you be okay with that?

Why or why not?

   

Re:On the positive side

[DAldredge]

Something tells me that you aren't in favor of a 18% tax on the things you like.

Re:On the positive side

[sunking2]

Tax sugar all you want. Nothing contains it anymore. Don't you dare tax my high fructose corn syrup though!

Re:On the positive side

[truthsearch]

So the extremely high tax on cigarettes has stopped all smoking, reducing the income from cigarette taxes to zero? I'm sure you're aware that many people still smoke even with the high tax. Same will be for soda, and the soda tax will be nowhere near as high as the one on cigarettes.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just not drink soda.

But I guess that's too rational of a solution, idiot.

Re:On the positive side

[JeanCroix]

I'd prefer the taxes on ipods, cigars, gasoline, and luxury cars to income tax increases.

Well, since we're naming off things we don't use or don't approve of for for higher taxation, I'd prefer taxes on iphones, soy-based fake meat, fuel-grade ethanol, hybrid cars, and - oh, what the heck, let's say bibles. Rather than income taxes, of course.

Re:On the positive side

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

I do. It reduces medical insurance costs for everyone in the long run

Except the governor is also proposing a tax increase on health insurance too (plus auto insurance, homeowners insurance, etc). Let's drive more people off of private insurance! That'll solve all of our problems.

NY is second in per capita expenditures in the country and nearly double that of California. I've watched the state rot around me for the past 30 years. NYC was relatively immune to it since it is the financial capital of the US, but the other 95% of the state has long suffered under these types of policies. Upstate and Western NY have had a fleeing population, increasing welfare rolls and businesses looking to relocate for decades because of our wasteful spending and burdensome taxation and regulation.

Squeezing even further will just force more activity out of the state, even if people choose to still live here. Fireworks are illegal in NY, but as soon as you cross the border to PA on 15, you'll see the fireworks store. Every summer, you see hundreds of people in my tiny town setting off fireworks. Just how do you think they got them? Almost all of the population of NY is within a 2 hour drive to another state. Buy stuff in sufficient quantities and it becomes worth it to make a trip, especially if you're already going to visit friends and family in adjacent states. The suckers dumb enough to keep buying in NY will pay the extra tax and the rest of us will be boosting the economies of PA, NJ, VT, CT, etc instead of our home state.

NY needs to cut some of the sacred cows... plain and simple. That's the only way of resolving the crisis.

Re:On the positive side

[plague3106]

Public roads benefit me far more than public eduction or health care.

Re:On the positive side

[Mr. Underbridge]

. I'd prefer the taxes on ipods, cigars, gasoline, and luxury cars to income tax increases.

Only problem: Sales taxes are inherently regressive. And it's not like we're talking yachts here, we're talking music.

Re:On the positive side

[mykey2k]

Some cities (Chicago being one) tax bottled water.

Next you'll be saying to drink it from a tap.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

We have socialized healthcare - Medicare - which pays a huge chunk of our hospital bills. That's why some American politicians get the "bright" idea to tax hamburgers to discourage bad health risks & lower Medicare costs.

Me, I prefer Thomas Jefferson's view:

(updated to the modern age): "Whether my neighbor eats one hamburger, many hamburgers, or no hamburgers, matters not to me. His actions do not harm my body, my property, nor my rights, so I will allow my neighbor to eat or not eat as many burgers as he pleases." - That is the true meaning of individual liberty. Do whatever you damn well please, and respect others' rights to do the same, so long as they do not harm your body, property, or rights.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

I disagree. You don't have a right to tell someone "You can't eat that" or "You can't smoke that", because that makes them a slave to the government (i.e. not free to live how they want). But you do have a right to deny free handouts to such people.

Re:On the positive side

[plague3106]

Hmm... except that they are finding that artificial sweeteners cause you to end up eating more, since your body detects "sweet" but isn't getting any calories for it. So it drives your hunger up.

How about we just stop paying for health problems with could be prevented by eating healthy and exercising? It amazes me the number of fat people that will have two whoopers, two large fries, oh and a diet coke please! Yes, that happens. My wife used to work in a bariatric clinic.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem there is that not many sodas offer diet - I'm serious, maybe in NYC or Buffalo or somewhere you can find the diet version of whatever brand of soda you want, but go upstate into any of the dozens of little middle-of-nowhere towns and try finding non-caffeinated diet drinks, and there might be diet Sprite if you're lucky. If not, you've got a half-hour drive to the nearest 'city' that contains a supermarket big enough for what you want, and then you're spending more money anyways.

Also, what about soda fountain beverages? They're now going to have to tax diet drinks and not tax non-diet drinks, but what happens when a person orders a beverage that's half diet, half regular in order to cut back on sugar without losing the flavor? Do they have to pay half the tax? And what about the kind of establishments where you pay for a drink, get handed a cup, and can get whatever you like out of the fountain? It's only going to make running a business in NYS that much more of a hassle...

And, last but not least, some people are allergic to artificial sugars, and some people with renal (kidney) problems can't have artificial sugars. And, of course, we run into the issue that people who can't have caffeine can't really have diet soda either...

Re:On the positive side

[TheLink]

Dying soon after you start being less productive reduces costs for everyone in the long run.

You are going to die of something in the end.

At the rate medical technology is progressing, tell me honestly what are the odds you are going to die of something cheap?

They are likely to be able to keep you alive as long as someone pays the bill.

So it's best you try to die suddenly not too long after you start going downhill. Get a massive heart attack or something, and try your best to not to be resuscitated[1].

But don't die too early. If you die too early (say before you are 30) that's a net loss since you've taken out more than you put in.

[1] If you succeed in a valiant manner, maybe the State/Gov should award you a White Fatty Heart medal or something, and present it posthumously in a nice ceremony for your family and friends to attend - and family members get a free super size meal on the anniversary of your death. For smokers who somehow sacrifice themselves similarly and not too expensively, they get the Black Lung medal- maybe their family members get free cartons of cigarettes instead.

Be grateful for those who sacrifice their lives for their country :).

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

But you still need to feed the vampires...

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

> But the state needs to stop bleeding money immediately.
And the solution to leaking budget is to pump more money into the leaking system?
Imho it'll just leak harder than before.

Re:On the positive side

[whathappenedtomonday]

As if having a bunch of saccharine coursing through your veins is healthy.

It isn't and it might make you fat.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

I wonder why the idea of "cut spending" and "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" never occurs to these Governors and Legislators?

Re:On the positive side

[vux984]

I guess you didn't bother to even read the summary, because you seem to have missed the 2nd sentence:

"On the chopping block is $700 million in school aid and $3.5 billion in health care subsidies."

So over 4 billion in spending cuts, in just 2 areas, and probably several others too.

Re:On the positive side

[truthsearch]

State funds are our property. If those funds are spent on health care, and your neighbor does things which burden the health care system more than others, than he is doing harm to your property by effectively taking it from you.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

This is complete off topic but I'll post anyways.

Drinking diet soda is dumb. Several studies have concluded consumption of diet sodas actually encourage consumption of additional sugars. Artificial sweeteners are far. far sweeter than sugar. This means your body becomes conditioned to super sweet foods to satisfy your "sweet tooth." This in turn means, when people eat foods which are not artificially sweetened, you will eat/drink far more of it to satisfy your "sweet tooth." In other words, drinking diet sodas is very likely to directly cause you to consume far more sugary foods.

Either drink the real drink or best of all, simply stop drinking soda. There exists no end of studies showing sodas (sugars actually) have a direct link to almost every disease known to man. Okay, that's an exaguration, but sugar has been directly linked to dozens and dozens of serious yet common diseases.

In short, large quantiles of sugar is very bad for you. Consumption of artificially sweetened foods actually encourages you to consume even larger quantities of sugar. Break the cycle. DO NOT DRINK DIET SODAS!

If you are trying to diet, drinking diet sodas is one of the worst things you can possibly do to your self. It is likely the primary reason you fail at dieting.

Re:On the positive side

[truthsearch]

Actually, we are talking yachts here. RTFA.

Almost everything suggested for a sales tax increase is a non-necessity.

Re:On the positive side

[LandDolphin]

So stop spending those funds on Healthcare and let your hamburger eating neighbor spend his own funds on healthcare.

Re:On the positive side

[zehaeva]

I don't have to but since I don't drink soda in huge quantities and my effective choices for soda are the taxed kind I can drink and the untaxed kind I can't then wth am I to do? Why am I being punished because others can't regulate their own intake of sugared beverages? what happens if i run into a restaurant that serves only soda(unlikely yes), I have to pay taxes on the only beverage that wont send me to the hospital? oh, i suppose i could drink tap water. If you're going to tax this stuff do it evenly, if at all, please.

Re:On the positive side

[Bob-taro]

I guess you didn't bother to even read the summary, because you seem to have missed the 2nd sentence: "On the chopping block is $700 million in school aid and $3.5 billion in health care subsidies." So over 4 billion in spending cuts, in just 2 areas, and probably several others too.

FTA:

Paterson's 2009-10 budget proposal represents only a 1% increase in total spending from this year's budget - the smallest increase in a dozen years. It also calls for:

• A 3.3%, or $698 million, reduction in school aid.
• $3.5 billion in health care savings, including reductions in payments to hospitals and nursing homes.
• Video slot machines at Belmont Park, more multistate lottery games and expanded hours for the state's Quick Draw lottery game.
• Layoffs for 521 state workers and the elimination of seven state agencies.

So this isn't an overall spending decrease, but a spending "deceleration". Put another way, it's not a step in the right direction, but it's a smaller step in the wrong direction than usual.

Re:On the positive side

[Duradin]

And diet pop is so good for you. Really, you're not saving any medical costs by promoting diet pop. The effects aren't as directly obvious as HFC pops (yet) but they are there and they do cost the insurance system money.

Cane sugar pop is much better for you (plural you, not singular you) in the long run than any of the diet pops (at least until the FDA stops propping up the corn and sugar industries by acknowledging natural no-to-low calorie sweeteners like Stevia).

Cane sugar pop is still a niche product and thus already expensive (though in my locale the price of Coke and Pepsi has been catching up to the price of Jones). Yes, it has calories so you have to have some self control and not guzzle it like water (figuratively) but the ingredients aren't as harmful as HFC or the various no-calorie artificial sweeteners in the mainstream brands.

I've still got enough disposable income to burn on "luxuries" like food that isn't slowly poisoning me. The masses aren't as lucky and if given the choice for $5 artificially sweetened pop and $7.20 cane sugar pop are probably going to go with the $5 option.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

>>>State funds are our property. If those funds are spent on health care, and your neighbor does things which burden the health care system more than others, than he is doing harm to your property by effectively taking it from you.

Yes that's true. And you have a right to deny your fat neighbor the "charity" of free healthcare.

You do NOT have the right to take away his freedom of religion.... er, to eat as many burgers as he wants. Your neighbor is not your slave to control and dictate what he can or can not eat.

Re:On the positive side

[operagost]

It reduces personal freedom without increasing freedom for others, so I am against it. Freedom trumps the nanny state.

Re:On the positive side

[nabsltd]

You can't drink water or juice? You're actually claiming that you are forced to drink regular soda. You somehow suffer without it. Seriously?

Yes, seriously.

Pick something that you consume a lot more of than the majority of the population (high-speed internet...we'll tax you on each byte transferred, etc.), and replace that with "regular soda" in your argument.

Once enough people stop drinking sugared beverages, then the government will have to put a tax on the "diet" ones to make up for the tax shortfall. Taxing non-diet soda is just another "what 'for the good of the children/fat people/whatever' reason can we use to get more tax money?" plan.

Basically, you try to convince all the people who "won't be impacted by the tax" to vote for it (or to vote for the representatives who implemented it). Then, you can get all the people impacted by this tax to vote for the "diet soda tax", because it will even things out.

Re:On the positive side

[operagost]

For the leftist, this only applies to recreational drugs and abortion. Everything they don't like: cigarettes, gasoline, junk food-- fire away!

Re:On the positive side

[operagost]

Damn you, you evil Reaganite!

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

People will simply drink less sugary soda and more diet
In the end, the "Obesity" tax will do NOTHING to stop obesity

Reconcile those two statements for me. You defeated your own argument.

The tax has a dual purpose: revenue and lowering the amount of sugared soda people drink. They are well-aware that fewer people will drink soda. That's half the point, something that seems to have escaped you before you flew into a frothing rage.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

Why is is that leftists often end-up looking like the right? (Or the church.) No sex. No drugs. No rock-and-roll. Oh and no sugar either.

Re:On the positive side

[vux984]

So this isn't an overall spending decrease, but a spending "deceleration". Put another way, it's not a step in the right direction, but it's a smaller step in the wrong direction than usual.

I disagree.

Thanks to inflation, you have to spend 3% more this year than last year to buy the same stuff. A 1% total spending increase (not corrected for inflation) actually represents a net reduction in the amount of goods/services purchased.

Besides to carry the bleeding wound metaphor... taking a gushing wound and reducing it to an oozing wound is big step in the RIGHT direction.

Re:On the positive side

[ericrost]

However, when my neighbor gets so fat he can't mow his lawn, clean his gutters, paint his house, take out his trash, etc he is harming my property by reducing its value. So, should I wait until I have to get his ass on a treadmill so he'll maintain his property or should I just nip the hamburger problem in the bud before it gets out of hand?

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

His actions do harm me when politicians take money from me to pay for his quadruple bypass.

Re:On the positive side

[Duradin]

I feel for you. Paying less in property taxes really sucks. Here, have a hanky.

Re:On the positive side

[ericrost]

How bad will you feel when you need to sell your house to relocate for work? Seems like a property value reduction will suck then. And you're dreaming if you think tax valuations take anything remotely like that into account properly. Here, have a clue.

Re:On the positive side

[SydShamino]

It doesn't work that way. As long as emergency rooms will treat anyone who walks or is carried through the door, the health of your neighbor affects your tax rate (or your insurance rate, which is basically just a tax anyway).

And I don't want to live in a society where an emergency room checks your wallet before they check your pulse. And really, you don't want to, either.

Re:On the positive side

[OldSoldier]

Well, on the up side he's trying to raise more money through products rather than income taxes. I'd prefer the taxes on ipods, cigars, gasoline, and luxury cars to income tax increases. Of course if it hurts NY businesses (I don't think it will), then it'll hurt in the long run. But the state needs to stop bleeding money immediately.

Interesting perspective. Normally sales taxes are considered "regressive" taxes because the poor pay relatively more of their income toward these taxes than the rich, while a flat income tax would tax everyone equally.

However, "luxury" taxes almost by definition are not regressive because the poor can't afford the items that trigger the tax and so they're completely unaffected.

Now if I could just wrap my mind around iTunes being a luxury good then I'd be set.

Re:On the positive side

[Duradin]

About as bad as when any *long* term investment has to be sold before it has had the time needed to mature.

Re:On the positive side

[curmudgeous]

Awesome. You've got my vote.

Re:On the positive side

[barzok]

I think I read that there will be taxes on non-diet sodas proposed as well.

Of course, the stores and/or soda companies will just jack the price on diet soda by the same amount and pocket the profits.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as you said "Cane Sugar Cola" I figured you were gonna bring up Jones.

At the place where I volunteer, as a fundraiser, we can buy Jones soda.

It's more expensive than regular soda, but between the cane sugar, the variety of unique flavors, and the glass bottles and the labels, I think it's worth it.

Re:On the positive side

[lymond01]

But Medicare funds aren't endless, and people who don't take care of themselves end up draining from that fund faster than those who do. And the money for Medicare comes from my "property": taxes. So to say they are not "harming" me by being a burden on our public health care system isn't true.

If people want to live unhealthily through ignorance or choice, I've not a single problem with that, so long as it doesn't affect me. But with socialized medicine, it does.

Re:On the positive side

[DarKnyht]

So the extremely high tax on cigarettes has stopped all smoking, reducing the income from cigarette taxes to zero? I'm sure you're aware that many people still smoke even with the high tax. Same will be for soda, and the soda tax will be nowhere near as high as the one on cigarettes.

Yeah, we tax addicted people to death because they cannot stop. Effectively we have an enslaved income source, score one for freedom. Now you want to hold that up as a shining example for what to do for other "luxuries". What happens when they implement the "Video Game Tax" or the "World of Warcraft Sales Tax?"

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes perfect sense as long as your neighbor is the one paying for his mistakes. If your neighbor eats a triple bacon cheeseburger everyday, and as a result, gets a heart attack, he should be the one paying for his health care.

When people don't have to accept the consequences of their actions they make more bad decisions and take greater risks. (Like lending significant amounts of money to people with bad credit)

Re:On the positive side

[DarKnyht]

Because in the end both sides are looking for the same thing, power over people. Their methods to get there are slightly different, but the end result is the same. Laws that control what you can and cannot do that make you beholden to your politician benefactor.

Just face it, anymore we are just freemen and serfs legally bound to our feudal lords.

Re:On the positive side

[ericrost]

That just compounds the problem (and avoids the issue at hand, but that's your tactic when you can't address the issue).

Re:On the positive side

[Leebert]

Yes that's true. And you have a right to deny your fat neighbor the "charity" of free healthcare.

I agree, as long as you allow him to opt out of paying taxes for that "free" healthcare.

Congratulations, you just re-invented private insurance.

Re:On the positive side

[DarKnyht]

It does and they file it under political suicide. What publicly elected official is going to piss off a large number of the voting public (the employees, their friends and family).

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

NY State law requires a balanced budget for the following fiscal year. These new taxes are ways to maintain some spending, and put the state in a position to balance. I think the increase was only something like 0.1%. The deficit is largely due to the economy right now. They will probably wait and see how things change before eliminating programs next year.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just kill him. Clearly, if he can't move, he's quite unhappy, so just stroll through the hole in the wall they had to make to get him out when he had a heart attack last week and shoot him! It's not like he'll be able to dodge, and he's such a big target that you can't miss. And then when you're in jail for murder, you can say that you did it for the common good, or property values, or whatever reason makes you feel good about yourself inside.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

Raises taxes pisses off even more people.

Re:On the positive side

[electrictroy]

>>>he is harming my property by reducing its value

Bull.

You might as well try to convince me that angels built your home.

Re:On the positive side

[Chris Mattern]

I happen to be allergic to most artificial sugars, specifically the ones used in diet sodas. Should I really have to pay a tax on a beverage when the alternative is to drink water?

Fixed that for you.

Re:On the positive side

[Chris Mattern]

Next you'll be saying to drink it from a tap.

Horrors! You are, of course, right, you must only drink bottled water! Granted, it's generally tap water in a bottle, but the point is you'll feel better about yourself!

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you hamburger eating friend does affect your property, in that he makes things like health care more expensive. You know that rate you pay for health insurance is the same for everyone on your plan... the fat bastards and the health folks. They have to account for overweight people costing more so you half to pony up some of the money for your hamburger eating neighbor.

Re:On the positive side

[Steauengeglase]

I don't have any numbers, but I can't help but wonder who spends more in health care, the healthy or unhealthy?

The unhealthy often don't go in for checkups or spend money on preventative medication. So who ends up spending more money? The relatively healthy person who goes in for regular checkups (dental, physical) and is given a steady diet of preventative drugs or the obese smoker who doesn't go to the doctor until 6 months before he dies (and spends a mint on heart-bypass/chemo).

Of course this is accounting that both parties are privately insured, but I can't help but wonder.

Re:On the positive side

[Mr. Underbridge]

Actually, we are talking yachts here. RTFA.

The focus of the slashdot story is the music. That's what I'm talking about.

Almost everything suggested for a sales tax increase is a non-necessity.

Nothing in life is absolutely necessary unless you're getting your 2000 calories a day from Raman noodles at $2.00 a day (max). Beyond that, living under a freeway ramp in Alabama is sufficient to sustain life and is free. Clothes aren't strictly necessary either. Start making that argument, and your tax plan is a flat tax on all those "luxuries" with a $1000 standard deduction for your Ramen. That's a regressive tax.

If a $0.99 music download trips your definition of "luxury", you're more than a little addled.

Re:On the positive side

[StikyPad]

Ah, the fallacy that the self-interest of others will protect the self-interest of ourselves. People wouldn't dare go without healthcare, would they? Do I really need to answer that?

The alternative to "stop spending those funds on healthcare" is not "and let your neighbor spend his own funds," it is "and stop providing healthcare to people who can't pay for it." Because when you take away that coverage, you rely on the idea that the person a) can afford his own coverage, b) will buy it if he can afford it, c) will never use medical facilities if he doesn't have coverage and/or d) will not get sick and/or die from a preventable or treatable cause. That's a lot of assumptions, most of which probably won't be true. But even if that person never costs a dollar in healthcare, and dies of a heart attack at 45, then we're just shifting those costs around, and likely increasing them in the process. If he had life insurance, then your insurance company just had to make an early payout. Rates go up. If he had a home, it's now in foreclosure. Lending rates go up. If he had a job, he probably has to be replaced. That means HR costs, training costs, and lost productivity in the interim. And those are just the most common, obvious costs.

So we could go on pretending that not taking care of our neighbor has no cost to ourselves or to society, or we could face reality and implement comprehensive healthcare where people *have to* pay, in the form of taxes. Not only does that lower the cost overall, because people are receiving preventative treatment, but by seeing the direct cost instead of adding up all the external ones, it gives us a direct incentive to lower those costs even further. Whether that means taxing McCoronaries, subsidizing vegetables, or giving a rebate to those who demonstrably follow certain guidelines, the point is that the discussion is *possible*, whereas the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal behavior is not very likely to lead to any sort of improvements at all.

Re:On the positive side

[Duradin]

So the issue wasn't that you hypothetically bought a property whose value was so variable that a neighbor's negligence could cause its value to drop dramatically and that you were trying to use this very volatile property as a short term high yield investment? If it was that big of a deal to you, you could try to help your neighbor (and thus yourself) out. Though helping people is like socialism, so that's bad.

If you can't handle the losses, don't treat homes like short term investments. If you can handle the losses and your neighbor's property is in such poor condition as to drastically affect your property value, you could buy his undervalued property, fix it up and flip it. There, a nice happy capitalist solution to your problem.

Re:On the positive side

[jcnnghm]

You'll notice that the uber-liberal governments of California and New York are both suffering financially, with California looking for a bailout. The fact of the matter is that the myriad social programs they've created are unsustainable, and patching the wound to stop the bleeding would be an admission of that fact. Instead they'll flail around with stupid entertainment, environmental, business, and social-ills taxes, until they're bailed out, they totally sink, or the economy picks back up.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

Hamburgers didn't appear until about 50 years after Thomas Jefferson died. If you use quotation marks, you need to be a little more careful about documenting the parts you change.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why some American politicians get the "bright" idea to tax hamburgers to discourage bad health risks

Here's a novel concept...how about lowering the cost for the "healthy" foods?
Seriously, you pay FAR more money for healthy foods vs. junk food. Ever wonder why poor people eat more often at fast-food places? Or get Doritoes and soda instead of fruit and juices?
and don't even start on the whole "water is free" stuff. Most bottled water is expensive, and tap water is just plain dangerous!
In many places, including where I work, you're better off chewing the water. You can clearly see the cloudiness.

This is all about greed, pure and simple.

This is the down-side to government-run health care. The same problem with Welfare, and any other program that attempts to help those that are legitimately struggling to make ends meet.
Eventually, someone decides that they don't want to help because they are freeloaders, that they should be allowed to keep their own money, so these groups are either taxed heavily or dropped from the program.
Yes, there are some that abuse the system. Instead of these BS taxes, how about enacting better ways of finding and stopping the abusers?
Nope, that would end a lucrative source of money for our greedy leaders.

Patterson is going to drive so much business, and so many people, out of NY, we'll end up with a lower population than Alaska.

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

Oh no, couldn't cut school aid or free health care! Oh noes! You seriously buy that shit? They pick those because they know people like you will be sucker enough to get all worried and agree to give the government more money. They should cut those, and as much else as they can. They're a living, breathing ponzi scheme and it's unsustainable to keep spending money like that.

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

That's because NYC is full of idiot leadership, just like most other Democrats. It sounds nice to make those "fat cats" who buy "yachts" pay more. The problem is they'll just take their money and not play the game. Fine, I won't buy a yacht - I'm still cool. How you doin' NYC, your income doesn't seem to have gone up, isn't that wacky?!

If you overtax any given area of the economy, be it rich people or poor people, they'll clam up and your tax income becomes wildly unstable. One year you are flush with cash (which you proceed to waste), then the next you have a huge deficit. That's why "tax the rich fat cats" mentality is laughably stupid.

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

Now if I could just wrap my mind around iTunes being a luxury good then I'd be set.

Please, please tell me you're being sarcastic? You do know a luxury item is something you don't need, not something that's expensive - right?

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

He needs to justify why he wants to drink soda? Seriously? I see Obama's election has brought out the Nanny State mentality in a lot of douchebags.

Re:On the positive side

[mdmkolbe]

I'd prefer the taxes on ... luxury cars...

FYI, luxury taxes don't work. Because luxury items typically have very elastic demands (i.e. people buy it less if the price goes up because, well, it's a luxury), the tax burden if shifted to the makers/sellers of luxury items not the buyers. In other words, taxes on yachts hurt blue collar yacht builders while barely effecting rich yacht buyers. This is because if you raise taxes on yachts, the effective price payed by the buyer goes up. Since it is a luxury, rich people will go without rather than pay the higher price. This decreases the number of yachts sold. Yacht seller's profits decrease. Yacht sellers cut their prices to increase sales and thus profits effectively subsidizing part of the tax that the buyers on paying on the yachts.

I'm sure all sorts of people will argue both ways about whether taxing the rich who are buying luxury items is "fair". But those arguments don't actually matter since it can be shown that luxury taxes don't tax rich people buying luxury items.

Re:On the positive side

[PitaBred]

New York should tax computers too. 20% seems about right... that'll be a huge boost in state revenue! You don't mind your $1000 machine costing $1200 now, do you? I mean, the library has computers, you don't need one of your own if you think the tax on computer ownership is unfair.

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

You're fucking kidding, right? This argument may work well on your fellow nanny state liberals, but the rest of us think you're an idiot. You are begging the question. "If those funds are spend on health care..". There's your problem - they shouldn't be. And if they are, it's your problem - not mine. In fact, when I'm old enough not to care I'm going to develop severe alcoholism, diabetes, and various other ailments just to make you assholes foot the bill.

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

God, where did all these assholes come out of the woodwork from? The only obligation I or the state has to give a shit about your property value is if I signed a HOA contract dictating proper upkeep of the property. The state isn't here to protect itself or to protect abstract "rights" to things it shouldn't be doing anyway, it's here to protect me from dipshits like you.

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

Hmm. The price of freedom - I pay a little more in tax money or the government runs my life. Tough choice, asshole. Emergency care is about all we should provide for free, if that was all we did we'd have a fraction of the health care tax burden we do now.

Re:On the positive side

[ITJC68]

Your story is the same here in Illinois (Non Chicago). Chicago is the biggest waste of money in the state. We all know about our current Governor (from Chicago) as well as the election violations of the past (dead people still voting in elections). Fireworks are illegal here but cross into Wisconsin or Indiana and fireworks stores everywhere!! If Illinois could get rid of Chicago the taxes would go down and business would continue to build out in the "sticks" of the state. Go to southern Illinois and it is a stark reality of a section of a state neglected. Back on Topic. If Illinois decided to start Taxing online purchases I will be packing up and moving north across the cheddar curtain where the property taxes are lower and the tax on purchases as well.

Re:On the positive side

[mikael]

ead up on Ronald Reagan's Luxury Yacht Tax and the effect on USA boat bulders.

Tax Cut Consensus

Class warfare targeting the rich is risky business. A federal luxury tax on yachts in 1991 took aim at the wealthy with a 10 percent tax on luxury yachts costing over $100,000. The result? The wealthy simply stopped buying U.S.-made yachts.

NY state may ax iPod download sales, but NY state iPod downloads will go elsewhere, so they will only end up collecting up less money than they had expected and budgeted for, thus having to raise taxes elsewhere. And the cycle continues.

Re:On the positive side

[ericrost]

Aside from the fact that most people who actually WORK for a living can't afford two homes (or to try and flip property), and the fact that I was specifically mentioning the situation that you had to sell a home to RELOCATE FOR WORK, not as a SHORT TERM INVESTMENT (nice attempted dodge there, but lets deal with the situation at hand) when someone deflates the value of your home due to lack of maintenance (ever wonder why when a bunch of renters move in the values go down, or when a bunch of houses get repo'd by the bank the values go down, or when someone lets their home become an eyesore?) it makes it difficult to have the portability of equity that is an attractive facet of home ownership. Where in ANY of that did the idea of a home as a short term investment get raised? No one's looking for profit, just for the money you put in to come back to you. If I get laid off (or you for that matter) and have to move elsewhere to find work, its not because of your investment strategy or anything else, its simply life. Most people have to relocate several times in their adult lives to stay gainfully employed.

Your strawmen are chewy and flammable.

Re:On the positive side

[online-shopper]

No, the obscenely high tax on cigarettes has created a gray market for trafficking in non-taxed cigarettes and driven up the business of roll-your own because those are often not taxed.

Re:On the positive side

[barbam]

Well -- as a politician why do you have to bother make sound economic decisions? Remember, Barack Obama and the congressional democrats will be passing legislation to 'bail out' NYS and other havens of idiocy in the first half of next year. The problem is that we refuse to make hard choices and elect short-sighted politicians who allow us to continue to dig ourselves a deeper grave by offering us free handouts and putting us into a state of denial. To make things worse, we've decided to let these same people run the entire country. While the conservative, blue collar parts of the country have been able to support our welfare state for a while its all starting to come to a head -- where is the money going to come from when we are ALL a part of the welfare state?

Re:On the positive side

[Dan541]

For about $10,000 you can have ALL the problems with that neighbour solved.

Re:On the positive side

[ericrost]

K, then I won't bother calling the fire department when your house is ablaze, or the police when you've been robbed, oh and those sewer lines we can easily shut off, as well as the trash collection you've got subsidized, lets just tell them to stop dropping by. There, now see how fucking self-reliant you are. Oh, and maybe you ought to be paying 1-200% more for those crops we're subsidizing for you to eat.

You're a douche.

Re:On the positive side

[rdoger6424]

You don't?

Re:On the positive side

[tompaulco]

Next you'll be saying to drink it from a tap.
I drink water from a tap, what's wrong with that, other than it doesn't support the bottled water companies, the plastics companies, the oil companies and the disposal companies?
Tap water in most of the U.S. is at least as safe to drink as bottled water, and is several thousand times cheaper, and doesn't leave as much of an environmental footprint.

Re:On the positive side

[lymond01]

Well, concerning public Medicare which helps those over 65 -- if you've had a rough lifestyle, you'll be spending more Medicare money post-65 to keep yourself alive than the person who has done preventative techniques to support their health.

Re:On the positive side

[WTF Chuck]

I wonder why the idea of "cut spending" and "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" never occurs to these Governors and Legislators?

But then they wouldn't have any staffers to order around at will. Imagine how less efficient they would be if they no longer felt that kind of immediate power.

Re:On the positive side

[WTF Chuck]

There are usually city ordinances to cover things like lawn and maintenance neglect. Here you are likely to find the city demolition crew at your door if things get too far out of hand. After a few fines, and other nasties from the city, he will learn that it is easier to pay someone to keep the lawn mowed, etc... than to sit in court, pay outrageous fines, have his property condemned...

Re:On the positive side

[OldSoldier]

Now if I could just wrap my mind around iTunes being a luxury good then I'd be set.

Please, please tell me you're being sarcastic? You do know a luxury item is something you don't need, not something that's expensive - right?

You're dividing it into "need to have" and "nice to have" and that's it? The only things I need to have to live are air, food, water, clothing and shelter. Food can be pretty basic and I'd imagine that nothing at Whole Foods would qualify as basic. Water is just water. Soda, which apparently many poor people drink is a luxury by your definition. The dividing line between need to have and nice to have gets blurrier in the clothing department. Clothing to keep you warm may not earn you much respect at the office, so social norms would seem to indicate that you need a "luxury" suit just to keep up at the office.

On a more practical level, I'd define a luxury item as say, anything the wealthiest 10% - 20% of the people buy and that no one in a lower economic class buys. Music is definitely NOT in that category. And indeed it's that sort of definition that prevents a luxury tax from becoming a regressive tax. Sales tax on any item that I don't *need* to survive, but that 90% of the population buys anyway affects the lower economic classes more than the upper ones. Furniture, dishes, television, telephone, a second pair of shoes are all pretty basic stuff that you would call a luxury and hence would be happy taxing at a luxury tax rate?

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

Words have meanings. A luxury item is something you can scale back on easily if you hit hard times economically. Music is a luxury item.

Re:On the positive side

[RightSaidFred99]

You misunderstand - but I expected that because you're stupid. I'm not saying "don't be a good neighbor". I'm saying it's not the government's job to try to help you out by abridging my rights. If I am your neighbor and I'm a fat asshole who brings down your property value, by all means be an asshole back to me.

Re:On the positive side

[ericrost]

Or if you're just an asshole in general I'll feel free to. See above.

Re:On the positive side

[Garrett Fox]

That's one of the reasons why government-run health care is so dangerous, besides its illegality on the federal level. If minimizing the burden on the health care system justifies forcibly restricting people's behavior, where does that stop? Wouldn't the health agency then have a justification for, say, telling you where to live, how much to exercise, what to eat, what books to read (to keep your blood pressure down) and so on? I look at something petty like a tax on cola and see an entering wedge. On that score I'm with the guys who said the same thing about tea.

Re:On the positive side

[OldSoldier]

Actually, since you're the one saying words have meaning you do know that you changed your definition of luxury between this post and the last? Your first definition was anything not necessary to live. Your second definition of easy to scale back on things, includes many things that would qualify as a luxury item by your first definition.

Regardless, an iPod is a luxury item, and music is an optional item, that we can agree on. As for music being luxury, all we seem to be doing is reading different lines from the dictionary:

Luxury - n
a) a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort : sumptuous environment
b) something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary

You're picking (b) and I'm picking (a) (emphasis on "great")

Re:On the positive side

[CptNerd]

Actually the states that have been taxing cigarettes more have seen a large drop in revenues from people reducing their smoking. Not to zero, which is the absurdum you're trying to reduce to, but each year has seen far less coming in than they planned in their budgets.

Re:On the positive side

[CrimsonAvenger]

Odd that you should assign blame for a 1991 tax (when George Bush was President) to Ronald Reagan.

Re:On the positive side

[mabhatter654]

Many states have balanced budget laws on the books. The legislature MUST present a balanced budget and they are barred from borrowing for general funds. If they don't balance the budget, then the governor gets to just start closing stuff until the funds are available.

We went through that last year in Michigan. We actually went without a budget for about a week and they actually closed a chunk of the state office down and sent the workers home for a few days because they couldn't legally pay them! It makes the states strong to have these rules, but when stuff like the last crash comes around you realize that the big taxpayers can simply choose not to pay by wiping out their profits for a few years when it's in fashion. That sends the states reeling to cut or replace the tax revenue they're not making so they have to push it on PEOPLE that can't escape so easily.

Re:On the positive side

[mabhatter654]

if you take a loss on a house sale, that's capital loss deduction which is the same as knocking that much off your wages and you don't pay taxes. Of course, that assumes you have the equity to lose in a sale, which is the problem now, that house prices dropped 20% which wiped out all the down payments and equity so every body is stuck waiting to sell because they need a minimum value out of their property or they face bankruptcy.

also, property tax is assess on SALES values, so if the house sells for less, the new owners should pay less taxes.

Re:On the positive side

[mabhatter654]

I work in a union steel shop and I see exactly that. None of the "30 and out" retirees live very long after. The swing shifts and 60 hour weeks burn them out by 60 or so.

If you want to see an expensive retirement, look at teachers. They live fairly routine, disciplined lives, they used to be mandated by law to live clean.. no smoking, drinking, fooling around.. and because of that they all live to be really old. Which means they suck down benefits for 20-25 years after they retire!!

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I agree with the OP, but water is ever so tasty by comparison. Perhaps s/he should also only eat stale bread for dinner as well?

Re:On the positive side

[Jaime2]

Even better, many of the residents of NY live within a few miles of an indian reservation. If these taxes are viewed as oppressive, then the indians will start carrying the items in question and New York State will have lost more control and made less in tax money than they budgeted for.

Re:On the positive side

[mjwx]

Your neighbor is not your slave to control and dictate what he can or can not eat.

Now you're projecting because he doesn't agree with your extremist point of view (libertarianism is an extreme POV). We aren't talking about taking away anything, merely adding incentives and disincentives.

What the parent is talking about is a tax on something bad in order to discourage its use, the neighbour is no slave and can continue to eat as many hamburgers as he can afford, meanwhile the extra tax goes towards offsetting the cost to the community and in no way dictates what the neighbour can or can not eat. What you are saying is that we are all slaves to the police because we will be punished if we commit murder.

Meanwhile you propose that the neighbour in question be discriminated in a different fashion (denied the same level of health care as everyone else) or in other words dictate who can and cannot receive socialised health care. This makes you a hypocrite as you would seek to impose your will above that of the parent of the fictional neighbour in question.

Re:On the positive side

[TheLink]

Yep, I'm a nonsmoker and I'm not fond of breathing in second hand smoke, BUT I really don't see why all those governments on one hand worry about an "aging population" and on the other hand insist on banning smoking, junk food etc.

Yes, we must educate[1] everybody of the dangers, advantages and disadvantages but to ban the stuff seems a bit silly.

Say you want to discourage smoking in restaurants/etc, tax establishments that allow smoking more than those that don't.

Nonsmokers aren't forced to work in places that allow smoking. If that's where the money is, well too bad - it means the smokers are good customers, so put up with it, or earn less.

Get a bunch of economists and actuarists to help work out the taxes so that it's a net gain.

In fact I told a smoker friend that smokers could be a net benefit to society and after hearing my explanation, he tried to quit ;).

[1] BTW seems it might be a good idea to offer help to educate parents to educate children - seems most parents don't have a clue about that. Not all of them think it's somebody else's job, many know it's their job but they don't know what to do.

Re:On the positive side

[Anonymous Coward]

Cane sugar pop is much better for you (plural you, not singular you) in the long run than any of the diet pops (at least until the FDA stops propping up the corn and sugar industries by acknowledging natural no-to-low calorie sweeteners like Stevia).

Do you know what the fuck you are talking about? Sure many people want Stevia legalized, but BFD. Cane sugar is empty calories. Carbohydrate only satisfies ONE nutritional requirement: energy. There are - at best - only trace vitamins and minerals. Almost know essential amino acids or fats. Diet pop is in the same boat BUT it has no calories and thus is not a substitute for food. For some people that can't metabolize some artificial sweeteners, diet soda can be a health threat. If the soda has gone bad - also a problem. Diet soda *might* be bad. Cane sugar soda *is* bad. Being better than HFCS is not much of a hurdle. It is more like a stick on the ground.

The Stevia issue and love affair with corn syrup have NAUGHT to do with the relative merits of diet pop versus cane sugar pop. What makes you think otherwise?

Re:On the positive side

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

Except, of course, we're going through another period where the governor has decided that the indian reservations are no longer sovereign and he wants them to charge taxes on non-indians buying from them. I believe he signed that into law again this past monday.

I look forward to the indians once again blocking the Thruway and have a half dozen tires they can have to burn. I hope they surround NYC and prevent any traffic in and out from the rest of the state to force them to think about it (NYC, of course, because all of the statewide office holders hail from there with the rest of the state excluded from input, so they need to be hit at home)

Re:On the positive side

[Nursie]

And yet it looks like the US government is doing this anyway with soda, whereas we have none of these problems with state run healthcare in the UK or elsewhere in the western world.

Re:On the positive side

[Nursie]

Except the government is already trying to run your life MORE than every other western country that has a nationalised healthcare system!

Re:On the positive side

[sac13]

But the state needs to stop bleeding money immediately.

Wrong analogy. Stopping the bleeding would be more appropriate to spending cuts (like normal people would do in this situation). Raising taxes is getting a blood transfusion.

Re:On the positive side

[SydShamino]

I see your brain is too small to realize that emergency care is incredibly costly to provide, while preventative care is significantly cheaper. Your drive for minimal government involvement is costing taxpayers far more than a comprehensive system that provides better services.

NY State Budget

[Anonymous Coward]

Movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, wine, cigars and massages would be taxed under Paterson's proposal. It also extends sales taxes to cable and satellite TV services and removes the tax exemption for clothes costing less than $110...reinstating the sales tax on clothing and shoes will drive people to New Jersey, where they will also gas up their cars and pick up their wine, spirits and soda because the prices are less due to lower taxes.

Hmm, that's funny, because according to the 2009 state budget, $1,397,787,000 (up from $0 the previous few years) is appropriated to "Economic Development" capital. More pork includes the $1,458,285,000 allocation to the DHS (up from $150,202,000 the previous year), and $350,000,000 for a new convention center.

Given that quality of life is part of economic development, why hurt the low and middle-class?

The answer is this quote from Wikipedia:

The New York metropolitan area is home to the largest number of Jews outside Israel. There are more Jews within New York City limits than within Jerusalem city limits, making the New York City Jewish community the largest such community in the world. About 12% of New Yorkers claim to be Jewish or of Jewish descent

Ahh, I knew those rich, greedy hooknosed Jews were behind it. I can just picture a pack of them at the dinner table(baby seal being served for dinner) rubbing their hands together and cackling, "Ghla ghla ghlaaaaaa!" in knee-deep piles of money. "Head Jew: "Ghhey, hlets tax them for taking shits too!" Other Jews: "Ghla ghla ghlaaaaaaa!"

Re:NY State Budget

[geoffrobinson]

You truly put the "Coward" in "Anonymous Coward".

If it moves tax it!

[cthulu_mt]

We've already got the highest taxes in the union. Why not pile on some more?

Time to put in for a transfer.

Issues

[Antony-Kyre]

Rather than arguing for or against taxing non-tangible products, let me says this...

How is New York's tax system done? Isn't it income tax, property tax, and some sort of sales tax?

They have a sales tax, right? They're just extending it to non-tangible goods. How is downloaded music any different from buying a CD, in regards to taxes? Why shouldn't it be taxed?

Taxi rides, movie tickets, cable and satellite TV, seem like a bad idea to be taxed. Taxi rides are a big part in living in the city, right? Movie tickets are expensive enough already, right? And, well, cable and satellite TV, what effect will that have on people voting for him next time around?

Re:Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Earn $1, and follow what's left of it through as you spend. Deduct your employers contributions from that as well - because realistically that is a cost they consider part of your value.

When you're done - if you're not incredibly pissed you should move to a socialist country. That's basically what we are now anyway - we just don't actually BENEFIT anywhere near as much as socialist countries. (Unless you're an illegal, that is...then you have open access to all our government programs..)

Re:Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Itunes downloads are already taxed in New York state via sales tax. This proposal is an additional tax on top of sales tax.

Re:Issues

[zehaeva]

most of NYS doesn't have taxi service >>

Re:Issues

[MightyYar]

How is downloaded music any different from buying a CD, in regards to taxes?

It brings up issues of jurisdiction. If Apple's servers are in CA and the payment is processed in CA, and Apple's facilities are in CA, then how can NY tax them? It's similar to mail-order tax issues.

By the way, I know this is theoretical, since Apple in fact has stores in NY. NY probably has every legal right to tax AAC downloads from Apple.

Re:Issues

[JStegmaier]

They have a sales tax, right? They're just extending it to non-tangible goods. How is downloaded music any different from buying a CD, in regards to taxes? Why shouldn't it be taxed?

That's some world-class begging the question right there.

Re:Issues

[Just Some Guy]

They have a sales tax, right? They're just extending it to non-tangible goods. How is downloaded music any different from buying a CD, in regards to taxes? Why shouldn't it be taxed?

I'll go you one further: declare that music and software purchases are purchases and end this "we only licensed it to you!" crap.

Re:Issues

[fwarren]

The difference is that your bank can be in one state. You can be in another state. Your residence is in a different state. The web servers were the transaction takes place is in a different state. The company you purchased from is in another state. The product is shipped or downloaded from servers in another state.

All of those states involved would like to tax your transaction. Not all of them are deserving. This needs to be figured out.

Washington State says that if you buy a gift certificate and don't use it, the purchaser gets the money (where Amazon is at). Idaho says the company that sold it gets the money (where Amazon sells there certificates from). Where I live Oregon, the State gets the money. Which law should apply? Where did the transaction take place at?

Should not that state be the one that taxes my transaction?

Re:Issues

[mabhatter654]

all the state cares about is that YOU paid money to THEM for something. What you bought is irrelevant.. only that the state want's their cut.

Re:Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

IAAL.

You're mixing up your issues. The issue isn't being taxed for purchases made from businesses in New York. If I buy a CD from Record City in NYC, I will be taxed. If I download the CD from Record City in NYC, I will be taxed. No one is disputing this scenario.

The issue is NY asserting the authority to tax goods that are sold elsewhere than NYC. Let's say an individual who resides in NYC goes to NJ and buys a CD. Can NY tax the CD? What if the CD is shipped from NJ?

I'm skipping some very important principles, but this should at least clear up the issue.

Taxing consumption?

[Samschnooks]

I'm with you!

If taxed consumption instead of taxing income and savings, we wouldn't be in this economic mess we're in now.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[electrictroy]

I never thought of it that way. Good insight. Sales tax discourages consumption, and instead encourages saving money.

It's almost like a sin tax - "How dare you buy a new $5000 computer? We'll slap you with a $1000 tax to discourage such wasteful spending. Go put that money in your kid's education."

Re:Taxing consumption?

[imamac]

Neil Boortz, is that you?

Re:Taxing consumption?

[Ollabelle]

Actually, I think we'd be an even deeper mess. Let's face it, the only activity left in our "economy" is borrowing money against the value of our assets and spending it. Tax - and therefore discourage - consumption, and the economy will drop yet further. Until the value of the dollar drops enough that imports are painfully expensive and we can manufacture/export again, there's nothing left for us to do.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[johnsonav]

Sales tax discourages consumption, and instead encourages saving money.

Yeah it has that effect, but only for the people who have money to save in the first place. A sales tax is usually considered regressive because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income than the rich. If the sales tax were 10%, and I make $20,000 a year, and spend all of it, I pay 10% of my income in taxes. If you make $200,000 a year, but only spend half of it on taxable items. The rest goes to investments, and savings. You only pay 5% in taxes. It doesn't seem quite fair.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[gorbachev]

Taxing consumption as a whole unduly affects poor people, because a larger percentage of their income goes to necessary consumption (food, clothes, transportation, etc.) than rich people. It would hit the poorest people the hardest.

That's why taxing consumption is not a good idea. As a whole.

However, taxing unnecessary (or luxury) consumption, like the proposed tax on iTunes downloads, doesn't have the same negative effect.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[electrictroy]

There is another alternative, one that seems to be unfolding even now:

- Lay off a lot of Americans.
- Unemployment rises.
- American workers will be in such a desolate state that they are willing to take any job they can get, even if it only pays $6 an hour for welding cars (or sewing Levis, or whatever), and therefore Asians/Americans are on the same wage scale.
- Factories flock back to America where they can get cheap labor.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[electrictroy]

That's not regressive. That's flat. A regressive tax would be one where the poor pay 10%, the middle incomes pay 5%, and the upper incomes pay 1%. And of course a progressive tax moves in the opposite direction, with ever-increasing percentages.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[LehiNephi]

Sure, the rich don't pay tax on those investments and savings....at first. As soon as they redeem/withdraw that money and spend it, then they, too pay the 10% tax, both on the original deposit and on any returns. So it's actually a flat tax...eventually. It just seems unfair at first, and since most people don't bother thinking very hard, there's a knee-jerk reaction against it.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[johnsonav]

That's not regressive. That's flat.

No, a flat tax is where everyone pays the same percentage of their income on taxes. A sales tax is clearly not flat. The rich will pay a smaller percentage of their income on the sales tax than the poor. And, as long as the poor have to spend nearly all of their income to survive, that will be the case.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[rockout]

I believe his point was that, in effect, a 10% sales tax across-the-board is really a regressive tax when you look at it in terms of income of poor, middle, and upper incomes.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[Beer_Smurf]

You need to look at the effect of past luxury taxes."BR" They do things like put the people who work on boats planes and sports cars out of business.
With a net loss in tax revenue.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[gorbachev]

Depends on the tax rates. Obviously an oppressive tax would, but a small one probably wouldn't.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[electrictroy]

Oh I see what you're saying.

Hmmm. Except that the rich tend to buy more stuff. If a poor person buys $5000 in clothes (25% out of 20,000) and a rich person buys a million in cars, boats, and other crap (50% of 2 million annually), the rich actually pays a higher percentage of income for his items. Correspondingly he pays a higher percent of sales tax too - 2.5% for the poor and 5% for the rich.

So you can't say it's "regressive" - it's not that simple.

The quick fix is to simply give all poor people cards such that they are tax-exempt at the store. We already do that in many States, so it's not a big deal.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[operagost]

Yeah it has that effect, but only for the people who have money to save in the first place. A sales tax is usually considered regressive because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income than the rich.

Unless you don't tax the necessities like food and clothing, which NY had been doing recently but now wants to abolish again. Darn Democrats hate the poor! Sales tax has an added advantage on taxing wealth instead of just income, so the "old money" that the left is always complaining about and slamming with estate taxes pays up once they spend the moldy money.

If you make $200,000 a year, but only spend half of it on taxable items

What are these mythical non-taxable items? Do the "rich" spend a greater percentage of their income on food and clothing than the "poor"?

Re:Taxing consumption?

[LandDolphin]

Wouldn't the response to that be to place lower taxation on items needed to survive and place a higher tax on luxury items that the "wealthy" are more likely to purchase. That way, people "just surviving" don't pay as high of a percent of their income towards taxes?

Re:Taxing consumption?

[johnsonav]

Except that the rich tend to buy more stuff.

Not based on a percentage of income. Your poor person doesn't just spend $5,000 of his $20,000. He has to spend it all, on food, rent, clothes, etc. So, with a sales tax of 10%, the poor person has paid 10% of his income to tax. The rich person is not in the same position. He doesn't have to spend all of his two million. He can afford to save and invest a portion. Since he doesn't spend it all, his effective tax rate is less than 10%.

The quick fix is to simply give all poor people cards such that they are tax-exempt at the store. We already do that in many States, so it's not a big deal.

Once you start adding exceptions, why move to a sales tax at all? Why not just keep the current income tax?

Re:Taxing consumption?

[camperdave]

Taxes are not all based on income. A sales tax is based solely on the cost of the item, which is the same for all purchasers, thus it is a flat tax.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[operagost]

Taxing consumption as a whole unduly affects poor people, because a larger percentage of their income goes to necessary consumption (food, clothes, transportation, etc.) than rich people.

And that's why food and clothing are not taxed in most states. Unfortunately, NY's Democratic governor wants to start taxing clothing under $110 again. I guess that means the poor go naked.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[electrictroy]

Here's a thought: Why not just tax everyone according to this formula? yyyyy (annual earnings) - xxxxx (paid to government) == $30,000 (you keep). People earning less than $30000 would actually get a handout to make it an even $30k.

There. Isn't that fair? A completely and totally flat tax.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[johnsonav]

There. Isn't that fair? A completely and totally flat tax.

Is it fair? I didn't say anything about fair. But it is definitely not flat. Its progressive. The rich are taxed at a higher percentage of their income than the poor.

Why not just tax everyone according to this formula?

Well, because there is no incentive to work harder and earn more. In fact, everyone's just better off being unemployed and collecting their check at the end of the year.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[Lord Apathy]

Why don't we just shoot all the poor people? That would eliminate that burden on society and act as an encouragement for the rest to work harder. Simple, eliminate that base and you don't have to worry about taxing them.

(Yes I'm only kidding and, Yes, it is in poor taste.)

Re:Taxing consumption?

[DarKnyht]

I think they tried that over in Russia once. Can't quite remember how that worked out....

Re:Taxing consumption?

[john.r.strohm]

The Feds tried that a few years ago. They slapped a luxury tax on yachts.

The luxury tax did not bring in a single penny of tax revenues. The people who would have paid it noticed that the price on domestic yacht purchases had gone up. Some of them postponed or cancelled their planned purchases. Others went out of jurisdiction, and bought abroad.

The resulting downturn in domestic yacht purchases did, however, put quite a few boatyards out of business, and cause marinas to lay people off, putting those employees on unemployment, costing their States a lot of money, and erasing their tax contributions, to both the Feds and the state (and local) governments.

The luxury tax on yachts, far from bringing home the bacon, actually LOST money, for the Feds, the States, and the people who worked to make and maintain those yachts, and everyone who worked to supply those yacht workers.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[DarKnyht]

You forgot about using this opportunity to finally gut the last remnants of the UAW. Republicans are trying their best to make that happen and democrats will probably go along.

Don't let the door hit them on the way out either. I don't particularly like paying an extra $2000 on my car just so some lazy, incompetent worker can draw a salary when his job is eliminated. The real value of a Union started to disappear when the government wrote real labor laws.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[smoker2]

Utter crap.

Until the rich are taxed at 100% (past the certain threshold) then there is ALWAYS incentive to make more. You sound like the dickheads I've worked with in the past who won't do paid overtime because "the government taxes them more". The govt. doesn't tax them any more than they do already, but that's their feeble excuse. After about £100 per week, you pay tax - end of story. You don't pay a higher rate until you reach over 40k a year and then it's only that portion over 40k that gets taxed at a higher rate. I don't see a shortage of millionaires either.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[johnsonav]

As soon as they redeem/withdraw that money and spend it, then they, too pay the 10% tax, both on the original deposit and on any returns.

That assumes that the investment carries no risk. Any money lost is never taxed. If the rich person, from my example, loses $10,000 from his original $100,000 investment, that ten grand is never taxed. The rich person still made $200,000, but only payed taxes on the $190,000 consumed.

Also, inflation takes its toll. If my hypothetical rich person invests his extra $100,000 and only spends it ten years from now, inflation will have reduced the value of that money. Because the poor would pay their taxes before inflation has a chance to affect them, they would end up paying a higher percentage of their buying power in taxes.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[ROU Nuisance Value]

Don't let the door hit them on the way out either. I don't particularly like paying an extra $2000 on my car just so some lazy, incompetent executive can draw a $200 Million bonus while running his company into the ditch.

There, fixed that for you

Re:Taxing consumption?

[johnsonav]

Until the rich are taxed at 100% (past the certain threshold) then there is ALWAYS incentive to make more.

You didn't really read the GP, did you? His proposal was to tax at 100% after $30,000.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[electrictroy]

>>>Its progressive. The rich are taxed at a higher percentage of their income than the poor

Well. Isn't that the goal of the IRS and the new president, to install a progressive tax? It sounds like my yyyyy (annual earnings) - xxxxx (paid to government) == $30,000 (you keep) achieves Obama's dreams.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[Chris Mattern]

Wow! I get to never work again, and I'll still get $30k/yr! And why would I want to work, since I'd only get the same amount of money anyways?

Re:Taxing consumption?

[icebrain]

That's why many national sales tax proposals include a rebate check to everyone that negates the taxes that would be paid on spending up to a certain amount. For example, let's say the national sales tax rate is 20%, and the "sales tax free" limit is $25k. That means everyone would receive a check each month for (25000 * 0.2)/12 ~= $416.

It basically works out so that anyone earning the limit of $25000 pays no taxes (assuming they spend every dollar they earn). Anyone earning less than that gets some additional money. Someone earning $50k pays an effective rate of 10%. And so on... you end up with a tax rate that starts out negative, and asymptotically approaches X% (where X is the sales tax rate).

This also has the added benefit that "under the table" income still gets taxed in the end.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[PachmanP]

I'm guessing you're not in the states, but over, in my experience, taxes get withheld at a higher rate for overtime and bonuses. I think at the end of the year everything balances out, but it at least looks pretty much like "work harder, get F***ed harder". I wasn't fond of working an extra 10 hrs and seeing an almost insignificant increase in my paycheck, and April(tax time) seems a long way off.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[zehaeva]

The Fair Tax plan is supposed to send a check to cover the sales tax on all goods and services needed to maintain at least the poverty level. so if the poverty level is 20k/year then you get a check for the sales tax you would have payed on that 20k of goods and services. that way you get a minimum standard of living for everyone. in essence you pay taxes only on stuff above and beyond that.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[tompaulco]

My guess is that would lead to everyone sitting at home waiting for their $30k check.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

bull. When the rich are taxes highly, the tradeoff between investing in a business venture (80% of the profit goes to taxes) and a sports car leans towards the sports car.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[slashtivus]

Then do what most states do:

If you purchased an automobile in a sales-tax free state (in this case Oregon) and wish to register your new car in another state (in this case Washington), you must pay the tax you would have otherwise had to pay anyway.

I know yachts are not cars, but if you want a US registry for your yacht then you pay out the difference. I don't like complicated laws, but that does not seem that complicated to be honest. Your example was just really stupid law-making.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[slashtivus]

Also, inflation takes its toll. If my hypothetical rich person invests his extra $100,000 and only spends it ten years from now, inflation will have reduced the value of that money.

If you invested $100,000 and did not get any return on your investment over 10 years to combat inflation (the entire purpose of investing) you have invested badly.

Re:Taxing consumption?

[johnsonav]

I'm not saying that there was no return on the investment, but that the principal will be taxed at a functionally lower rate ten years in the future than it would have been taxed in the year it was earned.

I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[rolfwind]

http://www.apttax.com/

That is all. Oh, and it's time for all government to tighten its fat belt.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[Andr T.]

...and I thought apt tax was some kind of Debian software.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[Archangel Michael]

I'm all for it, I'll move to all cash exchanges, and save even more. Will work for cash!

Thank,

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[MightyYar]

That's not bad. And it would be heavily progressive - if not because poor people make fewer transactions, then because most poor people are going to demand cash if it saves them 0.5%.

My "unintended consequences" spidey sense is tingling, though...

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[TheSpoom]

And suddenly, everyone uses cash for all of their payments. Governments everywhere do a facepalm.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it wouldn't be progressive. This is the "fair tax" reincarnated with technology and a slightly less intelligence-insulting name.

It replaces all taxes with the sales tax. It would be, on paper, neutral (neither regressive nor progressive, since the rate is the same for everyone), but in practice, regressive - consider that the poor must spend nearly their entire income to live whereas the rich do not; the poor and much of the middle class will end up paying a larger percentage of their income in tax than the wealthy will. Consider also that even if it was somehow rebalanced to be neutral in practice, compared to today's system, that means yet another cut for the rich and tax hike for the other 90% of us. It vastly magnifies the earning power of the rich too - since their financial income from interest and stock won't get taxed at all until they spend it, meaning they get a few more percent to run through the system more times for more profit... whereas wage-earners will get no such benefit.

On top of that, the plan tries to hide some of the tax by saying it'll be paid half by the buyer and half by the seller... but we know this is doubly BS. Sellers will raise the price enough to compensate for their half of the tax, and the "pay in cash" loophole people mentioned in other comments would still be hit by that price increase.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[Xtravar]

Until they make cash illegal.
You know the day's coming...

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[exi1ed0ne]

Already is - just ask Emiliano Gonzolez.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[characterZer0]

I have to pay a tax when I transfer money between my two accounts at the same bank? No thanks.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[MightyYar]

It replaces all taxes with the sales tax.

Not, according to the linked site. At least, not the type of sales tax that we have today. Instead, it would be ANY transaction - not just the end-user of the product. Which is, after all, why "sales tax" is technically a "use tax".

It would be, on paper, neutral (neither regressive nor progressive, since the rate is the same for everyone), but in practice, regressive

You have this almost entirely backwards. Since the poor spend most of their income, there is very little left to "transact" electronically. They are going to get paid in cash and they will spend that cash. If they are lucky enough to have a checking account, they would likely get taxed at 1% as they take a 0.5% hit putting it into the bank and a 0.5% hit taking it back out.

In contrast, a rich person is going to invest the money, making multiple transactions. Even if they shy away from the stock market or hedge funds, which transact like crazy, they'll still have to pay upkeep on whatever investments they do make - be it a corporation or real estate.

There's a chart on page 9 in this PDF which shows that the ratio of transactions:income is quite non-linear after about the $75,000 income level and the rich would end up paying a great deal more than the poor or middle class.

On top of that, the plan tries to hide some of the tax by saying it'll be paid half by the buyer and half by the seller...

The beauty of it is that it doesn't hide anything! Every time you give someone else money electronically, you pay half a percent. It's about the simplest tax scheme that I've ever heard of. Paying in cash would still get you out of your half of the tax, no matter how much the retailer raises prices to compensate for their half.

It vastly magnifies the earning power of the rich too - since their financial income from interest and stock won't get taxed at all until they spend it, meaning they get a few more percent to run through the system more times for more profit...

Actually, no. In fact, I have the opposite concern. High-transaction investments like mutual funds and hedge funds will no longer be attractive, and the changeover to this new tax seems like it would be very traumatic for the investment world. After all, the whole strategy right now is to avoid capital gains and income tax and all that would just melt away as people rushed to minimize their transactions.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[mulvane]

Reading that link, it seems a person could be charged on the same $ 4, 5, or maybe even 6 times depending on how he allocated and then later spends. An even simpler tax would be a global tax on purchase of goods. Everyone needs them and everyone buys them. You would get taxes on what you buy and not what you earn. That way, invested income would be safe from taxes until you drew it out later, and guess what spent it on a good.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[cynical kane]

Unintended consequences is absolutely correct.

The APT tax would have to define a transaction. What is a transaction? Say you buy a Eurodollar contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. This is a futures contract on a $1 million time deposit. That contract has a face value of $1 million, but most traders only put up about $1200 on margin for it. If this contract is a "transaction", then each trader would have to pay $6000 per contract. The exchange charges, I believe, about $1.

Essentially, money will flee to safe places for it to be exchanged. Companies will become enormous monoliths to keep all money inside. People will be paid with more perks and less wages. Nobody would trade futures (which is a bad thing). And so on.

Worst of all, finance will cease to be a world of many institutions trading constantly (the Eurodollar being just one example of many), and become a world of large monoliths trading secretly. The flow of money would stagnate. CDSs and CMOs were stagnant contracts traded by large companies secretly, and now we're in a depression because of it.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[MightyYar]

That's pretty much what I was fearing. And you couldn't simply exempt corporations, because then everyone would simply incorporate and only pay taxes when they extract money from the corporation.

Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Brazil tried this, it was called CPMF (portuguese) (Temporary Contribution on Financial Transaction) and was meant to cover the healthcare hole for a year. For every bank transaction, 0,38% was collected, amount to R$ 40 billion yearly.

Sounded nice in theory but, as it turns out, it wasn't really temporary (lasted 10 years). Also, not all of the money went to healthcare and, unlike APT, there were some exemptions (iirc, paycheck, healthcare and financial markets were exempt).

They need to make mugging legal...

[Anonymous Coward]

And tax it like everything else.

A government in its death throes

[brian0918]

So the state is collapsing under its government's regulations, and the government's plan to solve the problem is to regulate further, driving more markets out of the region? Brilliant! Eventually they'll learn, or be forced to learn, that you can't have your cake and eat it too. They will have to downsize the state government and withdraw the regulations hindering the market, or they will see their economy disappear. One or the other will be the inevitable outcome.

Re:A government in its death throes

[robot_love]

Don't worry. If their economy does disappear, they'll probably just get a nice fat bail-out from the federal government.

Re:A government in its death throes

[gorbachev]

Increased regulation causing the State budget shortfalls? How is making decisions on tax rates regulation?

You might also want to read up on a certain Mr. Madoff, who took full advantage of a regulatory vacuum. This is the world you want?

Re:A government in its death throes

[brian0918]

Increased regulation causing the State budget shortfalls? How is making decisions on tax rates regulation?

How is increasing taxes on certain transactions not regulation?

You might also want to read up on a certain Mr. Madoff, who took full advantage of a regulatory vacuum.

You mean the Bernard Madoff whose niece is a lawyer for his firm, and is married to an SEC investigator who has ignored complaints from private groups since 1999? The solution is not increased regulation, because increased government control violates individual rights and leads to increased opportunity for corruption (e.g. Madoff). The solution is competing private companies that demand transparency in exchange for their "seal of approval". You trust internet transactions that are checked by VeriSign, right? Would you be as trusting if, instead, it said "approved by the SEC"?

Re:A government in its death throes

[GiyaMonster]

Madoff didn't play in a regulatory vacuum. He played in a highly regulated world where the regulators failed to do their duty. Madoff's firm was reported to the SEC back as early as 1999 but the regulators did nothing. Yeah, let's give them MORE control. The government NEVER let's us down.

Re:A government in its death throes

[SirGarlon]

So the state is collapsing under its government's regulations

Actually, the state is collapsing under a sudden, dramatic downturn in tax revenues because Wall Street firms are losing money all of sudden. Quoth TFA:

"Maybe we should have thought about this when we were depending on what we thought was inexhaustive collections of taxes from Wall Street - and now those taxes have fallen off a cliff."

Apparently the state of New York didn't build up any cash reserves/pay off debts when times were good.

I don't see where regulation comes into it. It's not that I expect you to RTFA or anything, but it sure sounds like you're jumping to conclusions to fit your pet theory.

Re:A government in its death throes

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually they'll learn, or be forced to learn, that you can't have your cake and eat it too

No they won't. In the business of government, there's not much incentive to concentrate on long-term stability. What's in it for them? The culture is to take as much of the pie as you can and run with it. And that's exactly why every year government spends more, not less, than the year before. Federal, state, and local -- the culture is the same. Only the scale is different.

Put it this way: if they were going to "learn" they would have done so a long time ago. They know exactly what they're doing -- they're doing whatever it takes to expand the business of government, whether that means spend, tax, or borrow.

Re:A government in its death throes

[gorbachev]

It's debatable.

He set up his investment advisory business in a manner that it wasn't subjected to the same sort of regulatory oversight as mutual funds and even hedge funds are while operating in much the same way.

But I agree that enforcing regulations already in affect is a bigger problem than lack of regulation.

Re:A government in its death throes

[Manchot]

Collapsing under its regulations? Give me a break. The state is hurting because it derived 20% of its revenue from the financial sector, also known as Wall Street. Perhaps you've heard that they haven't been doing so well as of late? This had nothing to do with overregulation, and everything to do with a lack of oversight.

I know I'll murder my karma saying this, but I can't fathom the intellectual masochism that must be required to be an Internet libertarian. "The current crisis was caused by the the CRA!" Oh wait, minorities comprised a fraction of subprime loans in default. "I know, Sarbanes-Oxley was the cause! If companies had been allowed to doctor their books to fool their investors, none of this would've happened!" Wait a minute...that doesn't make much sense. "It must have been the Fed, encouraging bad loans by artificially setting interest rates!" Never mind the fact that the Fed chairman was a good friend to Ayn Rand, a self-described libertarian, and has since admitted that his philosophy was flawed.

Just face facts: the unregulated free market is not perfect or optimal. A combination of greed and flawed business models swept the housing market, and since a combination of Gramm-Leach-Bliley and a lax antitrust division at the Justice Department allowed for the formation of megaconglomerates, this crisis spread to the financial sector. This is what the people actually responsible are saying, and not some (with all due respeact) fringe group typing posts on Digg.

Re:A government in its death throes

[castironpigeon]

Drive through Buffalo sometime. Or Albany. Or Syracuse. You'll see more abandoned commercial and industrial buildings than occupied ones. The NY economy is already dead.

Re:A government in its death throes

[brian0918]

"The current crisis was caused by the the CRA!" Oh wait, minorities comprised a fraction of subprime loans in default.

What have minorities got to do with this? Increased fed demand for loans to the riskiest demographics led directly to massive defaults. The implicit guarantee of government-backed funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led directly to these loans being packaged in securities for trade. The loan defaults destroyed the value of these securities, destroying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and everyone else who relied on their implicit government-backing in the process. It's as simple as that. The problem at both ends - the borrower, and the securities trader - were caused by government manipulation of the economy.

I do agree that more transparency would be better, but that transparency is best provided by private organizations (think VeriSign for private transactions). Only competing private transparency groups can minimize risk of corruption. Ask the SEC and Bernard Madoff about that - his niece is a lawyer for his firm, and she's married to an SEC investigator, who has ignored complaints about Madoff since 1999. Corruption. This is what happens when you mix money and power. Transparency must be voluntarily demanded by the buyer from the seller, and vice versa, and voluntarily provided by each. Only then will we have true transparency and oversight. Until then, the most you're going to get is the false sense of security.

Never mind the fact that the Fed chairman was a good friend to Ayn Rand, a self-described libertarian.

What a joke! It would take you 10 seconds to realize that a man given the power to sway the whole economy with a snap of his fingers (e.g. Greenspan) is the antithesis of anything Rand proclaimed. He may have been friends with her in the 60s, but he decided long ago to diverge from her and follow the path of social and political power.

and has since admitted that his philosophy was flawed

Of course his philosophy is flawed. Any supporter of Rand will tell you that. His philosophy - like that of many politicians - is the polar opposite of Rand's.

Just face facts: the unregulated free market is not perfect or optimal.

Optimal for reaching what goals? What are your goals? Until you've defined what goals you're promoting, you're making an empty statement. If the goal is freedom and promotion of individual rights, only the free market will suffice. If the goal is government control of the economy to fund your agenda (e.g. universal healthcare, social security), then of course the free market will succeed. But, then, your goals are ill-conceived and will likewise fail.

Re:A government in its death throes

[Anonymous Coward]

If New York's economy dissapears I think you'll have much worse things to worry about by that point. Like food and shelter.

Re:A government in its death throes

[khallow]

Just face facts: the unregulated free market is not perfect or optimal. A combination of greed and flawed business models swept the housing market, and since a combination of Gramm-Leach-Bliley and a lax antitrust division at the Justice Department allowed for the formation of megaconglomerates, this crisis spread to the financial sector. This is what the people actually responsible are saying, and not some (with all due respeact) fringe group typing posts on Digg.

Sorry, you don't get it. There's always greed and flawed business models sweeping the business world. It's always raining somewhere. But how does it get so big that it threatens the entire system? When government pumps it up with a combination of rent-seeking (government boons to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, regulatory barriers to entry for finance, accounting, stock markets, etc) easy credit and other inappropriate generousity (like CRA, various bailouts over the years, labor union law, FDIC especially the practice of covering deposits that aren't legally insured), selective oversight (eg, stopping short selling because it was inconvenient for failing banks, pretending to oversee derivatives market), and regulatory half-measures (Sarbanes-Oxley).

I'm not a true Libertarian. I do beleive there are government functions which a government can do well enough: defense, insurer of last resort, etc. But it is foolish to ignore the role of government in the financial sector. The three biggest factors were the easy credit following 9/11 and lasting for too many years which lead to huge booms in real estate and automobile loans (both sectors being high profile basket cases now), the government benefits that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enjoyed, and finally decades of effort by the US, state, and local governments to pump up the value of residential real estate and create the high debt economy that is causing trouble for the US now.

But let's blame it all on a non-existent "free" market.

Re:A government in its death throes

[RightSaidFred99]

I agree, I'm getting shameful joy out of the problems NY and CA are having. What I'm afraid of, though, is people won't learn the lessons they should and the federal govt will have even worse problems than it already does.

Re:A government in its death throes

[RightSaidFred99]

It's collapsing for the same reason any socialist system in a large population will fail. They counted on "rich fat cats" too much for their tax money. It's easy to make lots of tax money when the rich play your game or when the rich make lots of money. When the economy takes a shit, though, or you overtax the wealthy and they clam up or move away from your state, you're _fucked_. That's why a sane tax system wouldn't be overly 'progressive' (a misnomer in common use, since any system based on percentages is progressive). Ergo, CA and NY. I'm glad it's happening, good luck f'ers. I just hope we learn the lesson before King Obama tries to do the same things at a federal level.

Re:A government in its death throes

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the state of New York didn't build up any cash reserves/pay off debts when times were good.

I don't see where regulation comes into it. It's not that I expect you to RTFA or anything, but it sure sounds like you're jumping to conclusions to fit your pet theory.

And when, dare I ask, were times good in NY? We have had budget problems for the past 20+ years and now things are suddenly much worse than they were before. The population of the city I live in (in Western NY) has cut half in the past 35 years. Taxes are too high, businesses are moving elsewhere, and the only jobs left in the city are government jobs or low level stuff like retail. The city and surrounding areas are littered with empty buildings and abandoned industrial parks. NYC may have been doing very well for itself in the 90's, but the rest of the state certainly was not.

Re:A government in its death throes

[mjwx]

It's collapsing for the same reason any socialist system in a large population will fail. They counted on "rich fat cats" too much for their tax money.

There's a contradiction in what you are saying. A "Socialist" system requires everyone to contribute where as an "ultra-capitalist" system relies on the rich fat cats to make all the money.

Not that it would matter to you, as the GP said:

but it sure sounds like you're jumping to conclusions to fit your pet theory

Nor should you mind that the reason the Australian and Canadian banking systems are falling apart is because AU and CA heavily regulated their systems, not the least of this regulation was forcing the banks to maintain a large liquid (cash) reserve.
no....
wait.....
The Australian and Canadian banks aren't falling apart, homes are not being repossessed by the train load in Australia. In Australia there's been a bit of a Cost of Living increase but we are going to weather this economic down turn relatively unscathed.

Re:A government in its death throes

[SirGarlon]

I live in Massachusetts, which is a state known for high taxes but also one that maintains a cash reserve. There are some substantial budget cuts this year, but nothing one would call a crisis.

To paraphrase Hanlon's Razor, never attribute to ideological differences that which can be explained by simple incompetence. ;-)

Re:A government in its death throes

[RightSaidFred99]

Sweet Jebus. Why do people keep bringing up Australia and Canada? They are tiny little countries, and neither is doing so well. What I said were simple facts. If your tax system tries to "punish the wealthy" and has a minority of the taxpayers paying the vast majority of the taxes, you are highly susceptible to boom bust cycles.

But hey, if you want to hold up Canada and Australia, we'll see how they turn out, eh? Canada depends on us, so they're pretty much screwed. And it isn't your regulations that saved you, it's that you're both tiny little countries. Besides, the home reposessions aren't a big deal - it's just the lie that "everyone should own a home" coming home to roost.

Less Government for Less Money

[Nom du Keyboard]

I would rather have less government for less money. Did you ever note that politicians always say they'll have to cut the most inflammatory items - police, fire, libraries - first? How about their own salaries next time for starters?

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[blueZ3]

I wish you could be modded higher than +5

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is completely fed up with this "it's for the children" crap. I bet someone living in New York could name 10 or 20 programs that not only deserve to be cut, but eliminated. But when it's time for the clowns who sit in the State House to set a new budget, any cuts have to come from some popular program, not from "$1,000,000 to study the impact of electric light on fungus" or "$100,000 to rename a state park after some pork-barreler and build a statue"

Personally, I'd like to implement a new system, where every year we decimate the ranks of politicians--if you served in public office during the year, we put your name on a list and we randomly shoot 1 in 10 of the people on the list.

Or just nuke congress from orbit--it's the only way to be sure.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Archangel Michael]

Basic Libertarian Principle there!

Problem is, people love to "stick it to the man", which is the very heart of "progressive" politics. Little do they realize that in a society that is ostensibly "Of, by and for the people", that they themselves are "the man", and when they "stick it to the man" they are harming themselves.

There is NO SUCH THING as FREE LUNCH, nor Health Care, Income, Welfare ..... etc.

We have to get off envy as a motivation for governance.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Anon E. Muss]

I would rather have less government for less money.

There are "low tax/low service" states. Vote with your feet and move out of New York.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[darkmeridian]

Policemen and firemen take up much more money in salaries and guaranteed retirement benefits than politicians, if only because there are so many more of the former group. Also, the result of cutting politicians' pay would be to make it so that only the rich and the corrupt can afford to be politicians.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Anonymous Coward]

How about their own salaries next time for starters?

How about voting for the ones who say they'll do that, instead of always voting against them in favor of the corrupt ones, and then complaining?

People don't really want their government fixed. If they did, they would vote for it.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[mpapet]

I would rather have less government for less money.

* Law enforcement is overrated. Jails too. Gangs and other forms of organized crime can keep the peace just fine.
* I'm thinking the roads in my State are too well maintained too.
* I haven't seen any fires in my neighborhood, so get rid of the Fire Department.
* Sewage systems and trash pick-up are over-rated too.

There you go, lower taxes. Enjoy your crime-riddled, trash-stinking utopia.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Zironic]

Probably because their salaries are a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the budget. Police, fire, libraries etc are the big expenses.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Explodicle]

Did you ever note that politicians always say they'll have to cut the most inflammatory items - police, fire, libraries - first? How about their own salaries next time for starters?

IIRC, state senators in NY make about $100k a year. Even if they cut that in half, it would only be like %0.01 of the total state budget. I guess it helps, but their salaries are not really the biggest problem here.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Bieeanda]

Not to mention that you'll lose even more qualified applicants to other organizations. I love it when people screech about 'overpaid' politicians and services they 'never use', it just serves to illustrate how myopic they really are.

Politicians and CEOs of non-profit organizations command large salaries not because they can vote themselves pay raises, but because their services really are that highly sought after. Oh, and before you say something like 'Oh, but anyone could do that!' ask yourself, 'Why aren't I doing it, then?'

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever note that politicians always say they'll have to cut the most inflammatory items - police, fire, libraries - first?

Yes I did notice, and what's ironic is that these are some of the very first justifications for government. Nearly every government in the beginning stages of its lifespan justifies taxing by citing exactly those services!

So these are the very first things they took our money for, and yet somehow, by some bizarre stretch of logic, they are also the first things to go when the budget is tight?

Something smells fishy. Could it be that the end goal of government is not justice, or safety, or peace, or even education -- but revenue?

It sure is odd how the richest, most powerful governments in the world still don't have enough revenue.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[aaronl]

Actually health care is NYS' largest item, then education, then the STAR program.

Health care = Medicaid and public health ($3.5b)
Education ($2.0b)
STAR = exemptions from school tax ($1.7b)

What they *actually* are trying to do is increase their tax revenue by $3.1b this year. They're doing the typical lying about what they'll cut if you don't give them more money.

As a former local government employee that dealt with budgets, let me tell you that there isn't a year that goes by that your government doesn't lie to you about what they'll actually cut if you turn down the budget. They might do something stupid just to scare the hell out of you into paying, but they'll always find somewhere to cut that they didn't tell you before. For example, you can guarantee that sports will always somehow find its way back, even when they claim that they'll have to fire dozens of teachers.

They'll claim to have to cut the most visible and scary programs every time. If you don't agree to pay more, then "you must be a terrorist, after all".

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

With the amount of money it takes to run for office, already only the rich or corrupt can afford to be politicians.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[oboeaaron]

* Law enforcement is overrated. Jails too. Gangs and other forms of organized crime can keep the peace just fine. * I'm thinking the roads in my State are too well maintained too. * I haven't seen any fires in my neighborhood, so get rid of the Fire Department. * Sewage systems and trash pick-up are over-rated too. There you go, lower taxes. Enjoy your crime-riddled, trash-stinking utopia.

Apologies for picking nits, but I live in upstate NY and our garbage collection is privately owned. It works quite well, thank you.

BTW, you just illustrated exactly what the GP was talking about - cherry-picking the most basic government services as emotionally-charged poster children for why government "can't possibly" be reduced.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Vidar Leathershod]

You've been trolling this topic with the same inflammatory rhetoric that the above poster describes. The fact is that those items are a very small portion of our budget. Most communities in NY have volunteer fire departments, for one. They raise money for equipment in a variety of ways, and they are pretty darn effective.

We have a reduced need for jails, and local communities pay for a large portion of police forces.

Likewise, those people who do not have their own septic tanks, and rely on municipal services, pay for their sewer on the local level. Not State.

Ditto for non-state Highways, which are maintained on a local level. The Thruway is maintained too well, using the massive amount of revenue gained from confiscatory tolls, which were supposed to be eliminated a long time ago.

Take your Socialist party hat and move to Europe, where you will be welcome. NY has one of the largest education budgets on a per student level in the nation (over 20,000 per student in my area), and the education our children get has not justified the cost.

Even though we have had huge increases every year, we still have idiots clamoring for more, and meanwhile New York has been losing population for years, and businesses are not exactly chomping at the bit to move in.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Duradin]

Let's compare two neighboring states with vastly differing tax levels, Minnesota and South Dakota.

MN is known as "The Land of 10,000 Taxes". SD is pretty much the land of no taxes.

SD is sounding pretty good, right?

It will, until you need to use its infrastructure, like roads. Bridges aside, MN has very good roads. It has to, unless having all transportation outside of the twin cities grind to a halt for half the year is acceptable, which for the people of "Greater Minnesota", it isn't. Decent shoulders, pot holes are repaired (lest the snowplows run into them), sensibly spaced road signs. These all cost money.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Cormacus]

I think the key word there is "ostensibly." I think several discussions here on /. have explored how little control the people have over the government. DHS anyone?

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[mpapet]

cherry-picking the most basic government services as emotionally-charged poster children for why government "can't possibly" be reduced.

I cherry-picked. So, let's not cherry-pick. Find 100 of the worst expenditures in your State and end them. Guess what? You haven't put a dent in government spending.

In the real-world politic, those top-100 bad projects will have the resources to blow your noble deed of fiscal restraint out of the water.

Those same people who derail your noble project will have their own list of 100 bad projects, some of which you will find super-valuable.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn; I ran out of points before I got down here. MOD PARENT UP

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[mpapet]

Your way of thinking is unclear and employs the untenable American dichotomy of less taxes = better government.

While I'm moving to Socialist Europe (those commies in Denmark will LOVE me), you move to the low-tax-rate Mexico. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg Hmmm. It seems Mexico's a bad place to do business. http://www.doingbusiness.org/EconomyRankings/

While I'm in Denmark where the Socialists have one of most business friendly climates in the world. Shocking isn't it.

NY has one of the largest education budgets on a per student level in the nation (over 20,000 per student in my area), and the education our children get has not justified the cost.

So, cut the budget in half. Go ahead. Will students be MORE qualified after the budget cut? Maybe you'd like to fund schools as little as they do in Tennessee? http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:Z89OYuyGr5cJ:www.jobseducationwis.org/263A%2520Education%2520Week%2520Quality%2520Counts%25202005.doc+educational+achievement+ranking+by+state&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Whining about taxes and big budgets and doing nothing about it is is a favored pastime of the well-off and stable countries worldwide.

Move your bottom-of-the-barrel magical thinking to Mexico. I'd be happy to hear how that works out for you... Oh, wait. It won't.

How about building an argument on facts first?

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[DarKnyht]

No thank you, they will just move to our "low tax/low service" states and screw them up like they did theirs. Look at what has happened to North Carolina lately.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Archangel Michael]

Replace DHS with any of the other alphabet soup agencies and see if it still works.

Does for me. Picking on one distracts from the greater truth.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[StikyPad]

I assume you're talking about state/local government since you're discussing state/local issues. I don't know where you live, but in my state, legislative salaries are well below the state median income.

Federal legislators.. well that's a whole different story.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[cvd6262]

Did you ever note that politicians always say they'll have to cut the most inflammatory items - police, fire, libraries - first? How about their own salaries next time for starters?

I was just listening to the local NPR show in Rochester, and this was brought up by a caller. The guests comment was... "Can't do that. It's against the state's constitution."

My thought was: W...T...F...?

I'm going to go read that document now.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[PitaBred]

Just an FYI, not intended as an insult. The idiom is champing at the bit.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[BoberFett]

The roads here in front of my Minneapolis home are crumbling. There aren't enough police, and I pay the same for my trash pickup as do people who use a private garbage service so I can only assume that the city isn't spending tax money on that, it's a use fee. We are building new stadiums so wealthy sports team owners can make more money however.

If the government wouldn't waste so much money elsewhere, some of us wouldn't have such a problem with spending tax money on the basics.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Kamoranakrre T. Eyea]

Chomp is just a variant of champ. The OED says it was "Formerly only dial. and U.S.", but has become widespread and includes citations for "chomping at the bit" back to 1937.

Re:Less Government for Less Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your Socialist party hat and move to Europe, where you will be welcome. NY has one of the largest education budgets on a per student level in the nation (over 20,000 per student in my area), and the education our children get has not justified the cost.

Afraid not. The socialist party is here to stay, and the humor in this is that you'll pay your increased taxes. Go ahead, bleat.. but you know it's true.

Solution!

[spazmolytic666]

Maybe just tax the prostitutes. Just ask their Gov. Eliot Spitzer how much just a small tax on them would make.

Re:Solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not a governor anymore. He's gone, not that he did anything wrong imo. I liked the new guy till he began doing stupid shit like this.

Easy out!

[Cornwallis]

Why can't Paterson make up for the shortfall by selling Hillary's Senate seat to Caroline!

Re:Easy out!

[jbeaupre]

Has the original bootleg fortune grown big enough?

I never got this...

[Capt James McCarthy]

How the Government institutions tell folks that they should be more fiscally responsible while they run up more and more debt. I guess if I had a tax base, I wouldn't be concerned with how much I spent every year either.

Re:I never got this...

[sac13]

How the Government institutions tell folks that they should be more fiscally responsible while they run up more and more debt. I guess if I had a tax base, I wouldn't be concerned with how much I spent every year either.

Yeah... it'd be nice if I could use the barrel of a gun to take whatever money I require to cover my "needs"...

A lot of the US should follow

[alta]

Not with the taxing entertainment, but I'm really not too upset about that one. But the rest of the country needs to back off on the social programs. Schools, no. Trying to pay for EVERYTHING to make sure EVERY warm body (citizen or not) has the same benefits as everyone else just isn't sustainable. Go ahead, tax the rich. And, as in the case of NYC, they are moving out in droves. So that leaves you with masses of people dependant on welfare, and no more rich left to tax.

California is going to be next here. They have a massive immigration issue. It's one thing to turn a blind eye (sanctuary cities anyone?) to the problem, Its another to try to feed, cloth, house, and healthcare every single person that shows up on your doorstep.

As Spock said, "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." The many are the 300Million United States Citizens, the few are the 20M illegal immigrants

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[jedrek]

You mean the illegal immigrants that pay all consumption, property and ownership taxes while not getting any of the direct benefits from them? The immigrants that are hired by US citizens? Yeah, they're the problem, not no-bid gov't contracts, spiraling health care costs, corporate subsidies (both industry and agricultural) along with two wars.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[my $anity 0]

But the "many" make use of many of these social programs. I bet many of the middle class would suddenly look very poor if they had to start paying for schools.

New York has about the second best school system in the country (usually alternates with California and a couple of other states), and has a quite good state university program. This creates skills and abilities which then create wealth. Remember, it's not a zero-sum game, wealth can be created, and schools do that.

I'm not saying New York Schools are perfect (far from), but they're some of the best we have, and we need to reform and improve them, even if it takes even MORE money. Good schools will attract people here.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

You mean the illegal immigrants who's kids suck up any and all tax money they may generate - and then some - the moment they enroll them in a public school? It costs ~$12k-$14k per kid. How many of these families generate enough income to cover just one kid? Not counting the other drains on social programs.

So yeah... they are the problem. So are the other things you meantion. They are not mutually exclusive.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[gorbachev]

"Go ahead, tax the rich. And, as in the case of NYC, they are moving out in droves."

Do you have any data to back that off, or are you just inventing facts to support your ideology?

The rich are moving out? I sure as hell haven't noticed. In fact, Manhattan real estate market for upscale (as in multi-million) homes is still very healthy. Meanwhile the real estate market in the burbs for working class homes is not. It's the poor and middle class people who can't afford to live in New York City. It's been this way for a LOOOONG time, but it's getting increasingly worse in recent times.

As for the rest of your post, a lot of the social/welfare program funding is cost effective, because it's preventive in nature.

For example, funding healthcare makes sense, because it improves the general health of the population reducing the need for REALLY expensive healthcare options (ER visits, hospitalization, etc.) and reduces the rates of serious illnesses (diabetes being #1 in NYC right now). It also reduces business losses by reducing the amount of sick days.

Funding the police prevents crime, which is MUCH cheaper than housing criminals in prisons.

It's exactly the same for practically every single social program that's government funded. It's a fairly simple cause and effect formula. You don't even have to think really hard about it. You just have to think.

I'm really sick and tired of hearing people complain about governments spending money on welfare programs. It's typically coming from neo-cons and other free markets advocates who don't seem to understand, or conveniently omit mentioning, the fact that most government funded welfare and social programs are cost effective on the long run.

I really don't understand the rationale of these people. You want governments to cut costs, but yet you advocate policies that would increase costs in the long run. What is it that you really want? I have a pretty good idea, but I still want to believe that people are fundamentally good, so I'm trying to not think about it.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

NY is near the top in state spending on education and near the middle of the pack on graduation rates, test scores, etc. I'd hardly call that "about the second best school system in the country."

Do we have some good state colleges in the SUNY system? You bet... but having good state colleges mean nothing when you have cities like Rochester with a 39% graduation rate.

Here's a comparison of graduation rates by state where NY comes in with a mediocre 87% and another study places NY at 16th in the country. Care to back up your assertion that we have one of the best school systems in the country?

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of these families generate enough income to cover just one kid?

The ones that don't magically teleport the kids to school from whatever universe they live in? I think even California has property taxes.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

I don't want to call you stupid, but I think you may qualify. I live in California and my property tax runs about $6k-$7k per year. My home value is slightly above the state average. You REALLY think that the taxes generated by my property can cover even one single child? How much do you think the property taxes generated by a single home with 2-4 families living in it? Or an appartment? Seriously? Use your grey matter. They do NOT cover their costs even remotely. It's a huge drain on society which cannot be sustained.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[internerdj]

Or, you know, corporate bailouts that dwarf years of spending on those things in the blink of an eye to save the jobs of people who make and lose more in a day than the majority of the country will see in a lifetime of working.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[alta]

The problem is, they're only paying consumption taxes.

Being illegal, they aren't paying the income taxes.
In almost all cases, they can't own land, so they can't pay property taxes.
They aren't paying social security....

Looking at my paystub,
Fed Income Tax 154
Social Security 143
Medicare 33
State Income Tax 108
Health Insurance 326

All of things put together are what I pay to the govermnet every month so my kids can go to school, I have paved roads to drive on, there are parks in my neighborhood and when I get old I have some minute chance that the gov may give me some money back.

Do illegals pay all this stuff? No.

And in most cases they are not hired by US Citizens. They are hired by greedy US Corporations. Personally I don't know anyone with enough money for a mexican maid or lawn guy. And the solution for that is to make these companies HURT when their caught. MASSIVE fines and Jail time. Not a slap on the wrist. When the work dries up, we won't need deporation, we just open the borders and let them walk back home.

But in sanctuary cities, we don't have any way to even tell if they're illegal, so large evil corps LOVE sancturary cities. Eliminate those as well.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[mpapet]

Trying to pay for EVERYTHING to make sure EVERY warm body (citizen or not) has the same benefits as everyone else just isn't sustainable.

If you expand your geopolitical boundaries a bit, you would discover many nations have some very effective nationalized systems for their citizens. What country do you live in? The U.S. is nowhere near providing anything like you describe.

California is going to be next here. They have a massive immigration issue.

As a lifelong Californian and middle-aged guy, this State has no "immigration issues." We love our immigrants! They pick ALL of the produce farmers grow, gladly provide all of the dirty, sweaty work in the hospitality industry. They have good credit, buy houses and pay taxes. It's been this way for at least 50 years.

Before the Latin Americans were doing the jobs, Europeans were *literally* imported for the same jobs. That's how my Grandfather got here. That's why you can find remnants of Basque and French populations in farm towns like Bakersfield, Fresno, etc.

It's time to let go of that one and move on.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[LehiNephi]

The fact that our school system *is* a social program is a problem in and of itself. If the school system were privatized and funded via a voucher system, we'd all be paying a lot less. The government-run education monopoly has no incentive to compete academically or financially.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the immigrants that are paid less then min wage? Or the ones where they do 'declare' something (and not enough) do so under a bogus SSN? Or the ones paid in cash where nothing is taxed at all? Or the ones living in a house meant for 5 people living with 10-30? Or the ones who show up at a hospital to get health care with no money to pay for the work? Or the ones who horde their cash then go back to wherever they came from with a big pile of cash? Or the ones working as mules carrying things that would end them up in jail?

Not exactly very fair to the ones who do follow the rules and try to get in and become a citizen. Find one they are not that hard to find then ask about the byzantine rules for getting just a visa, much less citizen.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[JStegmaier]

Or you could allow the immigrants to immigrate legally and have them pay taxes.

Presto! Your problem is solved.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[nurb432]

They get direct benefit.Everytime they drive their car across the street, or drink from public water supplies, or need assistance from a fireman or ambulance.

All they don't get benefit from are things like social security.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[characterZer0]

I'd rather my taxes pay for the education of some kids from a hard working illegal immigrant family that values education than for the babysitting of some welfare babies that do not make any effort to learn.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[GiyaMonster]

As for the rest of your post, a lot of the social/welfare program funding is cost effective, because it's preventive in nature.

Certainly that is the intention for most social programs, but many fail to live up to their intention. Take Welfare for example. Obviously the intent is prevent folks from becoming destitute and stricken with lethal poverty. Welfare has achieved this but due to the tons of loopholes lots of folks abuse the system and are freeloading on our goodwill. The solution isn't necessarily to end Welfare, but at the same time we probably shouldn't increase Welfare without revamping the system to eliminate fraud.

Funding the police prevents crime, which is MUCH cheaper than housing criminals in prisons.

Police do not prevent crime. They investigate crimes, identify and arrest suspects, and feed the criminal justice system. The threat of punishment is what prevents crime, not being caught by a policeman that summarily let's you go. Do you really think a car thief would stop stealing cars if we eliminated jails and just put more police on patrol? The only ounce of truth to your argument is that improving the likelihood of getting caught probably does decrease crime. Simply adding police does not result in linear gains on this end though. Look at the UK. There are more security/police cameras there than anywhere, yet they still have plenty of criminals.

I'm really sick and tired of hearing people complain about governments spending money on welfare programs. It's typically coming from neo-cons and other free markets advocates who don't seem to understand, or conveniently omit mentioning, the fact that most government funded welfare and social programs are cost effective on the long run.

You bandy the word neo-con about pretty loosely. Lots of folks, Democrats included, would like to see government spending decrease. To circle back to Welfare for a moment, I would prefer to teach people how to fish rather than giving them a fish. Obviously giving them shelter, clothing, and food is necessary for some time, but the goal should be to make people self reliant and responsible. The current Welfare system does little to improve a person's situation and is more focused on preventing it from declining. A truly progressive society would try to lift up the downtrodden, help them a get a job and become a productive worker in society. That's why so many people hate government programs. Their heart is in the right place, but they fail miserably where the rubber meets the road. Much of this disconnect is due to the massive, bloated size of the government. In an organization the size of the government the potential for abuses, fraud, and mistakes is more likely than a smaller more accountable government. Ultimately I think most folks that are critical of government spending, Republicans, neo-cons, Democrats, Independents, are really upset that there is no real accountability in government anymore. Some of the public faces change from time to time, but the bureaucracy is so mammoth it is virtually unaccountable. Consequently things that are broken never get fixed. Increasing spending on a broken system only loses us all more money and doesn't fix the problem

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

As a lifelong Californian and middle-aged guy, this State has no "immigration issues." We love our immigrants! They pick ALL of the produce farmers grow, gladly provide all of the dirty, sweaty work in the hospitality industry. They have good credit, buy houses and pay taxes. It's been this way for at least 50 years.

Um... counter-point time.

Funny, that. I'm a "lifelong Californian and middle-aged guy" and I disagree with you. Not about the "immigrants" part, but your leaving out the fact that we aren't talking about "immigrants" (my wife is one -- most of her family and my grandparents). It's the ones working here against the law, oversaying visas, working under fake SSNs, etc, etc, etc that are realling causing problems.

That California is yet again on the brink of bankruptcy is due in no small part to the costs generated by our unregulated under-the-table importation of poverty. What about state healthcare? Emergency rooms are closing in droves. Why? Our roads are overused, housing over priced and the tax burden shifts more and more upon the middle and upper classes and businesses to keep just the infrastructure running. Businesses are leaving the cities... and the state. The "rich/upper" income tax bracket STARTS at $44k paying nearly 10%. Know any "rich" people who make under $50k? Certainly not if they plan to live in California...

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Kohath]

And in most cases they are not hired by US Citizens. They are hired by greedy US Corporations.

With no human involvement at all. That's what you're saying, right?

And the solution for that is to make these companies HURT when their caught. MASSIVE fines and Jail time.

If there are no US citizens involved, who is going to jail? The point is that corporations are just groups of people.

I don't agree with sending these people to jail. They should be subject to large fines and the fines should be put into a fund to reimburse hospitals for the unpaid medical bills of illegals.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

But they are allowed to immigrate legally -- if they would only follow the law.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[alta]

That's assuming our country could manage that income effectively, but they've proven with what we've given them, that they want to bail out executives and the United Auto Workers.

Giving them more money to play with is just going to make that problem bigger.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[JStegmaier]

I dare say most illegal immigrants didn't immigrate illegally because they get a rush from going something outside the law. They did it because of the possibility that most of them would ever be allowed to immigrate legally under the current system is vanishingly small.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[alta]

Of course with Human involvement, but by people who thing they are protected be the corporate veil, and can not be prosecuted for committing crimes. I'm saying that in many cases their is a company (of any size) behind the hiring, not an individual. Let me clarify, because I'm not sure if you understood what I was saying. I'm not talking about putting immigrants in jail for working or being here. I'm saying put the people who are HIRING them in jail. My father-in-law runs a temp labor service. He won't hire the illegals because to compete with the companies that do he would have to pay them a very low wage ($2-$3)/hour. He won't do that because it's taking advantage of human beings, it's slavery. Because of that he has clients that use him just based on the fact that he's doing the right thing. (And somewhat because his workers speak English) (I had a point here, I lost it) Anyway, if the people running companies the size of his, all the way up to mega huge companies like Dole, had the threat of jail time, they'd be MUCH less likely to hire illegals. Threat of prison time is very scary to most who have a cushy life.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[alta]

And this would have the added benefit of getting rid of the teacher's union and the Tenure rules. Those two things together ensure that we have some of the most incompetant and over paid teachers in the world. Where I work, if I don't perform, I'll be replaced. If I do a good job, I'll get a raise. Tenure has made many teachers not give a damn.

Disc: My mom and sister are both teachers, and members of the NEA.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[mpapet]

It's the ones working here against the law, oversaying visas, working under fake SSNs, etc, etc, etc that are realling causing problems.

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but they provide most of the hard labor in the hospitality industry. Having worked in it, I know this from experience.

What problems do they cause?

That California is yet again on the brink of bankruptcy

And how exactly can you pin *$25+ billion* of dollars of fiscal irresponsibility on a significant minority? Do these illegal aliens spend hundreds of billions of dollars every single year on their own somehow?

unregulated under-the-table importation of poverty.
Okay, from this day forward, all restaraunts, hotels, service shops, farms, warehouses, drivers, are magically forbidden from using undocumented workers. Not only would there be a supply crisis, but you won't be able to afford going to your local restaurant or hotel. The cost of produce alone would skyrocket.

Emergency rooms are closing in droves
If you asked the people that run the hospitals, they would tell you the State isn't paying them enough to keep the doors open. They would also tell you that the emergency rooms are overwhelmed with people who can't afford to go to a doctor for non-emergency service. These are actual citizens using public services because they can't afford any other medical care.

tax burden shifts more and more upon the middle and upper classes
Okay, lets tax the hell out of the poor. Guess what? They'll leave the State too!

Your thinking is unclear and riddled with xenophobia.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[gorbachev]

The solution isn't necessarily to end Welfare, but at the same time we probably shouldn't increase Welfare without revamping the system to eliminate fraud.

Yes, but that's not the same as cutting funding on it, which was what I replied to.

Obviously the programs being funded should actually work. Why would you fund them if they didn't?

Police do not prevent crime. They investigate crimes, identify and arrest suspects, and feed the criminal justice system. The threat of punishment is what prevents crime, not being caught by a policeman that summarily let's you go. Do you really think a car thief would stop stealing cars if we eliminated jails and just put more police on patrol? The only ounce of truth to your argument is that improving the likelihood of getting caught probably does decrease crime. Simply adding police does not result in linear gains on this end though.

You're not really seeing the forest from the trees.

Obviously it's not police alone. Crime is a multi-faceted problem caused by many issues (poverty, education, abusive environment, policing, justice system, etc.), but all other things being equal increased police force DOES reduce crime.

A comment about linear gains...that was kinda my point. Investing in preventive programs doesn't have to produce linear gains, because they are usually preventing problems that are MUCH costlier than the investment in the preventive programs.

You bandy the word neo-con about pretty loosely. Lots of folks, Democrats included, would like to see government spending decrease. To circle back to Welfare for a moment, I would prefer to teach people how to fish rather than giving them a fish. Obviously giving them shelter, clothing, and food is necessary for some time, but the goal should be to make people self reliant and responsible. The current Welfare system does little to improve a person's situation and is more focused on preventing it from declining. A truly progressive society would try to lift up the downtrodden, help them a get a job and become a productive worker in society. That's why so many people hate government programs.

The problem is that when people are talking about cutting government spending on social programs, it's not just the "ineffective" welfare program(s) that get cut.

My wife works at a non-profit in NYC that specializes in issues relating to problem youth (education, juvenile justice system, home situation, childhood poverty, etc. etc.) and deals with the New York State (NYS) and City (NYC) budget decisions a lot. NYS and NYC fund all kinds of community programs that you describe as "progressive" (and a lot of them are). Most of them work better than the actual welfare program, usually because they're more targeted and smaller in scale.

When budget cuts happen, THOSE programs get cut first regardless of their effectiveness. That's how it always happens.

In any case, that wasn't really my point. The real point was that most social programs, even those with issues, are preventive in nature and produce cost reductions in the long run. Programs should obviously always be improved and the programs that truly do not benefit anyone should be eliminated.

Increasing spending on a broken system only loses us all more money and doesn't fix the problem

Well, yes. Framing the budget discussions in this manner would be great. Most people don't. All they spout is "Government spending bad. No spending good.", just like the comment I was responding to did.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

As a lifelong Californian and middle-aged guy, this State has no "immigration issues." We love our immigrants! They pick ALL of the produce farmers grow, gladly provide all of the dirty, sweaty work in the hospitality industry. They have good credit, buy houses and pay taxes. It's been this way for at least 50 years.

Your full of Shit. Thanks to California, the rest of the country has to pay for shit like this:

Some five million fraudulent home mortgages are in the hands of illegal aliens, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
It's not known how many of those have contributed to the subprime housing mortgage meltdown, but it has affected every state, including Arizona.
The problem began years ago when banks were forced to give mortgages without confirming social security numbers or borrower identification. As a result, illegal immigrants were able to obtain home mortgages which they could not afford.

My state has a huge agriculture industry too. We have migrant workers here legally to work the farms. They come in seasonally, pick the crops, get paid, then go home. This symbiotic relationship has worked well for over a hundred years.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[AncientPC]

In Texas's case at least, illegal immigrants are a financial net positive on the state government. The number crunching was done in one my government classes so I can't reference it, but immigrants contribute more to social security and taxes than they take out in terms of Medicaid (too scared to visit) and education.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[RJBeery]

A lot of taxes are avoided by immigrants requesting to be paid in cash. Also, illegals can dial 911 just like anyone else, can still access our free education system, and (contrary to political rhetoric) are NOT turned away from Hospitals! What other direct benefits are you referring to? Welfare? THE NET EFFECT ON THE US ECONOMY BY THE AVERAGE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT IS NEGATIVE. Read it again. That being said, I don't believe they are really a significant cause one way or the other of our current problems. Why you think "no-bid" gub'mint contracts are some looming cancer on our economy is beyond me.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

Why is that, do you suppose? What are the requirements to immigrate legally? Are they unreasonable or irresponsible? I already know the answer. Look it up.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Just Some Guy]

You mean the illegal immigrants who's kids suck up any and all tax money they may generate - and then some - the moment they enroll them in a public school? It costs ~$12k-$14k per kid.

Side topic: assuming a small classroom of only 20 kids and the bottom end of your scale, that means it costs $240,000 a year to teach them. Suppose for argument that the teacher gets half. Where's the extra $120,000 going? You could build a brand new freestanding building every few years for that price.

If costs really are that out of control, maybe they need to cut educational spending, starting from the top down.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but they provide most of the hard labor in the hospitality industry. Having worked in it, I know this from experience.

Jobs which were provided before by highschool and college students -- and other unskilled laborers. I know this from experience as *I* was one of those unskilled.

What problems do they cause?

To work illegally, you need to do one of the following: work for cash or work with fake SSNs. You think that alone doesn't cause problems? Many I've enountered claim exempt and pay next to no income tax. Think that doesn't cause problems?

And how exactly can you pin *$25+ billion* of dollars of fiscal irresponsibility on a significant minority? Do these illegal aliens spend hundreds of billions of dollars every single year on their own somehow?

Simple. I dont. Read what I said -- it's due in "no small part". I don't exclusevly blaim them -- but note they are part of the problem. Rather than dismiss them entirely because they can't be blamed ENTIRELY for the problem.

Okay, from this day forward, all restaraunts, hotels, service shops, farms, warehouses, drivers, are magically forbidden from using undocumented workers. Not only would there be a supply crisis, but you won't be able to afford going to your local restaurant or hotel. The cost of produce alone would skyrocket.

You seem to have the problem of not thinking and puting words in others mouths. Who suggested a solution which would cause what you state?

If you asked the people that run the hospitals, they would tell you the State isn't paying them enough to keep the doors open. They would also tell you that the emergency rooms are overwhelmed with people who can't afford to go to a doctor for non-emergency service. These are actual citizens using public services because they can't afford any other medical care.

I work in the healthcare industry -- closely with hospitals. Perhaps you should take your advice and actually ask them. Many will tell you stories different than you state. I know -- I work with these people.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Trailer Trash]

It costs ~$12k-$14k per kid. How many of these families generate enough income to cover just one kid?

Very few non-illegal-immigrant families pay enough in taxes each year to cover the public-school cost of their children's education. The average income is $46,000/household annually, which would pay only a few thousand dollars in income tax (not counting FICA), a thousand in property taxes (which are supposed to fund schools), and maybe some state income tax and sales taxes of another few thousand. All of that together wouldn't pay for school.

We have a huge illegal immigrant population here in Nashville, and I can tell you that there are enough without kids that it all works out, easily, that they're a net gain. We have no state income tax, so the *only* tax that they don't pay is federal income tax. At their income levels, they wouldn't owe it, anyway, only FICA. Given that they can't collect social security, I hardly see that as a problem.

One other thing - at this point it is just silly to be bitching about people who are scraping along illegally in this country, and working hard and actually contributing to the economy, when we have wall street, detroit, and whoever else can get their grubby hands in the treasury raping us for trillions of dollars. Corporate welfare is, at this point, so big that I don't even care anymore about the smaller things. It's obvious that we have to get rid of the rampant corruption in the federal government before they empty the treasury. We can worry about the smaller things after that.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

Excellent questions. Much is sucked up by the beuracracy. And the cost of teaching "special needs" kids is no small portion.

Some Interesting reading

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

One other thing - at this point it is just silly to be bitching about people who are scraping along illegally in this country, and working hard and actually contributing to the economy, when we have wall street, detroit, and whoever else can get their grubby hands in the treasury raping us for trillions of dollars. Corporate welfare is, at this point, so big that I don't even care anymore about the smaller things. It's obvious that we have to get rid of the rampant corruption in the federal government before they empty the treasury. We can worry about the smaller things after that.

I disagree. I also disagree with your numbers and would like a citation, but I'll just focus on what I quoted. I disagree that the problem is small -- I also disagree that we should focus on one problem at the exclusion of all others. If we do that, we'll do nothing but put out economic fires until we rot. All these problems need solutions. Importing poverty is not sustainable.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

People are leaving NYC because:

A) They're going bust. Bad economy.

B) They can't afford to live there anymore, where real estate prices are higher than almost anywhere else. Particularly when they're dealing with A).

C) It's too crowded, dirty, noisy, and dangerous compared to much cheaper, cleaner, nicer alternatives.

It's not the taxes.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[sr. bigotes]

I really don't understand your point. Very very few people in this country make enough to pay $14k in income taxes...does that mean their children shouldn't be attending public school either? Let's imagine a person who makes enough to pay $14k in taxes. Does he have to choose between sending his child to school or partaking of local police service? We've already established that these illegal immigrants you're convinced are ruining 'Merka are paying taxes. What's the issue? Illegal immigration is a problem, for myriad reasons, but poor immigrants not making enough money to pay the full share of their children's education costs is not one of them, especially since illegal immigrants are less likely to use other public services than citizens.

I also disagree with your numbers and would like a citation

you didn't cite anything yourself. Your numbers are probably more made up than the GP's.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[sr. bigotes]

The giant assumption behind your entire argument is that there are more, or at least similar amounts of, illegal immigrants than poor citizens. This is just not true. There are somewhere between 7-12 million illegal immigrants, but 40% of Americans have lived below the poverty line sometime in the last decade. That's an order of magnitude difference.

Regarding paying no income tax, yes, it's likely that these immigrants don't pay any, but again, this is irrelevant. The "unskilled laborers" you believe have been deprived of jobs by illegal immigrants wouldn't make enough money to pay income taxes either, and they would use more public services. We're talking about jobs that need to be done, but pay next to nothing. I fail to see how installing legal citizens in these jobs would generate any additional revenue for the government.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[RightSaidFred99]

I really don't understand the rationale of these people. You want governments to cut costs, but yet you advocate policies that would increase costs in the long run. What is it that you really want? I have a pretty good idea, but I still want to believe that people are fundamentally good, so I'm trying to not think about it.

Fundamentally good, huh? Is it fundamentally good to have 3 kids, have two taken away for abuse and neglect, then have 4 more you can't afford and won't take care of? We live in a fundamentally flawed system that will breakdown in the long term for a very simple reason. Go look at who's having babies and who's not. Look at education, income level, criminal background, etc... and tell me who's having babies. If you don't think we're fucked in 4-5 more generations anyway you're a total idiot.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[WTF Chuck]

Wish I had mod points now.

Jhon, it's not just the schools, you are forgetting several things.
Increasing illegal immigrant populations also means that the rest of the infrastructure has increased maintenance costs, as well as costs for expansions that would otherwise not be needed at this time, (roads, hospitals, law enforcement, fire departments).
Artificially increased labor pool == deflated wages.
Costs of deportation/incarceration for the "unlucky" few that do get caught.

Before anyone decides to mod me a troll, I am not anti-immigrant, I am anti-illegal-immigrant. Our immigration laws may need some reform, but I feel that before we can even begin such a debate, the illegal immigrant problem has to be addressed.

FWIW, a client, and dear friend of mine, immigrated here from Peru, put himself through Harvard with money he earned in the Alaskan fishing industry, and has had his US citizenship for years. I think that it is total bull shit that his non-citizen, non-resident family members, that are abiding by our immigration laws, have to keep traveling between here and Peru waiting for their residence status, while illegal immigrants just come and stay with no respect for our laws and have lobbying groups demanding that they be allowed to stay and have the same rights as citizens and non-residents. Another friend, from Belize, got his citizenship just in time to vote in the Presidential election. He runs a property management company.

Immigration works, illegal-immigration does not work.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Trailer Trash]

Poverty, by definition, is "not enough resources to adequately sustain life." We are importing *poor people*, not poverty. These people eat well, have a roof over their heads, and clothes on their back. While I wouldn't trade my life for it, it's not dictionary-definition poverty.

The only number I cite is average household income. I should have said "median". It's now up to $50K (look it up on wikipedia). At that number, a household doesn't pay enough in *total taxes* in a year to pay for a single child in public school. I'm not talking about the percentage of their taxes that actually fund schools - I'm saying if you took every single cent that they paid on every kind of tax that they pay, it wouldn't pay for the education of one single child in school.

I've seen your false-statistic about immigrant families (note - most people pushing drop the "illegal" part early on) costing us so much, because they narrow their range to the 20 years that people have kids in public schools to make their point.

Compared to a few trillion for wall street millionaires, this problem is completely irrelevant.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Trailer Trash]

Actually, my numbers aren't made up. I always argue from a numerically true position if we're talking about numerical things. Makes life easier...

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

I really don't understand your point. Very very few people in this country make enough to pay $14k in income taxes...

My point that as a group, they do not even covor the cost of educating their children -- regardless of what taxes they *DO* pay. In 2004, it was reported that children of illegal immigrants made up 15% of the california school system. That was $7.7 billion a year back then. Think the problem is better now? Add on the healthcare costs. You've essentially covered in just those two areas California's yearly deficite.

We're importing poverty at a huge cost to the middle class.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

The "unskilled laborers" you believe have been deprived of jobs by illegal immigrants wouldn't make enough money to pay income taxes either, and they would use more public services.

You are making an incorrect assumption. I never claimed people are being deprived of jobs. Re read my post. Many of these "service" and "unskilled" jobs were performed by high-school and college students. Most of whom didn't NEED public assistance. I was one of those. Now there is an entire class of people form whom this is their career. Dishwasher/busboy/fast-food-jockey were NEVER meant to be careers.

25+ years ago, you could have walked in to a burger king and I might have asked you "do you want fry's with that?". Today, I see 40+ year olds doing that work rather than HS kids.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

Jhon, it's not just the schools, you are forgetting several things.

Oh... I'm not forgetting them. I just used schools as a prime example that EVERY PENNY that they might be bringing in tax-wise is eaten up the moment those kids go to school. 7.7 billion a year estimated back in 2004.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[whoever57]

I live in California and my property tax runs about $6k-$7k per year. ..... You REALLY think that the taxes generated by my property can cover even one single child?

Er... yes. Perhaps you should look up how much CA spends on education per child -- It's less than you pay in property taxes.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't even make any sense. If the children of illegal immigrants are consuming so much in public school monies, then so are the children of citizens. Children of illegal immigrants don't use any more school than anyone else.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

Perhaps you should. It is more.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to California, the rest of the country has to pay for

Far less than they would otherwise as the taxes Californians pay go to the welfare states. No money *ever* comes from any other state to California via anything in any way related to taxes. It's a one way street.

By even pretending California is costing you anything you demonstrate that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

So, no, anything you pay for you pay less for due to Californians subsidizing your existence. Have some respect for the people who are paying your bills for you you fucking leech.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

Legal residents use the system as it was designed to be funded. The children of illegal immigrants are using the system when they should not be here. Every dollar spent to educate them is a dollar less for those here legally. Figure it out. It's not that hard.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[JesseMcDonald]

Are you trying to say that they don't pay property taxes (or rent, as the case may be)? That's where the funding for all these "necessary" local public services comes from. If they live in a house or an apartment they're already paying for these things.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

14k per kid!? Fuck the schools! Close them all down!! Imagine the saving!

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[JesseMcDonald]

They do pay property taxes -- or rather, their landlord does. It's part of the cost of rent. They also pay sales taxes. I would assume that they can't claim Social Security or Medicare benefits without documentation, so there's no reason for them to pay those. The largest item on your list, "Health Insurance", isn't a tax; that leaves just the two income taxes, or a bit less than half your original total.

Anyway, if you, like myself, think it's not right that you are forced to pay for someone else's benefit, then you should be arguing against all taxes; that's the sole reason they exist. Any given person is either a net-tax-payer or a net-tax-receiver, and the only reason to have taxes is to move wealth from the former group to the latter.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[nurb432]

I was disagreeing with the parent that they are not getting benefit for their 'consumption dollars'.

I feel that they are paying, AND getting benefit from it.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the illegal immigrants who's kids suck up any and all tax money they may generate - and then some - the moment they enroll them in a public school? It costs ~$12k-$14k per kid. How many of these families generate enough income to cover just one kid? Not counting the other drains on social programs.

Wait until you see the price tag that anything approaching effective enforcement comes with. Prince William County, a county of some 350,000, estimated in 2007 that it spent $3M/year providing services to illegal immigrants (most of which was housing them in jail). A year later, the budgeted cost for enforcement of illegal immigration was... $3.1M. I wouldn't even call their tactics effective, but I don't see much of a cost reduction there. And, plus, the jails got even fuller.

Imagine the cost of a) tracking down illegal immigrants and kicking 'em out, and b) keeping them from coming in in sizable numbers. I think I'd rather pay $12k/illegal immigrant child (many of which are actually U.S. citizens, thanks to the fourteenth amendment) than pay thousands per illegal immigrant to track them down and kick them out.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Creepy Crawler]

Free schooling is one of the few things I would like to see subsidized for all. An educated populace is good for our country in dealings local and remote.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[steelfood]

Illegal immigrants don't pay tax, but then again, the same applies for most poor families. And yes, that includes consumption taxes like sales tax. But this description pretty much applies to any poor family, legal or illegal. They don't pay jack in taxes, but they have lots of kids.

So what are you going to do about it? Banish them to the dark corners and turn the other way as they climb over themselves trying to get out, or actually try to lift them out of poverty, so that they or even their children might become useful contributors to society?

Illegal immigrants aren't the problem. Wasteful administrative spending is the problem. How much of that $12K-$14K a year per child actually goes to the child's education? The state's limit is about 32 students per class. Teachers certainly aren't making $384K a year. They'd be lucky to make 1/10th of that. So where's the rest of the money going?

Local corruption, soft power, personal greed and ambition. These are the problems that should be addressed, not trying to kick out a bunch of poor people, nor trying to kick out a bunch of wealthy people.

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the illegal immigrants who use emergency health care, our schools, free lunch programs, freeways who do not pay a fucking dime for me, and I have to pay to have insurance, for lunch of my child, and my kid gets shit education because most Mexican kids have a second grade education but are in 7th grade, and can't speak English and made the classroom into a shit hole? Fuck you. The amount illegals contribute to work force, is so little to amount they take out? And that is assuming there are 3 million, when a better study done shows over 11 million.

"California's nearly 3 million illegal immigrants cost taxpayers nearly $9 billion each year, according to a new report released last week by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes stricter immigration policies.

Educating the children of illegal immigrants is the largest cost, estimated at $7.7 billion each year, according to the report. Medical care for illegal immigrants and incarceration of those who have committed crimes are the next two largest expenses measured in the study, the author sa

Re:A lot of the US should follow

[Jhon]

Illegal immigrants don't pay tax, but then again, the same applies for most poor families. And yes, that includes consumption taxes like sales tax. But this description pretty much applies to any poor family, legal or illegal. They don't pay jack in taxes, but they have lots of kids.

You completely missed the point. The system was designed to handle a certain amount of poor or low-income families. The funding was based on legal immigration numbers and legal citizens. We've broken the system by allowing massive unregulated importation of poverty. In 2004, it was estimated that there were 15% of the public student body in California who are the children of illegal immigrants. That was 7.7 billion dollars a year of unanticipated expenses. Money doesn't "magically appear" and there are no gumball trees or lemonade streams.

When some claim the answer is to "increase taxes", what happens is you squeeze the middle class even more, push more businesses either out of business or out of the state and DECREASE sources of tax revenue for the state -- compounding the problem.

No surprise.

[theaveng]

Politicians will tax everything they can lay their hands on:

- telephone
- cellphone
- cable
- ISP
- electricity/natural gas
- gasoline/road tax
- income tax
- social security/medicare (levied on both citizens and businesses)
- sales
- excise/manufacturing tax
- tariff/import tax

It was obvious internet downloads would eventually get taxed too. The average American pays 40% of their income in taxes. The average European 65-70%.

Re:No surprise.

[jbeaupre]

I was going to make some joke about at least oxygen not being taxed. But then I realized the last time I bought oxygen, it was taxed. Air too! At least the don't tax water, uh, food, uh dying, oh forget it!

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

And in Europe it's a good thing. We don't fight attack wars in Iraq on the other hand.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the average American pays 30% and the average European 40-60%. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day

Re:No surprise.

[Jhon]

Perhaps you should read what you post.

Critics object to misleading portrayals of Tax Freedom Day in the popular media. It is commonly referred to as the day "the average American" has earned enough to pay his (or her) tax obligations. See for example this ABC News report.[2] While Tax Freedom Day presents an "average American" tax burden, it is not a tax burden typical for an American. That is, the tax burdens of most Americans are substantially overstated by Tax Freedom Day. The larger tax bills associated with higher incomes increases the average tax burden above that of most Americans.
...
The Tax Foundation defends its methodology by pointing out that Tax Freedom Day is the U.S. economy's overall average tax burden -- not the tax burden of the "average" American, which is how it is often misinterpreted by members of the media.[1] Tax Foundation materials do not use the phrase "tax burden of the average American", although members of the media often make this mistake.

Basically, there is a huge burden on the wealthy. Most american's pay no income tax at all -- and quite a few get "free money" in the form of EICs.

Of those that actually PAY taxes, it's much much higher than that "average" % you cite.

Re:No surprise.

[electrictroy]

Every week my employer sucks 35% off my paycheck.

(i.e. I take home about 650 out of $1000 earned.) Add in all the other taxes from sales, property, electricity, ....., gasoline and I am *well* over the 40% estimate.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

and several of those European countries have universal health care and affordable college education.

Two-thirds (65.7%) of 4-year undergraduate students graduate with some debt, and the average student loan debt among graduating seniors is $19,237 (excluding PLUS Loans but including Stafford, Perkins, state, college and private loans), according to the 2003-2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). (The median is $17,120. One quarter of undergraduate students borrow $24,936 or more, and one tenth borrow $35,213 or more. http://www.finaid.org/loans/

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point I was making is that the 40% figure for Americans is an overstatement. The Tax Freedom Day figures suggest 30% but as you point out, "the tax burdens of most Americans are substantially overstated by Tax Freedom Day". The figure of 30% is therefore an overstatement as well.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The average American pays 40% of their income in taxes. The average European 65-70%." So what. This is not the United States of Europe.

The bottom line is 2 unalterable facts:

Politicians will treat taxpayers as sheep to be sheared to get reelected

Governments suck at spending wisely

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in New Hampshire, we have a death tax. We get taxed to die.

Re:No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in New Hampshire, we have a death tax. We get taxed to die.

Well, it's Live Free or Die, I don't see anything about dying free. It's all in the fine print...

I wonder how this will affect retirement payouts

[MarkWatson]

I have two good friends who are retired school psychologists from New York ad everytme I read about New York's financial problems, I think of them.

Same thing in California: two relatives are teachers, and one is just about to retire on a teachers pension. I think that California is very close to bankruptcy.

Pensions may sound good, but it may be that only federal government pensions may pay out because the federal government can print money ad pay out in highly devalued dollars).

Re:Issues and Problems

[Nom du Keyboard]

They have a sales tax, right? They're just extending it to non-tangible goods.

It's more than that. Now Apple (although probably not Amazon since they maintain they have no presence in NY) will have to collect a special tax strictly for NY residents, and pay that tax regularly to the state, and maybe file additional reports at additional expense, and no longer have the nicely uniform 99 cents/download price/image - and that's the effect on just one company alone. Multiply this by every company affected in every new area and the burden is significant.

Of course NY prides itself on being a very liberal state, and Joe Biden has said that paying taxes is a civil duty. Maybe they'll like having this happen to them. If not they can always vote some new people in - oh wait! The election is already over and you're stuck with these clowns for at least the next 2 years.

(If you say why Apple? It's because there are Apple computer stores in NYC giving the state tax people something to get their claws into.)

Cut costs?

[oDDmON oUT]

I recently read that New York City's entitlements policy, bloated "public service" sector, fiscal irresponsibility and system of governance were key in bringing on the bankruptcy of the 70s.

Could this be a case of the tree not falling far from the apple?

The remedies in the 70s included fiscal conservatism, cutting entitlements, dealing with corruption and going after crime.

Rather than raising taxes to enable business-as-usual to continue unabated, maybe it's time state officials considered wielding the same scalpel used in the past to the body of the state today.

Re:Cut costs?

[poot_rootbeer]

I recently read that New York City's entitlements policy, bloated "public service" sector, fiscal irresponsibility and system of governance were key in bringing on the bankruptcy of the 70s.

While I'm sure all those things were factors to some extent, one important factor you don't mention is the exodus to the suburbs that affected all American cities from the 1950s through the 1970s. The tax base for New York city fell drastically within the span of one generation, but there were still just as many streets to clean, just as many buildings to put out fires in...

Extremely Shortsigh...err..

[Alzheimers]

I'd say that these tax proposals are extremely short-sighted and show that our (un-elected) Governor lacks a vision or direction, but I wouldn't want to offend anyone

People are Idiots (taxachusetts rant)

[Anonymous Coward]

Take Massachusetts. They had a chance to get rid of the state income tax. They voted agianst it by a 70-30 margin. State unions and pensions that go with it are out of control. the roads and bridges despite all the taxes are crap. I believe its 80% of highway funds go to administrative costs vs 20% goes into fixing the roads. Oh and for that they get a hole in the ground that was so shodily made its killed people, and it only cost them billions to build.

It seems all the gov run agencys are bankrupt yet you have firemen getting full untaxed disability for fake injurys. One of them was caught becuase well he finished in top 3 of some major state bodybuilding competition. Come on yes physical therapy can get a guy fit, but it you have a bum back no amount of therapys going to get you that buff.

The problem is they all get away from it up here in NH and bring the politics that turned everything that way with them. Cash is king now. More people riding the cart then pulling.

Re:People are Idiots (taxachusetts rant)

[Anonymous Coward]

"They had a chance to get rid of the state income tax. They voted agianst it by a 70-30 margin."

Yes, because they're not idiots: they realized that if you get rid of the state income tax, then everything the state had been paying towards local stuff would have to come out of local property taxes instead.

Tax marijuana instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Legalise marijuana and tax it at $100 per ounce. Between the new tax revenue and the savings in less police and prison space we'll make $50 billion per year.

It's time marijuana smokers pay their fair share. And most of them feel the same.

Re:Tax marijuana instead

[penguin_dance]

Legalise marijuana and tax it at $100 per ounce. Between the new tax revenue and the savings in less police and prison space we'll make $50 billion per year.

Legalize marijuana and tax it at $100 per ounce. Between the new tax revenue and loads of pot smokers, almost no one will CARE about the high taxes in New York.

There, FIXED that for you.

Re:Tax marijuana instead

[ColdWetDog]

Legalize marijuana and tax it at $100 per ounce

No, you all have it completely wrong.

All you need to do is tax taxes. So simple.

Think about it....

Re:Tax marijuana instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they will just continue to grow it in their closet for free....

Re:Tax marijuana instead

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to all the extra revenue from "drug tourists" coming to the one state where it's legal to get marijuana. Especially nowadays when Amsterdam isn't as attractive financially due to the exchange rates.

Re:Tax marijuana instead

[PitaBred]

Hell... tax it at $20 an ounce, and it'll probably make even more money. Most potheads I know are poor :P

Re:Tax marijuana instead

[LionMage]

You hit the nail right on the head. $100 an ounce tax is pretty ridiculous, since that's more than what most people I know would pay for an ounce of commercial-grade pot. (Yes, I know this varies by state, and we're talking about New York, not Arizona.) $20 an ounce is a substantial hit, but likely tolerable. I can't believe it, but I'm going to cite the Laffer Curve here -- there's a magic tax rate which will maximize tax revenue, and I think the concept applies to goods just as well as income.

Using law enforcement resources to catch and prosecute tax evaders costs money too, so the idea is to find the taxation sweet spot to maximize compliance and reduce the number of scofflaws you need to mobilize resources against.

Re:Tax marijuana instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, I've been in quite a few states, and unless we're talking compressed, dry, seedy schwag then $100/oz would be amazing. That's a lot of pot you know. Even in Oregon, where the stuff grows like crazy if you just throw some seeds on the ground (you can find it growing 'wild' in Forest Park in Portland) and enforcement is so light you can't walk down the street without finding a half dozen dealers, it's around 2.5x that price.

Not that $20 wouldn't be smarter, overall, but if $100/oz is what it took to justify legalization then I'd still be expecting to pay substantially less.

Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[FatSean]

Keep the health care budget intact, but close the bases and scale everything down. This will reduce the need to Federal Income Tax revenue.

Then, let NY keep more than $0.66 of every dollar it contributes in Federal taxes.

We need to cut costs, but at the top where the rich benefit from gov't spending the most.

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[bobobobo]

National security is more important than a bunch of bloated social programs that tend not to work very well.

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[aaarrrgggh]

The DOD budget is about 25% of the federal budget. Over half of the budget is medicare/medicaid/social security. Nobody talks about the elephant in the room...

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[Darby]

National security is more important than a bunch of bloated social programs that tend not to work very well.

Except that security theater, police state bullshit and propping up the military industrial complex has nothing to do with national security and that's far and away the vast majority of the money that gets spent on "national security".

We could cut the "defense" and "homeland security" budgets by 90+% and have no national security issues at all.

 

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[Dan541]

Because self defence is to create your own enemies by stealing their oil.

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[shutdown -p now]

National security is more important than a bunch of bloated social programs that tend not to work very well.

You don't need a cruise missile for every single terrorist out there to ensure your national security.

But I bet you actually have more than that.

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[ProfBooty]

I thought the US got most of its oil from canada and mexico?

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

Turns out Canada is #1, Mexico is number 3 with Saudi Arabia #2.

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[dunkelfalke]

only in a fascist country.

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[Anonymous Coward]

National security? You mean the military? The same one that can't win a war in a country 1/10th our size where the enemy is shooting at them with WWII era weapons? Yeah, the military is super-duper effective. Let's throw another $500 BILLION at it, plus $150 BILLION for the wars they can't seem to win conclusively. That's brilliant.

Meanwhile, Medicare continues to provide health care at 1/4 the administrative cost of private insurers... but that's not working well. I could cite a million other examples of how social programs work well, but why waste my time? It would make more sense to play chess with a chimp.

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[GuloGulo]

"We could cut the "defense" and "homeland security" budgets by 90+% and have no national security issues at all."[citation to make someone actually believe this stupid assertion needed, but impossible to supply]

Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget.

[Darby]

"[citation to make someone actually believe this stupid assertion needed, but impossible to supply]

Provide a citation of some credible *military* threat justifying even 80% of our "defense" budget I fucking dare you, shit for brains. You will fail utterly.

Until you can do that, my assertion stands as your rejection of depends entirely upon your apparent belief that we're under a constant barrage of *military* attacks justifying paying more than then next 5 countries put together.

What, you can't come up with *any* justification for even 1/20th of our current spending let alone the 1/10th I suggested reducing it to?

Then shut the fuck up, moron.
My assertion quite obviously isn't stupid as you can come up with nothing to justify the contrary. Learn to think, not just whine when intelligent people talk. Your ignorant, cowardly, inability to understand what the words I use mean doesn't mean that your whining little bitchery has any value. If you want to pay 10 times what's even sane, do it yourself and keep your cowardly, thieving, idiotic little paw out of my pocket and grow a pair.

New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[FatSean]

Those losers being states that take in more federal tax money than they contribute. New York gives up 1/3 of it's tax revenue to states like MS,MO,AL,LA,WV,NC,SC, etc...You know, the 'conservative' states where 'small government' and 'less taxes' get a huge response.

Imagine if the Federal Government let New York keep that money in state...instant balanced budget and then some.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of any State tax system having to give up funds to another state. Cite your source on this.

We aren't talking about Federal taxes here.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[NeutronCowboy]

Imagine if the Federal Government let New York keep that money in state...instant balanced budget and then some.

You know what would happen if NY would be allowed to keep all of its money? It would spend it all in a heartbeat, and be in the same position as earlier.

The problem isn't lack of revenue. The problem is politicians who see state revenue as a giant cash box with which to bribe their constituents.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[sh33333p]

Anyone have a quotable source on this? I'd really like to use this argument but I need to see if there are facts behind it. Thanks.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[Detritus]

New York also has much more economic activity than those "loser" states, so stop whining about how New York is subsidizing a bunch of losers. You also might want to consider the costs to the federal government of all the things that make that economic activity possible.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[scamper_22]

The ironic thing about that is the 'loser' states would glady accept a small federal government so that New York could keep more of its money.

However, it is states like New York that keep voting for bigger and bigger federal government.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post a source for these numbers. I keep seeing this raised but no one EVER posts a source.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh last time I checked the New York state tax system is completely separate from the Federal tax system, so you are combining what is really separate issues budgetary issues.

To complain about Southern States WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH New York's inability to manage its own state budget is nonsense.

Interesting you do not include TX. Texas is conservative, has a balanced budget AND contributes more to the federal government than it gets.

Re:New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[sac13]

Imagine if the Federal Government let New York keep that money in state...instant balanced budget and then some.

Sounds like a great idea to solve the NY problem... but, like most governments, the surplus wouldn't last for long. They'd find some way to spend it and get right back to where they are now.

This is SO stupid

[bytethese]

As a grad student in the CUNY (City Univ of NY) system this will hit me and my fellow students hard. Patterson wants to tax not only music downloads but also simple things such as soda, movie tickets and even wants to increase my tuition!

While I can only speculate, let's see here...
College costs more, tax on music downloads and tax on movie tickets. With FiOS being more widely available here I can just see an increase in downloading music/movies via torrent sites.

Re:This is SO stupid

[brendank310]

The increase in tuition wouldn't be so bad, if it stayed in education. I go to a SUNY school, and we're getting a $300 tuition hike from the state next year, and something like 10% of that stays in education. Then they cut the budget by 5 million. This guy is robbing us... blind?

Re:This is SO stupid

[Gizzmonic]

Movie tickets and soda taxes? Sounds like they hate poor college students in NY.

Why not tax hookers and limo drives instead!

Re:Issues and Problems

[diskofish]

Of course NYC prides itself on being a very liberal state, and Joe Biden has said that paying taxes is a civil duty.

Fixed that for ya. Talk to anyone outside the NYC area and they'll agree that taxes are way too high. The worst part is that local tax monies are sucked up and re-distributed to NYC.

Wait, money isn't free?

[Gothmolly]

We can't just keep spending and spending on bridges, and books for our little snowflakes, and police pensions, and welfare?

Oh the humanity!

There's also a proposed obesity tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

They want to tax all non-diet soft drinks and call it the "obesity" tax.

big deal

[memnock]

Florida's budget depends on hot air.

Re:big deal

[clam666]

At least Florida isn't currently stupid enough to have an income tax.

Florida taxes tourists. You know, bring money INTO the state instead of running people and businesses OUT of the state with bad tax policy.

A funny thing about taxes. They originally existed to fund the operations of government, in theory the operations that the people actually want. I appreciate how we've all bought into the idea that taxes should be used for social control and to encourage/discourage activities and actions.

These dumb taxes on smoking, types of food, IPOD music, etc. What do they have to do with the funding of government? They are either about petty revenge by appealing to people's baser emotions (I hate smokers...ick!) or envy (Let's tax gourmet coffees, only rich people drink them) or just being mean (Let's tax food that fat people eat, that'll show 'em).

Of course, I don't know why it would be surprising, since most people use government as a weapon against others for the petty emotions, with politicians laughing all the way to the bank with the money YOU supported them into taxing.

New York has been a waste of time, with all do respect, for years. Other than the 9/11 media frenzy, that town was basically on the way our to Detroit anyway.

Re:big deal

[memnock]

Florida taxes tourists.

that was kind of my point (but not entirely)... people coming here for the climate and relying on growth to fund the state's "needs".

i don't know if you live in Florida or not. if you do, sorry to tell you what you probably already know, but for anyone else interested: Florida has been struggling with a budget deficit for two years, maybe longer, i don't worry about it that much. with the state's financial problems and commiserate cuts, many services are being affected. fire departments (local entities and locally taxed, but still affected) and parks(state and local) are two things i think of off the top of my head, besides the services for needy people (funded both locally and at the state level).

state universities have seen very significant tuition increases over the last two years and more on on the way. one could argue that a Florida university is a bargain compared to the rest of the nation, but regardless, when that hike hits your wallet, you feel it.

part of the reason for these cuts is that the golden gooses aren't laying eggs like they used to. there are still corporate taxes, but they have lots of loopholes. with the budget problems the state's government is now raiding funds reserved for specific purposes to pay for general budget items.

i'm not saying a state income tax is going to solve all the issues, i don't pretend to be any kind of economist (it might help though). i was just observing that relying on tourists and growth due to people moving here because of an appealing climate ("hot air") hasn't been dependable.

What a moron

[Odiche]

Actually Paterson has lost any marbles he has had left.

One, raising taxes during a recession actually prolongs the recession, mainly because there is less available money to be used as capital. He says this is not a tax hike, but it really is.

  Second the rate hikes he is talking about are insane. Beer and wine alone have an over 100% increase against the base rate they are taxed at now. (keeping in mind this is his proposal, before the legislators tack on their spending requests.)The iPod tax may make the business model less appealing to consumers, which may in turn lead to less offerings (unlikely but possible).

Physician Registration is jumping from $600 Biannual fee to $800. Or a $400 per year increase. It may not seem like much, but physicians are already having a tough time making ends meet in this state. This is also state where there is a dearth of physicians already. (Try getting an appointment). Why would they want to migrate to NY if fees keep increasing.

The governor states that many of these fees have remained flat for years, and as such they can be raised. He does not seem to accept the possibility that these fees have remained the same because they might be at the highest the market can bear already. Now with the market declining, where can the cash come from?

Rich are leaving the city. Who to tax then? The small shop owners! (Otherwise known as the lower-upper middle class). Up until the point they start leaving for greener pastures as well. But once they start leaving, not many employers left.

Forgive me if I seem a bit skeptical about the entire plan,and it's not just because there is no provision for politicians to tighten THEIR belts, no mention of politicians taking a pay cut or "voluntary" redundancy. No mention of a reduction in pork projects, and contrary to belief, road maintenance is not a pork project; but they are reducing that. As well as targeting Health services, fire services, police services.

But then again I live in NY. Maybe its time to leave.

Re:What a moron

[Red Flayer]

The small shop owners! (Otherwise known as the lower-upper middle class)

Hruh?

I think you misspoke, I believe the correct term is vertically-challenged proprietor class.

But it's hard to tell... perhaps it would help if term used wasn't such so exactingly indeterminant.

Re:What a moron

[dtolman]

Lost his marbles? Please - He's the only responsible one up there in Albany!

The state has a 12 billion dollar shortfall - and NY State is not the federal government - it can't print money to get out of it. This is all because Pataki, Spitzer, and the other previous idiots running this state kept thinking the good times would be around forever, and passed spending programs that reflected it. Well now they're gone, and its about time an actual adult took responsibility and proposed serious ways of closing the gap.

Patterson is proposing both service cuts across the board, and tax increases - not to mention cutting benefits for state employees. Meanwhile the state senate and the assembly blubber about nickle-and-dime crap. Personally, I think we should cut every new program added in the past 8 years, and see how much of the gap that closes.

Re:What a moron

[Odiche]

Don't get me wrong, with the massive deficit I agree there needs to be some drastic cutting. In fact it will be painful. But raising taxes is not the way to get out of a recession.

I would consider the following to be necessities (in order).

Education Services - This is absolute, and I am talking about actual classroom expenses and not the administrative bloating that occurs.

Police
Fire
Medical.
Sanitation

Anything else is luxury.

Tax rates are unacceptable though. We already have the highest sales taxes in the nation (I think or close to it) highest property taxes. We don't have that much left to give.

There was a reason for the Boston Tea Party, and there is no reason to repeat it. But sometimes I wish politicians would keep that bit of history in the back of their minds while doing the budget.

Let's Dance!

[mcnastiest]

Who needs school...at least everyone will be able to dance their way through life!

NYS driving away everything in their own region

[guruevi]

NYS has been driving out businesses just by their costs and taxes. You pay taxes for everything and every piece of paper (permit, license, ...) from the government costs at least $10 for individuals, $100 for businesses. It's so bad that you can live in NYC but any decent company (datacenters. stocks and banking) is right outside the border in NJ. The same goes for Buffalo: it used to be a big business city; they all moved to Erie, PA or Canada and now that city is as good as dead. If you look at the border-towns (eg. PA-border) the NY-side of the border has the smallest population, no businesses except for a bar and no real-estate market (people dump it way below market value). On the other side of the border (the PA-side) there is a decent sized rural town, the shopping mall and stores like Wal-Mart are literally 1/2 mile away from the border, clearly built at a location to draw out the NYS folk.

Re:NYS driving away everything in their own region

[Xtravar]

This is exactly what I learned 12 years (or more?) ago when I played Sim City for the first time.

Maybe we should get these politicians a copy so they can see what happens when you jack up taxes - abandoned warehouses, skyscrapers, and houses. Whoops!

Re:NYS driving away everything in their own region

[Just Some Guy]

NYS has been driving out businesses just by their costs and taxes.

Oh, you think? We were driving to my mom's house for Thanksgiving and stopped in St. Joseph, MO to fill up with gas at $1.43 a gallon. My wife called her parents in Buffalo, NY to tell them, and her dad almost had a stroke because he paid $2.34 a gallon earlier that day. Sadly, he truly doesn't understand why he's paying an extra buck a gallon. His conclusion was that we get cheaper gas in the Midwest for some magical reason.

Re:NYS driving away everything in their own region

[areusche]

I call BS. I live in Erie PA and there has been a net loss for the city for quite some time. Even outside of the city boundaries no one wants to come in because of the insane county taxes. The business you are referring to are there because of the fact that Erie is the closest metro(kinda sorta) politan area for almost 100 miles.

I wish I had mod points!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is exactly right. Target the spots that hurt the most and will get the most publicity and keep the dead weight there.

Better remedies

[Anonymous Coward]

Use that old protocol from the 1980's that shall not be named.

An alternative remedy http://thepiratebay.org/

Heh. My capture was "bondage". USe the info to break the bondage.

New York Taxes

[ticklemeozmo]

I assumed their city was completely running off of Parking/Traffic Enforcement, and that everything else was just to pay off the corruption.

Try parking legally in New York City. Am I right people?

Re:New York Taxes

[barzok]

New York != NYC. There's thousands of square miles north of Westchester which are classified as "New York."

NYC has their own tax scheme on top of the state taxes. Even so far as to have questions specific to the Borough of Yonkers in TurboTax.

Re:New York Taxes

[vmxeo]

Almost 10 million tickets totaling $624 million in parking fines alone last year.

Incidentally, that's more than it costs the city to run the Department of Transportation.

Intolerable Acts

[Acknar]

Does anyone else get the idea that this has happened before? These type of taxes just seem so familiar.

Re:Issues and Problems

[camg188]

"...will have to collect a special tax strictly for NY residents."
Cell phone companies have had to deal with special local taxes for years. Any company that delivers products and has to collect sales tax has to deal with differences in local sales tax.

The tax system in the US seems to be more about subterfuge and camouflage than any sound fiscal policy.

Re:I wonder how this will affect retirement payout

[Archangel Michael]

You wonder wrong. The problem of California is large and wide spread, and isn't limited to retirement system. Actually the CA retirement system is one of the best funded retirement systems.

The problem in CA is that we've have a Democratic controlled legislature for decades and they have passed every progressive program entitlement that they could think of. And then they thought of more.

Then you have a very large section of the population that is here without proper documentation (illegal aliens), that are draining the resources of the state, and sending it back to their native country. I don't blame them either, because if I were in their boots, I'd do the exact same thing.

We live in a progressive tyranny. And they always cut fire, police and schools first, because the progressive motto is that the progressive programs are untouchable. And so is political correctness is their creed.

Makes for lousy way to run a state (or country)

Whaaambulance

[mpapet]

Your post, and the parent post are choking on their own misinformation.

The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world

If you want to pick a *single* statistic, to tie your frustrations to, then that's about as bad as it gets.

I think we would all agree that the American economy remains one of the most vibrant in the world. It remains one of the most business friendly. http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/10/smallbusiness/best_countries_for_small_biz.smb/

8 years of explicitly promoting a lax regulatory environment for every category of business in the U.S. hasn't seemed to have helped keep jobs in the U.S. at all. Wages certainly haven't gone up for those making less than $50,000/yr in the last eight years.

So let's chop away at those taxes! Publicly funded law enforcement is overrated. Organized crime/gangs do a good job protecting the neighborhood. Courts? Jails? Don't need em. Let's get rid of utility regulation too! You are perfectly willing to pay way more for electricity or safe fresh water at monopoly prices?

It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.

Re:Whaaambulance

[MightyYar]

It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.

Except that you seemed to be aiming at the feds, yet the things you mention are overwhelmingly local in nature (law enforcement, courts, jails, utilities, water). Of course there are federal aspects to these things, but most of the money is collected and spent locally.

Federal money primarily goes to social security, interest payments on debt, welfare, and the military. You could argue that these things are "part of what makes living in this country great", but you have to at least concede that the opposite viewpoint also has some merit.

Re:Whaaambulance

[tripdizzle]

8 years of explicitly promoting a lax regulatory environment for every category of business in the U.S. hasn't seemed to have helped keep jobs in the U.S. at all.

As always, everything is always Bush's fault. This has all been gone over many times here and elsewhere, that this entire recession is based in a housing/property bubble burst. The bubble was created by people who forced lenders to lend to people that were previously thought of as bad investments, by organizations such as ACORN suing banks for being racist (?) in their lending, and people like this guy:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=63siCHvuGFg (I hope this is the right video, cant get to youtube from work)

stopping any attempts to regulate at all costs.

People bitch about the past eight years, when things have only really gotten bad in the last two. We had a continually growing economy from Bush first being elected, through 9-11, and up until Democrats took congress.

I love it whenever we speak of reducing taxes, those on the left cry about "but we need cops and roads and schools" Of course we do!! Its everything else that tax dollars are being spent on that needs to stop.

Re:Whaaambulance

[That's Unpossible!]

It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.

No, our constitution and enforcement of it through our legal system are what make this country great.

Taxes are just a necessary evil. Switching over to a system like the Fair Tax would at least bring some sanity, and perhaps 'less evil', to the endeavor.

NY should drop their income tax and replace it with a flat sales tax increase.

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

I call bullshit:

Fact: Welfare Costs 1 Percent of the Federal Budget

Widespread misperception about the extent of welfare exacerbate the problems of poverty. The actual cost of welfare programs-about 1 percent of the federal budget and 2 percent of state budgets (McLaughlin, 1997)-is proportionally less than generally believed. During the 104th Congress, more than 93 percent of the budget reductions in welfare entitlements came from programs for low-income people (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 1996). Ironically, middle-class and wealthy Americans also receive "welfare" in the form of tax deductions for home mortgages, corporate and farm subsidies, capital gains tax limits, Social Security, Medicare, and a multitude of other tax benefits. Yet these types of assistance carry no stigma and are rarely considered "welfare" (Goodgame, 1993). Anti-welfare sentiment appears to be related to attitudes about class and widely shared and socially sanctioned stereotypes about the poor. Racism also fuels negative attitudes toward welfare programs (Quadagno, 1994).

source: http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/myths.html

Find someone to pick on besides those that are scraping by. Keep in mind that the defense budget is 54% of the federal budget in the US. I'd much rather feed hungry people than shoot them.

source: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

Re:Whaaambulance

[mpapet]

yet the things you mention are overwhelmingly local in nature (law enforcement, courts, jails, utilities, water

Federal courts? Federal law enforcement? You clearly don't really understand how much Federal money is distributed to your State/Local gov't.

Federal highways are way overrated too. Let's stop maintaining those. Federal support of railroads are a money pit too. Let's get rid of those and see what happens to your local economy.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Choad Namath]

NY should drop their income tax and replace it with a flat sales tax increase.

We already have some of the highest sales tax rates in the country when you consider state plus local rates. Raising the state sales tax would only drive businesses out of state when internet stores cannibalize their sales.

There's also that whole inherent regressivity that sales taxes have.

Re:Whaaambulance

[mpapet]

As always, everything is always Bush's fault.

You are jumping to a conclusion I did not make. This is not a political party issue.

"but we need cops and roads and schools" Of course we do!! Its everything else that tax dollars are being spent on that needs to stop.

Okay, so let's cut military spending in half and watch what happens. I don't think you understand the actual consequences of "just spend less" doublespeak.

Re:Whaaambulance

[lalena]

You can't say cutting the budget is cutting safe water or police.

Look at the budget breakdown on the NY State web site: http://publications.budget.state.ny.us/eBudget0910/fy0910littlebook/AllFunds.html

Medicaid is 1/3 of the budget.
Law Enforcement, Courts, Jails, Utilities, Roads... all total 10%.

Re:Whaaambulance

[MightyYar]

Sorry, I should have been more clear - I was lumping all of the department of health and human services together and calling it welfare. Medicare, medicaid, etc. This is one of the biggest items in the budget.

Defense budget is NOT 54% of the federal budget. That is propaganda from the other side! :) You'll always see the word "discretionary" put in front of that stat...

Re:Whaaambulance

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, dont trust economic data that has been collected by the American psychological association. I have nothing against helping people when help is needed, but I know people on welfare and unemployment, and they are just taking advantage of it because it is there, if it wasnt there, they would have to work for money and actually contribute something to society.

Oh, your poor and have five kids and little education, well maybe you should have paid attention in school and not gotten knocked up without being financially stable. its called personal responsibility, and no one wants to be responsible anymore

Re:Whaaambulance

[MightyYar]

Federal courts?

Necessary and they receive less than $50 billion IIRC... I'll gladly continue to pay for this tiny fraction of the federal budget.

Federal law enforcement?

Again, a necessity that receives less than $50 billion, including the Coast Guard. People won't all agree that the current size is appropriate, but I don't think people generally object to some level of federal law enforcment.

You clearly don't really understand how much Federal money is distributed to your State/Local gov't.

I do - it's one of the biggest items: welfare. Most of the money for Medicare, Medicaid, etc is distributed by the states. Personally, I'd prefer a system where states are required to fund their own social programs and the feds would only subsidize poor states rather than collect all of the money, tie strings to it, and then redistribute.

Federal highways are way overrated too. Let's stop maintaining those.

First of all - much of the funding comes from gas taxes and local tolls. Second, have you BEEN on a federal highway??? They stopped maintaining those a long time ago :)

Federal support of railroads are a money pit too.

You mean Amtrak? It's almost of no consequence whatsoever. New York's rail system is almost more impressive.

Re:Whaaambulance

[MightyYar]

Whoops... "You clearly don't really understand how much Federal money is distributed to your State/Local gov't." was meant to be quoted... you said it, not me :)

Re:Whaaambulance

[tripdizzle]

"but we need cops and roads and schools" Of course we do!! Its everything else that tax dollars are being spent on that needs to stop.

My bad, forgot to mention military. They way my brain works is that military is a given. The constitution does state "Provide for the common defense" so I see no reason why it would be cut. On the other hand, it also says "Promote general welfare" not "Provide general welfare"

Re:Whaaambulance

[nelsonal]

That war resister's number includes a ton of oddities, stuff like 80% of interest on the debt, 80% of homeland security's budget (TSA isn't what most people would call war spending), 50% of NASA's budget (even though the Air Force handles most of the military's space launches), and uses outlays rather than budgets (which is arguably more accurate but isn't comparable to the numbers that most orgs use to describe government spending). Also, they ignore medicare/social security taxes and spending which makes the denominator smaller.

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

So you'd rather preach, be self-righteous, and let people starve than deal with the REAL problems that are out there? I hate this "personal responsibility" crap. I am personally responsible. So are many people that get laid off and take advantage of the Unemployment Insurance that they PAY for out of their checks. The idea that somehow people in the past were more responsible, or educated, or hardworking is just plain crap. Every time the financial markets get deregulated, predatory lending takes off, and everyone ends up broke. The idea that somehow uneducated consumers that haven't dealt their whole lives with complex financial instruments that many of the people selling them don't even fully grasp is blaming the victim.

Why don't you take the energy used to create all that hot air and use it to make some positive changes in the world? Volunteer doing literacy training so that someone who "didn't pay attention in school" can get a shot at life and be productive members of society (since you understand that's what the VAST MAJORITY of them want to do?). Go feed some people at a homeless shelter and see how our Department of Veteran's Affairs leaves those that should be heroes behind to deal with debilitating psychological disorders without a shred of help.

Either grow a heart and start being a part of the solution or shut up and sit down.

Re:Whaaambulance

[TheCycoONE]

I'm familiar with that point of view; it assumes that everyone is made equal, and some of us due to good choices succeed, while others due to bad choices or selfish lazy choices fall back on social safety nets. Having worked for a number of years in an institution for mentally handicap persons I can say that's flatly not how the world works. A lot of people do not have the intellect, physical, or social ability to contribute to society in a meaningful way. A lot of people do not even have the capacity to think beyond the moment. The institutions have been downsizing for years, and it is my experience that most of the individuals who are released after a couple years end up being supported by the prison system after being on welfare/disability for awhile and hurting some innocent people in the mean time.

Secondly, while a minimum wage job may be more productive than welfare in the short term, the hours which one has to put into a minimum wage job to support themselves are inhibitory to acting as a member of the community and bettering oneself.

There are certainly people - lots of them, who abuse the welfare system. But generalization is not the answer in this case - and cut throat utilitarianism doesn't lead to, what I considered, much of a utopia.

Re:Whaaambulance

[HTH NE1]

You are perfectly willing to pay way more for electricity or safe fresh water at monopoly prices?

At $150 to own the Electric Company or the Water Works, sure!

And if you own both, you get from $20 to $120 if anyone lands on either one of them.

Re:Whaaambulance

[tripdizzle]

Is there a different reason you used the number of years 8 then??

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

There are certainly people - lots of them, who abuse the welfare system. But generalization is not the answer in this case - and cut throat utilitarianism doesn't lead to, what I considered, much of a utopia.

More FUD:

Myth: People on Welfare Become Permanently Dependent on the Support

Fact: Movement off Welfare Rolls Is Frequent

A prevalent welfare myth is that women who received AFDC became permanently dependent on public assistance. Analyses indicate that 56 percent of AFDC support ended within 12 months, 70 percent within 24 months, and almost 85 percent within 4 years (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These exit rates clearly contradict the widespread myth that AFDC recipients wanted to remain on public assistance or that welfare dependency was permanent. Unfortunately, return rates were also high, with 45 percent of ex-recipients returning to AFDC within 1 year. Persons who were likely to use AFDC longer than the average time had less than 12 years of education, no recent work experience, were never married, had a child below age 3 or had three or more children, were Latina or African American, and were under age 24 (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These risk factors illustrate the importance of structural barriers, such as inadequate child care, racism, and lack of education.

I agree with most of your post, but its just not true that people abusing the system is widespread or common. Its the safety net that we put in place so that poor people aren't desperate enough to rob, murder, rape, and steal. Look at it as self-interested protection money, because the mob is much bigger than you. (If you're that heartless that you can't just do without a few pennies a week so that starving people can eat.) (That last part is directed at the GP)

Re:Whaaambulance

[Anonymous Coward]

Dollars paid in for social security is lumped in with all the rest of tax revenues. Welfare has money being paid in by current workers, and money being taken out by retired workers. It costs so little right now because retirees are balanced out by current workers. Once the number of retirees starts to go up (baby boomers) or the number of workers goes down (possible increased unemployment), the costs of the system could grow unsustainably high. The people who talk about a social security crisis in the future are not all Chicken Littles.

In consideration of current events, the whole thing kind of reminds me of a Ponzi scheme.

Re:Whaaambulance

[mpapet]

1. It's nice to see someone use some facts around here. Good work!

2. Medicaid is 1/3 of the budget.

Okay, let's get rid of it. http://publications.budget.state.ny.us/eBudget0910/fy0910littlebook/HealthCare.html

So, which would you like to eliminate first?

*Indigent elderly care AND nursing homes. Kick em out. The streets will make them tough or dead.

*Health care for children. You know, they can just grow up with a chronic illness, that way we can spend 10x more on them as adults. Or not at all and they can live or die by whatever smarts they have.

*Home care. If they can't get to the Doctor's office on their own then they need to deal with that. Or call an ambulance and take them to critical care. You know that's FAR more expensive than offering rides right? Or they can just die at home.

I'm glad you used some facts, now it's time to make some decisions based on those facts.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Alaska Jack]

Speaking of choking on misinformation. This:

"8 years of explicitly promoting a lax regulatory environment for every category of business in the U.S."

is simply wrong.

BUSH REGULATORY SPENDING BREAKS RECORDS {Reuters]

ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After nearly eight years in
office, President Bush is on track to be one of the biggest regulatory budget
spending presidents in history, according to a new study from the Mercatus
Center at George Mason University and the Weidenbaum Center at Washington
University in St. Louis

MORE: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS192062+12-Aug-2008+PRN20080812

    - Alaska Jack

Re:Whaaambulance

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007

The President's actual budget for 2007 totals $2.8 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2006. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:

        * $586.1 billion (+7.0%) - Social Security
        * $548.8 billion (+9.0%) - Defense[2]
        * $394.5 billion (+12.4%) - Medicare
        * $294.0 billion (+2.0%) - Unemployment and welfare
        * $276.4 billion (+2.9%) - Medicaid and other health related
        * $243.7 billion (+13.4%) - Interest on debt
        * $89.9 billion (+1.3%) - Education and training
        * $76.9 billion (+8.1%) - Transportation
        * $72.6 billion (+5.8%) - Veterans' benefits
        * $43.5 billion (+9.2%) - Administration of justice
        * $33.1 billion (+5.7%) - Natural resources and environment
        * $32.5 billion (+15.4%) - Foreign affairs
        * $27.0 billion (+3.7%) - Agriculture
        * $26.8 billion (+28.7%) - Community and regional development
        * $25.0 billion (+4.0%) - Science and technology
        * $20.5 billion (+0.8%) - Energy
        * $20.1 billion (+11.4%) - General government

Looks like social programs eat up a huge chunk of the budget to me.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Anonymous Coward]

But... if we shoot them... then we don't have to feed them. Which means that... we wouldn't have to pay for them. And if we don't have to pay for them... then we can shoot more people, which leads to more savings!

This is a great idea Ericrost! I'll contact my congressman right away!

Re:Whaaambulance

[Neeperando]

On the other hand, my grandfather died when my mom was 11. I'm sorry my grandmother couldn't get a college education when she was the right age for that (due to depression and war) so that she could get one of those great high-paying jobs available to women in the early 60s. She did the best she could get to raise her two kids (she worked, so did my mom and my aunt), but they still needed welfare to get by.

Geez, Grandma, you mean when you were 20 you didn't prepare for the possibility that your husband would die tragically in a construction accident? Well maybe you should've paid more attention in school when your family could barely eat during the depression, and gone to college during the war, then ended sexism in the 50s so you could get a higher paying job when Grandpa bit it. It's called personal responsibility.

On the other hand, my mom tells people this story all the time as a defense of welfare, but when she lost her job she only applied to jobs she knew she couldn't get so she could keep her unemployment benefits as long as possible.

My point is that it goes both ways. You can't get rid of welfare just because some people abuse it. You'll punish the honest while the dishonest will find another way to game the system. It's just like DRM, I guess :-).

Re:Whaaambulance

[cgfsd]

I call bullshit on your bullshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2008

Defense only takes 16% of the budget.

Social Security (Welfare for the retired) 21%
Medicare (Welfare medical insurance for retired) 13.3%
Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory entitlements 11.2%
Medicaid (Welfare medical insurance for poor) 7.2%
Global War on Terror 5%
Health and Human Service 2.4%

So, depending on how you slice things. If you take Social Security and Medicare out of the mix, Defense is #1 in spending.

But if you leave those in there, Welfare accounts for about 54% of the US budget.

You can play the numbers any way you want to prove any point you want. But no matter how you slice it, welfare is far more than just 1% of the budget, unless you complete break down every category and isolate just welfare and only welfare and not include things like unemployment and Medicaid. (Which are forms of welfare)

Re:Whaaambulance

[Neeperando]

The bubble was created by people who forced lenders to lend to people that were previously thought of as bad investments

Maybe I'm inferring something you're not trying to say here, and I'm sorry if I am, but blaming Fannie Mae "forcing" lenders to make bad loans is about as accurate as blaming the Republicans and deregulation. As always, the truth is in between and shares elements of both sides.

The way I understand it, Clinton's changes to the CRA didn't force banks to make bad loans, but allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy mortgages from banks that were previously considered bad. Now, naturally this encouraged banks to make bad loans, which maybe in capitalistic terms is the same as saying they forced them. However, other, private investment banks were buying bad mortgages, too.

I'm sick of this whole attitude of Democrats saying, "All you have to do is look at a selective subset of the facts and its obvious it's the Republicans' fault," and the Republicans saying "Well, the liberal media only shows you one selective subset of the facts. Our selective subset of the facts makes it REALLY obvious that it was the Democrats' fault."

There's plenty of blame to go around: the people who tried to buy houses they couldn't afford, the banks who lent them money, the investors that bought mortgage-based securities, the executives that encouraged buying them, and politicians on both sides who passed laws that encouraged bad lending and deregulation that made it easier to make bad loans.

In retrospect, I think I'm misinterpreting what the parent was saying, so sorry about that, but I'm sick of people trying to say that one group's mistakes can be blamed for this whole thing.

Re:Whaaambulance

[TheCycoONE]

I feel I have been misunderstood.

My second point made it clear that I understood welfare wasn't permanent. A minimum wage job could entrap a person in a vicious cycle of survival, while welfare gives a person an opportunity to better themselves and seek more empowering employment opportunities.

My final point, which you chose to quote, concerns the intentions/motivations of certain people who use the service. If even 0.1% of welfare users are drunken bums who can't be bothered to improve themselves (and I've known a few so I suspect it's at least 0.1%) then it stands that lots of people are abusing it.

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

I'll say this real slow so you understand:

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE IS NOT WELFARE.

It's paid for out of the checks of the workers (and then funneled into the programs by the federal government) that's why its called unemployment INSURANCE. This is the biggest crock of shit that the blame the victim "personal responsibility" crowd needs to get over. Its just as much welfare as your HEALTH insurance is.

Re:Whaaambulance

[tripdizzle]

ACORN sued CitiBank and Wells Fargo because"Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories." This forced these banks to make shitty loans, and other banks, in fear of also being sued, followed suit.

Re:Whaaambulance

[RightSaidFred99]

I'm sorry, did those morons just compare me not giving some of my money (e.g. interest on mortgage) to welfare? Uhh...yeah. Pretty much ruins them as a source of any kind of information. See, the thing is I earned my money, then I also pay out welfare that goes to poor people. Anything less I can manage to pay in taxes is "welfare" as much as my not putting a gun in your face and stealing your money is "charitable" of me.

As for 1% - that's simply a lie. Many federal programs including various parts of medicare and medicaid are welfare. Anyone arguing it's 1% of the budget is a liar and/or a poor sophist.

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

Yep you earned your money which means it ought to be taxed. You're getting welfare, but its uncomfortable. Deal.

Re:Whaaambulance

[y86]

As for 1% - that's simply a lie. Many federal programs including various parts of medicare and medicaid are welfare. Anyone arguing it's 1% of the budget is a liar and/or a poor sophist.

Finally, someone I can agree with.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Anonymous Coward]

Defense budget is closer to 33% - Wikipedia says that the total budget for the US in 2009 is 3 trillion, with 1 trillion of that going to defense spending. That figure includes things that traditionally get considered entitlement spending, though - VA benefits and the like - so I'd estimate that the actual percentage of the budget spent on defense is somewhere around 25% of the total US budget. It also includes discretionary spending (the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan), which makes sense; whether you object to the war or support it, or couldn't care less about it, we're paying for it. Based off of what Wikipedia reported regarding the budget, it looks like peacetime military expenditures are even lower, closer to 10-15% of the total budget.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Neeperando]

white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories

So they said, "If you're going to make shitty loans to white people, you have to make shitty loans to black people, too." It sounds like they were making shitty loans already.

I know a lot of the more conservative folks around here don't believe racism is real, but here's my opinion: Making bad loans to poor people is stupid, but making bad loans to poor white people and not to poor black people is stupid and racist.

In any case, you're just proving my point even more. Do you really think that ACORN suing banks to force them to be equal-opportunity idiots is the sole cause of the crisis? According to this, this, and this, less than a quarter of the subprime loans were made by institutions that were covered by the CRA. Also, there's no data to suggest that CRA subprime loans have a higher default rate than the other 80% of subprime loans. And if ACORN sued Wells Fargo and CitiBank, how come Wells Fargo didn't go under because of all the bad loans it was forced to make in the last few years?

There's two sides to every story, and usually both sides are wrong. Certainly the government was stupid to encourage banks to make bad loans and are not without culpability here, but the banks were doing it anyway.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Garrett Fox]

It's also interesting to consider how much of that spending is authorized by the Constitution. I'd rate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and some share of other spending in the unauthorized, and therefore illegal, category. Whether it's a good idea is a different topic.

By the way, re: others' reference to Social Security as a trust fund, that's not how it's actually been managed. As I understand it, the money gets dumped into the general revenue and spent for other purposes. A lawyer who did that with an official trust fund for a client would go to jail.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Garrett Fox]

Note that "general welfare" is not a power granted to the federal government. According at least to the people who helped write it, that phrase is absolutely not "an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare." It's just an introductory phrase leading to the rest of the sentence, which lists the enumerated powers. That's why it says "common defense" and then goes on to specify that Congress can create a military; reading "common defense" as a power would make that part redundant. So, when we talk about federal spending, we should be looking at what legal authority there is for it -- if any.

Re:Whaaambulance

[RightSaidFred99]

I have no problem with taxation as a necessary evil. We have to pay for roads, the military, reasonable regulations and regulatory agencies, emergency (only) healthcare, the police, etc... I have a problem with forcing me to be a wage slave and work 1/3 of my life away to pay for other people's bad choices.

You "progressive" ponces like to try to turn the tables and claim people who work for a living should "man up" and pay their taxes. It's a laughable argumentative technique but I imagine it lets you feel like a little less of a bitch, so more power to you. You could tax someone 99% and say the same thing "uhh, deal with it!".

In the end, we (people who work) will win so I'm cool. The extra wealthy really do pull all the strings and they need us (middle and middle upper) class more than they need filth on welfare who have 12 kids. So if you want to pretend we'll have a utopia where you pay 60% taxes on anything you make over $100k, you go right on ahead pretending that.

Re:Whaaambulance

[z-j-y]

since you are playing the strawman game, I advise you move to socialist heaven North Korea, where government takes care of you 100%.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time you came to the realization that reasonable taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.

there, fixed that for you. you original statement that taxes are good (100% taxes must be GRRRRREAT, then!) is as absurd as the tax cut folks proclaiming every tax cut is good (0% tax rate must be GRRRRREAT, too!).

some taxes are good, others are bad. 95% of people are two simple minded to wrap their head around the idea one has to think and analyze individual issues before coming up with a specific reasoned solution.

i'm familiar with california and i'm alleging their proposed tax increases are bad for the following reasons:

1. CA has increased spending 40% in the previous 5 years against a back drop of 0% income increases. this is a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

2. many government workers were given raises *after* the government officials *knew* the budget was under funded. remember, these people get retirements, too. why should an employee, assuming they are still employed, with no retirement take a pay cut so the "government class" can get pay increases, health care increases and larger pensions? again, this is a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

3. CA mismanaged their money. at the peak of the real estate bubble, CALPERS leveraged 4-1 and bought into real estate. at the time, a board of director stated, "the only risk is not taking risk." they took risk and LOST ALL THEIR INVESTMENT AND NOW OWE MONEY. that's not a revenue problem. this guy wasn't fired, rather, he retired and likely gets a pension funded by the people who put up the billions he lost. this is a management problem, not a spending problem.

4. the state schools receive $11k per child. i pay $6k to spend my kid to private school for a much better education. i figure i pay 60% less for a 30% better education. more money won't fix that problem. perhaps it will make it worse. this is abad management problem, not a revenue problem.

5. LA unified burned $200 million on a payroll system that still doesn't work well. management problem. NOT REVENUE PROBLEM.

in a nutshell, only a total moron would provide more money to a bad money manager that continually squanders the money in an unproductive fashion. are you still sending checks to Bernard Madoff even though you know he blew over $50 billion unproductively?

i didn't think so.

so the particular tax increases in question are, imho, BAD TAX INCREASES. increased revenues don't fix the spending problems (+40% in 5 years) and they don't fix bad management - THE TRUE PROBLEMS. in fact, they further entrench the bad and corrupt people running california's government (both parties are awful).

Re:Whaaambulance

[geekoid]

"..ke the Fair Tax would at least bring some sanity, "

anytime someone mentions 'Fair Tax' is shows how ignorant they are of the tax policy and why it's the way it is.

Fair Tax is double speak for screw the poor.

Re:Whaaambulance

[sac13]

So you'd rather preach, be self-righteous, and let people starve than deal with the REAL problems that are out there? I hate this "personal responsibility" crap. I am personally responsible. So are many people that get laid off and take advantage of the Unemployment Insurance that they PAY for out of their checks. The idea that somehow people in the past were more responsible, or educated, or hardworking is just plain crap. Every time the financial markets get deregulated, predatory lending takes off, and everyone ends up broke. The idea that somehow uneducated consumers that haven't dealt their whole lives with complex financial instruments that many of the people selling them don't even fully grasp is blaming the victim.

Why don't you take the energy used to create all that hot air and use it to make some positive changes in the world? Volunteer doing literacy training so that someone who "didn't pay attention in school" can get a shot at life and be productive members of society (since you understand that's what the VAST MAJORITY of them want to do?). Go feed some people at a homeless shelter and see how our Department of Veteran's Affairs leaves those that should be heroes behind to deal with debilitating psychological disorders without a shred of help.

Either grow a heart and start being a part of the solution or shut up and sit down.

I find it humorous that you start your post with "So you'd rather preach, be self-righteous" and then proceed to spew as much dogma in the other direction.

Whether we like it or not, personal responsibility has a role to play. And for the other folks, we do have to have a social safety net. When we go full blast in either direction, that's when we get screwed.

If we just hand out money, health care, food, houses, cars and anything else anyone would ever want, who the hell is ever going to work? I know that you're not taking that position, but despite how we like to divide the world into us vs them, everything exists on a spectrum. And, your idea is more in that direction than the GP's.

It's a good thing that people have to work to afford life. The product of that work is the betterment of humanity. It either improves our living conditions or enriches our experience. We need people to work. And, unfortunately, the vast majority of us (and I would put myself at the top of this list) need the threat of a painful life to get us to perform at our best.

Now, there are certainly those that are unable to provide for themselves. And, you point out many that would fit in that category. We certainly should make sure that those are taken care of. And, like you say, those that can be educated and elevated should be. Those that can't, we have to care for them too.

But, we have to be able to distinguish those that truly need the help from those that can elevate themselves but refuse to become motivated. It is a moral evil against humanity to allow someone to stay in a ditch when they don't have to. It is an afront to those that are truly in need to not compel those that can contribute to do so. They take away resources from those that truly need them. They also have the ability inside them to rise up and give back to further help those in need.

I agree with you and the GP. The problem is that we have to understand that both approaches are valid and required to be "part of the solution." All we are doing in theses discussions are "preaching and being self-righteous". All we are doing is dividing for the sake of philosophy rather than finding common ground and understanding that we all and all of our ideas are needed to fix these things.

Re:Whaaambulance

[sumdumass]

Everybody on welfare is a victim of some sorts. And I don't think he was playing the blame game either.

In my state, there is no special deduction for unemployment insurance and it isn't a voluntary option. It is mandatory, part of the taxes and everyone who draw unemployment to the term length allowed by law will have taken more out of the system then they ever put back in. By it's very nature, it is welfare just the same as Social Security is welfare for the retired.

As for unemployment being like health insurance, Once there comes a law pulling a tax from my pay to cover health insurance and I can't opt out and I get more back when using it then I pay in, I will completely agree.

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

If I draw unemployment for six months once, it is far below what I pay into the system over my 40 year career. Federal: 0.008 * 7000 * 40 = $2,240. State(every one since its Federally approved): 0.054 * 7000 * 40 = $18,200. Total: 1I'd have to be unemployed for a 38 weeks to use up my contribution ($470/wk is what I got out of the State of Californian which pays the most out). Unemployment lasts (standard) for six months (24 weeks). Nice try!

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

Whoops, total $18200

Re:Whaaambulance

[sumdumass]

You don't pay unemployment tax, your employer does. So unless your self employed and are your own employer, you don't pay anything.

That is the one exception to the welfare bit. That also only covers a small amount of people too.

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

That's picking nits pretty thinly. "Employer provided welfare?" C'mon, I guess your salary is welfare too then?

Re:Whaaambulance

[sumdumass]

No, it's government provided welfare. The government demands it not the employer.

Re:Whaaambulance

[ericrost]

Oh bullshit. You're picking nits about who pays the premium. Like I said, its as much welfare as your heavily employer funded health insurance. What you think major medical costs $70 a month these days?

Re:Whaaambulance

[sumdumass]

When the law mandates that the employer provides the insurance coverage, you would be correct.

Do you understand the difference between doing something as a pay package or a perk to attract certain employees and a law mandating something? When the government demands it, it becomes government welfare. When it is optional, it becomes a benefit.

The point your needing to look at is when the government makes a law requiring something paid by someone other then you so you can exploit it if certain conditions exist. That is welfare.

Picking "nits" is sometimes important when the entire concept rests on the nit.

It worked for Al Capone...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking about tax evasion.

My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix

[kenp2002]

Consitiutional Amendments
"No governement agency at the federal, state, or local level shall spend in excess of the previous 3 years average of income from taxes and fees collected except through a voter approved bonding" (Prevent Overspending)

"No person shall have their property tax increased beyond 3% in any calendar year, nor increased greater then 100% since the time of purchase or transfer of ownership of their primary residence by any goverment agency." (Prevent trying to steal and redistributed land through taxing people out of their homes)

"A person shall be secure in their private property and eminent domain shall be restricted for use solely for the appropriation for government owned and operated use and may not be transfered to private ownership."
(Clean up 'public use' for land stealing)

"No company shall be tax on profits in excess of 5% of net revenue by the federal government and taxed no more then 15% when combined with local and state taxes." (Limit corporate income tax, so states at most can tax corporate income at 10%)

"The pay of corporate officers of a publically traded company shall be a scale of the median salary paid by the company to it's employees and contractors and may not exceed 10 times the median salary of the company in salary and no more then 20 times the median salary in stock compensation at the time of aquisition of those stock options." (If the typical employee makes $40,000 a year then the CEO can never make more then $400,000 in a salary and cannot receive more then $800,000 is stock in a year. If they want a raise, most employees must get a raise also)

"The term of any senate or house member shall be limited to 2 terms"

Those would go a long way.

Re:My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix

[Goldsmith]

Term limits...

I like your ideas, but being from California, I've seen what too-strict term limits can do. A local politician I respect (he proposed a bill about 15 years ago in California almost identical to your first suggestion... it didn't pass, of course) explained to me that it takes some time and training to be a good legislator. Usually, there is enough of a mix of new and old legislators that the new ones can pick things up (before you get too cynical, there are *some* good things done by legislators, at the very least it takes some time to learn restraint). He correctly predicted the current situation in California due to term limits (3 terms): there are no "grown ups" in the legislature anymore. Everyone is so focused on the short term glory and the next potential position that the state can't even pass a budget. Forget inter-party bickering, there's enough intra-party bickering to grind things to a halt. There's no leadership. A less active government is welcome, but a government that can no longer pay for basic infrastructure or services because the treasury isn't authorized to spend is absurd. The state lost ~$100 million borrowing money because that was allowed (maybe) without a budget, while using normal revenue was not: crazy.

Long story short: if the politician I know hadn't been put out on term limits, some of those suggestions you have may have already been law in California, instead we have a non-functioning government.

Re:My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix

[MrLogic17]

Re: "No person shall have their property tax increased beyond 3% in any calendar year, nor increased greater then 100% since the time of purchase or transfer of ownership of their primary residence by any goverment agency." (Prevent trying to steal and redistributed land through taxing people out of their homes)

Sounds like a good idea, but without any caps on spending, you end up with things like Michigan's Proposition A. Long time home owners pay much less property tax, newer home owners pay much more. Also results in a large financial penalty to buy & sell real estate. Oh, that and property tax bills that go up when home values are falling.

For reference:
http://blogpublic.lib.msu.edu/index.php/2008/09/03/tax-analyst-explains-michigan-property-t?blog=5
http://www.oakgov.com/equal/assets/doc/07_01_A_Guide_to_PropA.pdf
http://www.mitchross.com/blog/index.php?itemid=149&catid=6

Re:My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix

[Creepy Crawler]

I was going to make a snide statement on the likes of "you deserve the government you accept" and recommend to move elsewhere... but every state is having problems as you suggest.

The USA is turning into the United Pit of America. Corrupt politicians, no manufacturing sector, ever-worsening dollar. I wonder when we'll be the 3rd world?

Re:My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

do you know the difference between 'then' and 'than'?

Re:My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix

[kenp2002]

Sounds good to me. Why should someone who bought a $100,000 home in 1942 have to pay $300,000 a year in property taxes because two millionaire build a pair of 4 million dollar homes on each side and build a golf course across the street?

Home owners should pay property taxes based on the value of the home at the time of purchase and should never pay more then twice what they originally had. I've seen my property taxes triple over the last 2 years. I'm paying over 10% of the value of my home now in property taxes alone.

screwing the lower classes...

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, wine, cigars and massages would be taxed under Paterson's proposal. It also extends sales taxes to cable and satellite TV services and removes the tax exemption for clothes costing less than $110...reinstating the sales tax on clothing and shoes will drive people to New Jersey, where they will also gas up their cars and pick up their wine, spirits and soda because the prices are less due to lower taxes.

Seriously.. taxing clothes under $110..... First off, I think they should tax the hell out of anyone who wants to spend $100 or more per item (obviously some larger items can be excluded) but don't tax the guy spending $20 on a pair of jeans from walmart. Tax those who can afford the 100+ pair of jeans...

And as for TV.. well, I know its not a necessity, but it does keep people occupied, and we are already unfee fee'd to death there, adding another tax, well then they better start making the cable/sat companies remove some of those unfee's that they have been milking for years.....

Or even better, the gov should make those unfee fee's actual gov taxers and use that money, the telco's/cable/sat/cell providers are not actually using the money for anything that they are supposed to (that $1 charge for number portability that was supposed to be temporary and go away after they recouped their costs to implement the infrastructure.... has long long since been done, and now the money is basically profit...)..

Re:screwing the lower classes...

[homer_s]

First off, I think they should tax the hell out of anyone who wants to spend $100 or more per item .....Tax those who can afford the 100+ pair of jeans...

Yeah. How dare people work hard and buy nice things for themselves and their family!

We should also tax people who are good looking, who get good grades, who are good at sports and who have musical talent.

You missed one....

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "Services."

Lawyers... one of the largest service providers, have made sure that the state will never tax "services." Florida dried a few years ago, and the lawyers came out in force and killed it.

There is NO positive side.

[Shivetya]

Zero, zilch, nada, nil.

This could also be defined as a envy tax. Tax things people are buying because they have money and vilify them should they complain as it will benefit the children/poor/insert pc group here.

Instead of really cutting their budgets they just invented new taxes. NY will just be a model for what is going to happen in Washington, just don't expect it to be so direct. Instead we will get taxes under the guise of trading credits or some other lie.

look, this is just like the bailouts. Instead of fixing the problem (too much spending) we are enforcing the idea that more government is better even when no one can afford having more of it.

too get you to go along they will of course threaten to cut vital services (read: fire, police, schools) and never all the bullshit non-vital jobs but happen to go to cronies and the like. Ever notice that when school funding is cut that class room sizes go up but administrative positions don't go down?

15 to 1 their pensions will get an increase or whatever retirement system you are paying for but not aware of; note it is probably better than what many executives get.

15 to 1 they will use class envy if it comes down to a fight over these taxes. It is easy to prey on the jealously of others having more stuff than you.

15 to 1 they will not cut wasteful spending because of the previous point, its just rich people trying to keep their money instead of benefiting the public

Sorry, read Atlas Shrugged to see a mini version of what is going on now. It will only get sillier as the months. New York will simply drive those who can cross the border to make purchases there which means the poorest of the poor will suffer. Because the end result is, if you make it too expensive for people to buy and do stuff the jobs which were provided by that spending will be gone as well.

Re:There is NO positive side.

[all5n]

+1 Insightful

To say nothing of $2B/year on prisons

[gelfling]

Since the Rockefeller laws went into effect, NYS has spent billions locking up nonviolent drug offenders to ridiculously long prison terms. Last tally about 67% of all prisoners in NYS were so called nonviolent drug felons incarcerated under mandatory sentencing. They spend about $2 billion a year just maintaining that population. And that's just on the prison side of the equation. It doesn't even add the hundreds of thousands of doughnut eaters who have no other job than to round up all the drug lords with a quarter oz of weed on them.

Yeah! Drive even more companies to NC!

[RichMeatyTaste]

Thanks New York, seriously.
This just drives more companies down south. Companies that need workers, especially IT workers.
In Raleigh, NC am at least ten times more likely to meet someone *without* a southern accent than someone with one, so keep your southern jokes to yourself.

Re:Yeah! Drive even more companies to NC!

[Suggestive Language]

And when those same companies are finished wringing your treasury dry with tax abatements, they'll flee overseas, leaving your state with astronomical bond payments.

Thanks China, seriously.

Re:Yeah! Drive even more companies to NC!

[barbam]

Yeah, and with the mass migration of stupid NYers to places like NC its only a matter of time before those states are destroyed by backwards liberal politics as well. Just look at the results of the past election. If we know anything its that history repeats itself.

Re:Yeah! Drive even more companies to NC!

[couchslug]

"Yeah, and with the mass migration of stupid NYers to places like NC its only a matter of time before those states are destroyed by backwards liberal politics as well."

Expat Yankees DO need to realize that the things they like about the South are NOT the result of liberals moving down here.

I consider it only fair to warn them that everyone South of Mason-Dixon is a cannibal Klansman who makes Ottis Toole look like Richard Dawkins by comparison.

Libraries?

[Kohath]

There's a huge crisis and you think it's really important to keep government libraries? As one of the least essential services, libraries should be one of the first things cut. They are a luxury in a time when it's harder and harder to afford the necessities.

Your overall point is a good one. But you don't seem to have thought through the part about the libraries. They're not essential just because you like them. And if everyone likes them, they should have no trouble raising all their funds from voluntary donations instead of taxes.

Re:Libraries?

[Cormacus]

One of the biggest drivers of the economy is innovation. Innovation requires educated people to exist. Libraries are great sources of information when you are trying to get an education.

The problem with cutting library and other education spending when you get into "hard times" is that you will have a more difficult time getting out of them. I wouldn't consider libraries "least essential services."

Re:Libraries?

[Kohath]

Do you have any data that suggests that education levels are related to libraries at all? Do you have any data that suggests libraries lead to innovation? Since when do libraries have mostly technical books and science books? They have fiction and history, but neither of those is a primary ingredient in innovation.

What are schools supposed to be for? Why do we need duplication of educational efforts? Also, how many libraries? If we had 10 times as many libraries, would we have 10 times as much innovation?

Libraries are not education. They are not innovation. They don't teach math. They don't teach science. They are mostly entertainment. And everyone knows it.

Re:Libraries?

[Cormacus]

Wow. I made three assertions and one conclusion, and in your angry tirade of a response you didn't manage to address any of them.

1. One of the biggest drivers of the economy is innovation. Not addressed
2. Innovation requires educated people to exist. Not addressed
3. Libraries are great sources of information when you are trying to get an education. Not addressed

Angrily attacking my conclusion without actually addressing any of my assertions just makes you look stupid. (You came close to addressing assertion #3, but I didn't actually say that libraries lead to innovation by themselves, merely that they are a useful tool when getting an education). Would you like to try again?

Re:Libraries?

[Kohath]

Who was angry? I had questions. None of my questions were answered. Do you always accuse people who ask questions of being angry?

You made no substantial connection from libraries to innovation or any kind of technical knowledge or education that might lead to innovation. That was what the questions were for. If you could substantiate some connection, then you might have a point. But mental free-association of one thing to another in some sort of six-degrees-of-separation game is not a rational basis for public policy.

Public libraries are a less and less important source of information as time goes forward. And the information they do provide tends to be historical and biographical. It's not the scientific or technical information that leads to innovation.

Also, you did not substantiate the connection between generic education and innovation. Does an Art History education lead to innovation that fuels economic growth? How about Literature or Law?

Why does someone need to address your assertions when you can't back them up with a factual or logical argument?

Re:Libraries?

[Cormacus]

Public libraries are a less and less important source of information as time goes forward.

Disagree. Libraries are chock full of peer reviewed information, a quality that much of the information on the web does not share. As wikipedia has shown, a reliable source to compare to can be invaluable.

And the information they do provide tends to be historical and biographical. It's not the scientific or technical information that leads to innovation.

While the information provided may be largely historical, one of the most valuable engineering techniques is reading about what was done before and then improving upon it. There is also a significant amount of technical information available (at least in the local library that I frequent).

Also, you did not substantiate the connection between generic education and innovation.

I don't have to, I never said that a generic education leads to innovation. What I said was that innovation is necessary to drive the economy out of troubled times, and a library is a great (free!) resource to use when you are getting the kind of education that innovation usually requires.

Does an Art History education lead to innovation that fuels economic growth?

Probably not, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings by saying that.

Why does someone need to address your assertions

To avoid sounding like a jerk

when you can't back them up with a factual or logical argument?

As noted twice now, you should have read my argument more carefully before making comments like that.

Re:Issues and Problems

[mea37]

I'm not convinced one way or the other about this tax, but the "Apple can't maintain uniform $0.99/track pricing" argument seems a bit off to me, for two reasons.

The biggest reason is, I don't see it as the government's job in setting tax policy to accomodate an individual company's marketing desires. If the value of flat pricing across the board is so great, Apple can cut a few cents out of their own profits to maintain it by changing the base price they charge to NY residents so that the total with tax works out to $0.99. If it's not worth that much to them, then I don't see why anyone else should worry about it. It's a business decision for Apple to make, not a moral right.

Besides which, Apple has already done things that erode the idea of "every track is .99"; e.g. the DRM-free tracks that cost more.

Taxing Downloads

[nurb432]

So they will start asking for records from PirateBay then? :)

Re:Taxing Downloads

[Creepy Crawler]

What?! You just suggested Tax Evasion?

Off to the STATE PEN!!

Re:I wonder how this will affect retirement payout

[characterZer0]

For years, they supported the unions. They let the unions convince them that the should not follow the same principles that every other white collar worker follows; that they should take lousy pay and let the union negotiate their benefits. For years, they believed that the retirement system would always pay for the withdrawals with interest earned. For years, they never questioned the unions nor the state. And then it collapsed. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

Unfortunately, the state will just tax the hell out of the rest of us to cover it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

How Ironic

[NotQuiteReal]

So you don't like wealth redistribution?

You sound like it is a bad thing to take money from NY and give it to other "loser" states.

However, from the wording of your post, I suspect you have no qualms about taking money from "rich" individuals, so that politicians can dole it out to losers^h^h^h^h^h^h "the needy".

Agreed

[mpapet]

You made an excellent point.

The problem with Fair Tax is it eliminates one of the ways government subsidizes/promotes economic activity. Instead of overtly sponsoring an industry/technology Americans like it better if they don't have simple, clear evidence they are supporting an industry.

Re:Agreed

[Garrett Fox]

Indeed, our current tax system is routinely used to mask how our government manipulates the economy. That means everything from "corporate welfare" to lobbyists' specially-bought tax rules (as seen recently in the TARP bailout bill), to plain old earmarking. Although I'm not fully behind the FairTax proposal, it has the virtue of creating fewer places to hide abuses of power. We'd have to more openly look at what we're spending and who's getting the benefit.

Wait wait....

[RoninOtter]

Why is it the Government never has things on the chopping block we WANT to see reduced? Pensions, bloated pay, meaningless programs, wasteful practices.... Why are none of these ever in danger of losing their funding in a budget crisis? Why is the answer always more taxes?

Bad move

[NotQuiteReal]

There is already an illicit marijuana distribution system in place that would still exist, if just to avoid taxes.

If you think marijuana laws are bad, I'll bet being popped for tax evasion is a far worse crime than getting caught with a joint or two is now.

Re:Bad move

[Chris Burke]

There is already an illicit marijuana distribution system in place that would still exist, if just to avoid taxes.

If you think marijuana laws are bad, I'll bet being popped for tax evasion is a far worse crime than getting caught with a joint or two is now.

Yes, which is why the price of illicit marijuana would have to be even higher than it is today, which is why it wouldn't make any sense to go outside the system except for the schwaggiest of schwag to avoid a $100/oz tax.

Not Just IPOD Tax

[bobobobo]

Of course not just Itunes is getting taxed. Among other things:

Taxis, Concerts, Beer, Non-Diet Soda, Cable TV, Personal Service(gym, manicures, haircuts, etc), clothes, shoes.

The list goes on and on.

Re:Not Just IPOD Tax

[mabhatter654]

they did this in Michigan too. Although we do have sales tax on some of those things already. Our only exemptions are pretty much food. They tax phone, cable, all clothes, and we pay deposit on bottles. Last year they tried to tax personal services and repair services but it ended up being a wash because the tax was going to take more money to collect than it would generate because the amounts were so small per business.

We already pay sales tax on itunes as well just like anything at an Apple store. I don't think we pay taxes on concert tickets and movie tickets because there are exemptions to keep "art" around.

I think the idea of the bill is to make it "fair" and catch some of the smaller businesses that could be paying sales tax. But it's just too much work to get that last little drop, which is why it's not taxed.

Use the dollar houses for movies. Re:Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been going to the dollar houses for about five years. I could not begin to come up with what I have saved by not going to first run movies.

Besides, they act as a very good filter to filter in what is decent and leave out the rest to blow in the wind.

Just like the Sprint commercial

[Amazing Quantum Man]

It's just my way of sticking it to The Man.

But... you *are* The Man.

I know.

So... you're sticking it to yourself?

Maybe...

Typo

[brian0918]

Typo: "If the goal is government control of the economy to fund your agenda (e.g. universal healthcare, social security), then of course the free market will not succeed. But, then, your goals are ill-conceived and will likewise fail."

federal government pensions are 401ks.

[wiredog]

So not any better than any other pension these days.

Typical of the leeches (politicians)

[InsaneProcessor]

Let's not bother being responsible and cut the fat and useless expenses from our budget. Let's just tax the suckers more. If you are smart enough to make the money (and spend it to stimulate the economy) we will leech from you and give the money to those who don't even want to bother to earn any.

Temporary, right?

[Hoi Polloi]

I'm sure they'll roll this back once the economy recovers. Right!?

Riiiight

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think even California has property taxes."

Sure, and since illegals own those huge haciendas in California they pay lots of property taxes????

Are you for real?

Re:Issues and Problems

[wcbarksdale]

New York City pays $11 billion more in State taxes than it gets back in funding despite being the economic engine of the State.

How about a frag tax?

[PinchDuck]

$0.10 for everyone you kill in a game. Sheesh, I better not even suggest it...

Wrong

[BlackCobra43]

The moment anyone deposits the money the tax is applied. Are you suggesting merchants will hold on to hundreds of thousands in dollar bills (a ridiculous theft risk if nothing else) simply to save 0,3%?

People are greeedy, yes. They are not, however, idiots.

Re:Wrong

[TheSpoom]

LOUD NOISES

Oh, I'm sorry, that just slipped out. Where were we?

Ah yes. Merchants, of course, will continue using electronic payments. People, on the other hand, might not. One of my clients does pay me entirely in cash, for example.

Uhm, stupid question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate taxes are paid by you, the individual, in the form of increased prices for goods and services

Your argument is that a corporation selling Product X for $8.99 will raise the price to $9.99 if their taxes go up, and the customer will happily pay that price. So why exactly doesn't said corporation sell Product X for $9.99 *now* if that's the price that customers are willing to pay?

Re:Uhm, stupid question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is that a corporation selling Product X for $8.99 will raise the price to $9.99 if their taxes go up, and the customer will happily pay that price. So why exactly doesn't said corporation sell Product X for $9.99 *now* if that's the price that customers are willing to pay?

There will always be a company willing to undercut your price if they can still make a profit. Company A can sell for $9.99, but company B will sell for $8.99. This only works if the companies could make a profit at $8.99 and the supply allows consumers the choice (i.e. not a limited resource).

Mij

Re:Uhm, stupid question?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why exactly doesn't said corporation sell Product X for $9.99 *now* if that's the price that customers are willing to pay?

Since we're all talking theoretically, it wouldn't be, theoretically, maximizing profit.

When a government raises taxes on a business, the business plugs the new costs into their magical spread sheets and determines what price increase they'll need to maintain their profit levels and then determine how much loss in demand they'll get at those price levels, which, in-turn recalculates their new profit levels.

In the end, the business has to find the *new* maximized profit level. That might be a small price increase or it might not. It also depends on what kind of product you sell. If you're selling Ferrari's, price isn't an issue. If you're selling butter and eggs, you've got more of a problem, even for a 5 cent increase.

It might so be it that the company CANNOT increase their prices. After all, most mechanics don't work "manufacturer => Customer". It's "Manufacturer => Store => Customer". The manufacturer has to tell the store they're getting a price increase. If that store's Home Depot or Wal-Mart, they might just snub their nose at you and refuse to buy your product anymore. Why? Because THEY will make less profit, because THEY won't sell more product. Instead, Home Depot or Wal-Mart will turn to a Chinese (or Mexico or India, etc) company and import that same product type for a LOT cheaper. Now, said American (or whatever local country you're from) company just lost a major account, resulting having to layoff people.

So, getting back to your question. They don't do it now because it doesn't a) maximize profit or b) they can't because their buyers (the stores) won't take it because it doesn't maximize their profits with regards to other competitive products they could so (and make higher margins on).

This is how it works for the bulk of goods sold. There are cases like a Nintendo or Apply who gets to dictate the price of their products to stores. Which is also why you won't find an iPod or Wii at any different price at any store. If said store tried to sell it cheaper and muscle out other stores, they'll get their supply cut-off by Apple/Nintendo. Even the biggest of big, Wal-Mart, can't do this (and have tried). Wal-Mart needs iPod more than iPod needs Wal-Mart. Particularly since Wal-Mart has been trying very had to muscle in on Best Buy type electronic store market share and re-image themselves as "big" in electronics (ever notice their huge shift into HD and HD-TV's?).

So, yeah. End of the day, excessive taxes are helping kill the American economy and drive business over seas.

Simply put. It's complex. I company WILL pass the cost on to it's consumers if it can. However, when it can't, guess what? It's got to cut it's costs to maintain profit levels. And the biggest cost to companies in America is? Labor. Ever get your car repaired? yeah, that $600 2-hour job had a part that probably cost $10. Of course, what does it matter? Car insurance typically covers up how much things really cost. Just like health insurance.

Anyway. Go head. New York will just tax themselves into a worse economy. They start taxing download music, people will start pirating music. Not because it's expensive but because it'll feel "fair". Why should this guy pay $1.25 when the guy just over there is paying $1.00 for the exact same thing? That won't feel fair to people and to levy this feeling of mistreatment, they'll just pirate or claim they're not from NY.

Want an example? Ask people from Wisconsin how well their $1 tax hike on cigarettes worked? Yeah, not so good. WI LOST tax revenue. People smoked less, quite, or started buying online or carrying cases from Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.

Of course, despite high tax rates, there are loop holes. But seriously. Doesn't that just make you say WTF? If there's something so complex that it takes a team of people

Re:Uhm, stupid question?

[mdmkolbe]

Your question is a good one but to explain how the dynamics involved work out it would take a bit of more economic theory than can easily be taught in slashdot postings. Though if you really want me to try I could give it a go, just be ready for lots of math. (Even better take an intro micro-economics course. Or just read a micro-economics text book. It's fun, enlightening and an easy A+ for anyone with a moderate math background.)

The super simplified explanation is that (1) it makes no difference whether the buyer pays the tax man directly or if the buyer hands the tax to the seller who turns around and pays it to the tax man, (2) as a consequence the tax burden is split between the buyer and the seller but not evenly depending on the what is called the "elasticity" of the supply and demand, and finally, (3) higher taxes always (*) reduce the amount of goods that are traded thus maximizing the government's tax revenue is a ballance between higher tax rates which mean the government gets more money per transaction and lower tax rates which mean more transactions take place.

(*) Assuming lower prices make people want to buy more and higher prices make people want to sell more. There are a few goods where that is not the case.

Re:I wonder how this will affect retirement payout

[yerM)M]

Pensions are a good thing if they are fully funded. This means that the money is put into a pension scheme while the people are still working not by expecting future generations to magically come up with the past 20+ years of missing investment growth. This can add a small overhead but is similar to a 401(k). The problems arise when:

• People live longer

• Governments/Organizations dip into the funds or the funds aren't fully funded

• Wall Street Collapses, although fully funded public pensions tend to perform better.

While biased, there is a good introduction here. Note: I don't have a pension.

Corporate taxes

[wfstanle]

Bullshit!!!

While the rate might seem high, the actual taxes that US corporations pay are one of the lowest taxes paid in the world. When all the loopholes, tax dodges etc. are taken into account, the actual taxes paid are very small. The EFFECTIVE rate is much lower.

Re:Corporate taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world

Re:Corporate taxes

[wfstanle]

As I was saying... The taxes that corporations actually pay is much less than what they complain about. In many other countries, there are not as many ways to avoid paying taxes. What in theory is a 35% tax rate is just that, theory. It is the most that they can pay and the reality is that they pay considerably less.

Haircuts are going to be taxed too

[Anonymous Coward]

Hair stylists will have to start charging tax on haircuts with this new NYS tax.
My wife is a hair stylist.
I told her that this will not hurt her business because the competition will also have to charge the tax.
We're hoping it doesn't hurt her business.

Reality Check - this is NY Budget

[dtolman]

Great idea - cut everything except education, medical, and other essentials. And stop raising those high NY taxes. But when you look at the budget breakdown - where does the money come from? where do 2/3 of the budget go?

http://publications.budget.state.ny.us/eBudget0910/fy0910littlebook/AllFunds.html

Medicaid (medical) - 31%
School aid (education) - 19%
SUNY (education)- 7.6%
Transportation - 6%
Fringe Benefits (state employee benefits) - 4.5%

Basically just looking at our top 5 items, and 64% are going to essentials!

Its time to face the grim reality that our state leaders - particularly the "fiscally responsible" Republicans lead by Governor Pataki - have been adding on services and bloating the payroll for years, balanced on the back of the bubble economy. Now thats gone, and we're all going to pay.

Re:Reality Check - this is NY Budget

[Creepy Crawler]

If you move away, you leave their problems with them.

If you own a house, well, you probably paid too much and will have to sell it at a loss.

Re:Issues and Problems

[SydShamino]

And? Texas collects a tax on entertainment subscriptions over the internet. I pay more than you do every month for my World of Warcraft account because of this. (I'm assuming you have a WoW account because you're human.)

If Texas can tax it, New York certainly can!

Re:Issues and Problems

[Reverberant]

It's more than that. Now Apple (although probably not Amazon since they maintain they have no presence in NY) will have to collect a special tax strictly for NY residents, and pay that tax regularly to the state, and maybe file additional reports at additional expense, and no longer have the nicely uniform 99 cents/download price/image

Apple already does this in Massachusetts (our $0.99 downloads are really $1.04) and rather than fleeing MA, Apple has expanded its retail presence here.

People may or may not like the tax, but Apple clearly doesn't have a problem collecting it.

I'll make a deal: 3% on gross receipts...

[Overzeetop]

Instead of the current rate system. No deductions, no exemptions...every dollar that comes in gets taxed at 3%. Visa takes this amount from every purchase in the US, and they don't even provide a military or space program.

I know that this would never pass, because it would increase the corporate taxes, not lower them. The effective rate for most corporations, based on their cash flow, is vanishingly small.

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon already collects sales tax for products shipped to NY State in response to the "Amazon tax" that the legislature passed earlier this year. Google "NY Amazon tax" for more info.

$9 Bln in spending cuts

[eples]

TFA is light on details, but from the NYTimes:

[...] include 137 new or increased taxes and fees, loosened restrictions on gambling and $9 billion worth of spending cuts.

And the state is $15.4 Bln in deficit.

Here's the NYTimes link if anyone cares.

Funny how

[hesaigo999ca]

Funny how, they never mention about cutting back government spending inside its administration....replace old tired officials with newer less paid less experienced ones...
like they do in real companies....oh wait that would leave quite the vacuum!

I swear it would be nice to get rid of many officials we don't need and make back those 5 million here or 5 million there.... then we could afford to pay for more roadwork

http://www.ny.gov/governor/contact/index.html

[dmackey828]

People of NY, Send a message to The State Government and tell them we are NOT going to take it!! Here is the Link, FILL IT OUT!!! Do something that MAY stop this nonsense!!! http://www.ny.gov/governor/contact/index.html No excuse, THERE is the link! I just sent MY message, How about you.....

Once again, politics == idiocy

[joedoc]

Make all the arguments you like: the fact of the matter is the more you tax things, or the higher the rate of taxes you charge, the lower the revenue you will receive. I continue to be incredulous over the fact that politicians, especially those of a more "progressive" bent, fail to understand this basic concept.

Take cigarettes. The state of New York is pulling both ends on the smoking issue. They pay billions of dollars for programs to get people to quit smoking, including advertising and free stop-smoking aids (at taxpayer expense). Yet they look at raising taxes on cigarettes as a way to raise revenue. So what's it going to be? Do you want people to smoke or not? And do you really expect your tax revenue to rise by an increase in cigarette taxes?

The city and the state would be better off doing two things: shut down the useless anti-smoking campaign and cut the taxes on cigarettes. People are going to smoke, no matter what the nanny state does to stop it. The only way to stop smoking is to force quitting on the public by making tobacco possession and use illegal -- and we all know how well prohibition worked. They would be better off killing a useless program and allowing people to buy more cigarettes at a lower tax rate, because this would have the immediate effect of increasing tax revenues. That money could then be redirected to health and education.

This is the same situation that occurs with the transit system when ridership drops. The MTA gives in to union demands for high wages and benefits, even though there's less revenue coming in. Services have to be cut, which means you're paying people to sit around and do nothing. The only solution is to raise fares. Raise fares and riders will leave the system and find another way to get to work. And other than the "discounts" the MTA offered people for using the electronic Metrocards, I don't recall a time when they actually lowered the fare. Maybe trying this as an experiment would be interesting. Lower the fare - more people ride - more revenue comes in - as ridership increases, demand for services increase -- add back the services you cut -- more people ride -- revenue increases. What a vicious cycle.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who will argue that this doesn't work, but since it never gets tried, I suppose we'll never know, will we? Instead, all other aspects of the lives of New Yorkers are going to be burdened with higher costs.

Which is why I'm glad I abandoned that place 30 years ago.

See this post

[mpapet]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1065367&cid=26148925

Let's get rid of those Welfare Kings and Queens!

Re:See this post

[MightyYar]

I'm not saying that we should eliminate programs for the elderly and disadvantaged... quite the opposite. Hell, I want the government to run free or very cheap health clinics to provide basic health care.

I just want the states to handle the collection and distribution of the funds. The federal government can be used to subsidize poor states, but I don't like the current system where ALL the money passes through the federal government - which can then be used as a tool by special interests to control the populations of the various states using the purse string.

depends on the market dynamics

[Trepidity]

Corporate taxes are certainly not a cost "just like any other cost". If they were revenue taxes, that would be true, but they're taxes only on profits, which leads to quite different effects from most costs. If Southwest makes no profit this year, they pay zero in corporate tax, but you aren't going to see their fuel costs going down analogously.

In effect a corporate tax reduces any positive profits proportionally to how many positive profits there are. The main negative effect this has on business is reducing incentive of entrepreneurs to go into business; certainly past some level, where it reduced non-taxed profit almost to zero, it would stifle innovation entirely. But if a market segment is very profitable, then a corporate tax really has no effect except reducing profits---because the market segment will still be very profitable even after the tax.

Of course, one problem with analyzing corporate taxes using neoclassical price theory, as you seem to be attempting, is that in neoclassical price theory profits don't exist: in an efficient competitive market, the prices of goods and services approach their marginal cost of production. In that view, corporate taxes are basically a tax on market inefficiencies.

Easier

[maz2331]

There is an even easier solution: refuse to accept orders billed or shipped in NYS at all.

Re:Easier

[electrictroy]

And hurt my own income?

No. I will still sell to New York, but I won't pay taxes. The Legislature has no authority to tax a foreign citizen outside their jurisdiction. The NY legislators can go to hell.

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, We never voted for the current governor. He just took over when the last crook resigned.

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they've confused "economic engine" with "economic time-bomb". Wonder what the current numbers are.

Re:I wonder how this will affect retirement payout

[molo]

In NYS, the pensions are guaranteed in the state constitution. They can't be touched.

-molo

School Funding != School Performance

[Fished]

You seem to be suffering from a common sort of fallacious thinking--confusing correlation with causation. I have yet to see anything to convince me that more money to public education will necessary result in better educated students. Instead, what I see again and again is that enhanced funding for public education is often funneled into "luxury items" that do nothing to enhance the performance of students in basic areas like Reading, Math, Science, etc.

As a concrete example, the schools in my (rural) area gets large amounts of money from state, rural, and private foundations every year. One would hope that this money would be spent on things like smaller class sizes, better remedial education for low-performing students, better advanced education for high-performing students, or replacement/refurbishment of antiquated schools (some of which are literally unsafe.)

Instead, what do we have?

1. An elementary school that's literally falling apart, with back-flowing sewage, and a DS3 internet connection.
2. Same elementary school, with brand-new phone system based on Cisco IP Phones.
3. Somebody decided they needed an auto-dialer. Now I get 3-4 calls a night telling me about everything from football games to PTA meetings.
4. Brand new computers in the computer lab this year. And last year. And the year before. (Running Windows, of course. (Note that they don't actually teach computer science. They teach students how to use Microsoft Office and play video games.

In the meantime...

1. My autistic Daughter's special ed teacher is trying to help a 3-year-old child (who appears to have Down's Syndrome) whose only language is Spanish. The school has dealt with this by buying her a copy of Rosetta Stone. There's no funding for a translator, nor is there a translator available anywhere in the school system, even for IEP meetings. (This violates Federal special education laws, in my opinion.
2. My son is bored out of his gourd in his math classes. At home, he is studying Algebra. At school, they're adding fractions. The TAG teacher tried to get him a tutor, but was told there was no funding. He's now tuning out the classroom and his grades are dropping.
3. My other daughter is in a kindergarten classroom with 24 students. There is one teacher, and a teacher's aid shared with 2 other kindergarten classrooms.
4. Oh yeah... the PTA is constantly doing fund-raisers. They want to build a butterfly garden.

The problem with American education isn't a lack of funding. We spend more on education than any other major industrial nation. The problem is cultural. The problem is that we don't value academics. The problem is that we resent smart kids. The problem is that administrators would rather have toys than teachers. The problem is that the NEA would rather whine about not having funding than actually take responsibility for fixing the problems.

And I'm *SICK* to death of hearing the apologists for the failure of American education whine that they need more funding. You don't need more funding. You need to DO YOUR JOB. We need to fire the administrators who are more worried with empire building than knowledge building, promote the teachers that actually teach, tell the parents who want to build butterfly gardens and soothe the little angels egos to stuff a sock in it, and start focusing on one thing and one thing only: STUDENTS WHO CAN THINK.

Re:School Funding != School Performance

[Repossessed]

We spend more on education than any other major industrial nation

We're the second highest in per student spending, not first. Or third, depending on how to count it.

Re:School Funding != School Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

it is strange, you know.
you americans spend more money on education, healthcare and military than anyone else and you still get mediocre results.
you have less vacation days, have to work 60 hours a week and you still are less productive than the workers elsewhere.
why is that so?

maybe because of the widespread belief that hard work makes rich.
we europeans don't believe in hard work. in fact, a sentence like "he worked hard" in a job reference usually means that the employee was an inapt sucker.

we prefer to get things done instead.

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, you rural bumpkins are the welfare queens and don't even realize it. Did you really think your fruit stand was the economic powerhouse of NY? Left to your own devices you probably wouldn't even have paved roads and cable television.

In related news...

[pepax]

American airlines is now charging fees to non-passengers: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/american_airlines_now_charging

Re:Issues and Problems

[diskofish]

And what is your point really? I am not sure how much we pay in state taxes, but we do not get any state aid. Said another way, we get $0.00 back from the State.

Diet soda is toxic chemical waste water

[E 99]

The idea of a state charging tax on honest-to-God corn syrup soda and exempting that disgusting waste water that fat people drink so that the feel like they're "dieting" while they eat two big macs for lunch, gives me feelings of longing for a life of domestic terrorism.

Re:Diet soda is toxic chemical waste water

[Anonymous Coward]

You speak as though "normal" soda isn't just another chemical swill.

Re:Diet soda is toxic chemical waste water

[E 99]

Well, as a connoisseur of fine sodas, I have occasionally ordered cases of Dr. Pepper direct from Texas, which are made with real cane sugar instead of corn syrup. I also keep an eye out for locally produced sodas which often use sucrose. But I would far rather gorge myself with High-Fructose Corn Syrup than with chlorinated sucrose, aka sucralose, aka splenda, aka powdered death; or aspartame; or saccharine, which is still used by some people, God help them.

Re:Diet soda is toxic chemical waste water

[LionMage]

...and exempting that disgusting waste water that fat people drink so that the feel like they're "dieting" while they eat two big macs for lunch...

I used to share your opinion of diet sodas.

Then I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in December 2007. Since then, I've had to cut out all "regular" sodas. It was quite a shock to my sensibilities -- I remember once declaring that nothing artificially sweetened would ever pass my lips. After I was forced to change my diet, using hardly any real sugar anymore and mostly relying on sugar alcohols (e.g., xylitol) and artificial sweeteners for my sweetening needs, I found that my tastes changed substantially. I was even able to handle sucralose after a few weeks -- this despite my initial bad experience, where I felt one of my kidneys aching after trying a Coke Zero or a Pepsi One.

I noticed you also responded to one of your commenters elsewhere in this thread that you try to avoid HFCS. Good for you. In the year before I was diagnosed with diabetes, I too tried to eliminate HFCS from my diet, or substantially reduce it. It wasn't easy, but Safeway made it easier with their line of organic sodas; Jones Soda Co. also switched from HFCS to cane sugar, which earned them a lot of my business. It still didn't undo the years of drinking Mountain Dew and Doctor Pepper. By the time I switched, my bad genetics had caught up with me.

Amazingly, I was in denial for a few months before I finally saw a doctor. I had somehow convinced myself that the chemical/varnish/paint thinner smell coming from my urine was the result of a bladder infection that wouldn't go away, and didn't realize it was a symptom of diabetic ketosis.

And no, I don't fit the "fat" stereotype, not even before I got my diabetes under control. I lost some weight after I got diagnosed (some due to dietary changes, and the rest due to an unfortunate medication mishap which has since been rectified), so I'm even skinnier now than I was (and I've always been tall and skinny). It just goes to prove that, just because you don't have a particular risk factor, doesn't mean you won't get a certain disease. It also shows that "diet" soft drinks aren't just for overweight people.

Having said all that... I agree that it seems idiotic to tax HFCS sweetened sodas and not tax (or tax much less) sodas sweetened with various unnatural chemicals. Sounds to me as though some chemical companies lobbied very hard to make sure it worked out that way.

Re:Diet soda is toxic chemical waste water

[EmagGeek]

HFCS is not significantly different than cane sugar.

Cane sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. HFCS is 45% glucose and 55% fructose, unless you get the "low fructose" HFCS, which is only 42% fructose and 58% glucose.

HFCS is being unjustly demonized not because it is unhealthy, but because of peoples' tendency to consume so damn much of it.

Guess what, if you overconsume cane sugar, the exact same thing is going to happen to you.

Re:Diet soda is toxic chemical waste water

[E 99]

Point taken... diet sodas serve a legitimate purpose for diabetics. It's the superficiality of society that bugs me more than the products themselves (though the products themselves turn my stomach). The whole idea that it's generally a good thing to develop/consume good-tasting, non-nutritive foods, so that our limited needs for sustenance don't have to limit our consumption. Maybe Olestra would be a better example. Who needs chips so desperately that they would eat chips made out of a fat-like plastic that acts as a laxative?

My commemorative poem...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the State,
Patterson's proposed tax hikes dimmed the hopes of our fiscal fate.
With complete disregard and little fore-sight,
The un-elected Governor proposed a budget that was completely affright.
While visions of savings danced in his head,
The State Government would continue to operate deep in the red.
More rapid than growth his taxes they came,
all squeezing the little guy and decreasing his gain.
No cuts, no slashes of all the State bloat - Kill education, cops and other programs that keep society afloat.
"Eight percent an iTune, the tax shall be, and on clothing and soda, I too shall levee!"
As the Governor completed his holiday decree,
I couldn't help thinking, we all got screwed by Ashley Dupree.

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anubis350]

Of course NYC prides itself on being a very liberal state, and Joe Biden has said that paying taxes is a civil duty.

Fixed that for ya. Talk to anyone outside the NYC area and they'll agree that taxes are way too high. The worst part is that local tax monies are sucked up and re-distributed to NYC.

Wait, what? As far as I know, as a NYC taxpayer, for every dollar I pay in state taxes, less than a dollar is returned to the city, the opposite is true upstate/in LI.

NYC would be *better off* from a strictly tax point of view without the rest of the state, not the other way around....

Duty

[bussdriver]

If you recall or can look up the old war time propaganda from WW2... It was actually true - it was a responsible citizen's DUTY to buy war bonds and pay their taxes! It was how the war was won.

Naturally there are limits on both sides; unfortunately, we have both extremes today - a selfish public who wants everything for nothing AND a corrupt government (which is not held accountable by the public or the 'system'.)

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

>The worst part is that local tax monies are sucked up and re-distributed to NYC.

No, the worst part is that the commuter tax was repealed, and since then, non-city residents who commute to NYC for work, no longer pay their fair share for essential city services they consume.

Also, NY State chronically underfunds NY city schools (this long running court case went to the NY Supreme Court and the advocates for city schools won, but there has never been any follow through in the executive branch to adhere to the court order. NY State owes the city schools BILLIONS)

NYC should secede from the state and then we'll see how much the upstaters like it. Life will be hard without the NYC tax base to raid.

Breaking News: NY taxes infringment trials!

[Doug52392]

Breaking News: New York State, in light of a recent surge of RIAA lawsuits, tax copyright infringement cases. Details at 11!

Re:Issues and Problems

[Zxern]

Well sure as long as you don't need drinkable water.

The soda tax is the most damning for me, too

[Voyager529]

When I heard about it, I immediately thought about our founding father's intolerance of the tax on tea. Let's take 100,000 gallons of Pepsi and throw it in Boston Harbor and dress like Congressmen!

Additionally, I would buy this "trying to curb obesity" crap if they made it more direct. Tax Coca Cola, but use it to subsidize natural fruit juices. Tax potato chips, but use it to reduce the cost of vegetables. No, this is utterly ridiculous and just means that they've run out of other stuff to tax.

Joey

I thought the same thing!

[Voyager529]

Seriously, I think that every politician should have to be able to get a population of at least 200,000 in SimCity 2000 before being able to take a public office. How though, do we get them to approve that? You know that everyone in Albany and Crookhaven would lose their seats.

Joey

Another tax model

[mahohmei]

They should just go the RIAA path: add taxes on all CD-Rs, mp3 players, audio recorders, computers, or anything else that could potentially be used to violate copyright.

YES!

[/dev/trash]

Clothing is tax free in PA, and there are plenty of outlets near the border. Come, spend your money!

Who else is targeted?

[iron spartan]

I know that the tech items being taxed are getting a lot of play here, but did anybody else notice that a key part of the budget revolves around increased gambling and increased alcohol sales?

Cigarettes

[bryan1945]

They tried this with cigarettes (now up to 8-9 $ per pack, I think). Oops, internet. Now trying to file for internet cigarette sales records to get "back" taxes. Yes, I know that technically it is a "sales AND usage tax", but come on. The city is probably spending more money trying to track down the sales and paying lawyers in court to prove cases than getting actual money. Can you imagine the mess of trying to track, tax, back-track, back-tax, and monkey-tax online downloads? Will iPods have a higher tax? Will Khan win? Will they cut dumb services besides police, fire departments, schooling, and libraries? Can you say no?

Crap, I don't even live, work, or visit NYC and I hate the place.

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>Of course NY prides itself on being a very liberal state

Actually besides NYC the rest of the state usually votes Republican.

But in any regards this is just another stupid move by stupid politicians. But the real problem is that not enough people care or even know about what is happening in Albany to do anything about it. If the media (and sorry slashdot you aren't the mainstream media) actually reported on this and if there was a way for NY voters to easily send in their thoughts about the subject I'm sure this would be shot down right away.

I seriously think that when these guys start talking budget cuts and more taxes the first thing that should be done is show the Expense reports and Salaries of those who are proposing this.

Part-timers pay UI, but do not benefit

[Randym]

It's paid for out of the checks of the workers (and then funneled into the programs by the federal government) that's why its called unemployment INSURANCE.

There's an bit about this 'insurance' that I don't exactly understand: why is it that people who work part-time are taxed for this, but then they can't get benefits because the job that they lost was *part-time*.

Anybody want to take a crack at that?

Novel tax proposal that protects the poor

[Randym]

Make the retail sales tax rate equal to the ceiling of the log [base 10, not *e* - let's not get ridiculous] of the price of the item, rounded down. For example:

price log ceil total vs. 5%
$0.20 0.3 1 % $0.00 $0.01
$2.00 1.3 2 % $0.04 $0.10
$20.00 2.3 3 % $0.60 $1.00
$200.00 3.3 4 % $8.00 $10.00
$2000.00 4.3 5 % $100.00 $100.00
$20000.00 5.3 6 % $1200.00 $1000.00

Since most transactions are done on computer-aided cash registers, nobody actually has to think to calculate the tax (except we programmers :^), unless they are selling something by hand; even so, logarithms aren't *that* hard to learn.

Note also that all items priced less than a dollar are *tax-free*. The idea of some items *not* being taxed works here in Michigan, where non-ready-to-eat food is tax-free (part of the deal worked out back in the nineties when they raised the sales tax from 4% to 6% while lowering the income tax, which is about 4% now.) If you don't include that 'round down' feature, calculation of tax begins at $.50 rather than $1.00.

An argument against this system is that it introduces gross disparities in tax collection revenues depending on what you're selling: look at, e.g., luxury car sellers vs. dollar store owners. However, this is a straw-man argument: all sellers already remit some sales tax already, and calculation of the revenues is already highly automated. In any case, the tax comes from the *customer*, not the seller: there are no new costs of collection.

Another argument is that it will significantly *reduce* revenues because there are far more items sold at $2 vs. $20,000. To counteract this, the actual numbers used could be adjusted. For example, the tax might end up being twice the log, which is equivalent to this tax on an item whose price is the square of the original price. [2 log X = log (X^2) ].

It might be interesting to look at all the transactions over the course of a year in one state and see if this particular technique brings in more or less than the present system. The tricky part will be getting a reasonable sample of transactions to analyze.

Re:Issues and Problems

[Anubis350]

I did say "from a strictly tax point of view" ....