Why can we not judge a religion based upon those who practice it? I thought that the purpose of religion was to mold behavior (telling you how to live a "good" life). Shouldn't it also teach people how to teach the religion "correctly". How do you know you don't have it backwards? Maybe your experience is the "exception" that we should ignore yours and just look at the other path to judge the religion. Or did you really mean to say that when judging a religion (or just your religion) we should just look at the good aspects and ignore the bad ones?
I think that a religion should be judged based upon ALL of the people practicing it, good and bad. Talk is easy. Actually living that talk is where a religion is judged.
Which is why you should have electronic voting with a verifiable printout paper as grandparent suggested. That way the voter can verify their vote on paper, and if there is any doubt in the electronic tally, it can be verified against a handcount of the paper printouts.
In theory electronic voting would be more reliable and less open to interpretation than paper voting. I would be fine counting votes by hand until people were confident that the electronic voting machines were actually accurate.
First off... I never even hinted toward anything resembling a "fair share" argument in my post. The parent said that the US has a graduated tax bracket with the highest bracket at 35%, and I pointed out that most rich do not pay anywhere near that percentage. It was you who brought ideology into the argument in a very clumsy attempt to create a Straw Man you thought you could knock down.
But, I am intrigued by your Straw Man, so I will allow you to deviate me from the original argument and confront yours head-on.
I have been following this "Buffett Rule" argument and it seems a little one-sided. If you try to lower taxes on the rich (or "producers", though why stock brokers, CEOs, hedge fund managers, and bankers count as "producers" when an engineer like me isn't is beyond me) then it is called "Job Creation". But, if you try to raise taxes on the rich, then it is called "Class Warfare". Why isn't lowering taxes on the rich called "Class Warfare"?
How do you define "Fair Share"? How do you measure "Fair Share"? I hear talk show pundits all the time say that the government "takes 50% of their money" and that its wrong. Is 50% a magical number (like pi or e)? I have no problem with 100% or 0% taxes. Those numbers are arbitrary. The role of government (in my opinion) is to make the society that it governs as productive as possible. Tax policy should follow this.
So how do you make society productive? It is through class mobility. You want it to be a meritocracy. If I think that by being smarter/better/stronger/faster/etc than my peers that I will do better than my peers, then I will probably put that work in. If I don't think that, then I will probably just collect my paycheck and go home.
The problem is that our economy has become more of a capital based economy than labor based. If I want to make a lot of money, then I need money. The benefits of productivity increases have disproportionately gone to the capital-holders (shareholders), not to the labor (the workers). There are two problems with this. First, if I am poor then there is a very low possibility of me actually becoming rich. So, why should I work my ass off for something that is unlikely to happen anyway. Second, if capital begets more capital, then it is a cycle that feeds on itself and the rich just become richer and income inequality increases, which makes it even less likely that someone will work harder to become "rich".
So, my definition of "Fair Share" is relative. The income distribution of society should follow a bell curve (actually a poisson distribution but bell curve is close enough for a simplistic view) with the peak at somewhere between 5 and 10 times the poverty level. Tax policy should be used to shape the actual distribution back toward the ideal distribution (by raising and lowering taxes where appropriate). But, this also means that if any income group gets the "advantage" (are not paying their "Fair Share") then it gets accounted for the next year by a change in the tax rates. This way you are taxed based upon the advantages this country gives you, not some arbitrary percent assigned to your income bracket. As of now, if we want to get anywhere close to that distribution we need to significantly increase taxes on the rich.
I also believe in estate taxes to also help level the playing field.
I believe that the money going to the government, while definitely not the most efficient, is definitely used in a more advantageous way for society than a hedge fund manager or CEO using to buy another pet politician.
Why do you think we need more savings and investment? Companies are sitting on record amounts of cash right now. They could invest in increased productivity, but there is no extra demand right now so there would be no payback. We need to create more demand by putting more money in the hands of the middle class (which is what Obama's new stimulus bill is trying to do).
There are ways around the highest tax brackets, though. Warren Buffet paid about 17% on his earnings last year. On average, millionaires pay 20.1% on their earnings. Results are what matters, not rhetoric.
Correct. But, right now companies are sitting on record amounts of cash. They have decided that it is not worth investing it. Mainly because there is no reason to increase production. Because there is low demand. Because the middle class does not have money. That is the bottleneck. Once our economy is back on track, the bottleneck may change (to capital most likely). And then the companies will be happy to spend their loads of cash. And then maybe we can change our tax policy again to help companies keep more of their cash. But until that point, it does not help our economy at all to give them more cash to sit on.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Social Security is a Pay-as-you-Go system. You are currently paying for your parents and grandparents to retire. The "Trust Fund" is an accounting fiction (the money is not there, only IOUs). If the demographics of the country change (and they are) then Social Security has to adapt with reduced benefits or higher taxes. When it goes negative (as it is now) you have to raise income taxes to pay off the "Trust Fund". We are all in this together, everyone should contribute.
They are not evil for "hoarding wealth". But, if you accept that they do "hoard" their wealth, then lowering taxes on them will not stimulate the economy. It will just give them more wealth to hoard (and refutes the supposed "trickle down effect"). If you give more money to the poorer people, then they will spend it (because the don't hoard it) and it will be a more effective way of stimulating the economy.
Thats why he isn't arguing with the logic. He is using an ad hominem attack on Warren Buffet (hypocrisy) to deflect away from the real argument which he knows he can't win.
Ok... so we get more of our cheese from France. While that may be an adverse result of the tax, it still invalidates your argument that the costs will just be passed to the consumer.
What about for oil? Is the whole world going to start paying more for oil equal to the amount that the US raises taxes on US oil producers? Or, does it just mean that US oil producers are going to have to pay their shareholders smaller dividends and if they want to be able to compete on the global market?
Apparently Junior High is as far as you got (along with, it seems, most Republicans). We live in a globalized economy. The best example is Oil. If we tax oil extraction companies in the US at higher (fairer) rates, then they cannot just raise prices. Oil prices are set due to supply and demand on the Global market. They have to either accept reduced profits, or they can stop producing. Lower production might cause a slightly higher price, but the US produces such a small percentage of the Global oil supply that it would be a very small increase in price.
No, they just get politicians to go to war (with the publicly funded military) for them so that they can enjoy the benefits of being a war profiteer (Iraq War).
I see you remembered to slip that "federal income" in there. A lot of pundits forget it, and are therefore lying. EVERYONE already paying 5.45% (7.65% normally). And this does not include the employer match (7.65%). So, I agree. We should make it fair. Get rid of the $110k limit on Social Security FICA taxes, and charge FICA on all income (even unearned income). And don't claim that payroll taxes are somehow don't count. Congress has been robbing the "Trust Fund" to pay general expenses for a long time now.
Fine... denounce your US citizenship if you feel like it is just costing you too much money.
Last year the US pulled in about $1 trillion in personal income taxes from ALL citizens, while we spent somewhere between $800 billion and $1 trillion on defense. Do you benefit from the US military being deployed all over the world? If so, then we should probably increase your tax rate.
Then they use that money to buy politicians that deregulate banks and start unnecessary wars so that they can make money off of the public (limited liability, military contractors). They also use these bought politicians to lower their tax rates (Bush tax cuts). I just want them to pay their fair share.
Okay... we can argue semantics. It is classified as "unearned income" by the IRS, and it is taxed at 15% with no FICA taxes. For comparison, earned income above $8,500 in 2011 is taxed at 10% + 5.65% in FICA taxes (in case you can't do the math 15% 15.65%, capital gains are being taxed BELOW someone in the lowest "earned income" tax bracket with an actual tax rate).
How many humans were living on the land you are sitting on when it was at the bottom of a tropical sea? Underneath mile tall glaciers? Did you say none?
How many less humans will be living on the land you are sitting on if it changes drastically (sea, glaciers)? How many wars will those displaced humans cause? How much will the unrest disrupt our civilization and the rate of technological progress? How many people will suffer and die due to those changes?
The truth is irrelevant, not inconvenient.
Sure... keep on telling yourself that. I am not worried about "saving mother earth" or any crap like that. "Mother Earth" will survive. Humans have built their cities in convenient places (on the coast, next to rivers, near fertile land with plenty or rainfall). How well can humans adapt when the climate changes (coastal areas underwater, rivers flood, fertile land does not get rain)?
Are you opposed to Wikileaks in general? If that is the case, then you are probably just calling them idiots because you don't agree with their ideals. By your logic, they are not responsible for what happens. The sole responsible party is the person who leaks the material in the first place (or that person would be "delegating responsibility" which, according to you, they cannot do). Wikileaks did delegated responsibility by trying to pick respectable MSM news organizations. Their other option would have been to let the organization that the leaks originated from suggest what to redact. And they did offer that option to the US government but the US government refused. So, I would say that the US government is responsible because they could have prevented Wikileaks from having the necessity of going to news organizations but, instead, decided against it. But we already knew they are idiots. Unless you are advocating they spend the next 20 years doing the research necessary to properly redact these documents, then I do not see what other option they had. Maybe they should just release everything from now on un-redacted. Then you wouldn't be calling them idiots.
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Why can we not judge a religion based upon those who practice it? I thought that the purpose of religion was to mold behavior (telling you how to live a "good" life). Shouldn't it also teach people how to teach the religion "correctly". How do you know you don't have it backwards? Maybe your experience is the "exception" that we should ignore yours and just look at the other path to judge the religion. Or did you really mean to say that when judging a religion (or just your religion) we should just look at the good aspects and ignore the bad ones?
I think that a religion should be judged based upon ALL of the people practicing it, good and bad. Talk is easy. Actually living that talk is where a religion is judged.
The smarter people aren't actually *caught*. Think commandos and Hellfire-armed UCAVs.
Do you want to know why they aren't caught? BECAUSE THEY AREN'T ATTACKING!!! Unless you want to provide me with a link of one that succeeded.
Which is why you should have electronic voting with a verifiable printout paper as grandparent suggested. That way the voter can verify their vote on paper, and if there is any doubt in the electronic tally, it can be verified against a handcount of the paper printouts.
If you recounted the paper votes and it was different than the electronic tally, then it would be very clear very quickly that something was wrong.
In theory electronic voting would be more reliable and less open to interpretation than paper voting. I would be fine counting votes by hand until people were confident that the electronic voting machines were actually accurate.
First off... I never even hinted toward anything resembling a "fair share" argument in my post. The parent said that the US has a graduated tax bracket with the highest bracket at 35%, and I pointed out that most rich do not pay anywhere near that percentage. It was you who brought ideology into the argument in a very clumsy attempt to create a Straw Man you thought you could knock down.
But, I am intrigued by your Straw Man, so I will allow you to deviate me from the original argument and confront yours head-on.
I have been following this "Buffett Rule" argument and it seems a little one-sided. If you try to lower taxes on the rich (or "producers", though why stock brokers, CEOs, hedge fund managers, and bankers count as "producers" when an engineer like me isn't is beyond me) then it is called "Job Creation". But, if you try to raise taxes on the rich, then it is called "Class Warfare". Why isn't lowering taxes on the rich called "Class Warfare"?
How do you define "Fair Share"? How do you measure "Fair Share"? I hear talk show pundits all the time say that the government "takes 50% of their money" and that its wrong. Is 50% a magical number (like pi or e)? I have no problem with 100% or 0% taxes. Those numbers are arbitrary. The role of government (in my opinion) is to make the society that it governs as productive as possible. Tax policy should follow this.
So how do you make society productive? It is through class mobility. You want it to be a meritocracy. If I think that by being smarter/better/stronger/faster/etc than my peers that I will do better than my peers, then I will probably put that work in. If I don't think that, then I will probably just collect my paycheck and go home.
The problem is that our economy has become more of a capital based economy than labor based. If I want to make a lot of money, then I need money. The benefits of productivity increases have disproportionately gone to the capital-holders (shareholders), not to the labor (the workers). There are two problems with this. First, if I am poor then there is a very low possibility of me actually becoming rich. So, why should I work my ass off for something that is unlikely to happen anyway. Second, if capital begets more capital, then it is a cycle that feeds on itself and the rich just become richer and income inequality increases, which makes it even less likely that someone will work harder to become "rich".
So, my definition of "Fair Share" is relative. The income distribution of society should follow a bell curve (actually a poisson distribution but bell curve is close enough for a simplistic view) with the peak at somewhere between 5 and 10 times the poverty level. Tax policy should be used to shape the actual distribution back toward the ideal distribution (by raising and lowering taxes where appropriate). But, this also means that if any income group gets the "advantage" (are not paying their "Fair Share") then it gets accounted for the next year by a change in the tax rates. This way you are taxed based upon the advantages this country gives you, not some arbitrary percent assigned to your income bracket. As of now, if we want to get anywhere close to that distribution we need to significantly increase taxes on the rich.
I also believe in estate taxes to also help level the playing field.
I believe that the money going to the government, while definitely not the most efficient, is definitely used in a more advantageous way for society than a hedge fund manager or CEO using to buy another pet politician.
Why do you think we need more savings and investment? Companies are sitting on record amounts of cash right now. They could invest in increased productivity, but there is no extra demand right now so there would be no payback. We need to create more demand by putting more money in the hands of the middle class (which is what Obama's new stimulus bill is trying to do).
There are ways around the highest tax brackets, though. Warren Buffet paid about 17% on his earnings last year. On average, millionaires pay 20.1% on their earnings. Results are what matters, not rhetoric.
Correct. But, right now companies are sitting on record amounts of cash. They have decided that it is not worth investing it. Mainly because there is no reason to increase production. Because there is low demand. Because the middle class does not have money. That is the bottleneck. Once our economy is back on track, the bottleneck may change (to capital most likely). And then the companies will be happy to spend their loads of cash. And then maybe we can change our tax policy again to help companies keep more of their cash. But until that point, it does not help our economy at all to give them more cash to sit on.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Social Security is a Pay-as-you-Go system. You are currently paying for your parents and grandparents to retire. The "Trust Fund" is an accounting fiction (the money is not there, only IOUs). If the demographics of the country change (and they are) then Social Security has to adapt with reduced benefits or higher taxes. When it goes negative (as it is now) you have to raise income taxes to pay off the "Trust Fund". We are all in this together, everyone should contribute.
They are not evil for "hoarding wealth". But, if you accept that they do "hoard" their wealth, then lowering taxes on them will not stimulate the economy. It will just give them more wealth to hoard (and refutes the supposed "trickle down effect"). If you give more money to the poorer people, then they will spend it (because the don't hoard it) and it will be a more effective way of stimulating the economy.
I find it difficult to argue with that logic.
Thats why he isn't arguing with the logic. He is using an ad hominem attack on Warren Buffet (hypocrisy) to deflect away from the real argument which he knows he can't win.
Fine. First I want the defense contractors and oil companies to pay me back for the Iraq War.
Ok... so we get more of our cheese from France. While that may be an adverse result of the tax, it still invalidates your argument that the costs will just be passed to the consumer.
What about for oil? Is the whole world going to start paying more for oil equal to the amount that the US raises taxes on US oil producers? Or, does it just mean that US oil producers are going to have to pay their shareholders smaller dividends and if they want to be able to compete on the global market?
Apparently Junior High is as far as you got (along with, it seems, most Republicans). We live in a globalized economy. The best example is Oil. If we tax oil extraction companies in the US at higher (fairer) rates, then they cannot just raise prices. Oil prices are set due to supply and demand on the Global market. They have to either accept reduced profits, or they can stop producing. Lower production might cause a slightly higher price, but the US produces such a small percentage of the Global oil supply that it would be a very small increase in price.
No, they just get politicians to go to war (with the publicly funded military) for them so that they can enjoy the benefits of being a war profiteer (Iraq War).
Military... Case in Point -> Iraq War.
The military. Case in Point -> Iraq War.
I see you remembered to slip that "federal income" in there. A lot of pundits forget it, and are therefore lying. EVERYONE already paying 5.45% (7.65% normally). And this does not include the employer match (7.65%). So, I agree. We should make it fair. Get rid of the $110k limit on Social Security FICA taxes, and charge FICA on all income (even unearned income). And don't claim that payroll taxes are somehow don't count. Congress has been robbing the "Trust Fund" to pay general expenses for a long time now.
Ah... the old Ad Hominem attack. Classic.
When you have no response to a well thought out and logical argument, attack the person. Though implying they are a hypocrite is not very original.
Fine... denounce your US citizenship if you feel like it is just costing you too much money.
Last year the US pulled in about $1 trillion in personal income taxes from ALL citizens, while we spent somewhere between $800 billion and $1 trillion on defense. Do you benefit from the US military being deployed all over the world? If so, then we should probably increase your tax rate.
Then they use that money to buy politicians that deregulate banks and start unnecessary wars so that they can make money off of the public (limited liability, military contractors). They also use these bought politicians to lower their tax rates (Bush tax cuts). I just want them to pay their fair share.
Okay... we can argue semantics. It is classified as "unearned income" by the IRS, and it is taxed at 15% with no FICA taxes. For comparison, earned income above $8,500 in 2011 is taxed at 10% + 5.65% in FICA taxes (in case you can't do the math 15% 15.65%, capital gains are being taxed BELOW someone in the lowest "earned income" tax bracket with an actual tax rate).
How many humans were living on the land you are sitting on when it was at the bottom of a tropical sea? Underneath mile tall glaciers? Did you say none?
How many less humans will be living on the land you are sitting on if it changes drastically (sea, glaciers)? How many wars will those displaced humans cause? How much will the unrest disrupt our civilization and the rate of technological progress? How many people will suffer and die due to those changes?
The truth is irrelevant, not inconvenient.
Sure... keep on telling yourself that. I am not worried about "saving mother earth" or any crap like that. "Mother Earth" will survive. Humans have built their cities in convenient places (on the coast, next to rivers, near fertile land with plenty or rainfall). How well can humans adapt when the climate changes (coastal areas underwater, rivers flood, fertile land does not get rain)?
Are you opposed to Wikileaks in general? If that is the case, then you are probably just calling them idiots because you don't agree with their ideals. By your logic, they are not responsible for what happens. The sole responsible party is the person who leaks the material in the first place (or that person would be "delegating responsibility" which, according to you, they cannot do). Wikileaks did delegated responsibility by trying to pick respectable MSM news organizations. Their other option would have been to let the organization that the leaks originated from suggest what to redact. And they did offer that option to the US government but the US government refused. So, I would say that the US government is responsible because they could have prevented Wikileaks from having the necessity of going to news organizations but, instead, decided against it. But we already knew they are idiots. Unless you are advocating they spend the next 20 years doing the research necessary to properly redact these documents, then I do not see what other option they had. Maybe they should just release everything from now on un-redacted. Then you wouldn't be calling them idiots.