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Bernie Sanders, Presidential Candidate and H-1B Skeptic
Presto Vivace writes: The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting. ... ...Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they're cutting staff. He's especially critical of the visa's use in offshore outsourcing.
Does Sanders have any chance to become president? Bush and Clinton... been there, done that, both long term disasters.
If you'd like to focus on Bernie Sanders' view on H-1B Visas, that's fine. But let's not forget that his remarks and avowed beliefs of Socialism are what really make him an interesting candidate for the Democratic Party, contrasted with the free-market, capitalist beliefs of his opponents.
Can confirm: anyone stupid enough to expose their bigotry like that is unemployable in the Silicon Valley.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Hilary would be the first woman POTUS, and Bill would be the first First Man. She's a credible candidate, if she draws sufficient primary wins 'because she's a woman, and it's time', well, so be it. You just can't help wondering if Bernie really could be an agent of change, if enough money is drawn to his campaign to thwart the 'let's elect a female' and support the 'we already did the Clinton thing' messages. Mr. Sanders has been on the front lines against the 'machine' and there's a chance some Tea Party voters could even rise to rebel against the same ol' same ol' Republican they'll put up. '
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
Just a personal opinion, so take it for whatever you think it's worth. But IMO, Sanders is more of a campaign disruptor than a serious contender for the next presidential election.
He's known as a political "Independent" but as others have already noted, he's more of a Socialist really. I see some value in him wanting to bring up the H1-B VISA issue, but primarily so it encourages the other candidates to debate it.
I also hear quite a few comments from those supposedly disillusioned with "free market capitalism", so some of these people will surely find Sanders an interesting alternative. I find that quite unfortunate though. Personally, I'm still pretty firmly convinced that free market concepts really never got a fair shake in the U.S. in the first place. So often, we're sold that label while reality is quite different. Heck, I was just debating the whole issue with a friend of mine last week about the deregulation of the power companies and the disaster that created for California. He used it as a prime example of why free markets aren't really viable or desirable. I countered that actually, that was FAR more an example of fraud than anything else -- a problem that transcends politics or the type of marketplace you're working with. In fact, much of the scamming going on with all of that was only made possible because GOVERNMENT was still expected to make payments towards keeping the infrastructure working! (They had legislation in place where government would start paying out money whenever the utilization of the power lines went above a certain percentage of their maximum capabilities. Therefore, crooked businesses like Enron would create false entries, reserving utilization that was never really happening to fake capacity limits being hit and profit from the govt. funding that was theoretically going to upgrading that infrastructure.)
Time and time again, this is what I really see happening.... People get frustrated or disgusted at something that supposedly happens because of a lack of governmental controls. But a closer look makes you realize it was only due to government interference or control in the FIRST place that the scenario was set up. The net neutrality debates would probably be another example of this. Sure, we need government to step in and tell Comcast, "No! You can't merge with Time Warner!" now. BUT that scenario was QUITE unlikely to have ever happened in the first place if broadband internet service was handled in the private sector in the first place, minus govt. regulated monopolies getting preferential treatment when the services were first getting built out.
You might be surprised...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm no party animal but if he runs even as a Democrat, I might vote for him. He's an old man and I think old men are more likely to speak the truth and less likely to make moral compromises. At 73 he'll be thinking of an afterlife if he believes in one. Even if he doesn't he won't care about future prospects enough to sell out for them.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
but then goes for batshit insane politics that would push us back to the worst part of the soviet experiment.
Examples?
I looked him up to see what was so crazy, and all I found was:
None of that seems all that crazy or dangerous to me
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Such as? He strikes me as a moderate on the world political spectrum: free education, universal healthcare, strong privacy protections, support for unions, regulating financial markets and banks: all things that are considered 'normal' in the developed world. I haven't heard him ask for gulags or socializing private enterprise, although personally I would be in favor of socializing the infrastructure utilities use and allowing private enterprise to all have equal opportunity at providing services over said infrastructure (phone lines, power lines, cable lines, water lines). Should drastically reduce monopolies, increase competition, and improve the end users experience.
He makes a lot of very rational statement, but then goes for batshit insane politics that would push us back to the worst part of the soviet experiment.
So he's for establishing a gulag, is he? Citations please.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Unfortunately he is a candidate in name only. He can't raise the kind of money that Hillary or any other candidate running for the democratic nomination can raise, and hence has no chance of getting the nomination. He would be better off running as a third party candidate than trying to get the democratic nomination; it will be interesting to see him eventually reveal his plan for what to do when he has fallen too far behind in the party race.
The funny thing is, he is the liberal democrat that the conservative majority in this country always try to paint every other democrat to be. I would love to see what they would do if he actually gained power beyond his seat in the Senate.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
supporting the concepts, and understanding the economics on how to give everyone everything for free are 2 different things. I support them all as well in theory, in practice* not so much
by in practice, i simply mean the methods that he himself want to try
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
He's doubly stupid. Not only is he stupid enough to expose his bigotry, he can't even get the correct ethnic group. The majority of H1-Bs are most likely from India. India is not known for deserts (quite the opposite in fact, it has jungles and is famous for tigers). The slur he used is a reference to middle easterners, but those aren't a majority of imported tech workers by a long shot.
To the religious conservatives and libertarians who make up the bulk of this site's demographics, those things are all "crazy" and "dangerous" and "soviet-like". Especially the LGBT equality thing; Slashdotters really hate that.
Obama has cut the budget deficit in half since 2008. (Bush left it at $1.5 trillion per year, and now it's about $750 billion). Since $750 billion is still greater than zero, the national debt continues to rise, at about half the rate that it did during the Bush administration- when, if you recall, no one seemed to be complaining about it at all.
You get what you pay for..
India is not known for deserts (quite the opposite in fact, it has jungles and is famous for tigers).
India is a big place. It includes both jungles and deserts, including the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, along the border with Pakistan.
the current zeigeist is unlike any in my lifetime. Voters are deeply troubled by our current system, which stacks the deck against ordinary people. I think they are ready for someone like Sanders.
a balanced budget would not be a good idea.
What, how many masochists and suckers there are. No, you can't suprise anyone with that.
He strikes me as a moderate on the world political spectrum: free education, universal healthcare, strong privacy protections, support for unions, regulating financial markets and banks: all things that are considered 'normal' in the developed world.
Yes, he would be considered a moderate in France, or Italy. Unfortunately, he is running for president of America, where his chance of winning is infinitesimal. But he could have a big impact: by steering the Democratic primaries sharply to the left, he may compel Hillary to take positions that will make it harder for her to win the general election. We may end up with Jeb in the White House.
Paying for them is a simple matter of raising taxes on wealthy people.
You think we can't afford to pay for health care? We're paying for it now through a combination of taxes and premiums, just in a less efficient system than what Sanders wants.
What other thing is it you think we can't afford that Sanders wants?
Yes but you're missing the part where Americans want to live in a third world country because running a first world country requires taxes.
The Thar desert has a miniscule population, even a minority of Rajasthan people live there. Most of the Indians are from metro cities like Bangalore, Madras, Hyderabad, Pune, Bombay, Calcutta - places that are nowhere near any desert. The Thar desert may be a major area within the state of Rajasthan, but it's a blip in India's landsacape
I'm a pro-H1B redneck enjoying watching you nerdlings getting you jobs taken and wages debased after decades of being called racist by your lot for daring to questioning uncontrolled immigration along our southern border.
Hows that shit sandwich taste now?
You may be a troll (or may not), but you make a valid point.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Yeah those damn legless lizards, geckos, beaded lizards and tegus need to stay out of the house.
Private power companies don't work because they don't add value.
That is kind of a ridiculous statement. If nothing else they can add value simply by producing power cheaper than other companies, or provide power where public utilities will not.
There are private power companies in the U.S. you know... if they "do not work" how do they exist?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, he would be considered pretty right wing in France, the UK, Italy, Germany, in fact... pretty much all of Europe.
the problem is, Bernie's "truth" is poison to a free country.
No, "truth" is the poison in an unfree country, which is why he will be so vehemently opposed.
Within 400 yards of my front door is a hydro power plant owned by a paper mill. That power plant is one of the main reasons the paper mill is one of the few remaining mills in New England. Big value added to my town. Private power companies are continuing to be created these days, offering cheaper or "greener" power than existing companies, fueled by the sun, natural gas, water, biomass, wood chips, etc..
Complete non sequitur and contrary to fact. Everyone needs food, you want to buy it at GUM? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUM_(department_store). Most people want cars, do you want to have to buy a Trabant? Everyone needs shelter, do you want to live in a "project"? Everyone needs clothes, do you want to be limited to what the government supplies? (Good luck if you need orthopedic shoes.)
Government control allows the appointment of political hacks to jobs that they're not competent to perform. Fortunately, they often don't bother to show up. There's no pressure to control costs; there's no pressure to perform maintenance, there's no financial motive to hire competent or productive people. Why be safe? Are your customers going to sue a government power company in government court? Even if they do, even if they win, who in the government cares?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Well to be fair the man calls himself a socialist; he's just wrong about that. You're spot on about the bailout though. It's like my Bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he'd say, "nobody really believes in socialism. Nobody believes in capitalism either. It's 'socialism for me, capitalism for you!'"
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
'ER' Dude you are electing a representative president that is meant to implement and administer the laws provide by the senate and the congress, not fucking god. What the fuck are you talking about except typical PR=B$ hyperbole ad hominem attacks. Yeah sure, a bunch of very corrupt rich exploiting the poor laws need to change in order to rebuild the core, the middle class, but all the president can do is implement the policies provided and either do that well or do it incompetently or do it some what competently but extremely poorly because actions where based upon very unsound and corrupted information designed not to provide solutions but feed insatiable vested interests (corrupt advisers produce corrupted outcomes).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
No, he calls himself a democratic socialist. That isn't socialist. It's more-or-less the mainstream "left" party in most countries in Western Europe. And he'd fit well in those parties.
there's a certain kind of american who thinks "socialist" means "communist totalitarianism"
it's a kneejerk pavlovian response from cold war era propaganda without any thought education or historical awareness
i'm not a socialist and i can think of problems with socialism. but at least i can talk about the concept on its merits and lack thereof, rather than being a blind moron as to what the word really means and substituting ignorance from an expired era, the cold war, when considering the word emptily, rather than the real ideology the word actually represents
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wish people could think for themselves... NADER didn't split the vote and cost Gore a clear victory:
1) Gore won by the most conservative count. The supreme court made a corrupt ruling and appointed Bush the winner. It is not hard to figure that one out; but if you can't see it then you are capable of supporting a democracy.
2) Nader only had a tiny portion of the vote; it didn't split the DFL a lot of his people wouldn't vote for Gore. The Communist Party of Florida had more votes than the difference in the count (see #1.) If a portion of the Nader votes went for Gore you would have still had many areas so close it was still likely a mess would have happened.
3) Computer voting was alive and causing errors before anybody even noticed them (but they rushed in some IT people to fix the massive overvote "bugs")
4) Illegal banning of voters who might be black in a really corrupt scheme that should have put somebody in jail; it was intentional. The numbers of people on that were quite significant.
5) Don't forget the ballot which cased a jewish community to vote for a nazi sympathizer. (it only takes half a popcycle stick shove that kind of ballot out of alignment.)
6) Unverified and improper military ballots were counted anyway.
7) Fake directions for election day - the usual things like telling you to vote a day late or wrong location were going around as well. That old trick still happens around the nation.
8) Crazy waiting lines purposely engineered caused some people to turn away.
9) only 1 voting day; no real time off for it... and people propagandized to not vote (except the targeted stuff for certain demographics.)
Forget about Bush's brother, state campaign manager being in charge of the whole foobar process. Don't blame Gore or Nader - everything else was all wrong. A billion dollars was spent to make both candidates seem the same so it would turn out CLOSE which makes it easier to cheat in the tiny margins. In addition, the whole thing is like the Palestinian Government where it really has no power to do anything - it is just there to appease some people into thinking there is a democracy.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
No, he would be considered pretty right wing in France, the UK, Italy, Germany, in fact... pretty much all of Europe.
Right-wing, or centrist? What are examples of European centrists to his left?
The interesting thing is that the majority of the 1% support increased taxes on the rich whereas the most vocal opponents of raising taxes on the rich, aren't.
lets just take more from the rich to gove to the pooor, that has worked so well in the past
It actually does work the exceedingly few times it's actually been done.
You know what the solution to poverty is? Money.
You can see examples of that not working in practice.
The French just tried your little theory and it caused a capital flight of investment out of France while at the same time elite interests were able to exempt themselves for most of it. Which meant the bulk of the costs would land on the middle class pushing them into the lower class thus expanding the lower class thus increasing the money needed to subsidize the lower class thus putting more pressure on what remains of the middle class, etc...
It doesn't work.
You people are like that monkey that keeps pressing the red button that causes him to get an electrical shock. Press the green peannut button, you fucking retards.
There is no easy answer to these problems. This notion of just tax the rich fails to keep in mind that it isn't money people want anyway.
People want food, housing, various goods, various services... and all those things are in limited supply and cost X because they are in Y supply. If you give everyone more money to buy Y it just causes X to increase proportionally because Y is a finite thing. The money we can just make by pressing buttons on a computer. Everyone want 100 trillion dollars? we could do that tomorrow no problem.
That would not change Y however. All you would have done is inflate the currency by changing the ratio between the money supply and Y.
If you want to help poor people, then you need to improve supply of good. That is you need to make more stuff. That means more housing, more factories, more farms, etc. And all of that will increase the supply of Y while reducing the cost per unit of Y which in this example is X.
How then do we increase production? Well, you need to encourage people to make stuff... that means business. And encouraging business to be make stuff means encouraging business in general.
And guess what one of the dumbest things you can do if you want to increase business is? Raise taxes. Because businesses generally do not expand in hostile tax environments.
The core misunderstanding you have is that you think "money" is actually a real thing. It isn't. It is a measure of value. It is like saying I have a 12 inch penis. The inches are the money but they're just numbers you write down on a piece of paper. They're not the throbbing dick.
What you want is that dick. And just redefining "inches" to mean something different doesn't actually get you any more dick when it comes to your turn. Lets say we redefine miles to mean inches such that I now say my dick is 12 miles long. Are you getting any more dick then you were getting before? Nope. Dick is the same length. You've just changed the unit of measurement.
So no, you cannot just raise taxes on the rich, you fucking ignorant peasant.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Paying for them is a simple matter of raising taxes on wealthy people.
That's a brave thing for a wealthy person like yourself to say and I commend it. Wait, what? You aren't actually wealthy, and instead you just think that somebody who is "not you" should pay for it? Oh, that seems a little more convenient.
While marginal tax rates in the US are not nearly as high as those in many parts of Europe, our income tax system is progressive (i.e. rich pay more) and the lower tax burden is disporportionately structured to benefit the less wealthy. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, "taxpayers with income over $100,000 a year earn 60 percent of the nation's income and pay 95.2 percent of the income taxes in the United States." Additionally, according to that same source, "Those making over $200,000 comprise just over 5 percent of the nation's taxpayers, earn 32.3 percent of the income, but pay 46.7 percent of total federal taxes and 70 percent of federal income taxes." European systems are actually more "fair" in the sense that larger portions of their incomes are collected in regressive taxes (i.e. everyone pays the same so poor feel it more) like the VAT.
Let's be grown-ups and admit that where we stand depends on where we sit. You probably are not "wealthy," whatever that means to you, and taxing those smug bastards sure sounds good to you, right? Conversely, I am not a "one percenter" (at least not in my state or region), but am part of a family with two working spouses with tech management jobs, and my family's Federal tax bill this year before adjustments and deductions closely approached six figures, or just slightly less than double the median income of the United States.
To someone who is certainly comfortable but by no means rolling in it - child care is ludicrously expensive, and we save as much as is feasible for retirement, taking a lot off our topline income - "oh let's just throw more taxes on people with money" does not sound nearly as good to me as it apparently does to you.
"95% of all Slashdot
Which can otherwise be described as ban on anonymous speech — at least, political speech.
We don't have a media monopoly, that's all that matters. Most likely, his being a Socialist, the solution will involve creating an official governmental media corporation (such as by vastly expanding NPR/PBS). USSR had such a monopoly on media, and now Russia has too. It is not pretty — and much worse, than what we have today.
Well, GP said "soviet experiment" and you asked for examples — here is another one.
They are perfectly equal already — there are no laws singling them out in any way.
Yeah, right. Would he properly privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mark? Without dealing with that giant elephant in the room, all "banking reforms" are meaningless.
Then you have no idea, what "soviet experiment" is. Likely, Mr. Sanders does not know it either. Both of you should be kept away from governing a country.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Top marginal tax rates in the US on the wealthy were 95%.. but that was back when we had a thriving middle class, almost free education, unions that ensured a 40 hour work week, safe working environments and a political class that gave us Social Security and took the concerns of the many into consideration.
Now we have tuition that leaves students in debt for years after graduation, a miniscule middle class, no unions, cheap imported labor, a political class that passes laws only for the few...
I wonder what changed.
plenty of those wealthy only get their wealth by warping the laws of the land to bring more wealth in their direction. we're not talking about hard working small business owners here, we're talking about parasites
additionally, i am not sure why we should worry about these "patriotic americans" fleeing the country being that doing so would give us more leverage to seize the means of their ill gotten gains, which is the real problem
so good fucking riddance should they flee
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
whats even more interesting is how they say as much...but they never actually do pay the taxes they claim they want to be paying. soros is potentially facing jail time over it now
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
we have been throwing trillions of dollars at it since FDR and we are no better off now then we were then. in fact some would say we are worse off
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What changes are voters who don't understand marginal taxes and believe their 60k a year job would subject them to a death tax.
"Which can otherwise be described as ban on anonymous speech â€" at least, political speech."
It's okay for global corporations to finance the election?
So universal health care is a bad thing? Didn't Romney try this somewhat in MA?
How about when a gay couple adopt children, one of the "parents" gets killed and since states don't recognize the partnership the kid(s) are left with out a legal parent.
Get up!
Who would say we're worse off today than in the 1930s?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because it is commonly noted that the "rich" who actually get taxed tend to include a large number people who are in the middle class.
While yes, the tax would charge a rich individual more than a middle class individual in an absolute sense, there are a few things at work here:
The first one is obvious and needs little discussion. The rich are able to create various means of preserving their wealth in the face of general taxation. The rich are willing to pay "more", but "more" is not enough. Particularly when they're already hiding much of it anyway. Even then, at a certain point, it's mostly like keeping score.
Which leads to the next issue. While the rich can pay disproportionately on an individual level, they can't pay enough as a class to support the rest of the country for programs like free health care, even if you completely removed all of their wealth down to zero (which will not happen). They actually only bring in a trillion dollars a year as a class. That's HUGE for such a small number of people, but its not actually enough in total to operate a single payer program for everyone.
What happens is that everyone else has to chip in, and because the poor are poor and would be excluded, it falls square on the middle class to pay for it.
You may or may not be okay with that. However, there are some rather high tax rates in countries that do have things like universal health care, and it is more or less a universal tax on everyone except those who couldn't pay anyhow.
Let's not forget the "fees" for people who didn't want insurance under Obamacare. Who is paying those fees?
Not the rich, they would have no problem getting insurance and almost certainly have the best insurance available even without the encouragement.
Not the poor, they get subsidies to keep their policies affordable.
It's the people who are the working poor or young who did not pay for insurance previously. They may have insurance now, but it's expensive, and they don't need it. They are simply being forced to put in money to support a group pool.
Single payer health care is not Obamacare, but it would still need to tax the same people that are being taxed for Obamacare and is even more expensive.
So when I hear someone say that the "rich" will be paying the bill, I know I'm listening to someone who hasn't actually done the math. You will be footing the bill, and as usual, it will charge the middle class more than it will hurt the rich, progressive taxation or not.
That is why the wealthy are the ones who are not having the most problem with Obamacare or Single Payer. They're not the ones who will find the burden onerous.
This year's deficit is about $750 billion. I think you're emboldened quote is a little out of date.
You are welcome on my lawn.
life isnt fair, if one works harder than another and makes better decisions with their lives, they deserve more.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Nonpartisan my ass. The Tax Foundation is a right wing think tank born out of hatred of FDR and have been carrying water for the wealthiest of the wealthy ever since.
This elections Ross Perot? Or will he just fumble to make Hillary look good.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It does if you look at it differently, as another way to erode American workers wages and benefits.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
[LBGT] are perfectly equal already — there are no laws singling them out in any way.
Nope, there are hundreds, if not thousands of laws that single them out, whether by name or omission. There are piles of laws on housing and other things that state you can't discriminate on race, gender, age, family status, religion, and/or other factors, but very few of them extend anti-discrimination laws to LBGT. This is singling them out as one of the non-protected classes is singling them out.
Learn to love Alaska
That depends on what the money is used for.
If I walk up to someone on the street and give them a thousand dollars out of my pocket, there is the presumption that this would help them. Even putting aside obvious extreme cases like gamblers and drug addicts, that thousand dollars can very easily be burned up on things that will actually do little to remove people from poverty.
If my thousand dollars was used to help pay for a car, they can drive to work, that's better but they still have a depreciating asset that they have to maintain. If it was used to buy Christmas presents, then you have some happy kids, but you've bought something that does nothing for you in the long run.
Now what if you do something smart like invest it? Then you're likely to see some real value from it. In about thirty years. If and only if an emergency does not force you to withdraw it. In the meantime, you're still poor and you have to resist the urge to use that money for anything but as an investment or a payment that helps you on a continuing and increasing basis.
You don't want to give people money and expect that to end poverty. You want to remove incidences of bad decision-making and you have to buffer them from bad luck. Money can be a buffer, but if you continue to make bad decisions with the money you have, you're going to keep being poor.
There are anecdotes of people who make millions, either being rock stars, sports stars, or lottery ticket winners, and they lose it all. How do they end up that way? They would have been (temporarily) rich one-percenters just as surely as Bill Gates or the Koch Brothers are. The catch is that they have terrible decision making skills when it comes to money. They may spend it lavishly. They get bad advice and fail to learn how to invest. They may simply have weak personalities and are taken advantage of. They don't understand what you do with money, and then they lose it.
Although those are anecdotes, the same thing happens to tens of millions of people everyday in smaller, but more crucial situations. Poverty isn't always about helpless people being taken advantage of. It's more about the fact that it is more important to know how not to be poor than it is to actually have money thrown at you.
The point is that the solution to Poverty is *not* money. The solution to Poverty is *doing the right things* with money.
This year's deficit is about $750 billion. I think you're emboldened quote is a little out of date.
Well, I don't really think rich people should pay for it ALL. Just a lot of it.
But let's look at that math. According to http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo...
the top 1% average in 2012 was $717,000 per household and there are roughly 1.2 million such households. Their income was therefore about $880 billion. Figures aren't in for last year but it's safe to say they're considerably higher.
The deficit last year was $564 billion. So yes, they could pay the deficit and have money to spare.
If you recognize that nobody's proposing that they do it without help from the moderately well-off, it starts looking not at all out of reach.
But paying the deficit wasn't even my point. If you want to nationalize health care, you do it with taxes. INSTEAD of the health-insurance premiums and all the nickel and your-whole-bank-account charges we pay now. Not in addition, INSTEAD.
supporting the concepts, and understanding the economics on how to give everyone everything for free are 2 different things.
That's the thing, opposing the bank bail outs means that he doesn't want to give everyone everything for free and it also means that he supports the free market to some degree.
Personally, I don't know much about his policies, so I don't even know if I support his positions, but I do know that when someone like yourself is using absolute quantifiers like 'everyone' and 'everything' when speaking about a particular political issue, then it means you've stopped listening rationally to the other side on that particular issue.
30K per year is barely a living wage for the average family of 4. Try 300k a year, and you're getting closer to the definition of "rich."
they never actually do pay the taxes they claim
Nonsense. Well-off people pay the vast majority of the income taxes in this country. Nearly half the people in the country pay no income taxes at all (though they still get to vote on what happens to the money collected from the other people who do).
The top 5% of earners pay almost 60% of the taxes. The top 25% of earners pay over 86% of the taxes. The bottom HALF of the country pays under 3% of those taxes. So how do you come up with "never actually do pay" - ? These numbers come from the IRS. The people who cash the checks you say aren't being written.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So the top 5% of earners pays only 60% of the taxes, while just the top 1% has 48% of the money?
If the missing 4% of people are getting at least 12% of the money, then they're still getting off lucky.
Math is fun!
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
lets just take more from the rich to gove to the pooor, that has worked so well in the past
It actually does work the exceedingly few times it's actually been done.
You know what the solution to poverty is? Money.
Yup, if we just took all of the money from the 1 percenters and shared it out equally, then everybody would get about $100k. Of course, that is a one time thing, because now the 1 percenters will be counted among the poor, and $100k is not going to help anybody out for long. It is less than 3 years of poverty level living.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
We just need to make H1-B's expensive to employers. That will insure that corporations who are looking for motivated well educated foreigners instead of lazy "special snowflake" domestic employees will have to decide that the foreign workers are worth the extra money.
First, enforce "comparable wages/jobs" rules. Second, impose a 20% to 30% tax on wages payable by the employer of an H1-B employee. Third, remove the cap entirely. This would result in it being impossible to hire foreign engineers to save money, but they would still be hired if they were at least 30% or so more effective than domestic talent. In reality, this wouldn't help save the jobs of those whining about H-1B employees, but it would force the whiners to recognize that employers won't give them a job but will happily shell out a LOT more money to get a more qualified H-1B employee -- i.e., it has little do do with money.
I've never hired an H-1B to save money -- in fact, they cost me more money than a domestic employee. However, I'd rather have five well educated motivated developers than 15 lazy uneducated bums with degrees from "respected" U.S. universities.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Doubtlessly, it didn't seem "crazy or dangerous" to you if your parents had bought you a pony. Except that it might well have cost you your college education.
Sanders voted for $1 billion in handouts to big corporations while claiming to oppose crony capitalism. That alone tells you how confused the man is.
Our public health care system covers about a third of Americans and consumes about half of our health care spending overall. When we take all that money, the US government is already spending more per capita over the entire population than the UK. How can you possibly believe that extending that kind of system to the entire US population would make US health care more efficient?
The problem with health care in the US is that it completely divorces costs from individual choice; patients have no motivation and no information to save money; they pick the latest and most expensive drugs and tests for everything because, hey, why not? That's the problem with the current system, and it's the problem with Sanders' system.
To make our health care system efficient, the system needs to be more market oriented: a health savings account started at birth with some kind of catastrophic insurance coverage. That's the only way to make it work.
The first number refers to income tax, the second number refers to net worth (it's probably not correct either, but who's counting).
Yeah, but garbage in garbage out.
It's very, VERY important to pay attention to the terms when someone starts flashing around statistics. For one, it's very easy to talk about something else entirely, but make it seem like you're offering a contrast rather than comparing apples and oranges.
For instance, "top 5% of earners pay 60% of income tax" is true, but entirely misleading, because we're only talking about INCOME tax. That's the people who get paychecks. We're not talking about the truly rich, who don't have to work for a living, they make their money in investments - that is, capital gains. Now, capital gains is taxed, but at a much lower rate. This is why Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. There are also other taxes that people pay, but income and capital gains are the biggest chunks when we're talking about an individual (depending on where you live at least, some states don't have an income tax and use sales/etc tax instead, so YMMV).
Capital Gains is taxed lower than income, unless it's short term gains (i.e. day trading or the like), and you can bet that anyone who's significantly wealthy enough can manage to hire people to make sure and avoid that.
The fact that people fixate on income is a fallacy, because regular income isn't where the truly rich get their money, nor is it even the work those people do. No, that's the money your money makes once you already have money.
Note that I'm not suggesting that soaking the rich is some panacea, or that being rich is an inherently bad thing etc etc, merely pointing out that income taxes are only a part of the puzzle, and not the one that applies when we're talking about the rich.
This is an outright lie. You probably don't even realize it's a lie because you've bought into the propaganda. Every person who hold a job pays taxes including those on income. Social security and medicare taxes are NOT exempt-able and they ARE income taxes. The only way to not pay social security and medicare/medicaid taxes is to not have income, something the wealthy are remarkably good at not paying for. On top of this they pay their state taxes, including income, cigarette, alcohol, gas, sales and property along with all the other miscellaneous taxes and fees. In fact as a percentage of their income the poorest among us pay the highest proportion of their income in taxes than anyone else.
The nugget of truth that makes your lie so insidious is that the poorest among us don't pay FEDERAL income tax but they still pay taxes and they still pay income taxes. This little lie and deception allows you to paint entire segments of our society as non-contributing freeloaders and it's NOT TRUE.
All your bullshit numbers are based solely on federal income tax. They disregard all the other taxes entirely as if they don't exist and it's complete and utter horseshit. The most important fact, the one you completely ignore is that the poorest among us pay something like 50% of their income in various federal, state and local taxes. As a percentage of income they are the highest taxed individuals in this country.
Personally I'm a big believer that those people who have benefited the most from the system and have the means to support it should be the ones that have the highest burden in paying for it. That is NOT asking a lot.
It's not a lie, it's a distraction by statistic. Look at it again - "almost half the people in this country pay no income tax" which is true... ...except the statement was used to imply that "pays no income tax" means "pays no tax, at all" which is quite clearly NOT the case.
It's sort of like how Apple used to state in their ads how "Macs aren't affected by Windows viruses and malware!" Apple knew very well that Macs are no more affected by Windows malware any more than Windows machines would be affected by malicious code written for Mac/Linux/etc, so the statement is factually true. What they also know is that the average person hearing that statement doesn't realize the underlying nuance, and instead hears "Macs are immune to viruses!"
To get back to taxes, there's almost no one who doesn't pay any tax at all, whatsoever. Some people pay more, some people pay less. The fact that some people don't make enough income to get taxed on it shouldn't be what concerns us, it's that people who earn money through work pay a top marginal rate almost twice what the rate is for money earned by capital gains.
Sorry, parent made most of the same points, it's just late and I'm tired.
To add, the fixation on income tax is because it's the main tax that most people are familiar with, but it's also a major distraction from the fact that the tax the truly rich mostly pay, Capital Gains, is far, far lower - 20% for long term at the top bracket (and the people rich enough to pay that have accountants to make sure their income falls in that category, rather than short term, among other things).
it's a distraction by statistic
Nonsense. It's not a distraction, it's different topic than the ebb and flow of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare (which are transfer welfare taxes). Income taxes are what pay for all discretionary spending (the military, federal agencies like the EPA, the FAA, the FCC and a jillion other activities). There's a good reason we look at all of those differently than we do the entitlement programs.
... capital gains? You do realize that a whole lot of middle class people also earn capital gains, right? Directly or indirectly, through things like mutual funds. Warren Buffet's secretary can put a pizza's worth of cash every month into some investments when she's young, and can and should be looking forward to earning some money from that. You know, just like him: taking money on which she's already paid taxes, and putting it entirely at risk in an investment that stimulates the economy and if and when it happens to pay off, paying more taxes on that activity.
And
If Warren Buffet loses money in an investment? He doesn't get to write that off against his income taxes - he just loses it, plain and simple. But he's smart, and usually makes good investments. If he's making money, the money he risked is being put to very good use in an active economy. That's the entire reason why we reward that risk taking with a lower tax rate - because we want more of that risk taking to happen.
All of which has nothing to do with transfer entitlement taxes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
SS and Medicare do not transfer wealth. They are paid for with specific taxes on income which either stops at a fairly low amount or the taxrate drops to a very low amount.
Also capital losses can be a write off.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Well, there you go.
You are welcome on my lawn.
evidence?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You can in fact deduct losses from income, there would be few investment firms if you could not.
A paycheck is definitely a lower risk way to earn income, but also usually has a fairly low maximum cap compared to risking your own money or time.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
cause lord knows its not like social democratic policies have EVER been tried before, right?
just like guns are a totally unique problem to the US that no country has ever faced or solved before, right?
or healthcare?
or border policies?
or telecom regulations?
no, you're right. these are totallly unique things never before seen by anyone except the US.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
cause there is only one tax system in the country right?
cause there's no system of other taxes that disproportionately affect poor and low income people,
causing them to pay a far higher percentage of their income in overall taxation, right?
(idiot)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
...decades of being called racist by your lot for daring to questioning uncontrolled immigration along our southern border.
Not by me. Nor by anybody else here on /. that I can remember.
how much do they pay you to write this shit for them?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"To make our health care system efficient, the system needs to be more market oriented: a health savings account started at birth with some kind of catastrophic insurance coverage. That's the only way to make it work."
That's your response to the US spending more per capita than the UK? You're incoherent. The UK has a much more socialized system that makes them much less sensitive to cost of services than US consumers.
If you want it to cost like the UK system, design it like the UK system. THAT is at least coherent thinking.
we're not.
specifically because of the programs we created since the 1930s.
without those programs the 2008 shitstorm would have made the 1930s look like a damp fart.
but the programs did their job: they arrested the fall and kept money moving in the system and reduced the severity of the crash.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
so the rich and corporations do not use their money to change the laws to get even more money, for no extra effort?
you're ignorant and delusional
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, you are incoherent. As I was saying, the socialized portion of the US health care system already spends more three times as much as the UK system per patient; obviously, socialization of the health care system isn't working in the US.
But that's not the wealthy people that politicians are talking about when they discuss raising taxes on the wealthy. The point was irrelevant.
Why are you telling me? I wasn't "flashing statistics", I was pointing out that the GP post was comparing apples and oranges.
You need to look at the combination of corporate taxes and capital gains taxes, because capital gains are simply corporate profits that haven't been paid out to you as dividends. So, if the company pays a dollar in corporate taxes on their profits, that comes out of your capital gains as much as if you pay a dollar in capital gains taxes on your personal tax return.
When you do that, you'll see that the US has one of the highest tax rates on capital gains of all nations, ahead of most European countries (only Denmark, Italy, and France are higher).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
That's also one of the main reasons corporations are leaving the US: not only are they subject to excessive regulations and cost of doing business, they also face a very tax-unfriendly environment.
Any claim of there being "thousands" of anything not accompanied by even one example is invalid. Fail.
Oh, well, if we start counting omissions, we can get really far. There are no laws defending blonds or red-heads against discrimination by brunettes either. Can a politician proposing to ban discrimination based on hair-color to our thick books be confident of your vote?
How about folks, whose name begins with "Mi*"? There is not a law anywhere in the world (!) explicitly protecting us — how do you sleep at night knowing of this ongoing travesty?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Your response might've been meaningful, if the 100% tax on "the rich" would have covered your figure. And not even then — the very fact that the numbers are comparable means, even flat-out confiscating all income from those earning $1mln is not enough. Oh, and you can only do that sort of things once (per generation) — may be enough for a one-time undertaking, but not for ongoing payments for all the wonder-programs Socialists dream about.
Yes, had you clicked on the link provided, you would've seen the date on the article: 4/03/2012 @ 2:39PM: same President, same totalitarian "progressives", same debate as we have now.
Just what is it that drives people like you to these attempts to state the meaningless bits, that make not a iota of difference to the point being made, is beyond me...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Your rhetorical question is the same as "is it Ok for child-molesters to roam the streets" — you need to seriously violate privacy rights of everybody to even learn, which money comes from "global corporation" or who is a known "sex offender".
And the answer to both questions is "Yes". You can ask a politician, who gave him money — and draw conclusions from answers or evasions — but you can not ban it outright. Certainly not according to Slashdot's prevailing opinion.
It is certainly something USSR had — and it was as bad as the rest of what they had USSR.
Ultimately, it is unfair — a citizen pays taxes into the common pool, but, when he needs treatment, it is up to the pool's administrators to decide, what is and what is not "appropriate" treatment (or, maybe, he deserves only the end-of-life counselling). Sure, insurance companies have a very similar arrangement (except any of them would be torched to the ground for even mentioning EOL), but insurance companies compete with each other and people can switch between them as they see fit.
"Somewhat" is a qualifier, you can drive a truck through, is not it? Your question is irrelevant, though, and the answer is "No" — Romney did not introduce "Universal" healthcare in Massachusetts.
Is a paraplegic being discriminated against, when he is told, he can not play volleyball or practice karate? If the law requires adoptions to favor married couples, then any unmarried couple is disqualified. It is not anybody's fault that (most) gays would not marry — any more than that the paraplegic can neither jump nor kick.
But "discrimination" it is not — and neither the gays' nor the paraplegics' predicament can be rectified by a politician or any legislation, only by, one hopes, some future medical breakthroughs.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
My response was only to point out that your assertion that taxing millionaires at 100% would only cover 1/3 of the deficit was untrue. That's all. Don't get yourself excited to refute some points I wasn't making.
In fact, my number for the current deficit of $750 billion was too high. It's closer to $550 billion, so taxing millionaires at 100% would in fact cover it and leave a hundred billion or so left over to pay for health care for everyone.
I'm not endorsing that policy, only pointing out that blockquote you decided to put in bold face, was in fact, boldly untrue.
Are we cool now?
You are welcome on my lawn.
for the injuries that are inflicted on them too. I mean, if they would just do what the aggressors wanted, none of the punishment would have been necessary.
where your friends lied their asses of to get their little war and insulted the patriotism of anyone that dared to point out that the entire thing was bullshit.
is not a substitute for admitting that you are wrong.
caused by bushes failures do you feel that you can legitimately place on other people.
That would be funny in a sitcom, but not in the real world where the grownups have to continuously clean up after those spoiled children.
Therefore, in my opinion, he just guaranteed he will not get elected.
The One Percent will not support it.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
That's twice. The first was telling the press that he was busy, he had work to do. Now he questions H1B's. He's 2 and 0. Bernie, just may go Obama on Hilary,(again), if she can't get in front of this contrived enforced resession.
throwing 30 billion dollars at the auto industry... for them to go bankrupt ANYWAY...was not the right decision. along with 10000 other decisions that lead up to the collapse.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
what you ignore while you talk about capitol gains is they already paid taxes on that income. why should they pay again??? let alone at a higher rate???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
capital gains have already been paid income tax on prior to investing. so you need to add the income tax rate to the capital gains rate to get the real rate of tax there
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
id blame regulation and overbearing government for those problems, not the rich
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
it might not be who they are talking about, but it is who always gets hit
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
so... vote out the people changing the laws for them? thats too obvious....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
they could 1 off pay off 1 years deficit...
now what. is the government going to spend 1/2 trillion less the next year? because they already took all the rich peoples money, they no longer have the money to cover that.... what happens now????
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
and how do you plan to continuing to pay for peoples healthcare next year after stealing all the money the rich had earned the year before??? You dont think, thats the problem with liberal economic policy "its always someone elses fault and responsibility"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, ...
Huh???? It ain't about skepticism, and if Sanders, a congressional critter, and supposedly with a law degree, still CANNOT figure out that it is AGAINST THE FRIGGING LAW!!!! American workers cannot be replaced unless it is proven that no qualified workers can be found, AND SINCE THEY ARE in the effing position to begin with, that goes against the law.
Which is why the next two videos are soooo fundamental and sooo important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Excellent points, overall, his record is the best, it is on a few individual items where he falters, i.e., voting down the food stamp legislation and then stating he had second thoughts about that vote, and not being VOCAL ENOUGH about jobs offshoring and the use of foreign visa replacement scab workers!
So all those SEC filings I've perused over the years, all those GAO reports, and various other books and reports and filings on deferred income and hedge fund managers and hedge fund people and private equity types is all lies?????
I think not, mofo! So how's about putting up or STFU! And to those ignorant of forensic finance, the super-rich and the hedge fundsters and private equiteers routinely give themselves "loans" from their offshore monies, which means they transfer their money back themselves in not taxable form, since their so-called "interest" they pay is not only non-taxable, but is really just transferring more money offshore!
Dumbshit, what part of, "I'm not endorsing that policy, only pointing out that blockquote you decided to put in bold face, was in fact, boldly untrue." do you not understand?
I'm not in favor of taxing millionaires at 100% any more than you're in favor of allowing felons to own guns or legalizing rape.
Oh wait...
You are welcome on my lawn.
What the fuck are you talking about? Are you referring to the GM bailout?
THIS auto bailout?
http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.c...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sure. Vote 'em out. Politicians should not be so easily corruptible (which is why I support publically funded campaigns and term limits) .But what about the ones who are *doing the corrupting*? Just let them off scot free? I don't think so... unfortunately the SEC and the FED is so thoroughly compromised as to be worthless.
C|N>K
that is why we keep on calling out morally bankrupt losers like you every time you insult our intelligence by trying to pretend that you do not bear responsibility for all of the death and destruction.
i dont know whats worse: the blatant bullshit this idiot spews, or the idiot who modded him insightful.
of course, thats assuming he's not just sock puppet modding his own comments, which im already half convinced he does.
no one with more than a single brain cell should be capable of stating or reading the words
"They are perfectly equal already — there are no laws singling them [LGBT] out in any way."
let alone be taken seriously and modded up for saying it.
theres also the "universal health care" presented once again as if the idea is a brand new concept never before tried, and his once again showing his support for the ownership of politicians by those with the most "speech".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The Executive:
1) Writes the budget. The budget defines how money is spent. How much money is spent has just a little bit to do with the national debt
2) Signs or vetoes legislation. Presidents say "I will veto this bill if it does/does not do X" all the time.
3) Is the leader of his party, and largely dictates his party's agenda. Even as a lame duck, Obama can cut off campaign money for Dems running for reelection next year if they aren't "team players" on the budget.
The president has more power and influence over the budget than entire committees or leaders of the respective chambers. That's not quite the polar opposite of "no power", but it's pretty close.
"someone bribed the bank guard and robbed the bank"
"so fire the guard, problem solved"
"what about the robbers?"
"uhhh...."
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
$880 Billion - $ 564 Billion = $316 Biillion, which is about $260 K per household after tax. So if you were to say it's all going to come from the top 1%, they'd be taxed at an average 64%.
You might call that "confiscatory" but it's not eating the seed corn.
The shutdown was caused by the veto, not the passing of the bill. The passing of the bill was valid and would have resulted in a working government, then Clinton took an action that caused the government to shut down.
I don't see why it matters so much to you. What does it matter who you blame for the shutdown? It was a good thing, not a bad thing.
Learn to love Alaska
You want to play this game? Fine. I'm well within the 1% of US by income, and while the majority of my income isn't from capital gains, they are a sizable contribution due to stock bonuses and such. I'm quite okay with making personal income tax more progressive, and raising capital gains tax to match personal income, even though that would mean more money taken out of my pocket every year. Why? Well, perhaps because I don't want another Baltimore in my neighborhood?
The way I see Free Market Capitalism is this: When have you ever had a difficult problem that got better by leaving it the fsck alone?
I think this is the core question. The answer is that these problems happen all the time. For example, there's a large category of perceived problems which aren't actual problems. For example, your claim that power companies don't "add value" when in the next sentence you state exactly the value they provide - power that _everyone_ wants. Since they are actually adding considerable value, the difficult problem of the valueless power companies is easily adverted by not having existed in the first place.
Second, there are the very difficult problems that aren't your problems. I find letting people work their difficult problems out on their own is the best solution here. Among other things, it's an educational experience that allows people to solve other difficult problems they face over the course of their lives.
`Then there's the difficult problem that one makes works by messing with it. For example:
Socialists basically say: Hey, the world is _fsckin'_ complex and it takes real hard work to make things run smoothly, and then a Socialist will start blathering on about all the things you need to do to make a system work.
In other words, the Socialist takes their one tool in the box and whacks on the problem happily. Then when the problem results in more problems (such as your DMV example where the supposed "anti-gov't types" fail to behave according to script), there's more targets to whack on. The top-down strategy common to socialism results in all sorts of problems due to both the ignorance and venality of the policy makers as well as the crude nature of the tools.
There is a standard destructive spiral that socialism gets in. First, they create a public good. Then when the rest of the world behaves in a way as to overconsume the public good, the standard tragedy of the commons phenomenon, then a bureaucracy is set up to regulate the consumption of the public good and starts doing its own thing. Then the cycle repeats, this time with a sliver of the society trapped in this bit of waste. This is exactly a place where relatively free markets excel.
Finally, there is the continued contradiction of growing an ever more complex, opaque, powerful, and unaccountable government while saying "Sure, you have to keep an eye on things". No, you aren't keeping an eye on things. You are growing one of the largest problems of societies, known since we first had civilizations. You don't have to "keep an eye" on markets like you do on bureaucracies, whether government-based or otherwise, who have little stake in doing their job.
Don't give any poverty 'victims' anything but a CHANCE to succeed. Redistributing wealth does NOT mean handing out anything but advice on how to hold on to your money and invest like rich people do. You know, in a place like public school??? Why aren't we told about falling under the credit 'thumb of life' there? A hand up not a hand out. Get real you whinners. I donated $10 to Bernie for a statement. He has a chance if he opposes the status quo. Everyone knows we HAVE to do SOMETHING to fix our (best government corporate money can buy.)
Quite right: why not fix that first. I.e., instead of first switching over to single payer and then figuring out how to save costs, do it the other way around: first, the vast, existing public health care system in the US should figure out how to become cost efficient, and once they have proven they can do that, then we can revisit the question of whether we can switch to single payer. I won't hold my breath.
SS and Medicare do not transfer wealth.
What? Each year, people's wages are taxed into those programs, and funds are transferred, that year, to the people who receive it. There is no "savings account." There is no "I paid into Social Security, so I'll get X when I retire." The amount that retired/disabled people get from that entitlement program is determined legislatively each year, and if you bother to read the fine print in your SS statement, you'll see that they explicitly remind you that there is no guarantee you'll get any future benefits.
Each year, funds are transferred from the people who pay to the people who collect.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
how much do they pay you to write this shit for them?
That's a very insightful way to address the substance of the matter. Obviously you're not willing to say the actual numbers or description of the situation is incorrect ... you're just mad at someone for pointing it out? I get that. But you're not really making any sort of lucid point.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
What I am worried about is them moving their wealth out of the country. And how exactly is the law going to distinguish between those who are hard working business owners and the parasites? The most important point is that the vast majority of the wealth we are talking about is not cash. Exactly who is going to be willing to give the government cash for it after the government confiscated it from someone else? What will happen in your system of "taxing" the wealthy is that wealth will be taken from those with insufficient political connections and given to those with political connections. However, none of that will generate significant revenue for the government.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
i get what you are saying however what I am saying is you cant fix that problem without fixing the underlying problem, being political corruption
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
How about we agree to tax everyone equal. Not in $ amount but what is fair by taxing everyone equal in %. So that includes payroll, capital gains, consumer tax, etc. Instead Romney etc pay 10% and middle class pay 23%. Poor end up paying 10%.
Currently the middle class is getting squeezed for everyone else.
love the taste, hate the texture
yes, absolutely, political corruption is a crime with a corruptor and a corrupted
why do you want to focus all blame on only one side of a deal that is the fault of two sides?
why do you focus zero blame on the guy who is paying for and often initiating the corruption? you think it's only innocent corporations being reached out to by sleazy politicians? seriously?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
well, nice to know we can still throw around insults unjustifiably and misrepresent my views on things....
Just as you were not justifying 100% taxes, I was simply wondering how if one were to do that, how they planned on getting money to continue to pay for the project when they have no one but poor people to go after in year 2 after taking all the money from the rich.
I can see how it looked like I was calling you out or something, but that wasnt the intent, it was just to further conversation.
allowing americans their right to protection is one thing, as for your other statement, its simply disgusting and Im not even going to dignify it with a response.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
because if you take away the people being bribed, others are no longer bribing. If we punish those bribing, but not those taking the bribes, they will simply be bribed again.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
No. He doesn't. Not even close. Implying that opposing H1-B == racism is as stupidly dishonest as accusing someone of racism because they oppose Obama's wars and bailouts.
Now brother, you know I wasn't endorsing any 100% taxation policy, and yet you purposely tried to represent my comment in which I specifically said I wasn't endorsing said policy as supporting it.
I get a little touchy.
100% is ridiculous. As we've seen during the prosperous 1950s, 90% is a perfectly good top tax rate, and with the steadily falling deficit, we'll be OK as long as we don't elect Hillary Clinton or any of the Republicans. Because make no mistake, either of those alternatives will lead us back to war and recession before the cement is dry at the Obama library.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Haters gonna hate.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
you want to take away the government?
you want to magically remove corruptibility from the human race?
you don't want to go after the slimy assholes doing the corrupting?
you're a moron, really. not a baseless insult, an objective evaluation of your thinking. you want to ignore corruptors and focus only on the corrupted. fucking stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
no the only moron here is you who cant seem to grasp the simple concept that im stating
who has the power to create the framework that the companies work in - the government
Vote out the people who are writing the rules for the big businesses, and vote in people who will follow the constitution, rather than bend to whatever some business wants
I in NO way, said dont ALSO go after the businesses who are breaking the law. they should pay as well.
My point was simple, if you only take out the people paying the bribes, and not those accepting them, someone else will step up and start bribing the people in government
objective- i dont think that word means what you think it means based on that worthless attempt at an insult based on your own misunderstanding of a simple idea.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
again, i apologize if it seemed like i was calling you out specifically or misrepresenting what you were saying
i disagree with you on a 90% top tax rate for the rich, if i were in that top rate, i would find ways to not make so much if i know the4 government is gonna take it from me anyway. therefore costing jobs to others
we can agree that hillary and most of the GOP would be a disaster though that is for sure
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
No, it is not. Two blonds can have a brunette child, for example.
So cite one, where the accusation was based on the supposed victim(s) hair-color.
I will not respond again until you offer a valid link — you've made enough unsubstantiated claims already.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
i'm saying take out both, you're focusing only on one side
this is retarded beyond belief. if government were weaker or nonexistent, companies would still exist, and merely form their own security forces, against which you have no right to redress. power is not magic that government creates, it is merely assumed by whomever exerts it. why do you want to weaken the only institution you have on your side, government, and allow a freer hand to those who are already abusing you (corrupting your government) and would happily abuse you more without pesky rules and regulations?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
what you ignore while you talk about capitol gains is they already paid taxes on that income. why should they pay again??? let alone at a higher rate???
That is absolutely false. From the definition of capital gains:
When you sell a capital asset, the difference between the basis in the asset and the amount you sell it for is a capital gain or a capital loss. Generally, an asset's basis is its cost to the owner, but if you received the asset as a gift or inheritance, refer to Topic 703 for information about your basis. You have a capital gain if you sell the asset for more than your basis. You have a capital loss if you sell the asset for less than your basis. Losses from the sale of personal-use property, such as your home or car, are not deductible.
You are not re-taxed on your original earnings (the "basis"). You are taxed on the growth in value or gain (hence the name).
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Do remember that income taxes are not the only taxes that affect people. They're just the most progressive, which means that people of a certain political persuasion tend to talk about them without talking about other taxes.
Look, my family is well off, and we're open to paying more taxes. However, I keep reading about rich people paying less of their income in taxes than we do, proportionately, and I am not happy about that. (Remember the year Warren Buffett described his taxes as proportionally less than his secretary's? They were ludicrously lower than ours.) It seems that, of all the major ways to make money, actually working for it is the most taxed, which I find ridiculous.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
you are not grasping what I am saying. I will try and make it simple as possible for you
Yes, worry about both
when I say take out the government, im saying vote out the people getting bribed and stop voting incumbents in over 80% of the time. hard to bribe people when they change every few years
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Suppose I have $100K. Presumably, I've already paid all necessary taxes on the $100K. Now, I buy stocks with it, and a few years later they're worth $150K, and I sell them. I pay capital gains taxes on the $50K, not the $100K, and I pay no actual income taxes on it. That's the $50K I haven't paid taxes on yet, so unless you have some sort of obscure point you're bad at getting across, you're wrong.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yup. This is why I consider the FICA contributions to be a particularly regressive tax, and not something like pension contributions. I also consider the deceptively named employer's portion to be a tax, although at least I don't pay income tax on it. It's money coming from the payroll allocation of my employer that the Feds get whether I like it or not. If you've ever been self-employed, you see the full scale of these taxes on your income, and, believe me, it's a shock if you haven't been through it before.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
- There is nothing rhetorical about corporations funding elections, it's the way it's done. ....
- Yes the USSR sucked, surely we can do better.
- What did Romney sign into law? Lets see:
Chapter 58 had several key provisions: the creation of the Health Connector; the establishment of the subsidized Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Program; the employer Fair Share Contribution and Free Rider Surcharge; and a requirement that each individual must show evidence of coverage on their income tax return or face a tax penalty, unless coverage was deemed unaffordable by the Health Connector.[23]
- Regarding your comparison between gays and paraplegics, what? (slaps head)
Get up!