Guess you've never heard of state sales tax. Or worked out what it costs you to have a single employee in California (hint: almost 3 times as much is paid to the state as to the employee).
Yes, California behaves sanely here, but businesses just move elsewhere, and California can't tax imports.
As I pointed out, states already try this, but have a rather fundamental flaw in that they can't tax imports.
Likewise, the US uses 'corporate income tax' which is utterly nonsensical.
OR you can go out of business or flee that business climate.
Or, if you're a large company, you 'flee' the business climate, while still doing everything here and paying no corporate income taxes on it.
But you seem to think that's always a great profit margin, and the truth is more the opposite, usually the most you can get barely keeps your business afloat. And when cheap foreign junk drives prices below your rising costs, then what?
YOU. TAX. THE. FUCKING. IMPORTS. LIKE. I. WAS. SUGGESTING.
Will you please read what I'm suggesting instead of trying to figure out a sentence to disagree with?
I know we already tax those things at various places. My suggestion was to remove corporate income taxes (Which have been demonstrated to be sheer nonsense as only small business owners pay them, everyone who can afford it moves their mailbox to somewhere else.), and make up the difference in Federal taxes on those things, either new taxes or increasing the old.
Of course, what I was presenting was altering taxes, not raising them across the industry. We were talking about a business, not 'businesses'.
I'm really getting tired of having to defend myself from a billion different people who didn't read the context.
For the record, I suggested that, instead of taxing business income (Which is incredibly easy to dodge.), we tax actual monetary transactions that happen in the US...we tax employees, we tax goods sold, we tax good imported even more, we dividends.
At the Federal level, instead of income tax, at a level to make up the lack of income tax, as this has seemed to confuse everyone. I know we already tax some of that at various levels.
Do you have an actual issue with that (An actual issue was, in fact, pointed out with taxing dividends, that a lot of poor people have them as the only income.), or not?
Social Security is not revenue neutral this year and won't be revenue neutral after 2013.
Yes, if only we could, you know, slightly change it and have it remain okay.
Oh, what's that? We can? We could raise the cap on income? Well, let's do that, then.
Under unrealistic assumptions, Medicare is revenue neutral for less than twenty years (and continues to outpace GDP).
Again, I have no idea what 'outpace the GDP' has to with anything. The reason Medicare is outpacing the GDP is that medical costs are outpacing the GDP.
There's really only one actual solution to that, and it's getting medical costs under control. Getting entirely rid of Medicare won't change the fact no one can afford health care.
Once medical costs are under control, Medicare is pretty automatically sustainable. If medical costs are not gotten under control, it hardly matters in exactly which manner we're unable to afford health care....we all died of typhoid or something.
If you want to argue that the health care bill hasn't done that, well, fine. Feel free to argue for some other bill fixing that. (I would argue for a bill to kill health insurance CEOs and put their heads on pikes. That wouldn't solve anything, but it would be good for morale.) But that doesn't change what the actual problem is, and it isn't Medicare.
The reason I don't "grasp" that is because it isn't true. Social Security and Medicare are established by law. Congress can change that law. I recognize that the US probably won't destroy these programs, but it's foolhardy to claim that they are untouchable.
Well, no, as Medicare is voluntary, Congress could hardly remove the payout from it and expect people to keep paying premiums for Medicare insurance.
If Medicare payouts went away, all incoming Medicare money (Which is more than outgoing Medicare money, at least for now.), would go away. Because no one would buy Medicare insurance anymore!
Now, strictly speaking, Congress could remove the payout of social security, and yet keep removing SSI premiums from people's paycheck.
I suspect people would take issue with that, though, considering that's an obvious tax increase.
But I'll finish with one reason why I don't think we should just raise taxes to deal with the problem.
If you want to remove social security, but keep collecting social security premiums by law, you do want to raise taxes, because those aren't SSI premiums anymore. You turned 'mandatory insurance premiums' into 'general taxes', removing payout from the insurance.
You just didn't want it to look like you raised taxes. But that plan won't work. It's like removing garbage pickup from a city, but leaving it on the tax bill, but send it to general revenue.
Firstly, that pisses people off, and secondly, people aren't morons and know damn well what you just did. You just raised taxes by that amount, and now you're lying to them about it.
My view is that about half to two thirds of the US government budget doesn't serve a compelling national need and should be eliminated for that reason along.
If you don't like Medicare, feel free to, you know, not get Medicare. It is voluntary, you know, and paid out of people who join it.
Including it in a discussion of the deficit demonstrate how entirely unserious you are about this issue.
Except that we owe four times as much money to other people.
We can owe the college fund $25,000 dollars...and the bank $100,000 , and the solution is to...stop collecting the college fund. Um.
There is no situation where collecting the college fund can make things worse. In this world, where we're $1000 in debt each month, it reduces the interest payments. In an ideal world, where we pay off $1000 a month, it still reduces interest payments of another $200.
No matter how crippled under debt you are, you accept interest-free loans...so you can pay off your interest-bearing loans. There is never any downside. There is not even a conceivable downside.
If we really can't pay off 1/5th of the debt, we're pretty much reduced to this, and social security is the least of our problems.
Either conservatives have no grasp of economics, or they just want to kill social security.
Actually, I don't see why both of those can't be correct.
I notice that all your "solutions" involve taxing.
Um, actually, my solution involves less taxes. Namely, less, and even no, corporate income tax. Which would be made up by other taxes that can no longer be dodged by being in 'another jurisdiction'. Taxes on goods and employees. Taxes on actual physical things and actual money paid to people.
Theft, even when it's the government that practices it, is never a net good.
...Oh.
You know, I wish slashdot had a 'hide person' option that wasn't labeled 'Enemy'. Enemy is a bit...extreme.
You will not have ANY effect on the bottom line of the importing companies, because they will simply make your consumer eat that import tax.
BZZZT, you lose, thank you for playing, game over.
I'm not even going to debate people anymore with such a poor grasp of supply and demand.
Here's a hint, for the future: If businesses could charge more for those goods, and have people buy them, then they'd already charge more for those goods.
Not understanding that pretty much disqualifies you from talking about what businesses 'would' do.
That's not really gaming the system...I don't particularly see why they should have to pay taxes on that.
I mean, if American google employees are doing it, those taxes get paid, and it's hosted on American soil, those taxes get paid. Advertisement isn't really a 'product', no one bought it.
But there are always fringe cases.
The point I am trying to make is that taxing 'corporate income' doesn't work at all. A corporation's 'location' is total nonsense, and it could be located wherever it wants.
We need to tax the actual transactions it does with actual people, where those transactions happen. If it has workers in country X, X taxes them for those workers. If it sales goods in X, X taxes them for those. If it has a building in X, X taxes them for that.
We need to remove corporate income tax and add, or sometimes just increase, those taxes high enough to make up for it.
Um, no. Unemployment insurance is about it, and that's capped at $434 a year, so isn't that impressive a tax. A tax of $1.19 a day is probably less than what the employee wastes in going to the bathroom.
2) Sales and use taxes
The Federal government does not collect sales tax or use tax.
3) Import/export duties/tariffs
We have almost no import and tariffs, and none at all on companies that are 'outside the US', but somehow manufacture all their stuff here, like Microsoft.
4) Income tax
Foreign businesses that employ Americans do pay income tax, correct.
Your score: 1/4.
Better luck next time.
Any tax dinged against a business MUST be passed along to the consumer,
No it doesn't. The price that customers are charged has NO BEARING on the taxes assessed against it.
You have no clue how supply and demand works, do you? Businesses charge the amount they can. If they can charge more and make the same profit, they will, if they have to charge less to make a profit (by selling more), they will.
In your universe, apparently, businesses sit there going 'Well, we're making 10% profit, and even though we could raise prices 5% more and make 15% profit, we're not going to....Oh no, they just raised taxes 5%, we better raise prices 5% to get back to our 10% profit.'
Do you have even the simplest grasp of how businesses operate? Businesses do not pick a 'profit level' and operate there, moving up and down in response to costs.
That is just insane. It's not even a simplified version of economic theory. It's an economic theory designed by a second grader.
Income tax on dividends hurts mainly small investors relying on it for their retirement, who hold (per the last figures I saw) over 90% of stocks.
If you want to assert that that's a bad idea, I will not object.
US economy is on the brink of collapse and instead of welcoming the capital and production capacity by getting rid of income taxes and repealing all regulations you want to tighten it. As I said, good luck.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I don't want to 'tighten' any regulations.
I want to tax imports.
It's not whether they want to sell it to you, it's YOU who wants to buy it, because you have no economy, no production.
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Yes, China really does care if we buy their stuff. Microsoft, to pick an example in the article, really does care if we buy their stuff.
Companies, in general, need people to buy their stuff.
You think you have the 'biggest first world market in the world', what you have a pyramid scheme, the USD (and bond) being the hot potato. You think that it is trivial that you will get all that supply, you will find out how trivial this is, once the US bond market crashes and USD is printed out of existence.
We factually have the biggest first world market in existence. We have 300 million people. We are the largest country of first world people. Other countries have some places with high standard of living, and are larger, but it's all tiny areas of first world surrounded by poverty, like China and India.
We are something like 2/5th of the entire first world, in fact, which is a shitload of bargaining power. Either companies play by our rules or they go under.
You're trying to make some argument about the government. I have no idea how trusted the government is could be the slightest bit relevant. It doesn't matter if corporations distrust the US government, they still have to play by US law to sell stuff here, and if that means paying tariffs it means paying tariffs.
Exactly. So what's more important? Honoring some corrupt and blatantly deceptive pyramid scheme from the last century, which I might add will never be fully honored, or saving the future of the US?
In other words, you want to steal from it because you argue that people like you will steal from it, so we should steal from it.
Whereas I argue that we shouldn't steal from it, because no one is going to steal from it.
I would keep arguing with you, but you're dying because I'll soon shot you in your head to put you of your misery, so I'm just going to shoot you in your head to put you out of your misery. Or something like that.
So we're equating spending reduction with tax increase (excuse me, "secret" tax increases)? Ok. I'd rather "increase my taxes" by reducing spending say by eliminating Social Security, Medicare, and a deep cut in national defense.
Eliminating social security and medicare won't decrease the deficit, you idiot.
You are utterly failing to grasp that eliminating social security and medicare are REVENUE NEUTRAL, because when we eliminate insurance, we eliminate people paying the premiums! It in no way helps the budget at all. (In fact, it harms the budget, because now can't borrow from them anymore, and have to borrow from places we pay interest.)
You really don't grasp that, do you? Social security and Medicare are funded separately. If you cut or remove then, their funding source will correspondingly be decreased. You cannot cut them and have more money for the government!
Unless, as you suggested, their funding source gets merged into the general revenue, then you cut them...which as I pointed out is just a clever backdoor tax increase, and you could do the same thing just by raising taxes and leaving SS and Medicare alone.
Raising taxes gives government incentive to increase spending, something they've demonstrated they eagerly do every year.
Yes, in your delusional world.
In the actual world, every tax decease has resulted in less revenue, and you can only pretend otherwise by generalizing over decades, as I pointed in your lying post about it.
But, hey, we just had another example of it. We cut taxes in 2001.(1) Where's our increased revenue?
Looks like the tax cuts set us back half a decade in growth of the taxes.
This is exactly what's happening with Social Security now the government was supposed to be setting some money aside for these benefits they knew were coming, but now they have to pay them all out of current taxes, and it's not enough without being crushing debt on the kids.
I don't know if it's me you're WHOOSHing or the other guy.
And we're near where the college fund analogy falls apart...stop putting money in a college fund, you have more money. A quick fix: Instead for putting aside 15%, your parents said they'd give you $200 a month to put in a college fund for your kids, as long as you promised to pay for their college with it. So you collect that each month.
My complaint was conservative idiots who claim the problem is the college fund, and the solution is to get rid of it and stop collecting that $200 from their parents.
This is because they don't like the idea of the kid going to college, and is not any serious solution to financial situation we're in, because it's not a 'solution' whatsoever, in any sense.
President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).
Firstly, there were no tax cuts for 1983, there was one for 1982. Here is the tax revenue in constant dollars.
1980 728.1
1981 766.6
1982 738.2 *first year of tax cuts*
1983 684.3
1984 730.4
1985 776.6
1986 790.0
1987 854.1
1988 877.3
Wow, that barely kept ahead of inflation. In fact, it looks like it crippled revenue, setting growth back 4 years while the GDP continued to climb.
President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).
This is deliberate deception. See here. Then stand there argue with a straight face how nice JFK's tax cuts were.
No, I know all that. The wealth of a nation is its production base.
What you have failed to understand is that we have a nation of 300 million people who buy stuff.
If they want to sell to us, they have to play by our rules, like paying taxes on imports. Which should make production in other countries more costly than just producing the things here.(1)
Or they can just not sell to the biggest first world market in the world. Their choice. I'm sure other companies will pick up the slack.
1) Of course, other countries would logically start doing the same thing, so in the end, it would even out, except it would even out with a distribution roughly the same as where companies sell the products, not tax havens.
As a post down the way pointed out, we can read the disposition, which I didn't see earlier. (Stupid Noscript.)
Reading it, it appears they have some points, but a lot of their arguments are bogus.
In random order, in 1 they're complaining that the forms are defective because they're filed with the court, not served to the opposing consul. Which would be a fair complaint if those people actually had legal consul, but the courts tend to be fairly lax, procedure-wise, with people who have been sued and defend themselves. In fact, the law says what consul should do, not what defendants without consul should do.
Their complaint is, frankly, absurd, and they're attempting to make 'consulted with a lawyer for legal advice' into 'has a lawyer'. Just because lawyers don't like to give legal advice to non-clients doesn't mean they can't.
3 is equally dumb. They correctly point out that the motions to squash the subpoena is incorrect, but then admit all but one of those motions gave them the information they were looking for...which advances their case and saves them time and money. They can hardly complain about that.
4 is idiotic in it's own way, in that they apparently cite cases deciding a court has jurisdiction for Doe subpoenas...but what that actually demonstrates is that it's a debatable legal point. Um, duh. The motion may fail, but that doesn't make it frivolous.
Their only legit complaint is 2, where apparently the wrong part of the law is cited. Which, again, happens all the time and is a mistake...but isn't 'frivolous'.
I guess they're trying to make the point that he 'keeps' making such a claim, but they'd have to demonstrate that he knew such a claim was bogus and didn't fix it in things he sold. Giving people the same piece of legal advice over the years, and then discovering it's wrong, is not magically 'frivolous' if those people acted on the advice and were shot down.
Another "WOW" moment. I guess I didn't hint at the problems with Social Security and Medicare. The latter is growing faster (aside perhaps from a hiccup over this fiscal year) than GDP, not just inflation.
Medical costs are growing faster than the GDP. It has nothing to do with Medicare.
Yes, if medical cost continue to increase, Medicare can't cover medical stuff...but neither can any other medical spending, at which point we all die of smallpox or something.
Or, alternately, your model is stupid.
That means we can't keep increasing taxes to keep up with it, because at some point it'll grow bigger than the economy which is funding it.
It's like the way I can fire a gun downward, which accelerates at faster than gravity, which eventually means it will go faster than the speed of light.
Or alternately that was just a bunch of random stuff strung together with no concept of what it means.
Things cannot cost more than the economy that's funding them for two reasons. One, as AK Marc pointed out, it's part of the economy, so cannot be 'larger' than it unless it's a TARDIS or something.
Two, even if it wasn't part of the economy, no one would actually be able to afford it. When normal people can't afford things, they can do them anyway by borrowing. When governments can't afford things, they can do the same.
But when economies can't afford things, they actually can't afford them. Economies cannot borrow money or resources from...outside the economy. Likewise, they can't pay people outside the economy to do things. There is no outside! Economies cannot do things they 'cannot afford'! If they can do it, they can 'afford' it.
If we actually reached the point where treating a cold cost as much, resource-wise, as going to the moon would, we could not keep treating colds and be in debt, just like we couldn't physically go to the moon a billion times. It doesn't matter how much we borrow, there is not enough production and resources that actually exist in the actual existing world.
As for Social Security, what does it do that we really need it for? As I see it, there are two groups, the handicapped and the elderly poor. Neither group is particularly large. Yet Social Security transfers several hundred billion from workers who need that money to raise families, educate themselves, etc to old people who don't need it as much.
What the hell are you yammering about? Why, exactly, do old people not need social security?
But thanks for being open about the fact you want to get rid of social security, it make my point that social security has nothing to do with the deficit, but is instead being attacked by conservatives who don't like it on principle, not because of financial reasons, much much much more clear.
Just getting rid of these two programs almost balances the 2009-2010 budget on its own.
Yes, if you steal hundreds of billions of dollars that people paid into social security and medicare and put that in the general budget, the US is in better shape financially.
Roll over these taxes into the standard income tax.
And then, later, you can cut those programs without anyone noticing, without reducing the tax. It's a magical tax increase. Wheee!
Or we could just raise general revenue taxes to cover the shortfall in general revenue, instead of fucking around with a secret tax increase and blowing up social security.
Having not seen their actual complaint, I'd bet it has more to do with a claim that this guy's self-representation packet encourages defendants to file frivolous time-wasting motions... Not that they lost any case on the merits.
The problem with that theory is that one of the 'frivolous' motions does work. Namely, that you can't sue someone who lives in Florida for copyright infringement in DC.
I have no idea if there are other motions being filed, but as 'lack of jurisdiction' is something you actually have to file first (Because anything else accepts the court's jurisdiction over you.), I rather doubt it. Anything else, I might be thinking 'Yeah, he's wasting the court's time by encouraging 10+ stupid motions, even if the 11th he says they try works', but here, the one that's working has to, by law, have been the first one tried.
'frivolous' motions have to be something that lawyers should know would fail. These appear to be working. Even if they did fail a few times, they work in general, and are a perfectly reasonable plan for a lawyer to give advice encouraging people to try. (In fact, I don't know why we'd limit it to him. How many 'lack of jurisdiction' motions happen every year? It's not a frivolous legal maneuver.)
'doesn't always work' and 'frivolous' aren't the same thing, and 'does work' and 'frivolous' can't possibly be the same thing.
If anything, it's the damn USCG that's wasting the court's time by constantly filing lawsuits in the wrong jurisdiction and having them kicked out!
The guy's a lawyer. He can sell legal services if he wants, for whatever amount he wants. Copyright law is Federal, so assuming he's able to appear in Federal court, he can give advice for things in those courts.
And the fact it's pre-packaged doesn't change things....pre-packages legal services with set fees happen all the time. It's how people do wills and stuff. You pay $50, you get a form to fill out, they provide two witnesses and keep a copy. Lawyers don't have to charge by the hour.
I'm a little baffled as to what he could be sued for.
His clients could sue him for all sorts of stuff if his advice was bad, and he could be arrested by the government if his advice was illegal (Which is not likely.), but I can't comprehend how some other legal consul can sue him for giving legal advice.
It seems a little bit idiotic our system is setup where people have to buy this, instead of the court handing it out for free, but $20 is pretty reasonable if they're actually useful.
Is it "less stupid" to "borrow" money interest-free against that for other projects? I suppose, but its no less irresponsible, as you're not going to be able to get that capital back as its tied up elsewhere, and eventually you're going to have to pay up when the kid goes to college/the boomers retire.
Granted, but that's not the point.
The point is that people on the right keep presenting the problem as a problem with social security. Which is utter and complete nonsense.
This whole situation is bullshit and so convoluted that I suspect many people with economics or accounting degrees might get confused from time to time. I'm sure I only barely understand it, and that's probably why this has gone on for so long -- people can't tell they're being fleeced.
People's 'fleecing' is due conservatives constantly misinforming them about what's going on.
Almost all social programs in this country, to get passed, compromise into paying for themselves...you're notice we have social security insurance, and medicare insurance, and unemployment insurance, etc.
They are insurance. This means that people pay into them, and get money out of them, separate from the general revenue. They are not paid out of taxes. (Well, some of them are mandatory, so they are 'taxes' in a technical sense, but they aren't normal taxes.)
Sometimes the separation is strict, like social security, sometimes it's somewhat fuzzy, like unemployment. But the rule is that the premiums have to average what is actually paid out, and they do get adjusted.
Meanwhile, wars and stuff get paid for out of taxes, out of general revenue.
The right has manged to twist this entirely backwards, and take the fact the general revenue has a constant shortfall of general spending, and hence borrows from those self-paid programs, which do not have shortfalls(1), that somehow those self-paid programs 'are facing disaster'.
It is utter nonsense on the epic scale. 'This program is in trouble because we keep taking money from it to pay for our crap, so we should kill this program.'
What. The. Fuck? Why do people let them get away with that? That's not only nonsense, it wouldn't even help anything unless the idea was that we'd get rid of unemployment insurance, but have people still pay the premiums for it, which seems rather surreal.
1) At least not over time. Some have shortfalls from years to year, and Medicare, thanks to rising medical costs, has started burning through their reserve and would have hit it in 2019 without health care reform, and now will hopefully go to 2040. But that's what reserves are for.
There are two ways the USPS is tax supported. Congress makes up for budget shortfalls, which happen frequently. And the US is liable for USPS pensions.
Both those are just the government guaranteeing the post office. The post office pays for itself on average. If the government loans it money one year, it will pay it back the next, with interest.
It's not responsible for any of the debt.
The deficit is due to one thing: spending more than revenue. The primary contributors to that are mandatory spending, which is more than half the budget.
Jesus Christ, another one.
Problem: Government spending is more than government income.
How many entities are in the problem as stated? What is their relationship? How many of them could be changed, thus changing their relationship?
Gee, we could reduce general spending...or, and here's a crazy idea, we could increase general revenue. Wow, I'm thinking outside the box today.
And here's fun fact for you: most mandatory spending takes in more money than it spends. Medicare, and social security, as I mentioned, pull their own weight. They are a surplus.
If you reduce them, you reduce their taxes, which would mean the fucking budget still wasn't balanced. In fact, it would be less balanced, as we'd end up paying interest on the money we borrowed from people, instead of borrowing from social security.
The only way to reduce the deficit is to a) increase general revenue, or b) reduce things funded out of general revenue, because general revenue is the unbalanced part.
I swear, I can't talk to people here anymore. We're SUPPOSED TO BE THE SMART PEOPLE.
You can't even claim that the debt increased less than it other would, simply because the federal government has borrowed as much as it could get away with, decade after decade.
That is the strangest assertion I've ever heard, and not true in any sense. The government borrows exactly as much as it needs to do its budget.
As a final note, Social Security apparently transitioned from revenue positive to revenue negative this fiscal year. Medicare, despite the alleged 2010 cuts, still grows much faster than the rate of inflation. We can't count on revenue from these programs even with substantial cuts in service.
WOW. Just...wow.
I want everyone to read that last sentence over and over and over, until they figure out what's wrong with it, and, by extension, what's wrong with the political thought on the right.
You figured it out yet? No, it doesn't have anything to do with the strange idea we need to 'count on revenue' from those programs.
DO NOT CONTINUE UNTIL YOU HAVE IT.
Here it is: It's the idea that the only solution is to cut those services.
Instead of, I dunno, raising the amount of money they take in.
The political right cannot even conceive of raising revenue in any form or fashion. It is literally not even an option in their mind. The fact we could fix social security pretty easily by a small change in the income cap...it simply does not occur to them.
Borrowing from social security to pay for non-social-security-related expenses is like borrowing from your kid's college fund to pay for a new deck. Yes, you've increased your wealth in terms of material assets, but it's not like you can liquidate the deck to pay back the college fund later.
So the grandparent's theory is that...the kids shouldn't go to college, and you should stop saving that money, and spend the existing money on the deck?
Wow, critical failure on the analogy roll, dude. Are you some sort of fifth columnist arguing the wrong side?;)
I agree that you're correct in the analogy, but the problem is clearly building the new deck without the money to pay for it. Borrowing from the college fund instead of the bank to build the deck is not a 'bad thing', per se, it's a less stupid way to do a stupid thing.
And blaming the college fund is just surreal. Especially when all the people blaming it do not immediately say 'After we stop collecting social security, we need to raise taxes to keep collecting approximately that much money, so we can spend it on other stuff.' And they're not just forgetting to mention that, they're members of a political philosophy that would seem unlikely to be thinking we'd do that.
No, they want to get rid of the chance to go to college...but also take a cut in income so that the money that would end up the college fund no longer exists. So, um, yeah. That really doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with the deck.
I'm really liking your analogy, BTW.
As to your response re: teachers, you seem to harp on one part of a list to try and make the person you're replying to sound dumb.
Because he is dumb. He was listing 'bad spending' examples that have nothing to do with the debt at all.
Do you have any clue, any whatsoever, what liberty means?
Sure. Let me quote the founding father's problems with British rule:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excite
In retrospect it is obvious that the state should not be insuring bank deposits when the amounts become so large relative to GDP, and maybe the Irish state should not have honored that pledge, but it's not stupid or corrupt of them to do so.
No, that's not why Ireland shouldn't be insuring bank deposits.
This entire thing is nonsense. The problem is banks that feel free to be irresponsible with money.
No one should have 'insure' non-interest earning bank deposits, because that money should still be there. The entire idea that storing money in banks is 'risky' is complete fucking nonsense.
Interest earning deposits should be some entirely different thing, with the risk actually related to the interest. (And there's a certain low level of interest where the bank is just buying government securities, and that shouldn't be very risky either.)
Everyone's fucking banks are utterly broken. Investments should be at risk, not deposits. If the banks can't keep them apart, then they don't get to do both.
Yes, yes, someone's about to point out how such behavior would 'constrict the money supply'. There's absolutely no reason it has to. The banks could ship money on deposit back to the Fed, who could give it out again. The money doesn't have to be actually 'in' the bank.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess you've never heard of state sales tax. Or worked out what it costs you to have a single employee in California (hint: almost 3 times as much is paid to the state as to the employee).
Yes, California behaves sanely here, but businesses just move elsewhere, and California can't tax imports.
As I pointed out, states already try this, but have a rather fundamental flaw in that they can't tax imports.
Likewise, the US uses 'corporate income tax' which is utterly nonsensical.
OR you can go out of business or flee that business climate.
Or, if you're a large company, you 'flee' the business climate, while still doing everything here and paying no corporate income taxes on it.
But you seem to think that's always a great profit margin, and the truth is more the opposite, usually the most you can get barely keeps your business afloat. And when cheap foreign junk drives prices below your rising costs, then what?
YOU. TAX. THE. FUCKING. IMPORTS. LIKE. I. WAS. SUGGESTING.
Will you please read what I'm suggesting instead of trying to figure out a sentence to disagree with?
I know we already tax those things at various places. My suggestion was to remove corporate income taxes (Which have been demonstrated to be sheer nonsense as only small business owners pay them, everyone who can afford it moves their mailbox to somewhere else.), and make up the difference in Federal taxes on those things, either new taxes or increasing the old.
Do you have a comment on that?
Sigh.
Obviously what you're saying is correct.
Of course, what I was presenting was altering taxes, not raising them across the industry. We were talking about a business, not 'businesses'.
I'm really getting tired of having to defend myself from a billion different people who didn't read the context.
For the record, I suggested that, instead of taxing business income (Which is incredibly easy to dodge.), we tax actual monetary transactions that happen in the US...we tax employees, we tax goods sold, we tax good imported even more, we dividends.
At the Federal level, instead of income tax, at a level to make up the lack of income tax, as this has seemed to confuse everyone. I know we already tax some of that at various levels.
Do you have an actual issue with that (An actual issue was, in fact, pointed out with taxing dividends, that a lot of poor people have them as the only income.), or not?
Social Security is not revenue neutral this year and won't be revenue neutral after 2013.
Yes, if only we could, you know, slightly change it and have it remain okay.
Oh, what's that? We can? We could raise the cap on income? Well, let's do that, then.
Under unrealistic assumptions, Medicare is revenue neutral for less than twenty years (and continues to outpace GDP).
Again, I have no idea what 'outpace the GDP' has to with anything. The reason Medicare is outpacing the GDP is that medical costs are outpacing the GDP.
There's really only one actual solution to that, and it's getting medical costs under control. Getting entirely rid of Medicare won't change the fact no one can afford health care.
Once medical costs are under control, Medicare is pretty automatically sustainable. If medical costs are not gotten under control, it hardly matters in exactly which manner we're unable to afford health care....we all died of typhoid or something.
If you want to argue that the health care bill hasn't done that, well, fine. Feel free to argue for some other bill fixing that. (I would argue for a bill to kill health insurance CEOs and put their heads on pikes. That wouldn't solve anything, but it would be good for morale.) But that doesn't change what the actual problem is, and it isn't Medicare.
The reason I don't "grasp" that is because it isn't true. Social Security and Medicare are established by law. Congress can change that law. I recognize that the US probably won't destroy these programs, but it's foolhardy to claim that they are untouchable.
Well, no, as Medicare is voluntary, Congress could hardly remove the payout from it and expect people to keep paying premiums for Medicare insurance.
If Medicare payouts went away, all incoming Medicare money (Which is more than outgoing Medicare money, at least for now.), would go away. Because no one would buy Medicare insurance anymore!
Now, strictly speaking, Congress could remove the payout of social security, and yet keep removing SSI premiums from people's paycheck.
I suspect people would take issue with that, though, considering that's an obvious tax increase.
But I'll finish with one reason why I don't think we should just raise taxes to deal with the problem.
If you want to remove social security, but keep collecting social security premiums by law, you do want to raise taxes, because those aren't SSI premiums anymore. You turned 'mandatory insurance premiums' into 'general taxes', removing payout from the insurance.
You just didn't want it to look like you raised taxes. But that plan won't work. It's like removing garbage pickup from a city, but leaving it on the tax bill, but send it to general revenue.
Firstly, that pisses people off, and secondly, people aren't morons and know damn well what you just did. You just raised taxes by that amount, and now you're lying to them about it.
My view is that about half to two thirds of the US government budget doesn't serve a compelling national need and should be eliminated for that reason along.
If you don't like Medicare, feel free to, you know, not get Medicare. It is voluntary, you know, and paid out of people who join it.
Including it in a discussion of the deficit demonstrate how entirely unserious you are about this issue.
Except that we owe four times as much money to other people.
We can owe the college fund $25,000 dollars...and the bank $100,000 , and the solution is to...stop collecting the college fund. Um.
There is no situation where collecting the college fund can make things worse. In this world, where we're $1000 in debt each month, it reduces the interest payments. In an ideal world, where we pay off $1000 a month, it still reduces interest payments of another $200.
No matter how crippled under debt you are, you accept interest-free loans...so you can pay off your interest-bearing loans. There is never any downside. There is not even a conceivable downside.
If we really can't pay off 1/5th of the debt, we're pretty much reduced to this, and social security is the least of our problems.
Either conservatives have no grasp of economics, or they just want to kill social security.
Actually, I don't see why both of those can't be correct.
No, he's licensed in federal court, and copyright is a federal offense, and these are federal courts.
Someone who isn't licensed in, say, Maine, but in Federal court, can still show up there and argue a case in Federal court.
I notice that all your "solutions" involve taxing.
Um, actually, my solution involves less taxes. Namely, less, and even no, corporate income tax. Which would be made up by other taxes that can no longer be dodged by being in 'another jurisdiction'. Taxes on goods and employees. Taxes on actual physical things and actual money paid to people.
Theft, even when it's the government that practices it, is never a net good.
You know, I wish slashdot had a 'hide person' option that wasn't labeled 'Enemy'. Enemy is a bit...extreme.
You're just very brainwashed.
You will not have ANY effect on the bottom line of the importing companies, because they will simply make your consumer eat that import tax.
BZZZT, you lose, thank you for playing, game over.
I'm not even going to debate people anymore with such a poor grasp of supply and demand.
Here's a hint, for the future: If businesses could charge more for those goods, and have people buy them, then they'd already charge more for those goods.
Not understanding that pretty much disqualifies you from talking about what businesses 'would' do.
That's not really gaming the system...I don't particularly see why they should have to pay taxes on that.
I mean, if American google employees are doing it, those taxes get paid, and it's hosted on American soil, those taxes get paid. Advertisement isn't really a 'product', no one bought it.
But there are always fringe cases.
The point I am trying to make is that taxing 'corporate income' doesn't work at all. A corporation's 'location' is total nonsense, and it could be located wherever it wants.
We need to tax the actual transactions it does with actual people, where those transactions happen. If it has workers in country X, X taxes them for those workers. If it sales goods in X, X taxes them for those. If it has a building in X, X taxes them for that.
We need to remove corporate income tax and add, or sometimes just increase, those taxes high enough to make up for it.
1) Payroll taxes
Um, no. Unemployment insurance is about it, and that's capped at $434 a year, so isn't that impressive a tax. A tax of $1.19 a day is probably less than what the employee wastes in going to the bathroom.
2) Sales and use taxes
The Federal government does not collect sales tax or use tax.
3) Import/export duties/tariffs
We have almost no import and tariffs, and none at all on companies that are 'outside the US', but somehow manufacture all their stuff here, like Microsoft.
4) Income tax
Foreign businesses that employ Americans do pay income tax, correct.
Your score: 1/4.
Better luck next time.
Any tax dinged against a business MUST be passed along to the consumer,
No it doesn't. The price that customers are charged has NO BEARING on the taxes assessed against it.
You have no clue how supply and demand works, do you? Businesses charge the amount they can. If they can charge more and make the same profit, they will, if they have to charge less to make a profit (by selling more), they will.
In your universe, apparently, businesses sit there going 'Well, we're making 10% profit, and even though we could raise prices 5% more and make 15% profit, we're not going to....Oh no, they just raised taxes 5%, we better raise prices 5% to get back to our 10% profit.'
Do you have even the simplest grasp of how businesses operate? Businesses do not pick a 'profit level' and operate there, moving up and down in response to costs.
That is just insane. It's not even a simplified version of economic theory. It's an economic theory designed by a second grader.
Income tax on dividends hurts mainly small investors relying on it for their retirement, who hold (per the last figures I saw) over 90% of stocks.
If you want to assert that that's a bad idea, I will not object.
US economy is on the brink of collapse and instead of welcoming the capital and production capacity by getting rid of income taxes and repealing all regulations you want to tighten it. As I said, good luck.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I don't want to 'tighten' any regulations.
I want to tax imports.
It's not whether they want to sell it to you, it's YOU who wants to buy it, because you have no economy, no production.
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Yes, China really does care if we buy their stuff. Microsoft, to pick an example in the article, really does care if we buy their stuff.
Companies, in general, need people to buy their stuff.
You think you have the 'biggest first world market in the world', what you have a pyramid scheme, the USD (and bond) being the hot potato. You think that it is trivial that you will get all that supply, you will find out how trivial this is, once the US bond market crashes and USD is printed out of existence.
We factually have the biggest first world market in existence. We have 300 million people. We are the largest country of first world people. Other countries have some places with high standard of living, and are larger, but it's all tiny areas of first world surrounded by poverty, like China and India.
We are something like 2/5th of the entire first world, in fact, which is a shitload of bargaining power. Either companies play by our rules or they go under.
You're trying to make some argument about the government. I have no idea how trusted the government is could be the slightest bit relevant. It doesn't matter if corporations distrust the US government, they still have to play by US law to sell stuff here, and if that means paying tariffs it means paying tariffs.
Exactly. So what's more important? Honoring some corrupt and blatantly deceptive pyramid scheme from the last century, which I might add will never be fully honored, or saving the future of the US?
In other words, you want to steal from it because you argue that people like you will steal from it, so we should steal from it.
Whereas I argue that we shouldn't steal from it, because no one is going to steal from it.
I would keep arguing with you, but you're dying because I'll soon shot you in your head to put you of your misery, so I'm just going to shoot you in your head to put you out of your misery. Or something like that.
So we're equating spending reduction with tax increase (excuse me, "secret" tax increases)? Ok. I'd rather "increase my taxes" by reducing spending say by eliminating Social Security, Medicare, and a deep cut in national defense.
Eliminating social security and medicare won't decrease the deficit, you idiot.
You are utterly failing to grasp that eliminating social security and medicare are REVENUE NEUTRAL, because when we eliminate insurance, we eliminate people paying the premiums! It in no way helps the budget at all. (In fact, it harms the budget, because now can't borrow from them anymore, and have to borrow from places we pay interest.)
You really don't grasp that, do you? Social security and Medicare are funded separately. If you cut or remove then, their funding source will correspondingly be decreased. You cannot cut them and have more money for the government!
Unless, as you suggested, their funding source gets merged into the general revenue, then you cut them...which as I pointed out is just a clever backdoor tax increase, and you could do the same thing just by raising taxes and leaving SS and Medicare alone.
Raising taxes gives government incentive to increase spending, something they've demonstrated they eagerly do every year.
Yes, in your delusional world.
In the actual world, every tax decease has resulted in less revenue, and you can only pretend otherwise by generalizing over decades, as I pointed in your lying post about it.
But, hey, we just had another example of it. We cut taxes in 2001.(1) Where's our increased revenue?
Looks like the tax cuts set us back half a decade in growth of the taxes.
Or, for fun, look at this.
1) Yes, I know the 2001 budget was Clinton's, but Bush decided to give back money right after taking office aka, the Bush rebate.
This is exactly what's happening with Social Security now the government was supposed to be setting some money aside for these benefits they knew were coming, but now they have to pay them all out of current taxes, and it's not enough without being crushing debt on the kids.
I don't know if it's me you're WHOOSHing or the other guy.
And we're near where the college fund analogy falls apart...stop putting money in a college fund, you have more money. A quick fix: Instead for putting aside 15%, your parents said they'd give you $200 a month to put in a college fund for your kids, as long as you promised to pay for their college with it. So you collect that each month.
My complaint was conservative idiots who claim the problem is the college fund, and the solution is to get rid of it and stop collecting that $200 from their parents.
This is because they don't like the idea of the kid going to college, and is not any serious solution to financial situation we're in, because it's not a 'solution' whatsoever, in any sense.
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.
President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).
Firstly, there were no tax cuts for 1983, there was one for 1982. Here is the tax revenue in constant dollars.
1980 728.1
1981 766.6
1982 738.2 *first year of tax cuts*
1983 684.3
1984 730.4
1985 776.6
1986 790.0
1987 854.1
1988 877.3
Wow, that barely kept ahead of inflation. In fact, it looks like it crippled revenue, setting growth back 4 years while the GDP continued to climb.
Just go here.
President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).
This is deliberate deception. See here. Then stand there argue with a straight face how nice JFK's tax cuts were.
Huh?
No, I know all that. The wealth of a nation is its production base.
What you have failed to understand is that we have a nation of 300 million people who buy stuff.
If they want to sell to us, they have to play by our rules, like paying taxes on imports. Which should make production in other countries more costly than just producing the things here.(1)
Or they can just not sell to the biggest first world market in the world. Their choice. I'm sure other companies will pick up the slack.
1) Of course, other countries would logically start doing the same thing, so in the end, it would even out, except it would even out with a distribution roughly the same as where companies sell the products, not tax havens.
As a post down the way pointed out, we can read the disposition, which I didn't see earlier. (Stupid Noscript.)
Reading it, it appears they have some points, but a lot of their arguments are bogus.
In random order, in 1 they're complaining that the forms are defective because they're filed with the court, not served to the opposing consul. Which would be a fair complaint if those people actually had legal consul, but the courts tend to be fairly lax, procedure-wise, with people who have been sued and defend themselves. In fact, the law says what consul should do, not what defendants without consul should do.
Their complaint is, frankly, absurd, and they're attempting to make 'consulted with a lawyer for legal advice' into 'has a lawyer'. Just because lawyers don't like to give legal advice to non-clients doesn't mean they can't.
3 is equally dumb. They correctly point out that the motions to squash the subpoena is incorrect, but then admit all but one of those motions gave them the information they were looking for...which advances their case and saves them time and money. They can hardly complain about that.
4 is idiotic in it's own way, in that they apparently cite cases deciding a court has jurisdiction for Doe subpoenas...but what that actually demonstrates is that it's a debatable legal point. Um, duh. The motion may fail, but that doesn't make it frivolous.
Their only legit complaint is 2, where apparently the wrong part of the law is cited. Which, again, happens all the time and is a mistake...but isn't 'frivolous'.
I guess they're trying to make the point that he 'keeps' making such a claim, but they'd have to demonstrate that he knew such a claim was bogus and didn't fix it in things he sold. Giving people the same piece of legal advice over the years, and then discovering it's wrong, is not magically 'frivolous' if those people acted on the advice and were shot down.
Another "WOW" moment. I guess I didn't hint at the problems with Social Security and Medicare. The latter is growing faster (aside perhaps from a hiccup over this fiscal year) than GDP, not just inflation.
Medical costs are growing faster than the GDP. It has nothing to do with Medicare.
Yes, if medical cost continue to increase, Medicare can't cover medical stuff...but neither can any other medical spending, at which point we all die of smallpox or something.
Or, alternately, your model is stupid.
That means we can't keep increasing taxes to keep up with it, because at some point it'll grow bigger than the economy which is funding it.
It's like the way I can fire a gun downward, which accelerates at faster than gravity, which eventually means it will go faster than the speed of light.
Or alternately that was just a bunch of random stuff strung together with no concept of what it means.
Things cannot cost more than the economy that's funding them for two reasons. One, as AK Marc pointed out, it's part of the economy, so cannot be 'larger' than it unless it's a TARDIS or something.
Two, even if it wasn't part of the economy, no one would actually be able to afford it. When normal people can't afford things, they can do them anyway by borrowing. When governments can't afford things, they can do the same.
But when economies can't afford things, they actually can't afford them. Economies cannot borrow money or resources from...outside the economy. Likewise, they can't pay people outside the economy to do things. There is no outside! Economies cannot do things they 'cannot afford'! If they can do it, they can 'afford' it.
If we actually reached the point where treating a cold cost as much, resource-wise, as going to the moon would, we could not keep treating colds and be in debt, just like we couldn't physically go to the moon a billion times. It doesn't matter how much we borrow, there is not enough production and resources that actually exist in the actual existing world.
As for Social Security, what does it do that we really need it for? As I see it, there are two groups, the handicapped and the elderly poor. Neither group is particularly large. Yet Social Security transfers several hundred billion from workers who need that money to raise families, educate themselves, etc to old people who don't need it as much.
What the hell are you yammering about? Why, exactly, do old people not need social security?
But thanks for being open about the fact you want to get rid of social security, it make my point that social security has nothing to do with the deficit, but is instead being attacked by conservatives who don't like it on principle, not because of financial reasons, much much much more clear.
Just getting rid of these two programs almost balances the 2009-2010 budget on its own.
Yes, if you steal hundreds of billions of dollars that people paid into social security and medicare and put that in the general budget, the US is in better shape financially.
Roll over these taxes into the standard income tax.
And then, later, you can cut those programs without anyone noticing, without reducing the tax. It's a magical tax increase. Wheee!
Or we could just raise general revenue taxes to cover the shortfall in general revenue, instead of fucking around with a secret tax increase and blowing up social security.
Having not seen their actual complaint, I'd bet it has more to do with a claim that this guy's self-representation packet encourages defendants to file frivolous time-wasting motions... Not that they lost any case on the merits.
The problem with that theory is that one of the 'frivolous' motions does work. Namely, that you can't sue someone who lives in Florida for copyright infringement in DC.
I have no idea if there are other motions being filed, but as 'lack of jurisdiction' is something you actually have to file first (Because anything else accepts the court's jurisdiction over you.), I rather doubt it. Anything else, I might be thinking 'Yeah, he's wasting the court's time by encouraging 10+ stupid motions, even if the 11th he says they try works', but here, the one that's working has to, by law, have been the first one tried.
'frivolous' motions have to be something that lawyers should know would fail. These appear to be working. Even if they did fail a few times, they work in general, and are a perfectly reasonable plan for a lawyer to give advice encouraging people to try. (In fact, I don't know why we'd limit it to him. How many 'lack of jurisdiction' motions happen every year? It's not a frivolous legal maneuver.)
'doesn't always work' and 'frivolous' aren't the same thing, and 'does work' and 'frivolous' can't possibly be the same thing.
If anything, it's the damn USCG that's wasting the court's time by constantly filing lawsuits in the wrong jurisdiction and having them kicked out!
Yeah, I don't understand either.
The guy's a lawyer. He can sell legal services if he wants, for whatever amount he wants. Copyright law is Federal, so assuming he's able to appear in Federal court, he can give advice for things in those courts.
And the fact it's pre-packaged doesn't change things....pre-packages legal services with set fees happen all the time. It's how people do wills and stuff. You pay $50, you get a form to fill out, they provide two witnesses and keep a copy. Lawyers don't have to charge by the hour.
I'm a little baffled as to what he could be sued for.
His clients could sue him for all sorts of stuff if his advice was bad, and he could be arrested by the government if his advice was illegal (Which is not likely.), but I can't comprehend how some other legal consul can sue him for giving legal advice.
It seems a little bit idiotic our system is setup where people have to buy this, instead of the court handing it out for free, but $20 is pretty reasonable if they're actually useful.
Is it "less stupid" to "borrow" money interest-free against that for other projects? I suppose, but its no less irresponsible, as you're not going to be able to get that capital back as its tied up elsewhere, and eventually you're going to have to pay up when the kid goes to college/the boomers retire.
Granted, but that's not the point.
The point is that people on the right keep presenting the problem as a problem with social security. Which is utter and complete nonsense.
This whole situation is bullshit and so convoluted that I suspect many people with economics or accounting degrees might get confused from time to time. I'm sure I only barely understand it, and that's probably why this has gone on for so long -- people can't tell they're being fleeced.
People's 'fleecing' is due conservatives constantly misinforming them about what's going on.
Almost all social programs in this country, to get passed, compromise into paying for themselves...you're notice we have social security insurance, and medicare insurance, and unemployment insurance, etc.
They are insurance. This means that people pay into them, and get money out of them, separate from the general revenue. They are not paid out of taxes. (Well, some of them are mandatory, so they are 'taxes' in a technical sense, but they aren't normal taxes.)
Sometimes the separation is strict, like social security, sometimes it's somewhat fuzzy, like unemployment. But the rule is that the premiums have to average what is actually paid out, and they do get adjusted.
Meanwhile, wars and stuff get paid for out of taxes, out of general revenue.
The right has manged to twist this entirely backwards, and take the fact the general revenue has a constant shortfall of general spending, and hence borrows from those self-paid programs, which do not have shortfalls(1), that somehow those self-paid programs 'are facing disaster'.
It is utter nonsense on the epic scale. 'This program is in trouble because we keep taking money from it to pay for our crap, so we should kill this program.'
What. The. Fuck? Why do people let them get away with that? That's not only nonsense, it wouldn't even help anything unless the idea was that we'd get rid of unemployment insurance, but have people still pay the premiums for it, which seems rather surreal.
1) At least not over time. Some have shortfalls from years to year, and Medicare, thanks to rising medical costs, has started burning through their reserve and would have hit it in 2019 without health care reform, and now will hopefully go to 2040. But that's what reserves are for.
There are two ways the USPS is tax supported. Congress makes up for budget shortfalls, which happen frequently. And the US is liable for USPS pensions.
Both those are just the government guaranteeing the post office. The post office pays for itself on average. If the government loans it money one year, it will pay it back the next, with interest.
It's not responsible for any of the debt.
The deficit is due to one thing: spending more than revenue. The primary contributors to that are mandatory spending, which is more than half the budget.
Jesus Christ, another one.
Problem: Government spending is more than government income.
How many entities are in the problem as stated? What is their relationship? How many of them could be changed, thus changing their relationship?
Gee, we could reduce general spending...or, and here's a crazy idea, we could increase general revenue. Wow, I'm thinking outside the box today.
And here's fun fact for you: most mandatory spending takes in more money than it spends. Medicare, and social security, as I mentioned, pull their own weight. They are a surplus.
If you reduce them, you reduce their taxes, which would mean the fucking budget still wasn't balanced. In fact, it would be less balanced, as we'd end up paying interest on the money we borrowed from people, instead of borrowing from social security.
The only way to reduce the deficit is to a) increase general revenue, or b) reduce things funded out of general revenue, because general revenue is the unbalanced part.
I swear, I can't talk to people here anymore. We're SUPPOSED TO BE THE SMART PEOPLE.
You can't even claim that the debt increased less than it other would, simply because the federal government has borrowed as much as it could get away with, decade after decade.
That is the strangest assertion I've ever heard, and not true in any sense. The government borrows exactly as much as it needs to do its budget.
As a final note, Social Security apparently transitioned from revenue positive to revenue negative this fiscal year. Medicare, despite the alleged 2010 cuts, still grows much faster than the rate of inflation. We can't count on revenue from these programs even with substantial cuts in service.
WOW. Just...wow.
I want everyone to read that last sentence over and over and over, until they figure out what's wrong with it, and, by extension, what's wrong with the political thought on the right.
You figured it out yet? No, it doesn't have anything to do with the strange idea we need to 'count on revenue' from those programs.
DO NOT CONTINUE UNTIL YOU HAVE IT.
Here it is: It's the idea that the only solution is to cut those services.
Instead of, I dunno, raising the amount of money they take in.
The political right cannot even conceive of raising revenue in any form or fashion. It is literally not even an option in their mind. The fact we could fix social security pretty easily by a small change in the income cap...it simply does not occur to them.
Borrowing from social security to pay for non-social-security-related expenses is like borrowing from your kid's college fund to pay for a new deck. Yes, you've increased your wealth in terms of material assets, but it's not like you can liquidate the deck to pay back the college fund later.
So the grandparent's theory is that...the kids shouldn't go to college, and you should stop saving that money, and spend the existing money on the deck?
Wow, critical failure on the analogy roll, dude. Are you some sort of fifth columnist arguing the wrong side? ;)
I agree that you're correct in the analogy, but the problem is clearly building the new deck without the money to pay for it. Borrowing from the college fund instead of the bank to build the deck is not a 'bad thing', per se, it's a less stupid way to do a stupid thing.
And blaming the college fund is just surreal. Especially when all the people blaming it do not immediately say 'After we stop collecting social security, we need to raise taxes to keep collecting approximately that much money, so we can spend it on other stuff.' And they're not just forgetting to mention that, they're members of a political philosophy that would seem unlikely to be thinking we'd do that.
No, they want to get rid of the chance to go to college...but also take a cut in income so that the money that would end up the college fund no longer exists. So, um, yeah. That really doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with the deck.
I'm really liking your analogy, BTW.
As to your response re: teachers, you seem to harp on one part of a list to try and make the person you're replying to sound dumb.
Because he is dumb. He was listing 'bad spending' examples that have nothing to do with the debt at all.
Do you have any clue, any whatsoever, what liberty means?
Sure. Let me quote the founding father's problems with British rule:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excite
In retrospect it is obvious that the state should not be insuring bank deposits when the amounts become so large relative to GDP, and maybe the Irish state should not have honored that pledge, but it's not stupid or corrupt of them to do so.
No, that's not why Ireland shouldn't be insuring bank deposits.
This entire thing is nonsense. The problem is banks that feel free to be irresponsible with money.
No one should have 'insure' non-interest earning bank deposits, because that money should still be there. The entire idea that storing money in banks is 'risky' is complete fucking nonsense.
Interest earning deposits should be some entirely different thing, with the risk actually related to the interest. (And there's a certain low level of interest where the bank is just buying government securities, and that shouldn't be very risky either.)
Everyone's fucking banks are utterly broken. Investments should be at risk, not deposits. If the banks can't keep them apart, then they don't get to do both.
Yes, yes, someone's about to point out how such behavior would 'constrict the money supply'. There's absolutely no reason it has to. The banks could ship money on deposit back to the Fed, who could give it out again. The money doesn't have to be actually 'in' the bank.