Please think about what you said for a minute. Let's envision this conversation.
A: "Let's cut $100 spending and also raise $100 revenue."
B: "No."
A: "Okay, let's cut $200 spending and also raise $100 revenue."
B: "No."
A: "Okay, let's cut $500 spending and also raise $100 revenue."
B: "No."
That's just retarded. Who's retarded? Person A. If the revenue increase is the sticking point, THEN GET RID OF IT.
Person A is obviously willing to cut spending, and is even willing to cut more and more spending than they would gain in revenue. I'm just going to throw this out there: Imagine a world where $400 is cut from spending, and $0 is raised in revenue. How different is that world from the one where $500 is cut from spending and $100 is raised in revenue? Well in the latter, we're spending even less, so not a single program has benefited from the raised revenue. And the population is paying more, even though services have been cut.
It makes no sense. No sense at all. If you find spending that you're willing to cut, cut it. Don't play games by trying to include a token revenue raise that accomplishes nothing, and then claim that because that token isn't met the other side is evil and unwilling to compromise. You're the one holding onto the completely irrational token!
If the Democrats are willing to cut $1 trillion in exchange for $250 billion of new tax, then the obvious compromise is to cut $750 billion and have no new taxes.
But they are unwilling to do that. So obviously something fishy is going on here. In reality they never really planned to cut that $1 trillion and don't want to be called on it. Otherwise they would say "Oh, okay, well since we were willing to cut these programs anyway, let's cut them, just a little less than we planned. We'll just pretend we got our tax increase to offset the originally planned cuts."
You have NO IDEA how much respect and political capital that would earn among disgruntled Republicans, Tea Partiers, etc.
They don't count children with zero income when making those statistics! If by "youth" you mean 20 and 30 year olds, I don't see what's wrong with counting them.
The point is, you can't rely on "necessary tax increases" to cause pain among the population which would lead to spending stabilization (cuts are unrealistic). There simply isn't enough pain for most people. And the indirect taxes you mention are just as much to blame. I would much prefer a plainly visible income tax than the sales taxes and sin taxes (that disproportionately affect the poor anyway). People vote themselves into poverty and vote themselves into handouts and don't even realize how the two are connected. It's a shame.
Obama offered them a jobs bill that was 98% copy-and-paste from previous Republican jobs bills.
It's like people don't realize that some Republicans disagree with other Republicans. You can create an economic package that was endorsed by "Democrats" (such as Joe Lieberman) that includes stuff like boosting defense spending. Other Democrats would be happy to reject that.
Except the democrats have history and the study of economics on their side.
Don't be ridiculous. First of all, history? How can history be on someone's side? If it were that obvious, that this has all literally happened before and we just need to look, there would be no debate.
Second, economics? I'm laughing here. Did Obama have any economists advising him on his last round of stimulus? Yep. Did it work? Nope.
Economists don't know shit, and you know that, or ought to.
Talking about history being on someone's side, I think the only reasonable position is that history is NOT on the side of economists.
I remember in the last round of debates that led to the formation of the supercommittee the Republicans offered a number of "tax increases" (based on eliminating deductions).
So here's the question. If the Democrats are okay with some cuts (which you claim) and the Republicans are okay with some increases (even if they're not real to some people), why wasn't there a mini plan with those?
Hmm.
It doesn't take a lot of thinking to realize that both parties decided they don't want anything.
Personally I don't think it's unreasonable to object to the blatant class warfare of raising taxes on the "super rich" and ignoring everything else. And making that a centerstone of your debate, to the point where you won't agree to anything unless it contains that, is just as obstinate as not agreeing to it.
I know that, that's why I specifically said income tax. Whatever total tax burden you're paying now, if your take home pay went from $1000/month to $950/month (5% tax, which would be huge) you wouldn't notice it. You'll need to eat out less a whole one time per month. Oh no.
And don't tell me "the poor" (50% of the whole damn country) don't eat out.
The real issue is that the surplus, even if it's all paid back, will still run out... before my generation retires. With current assumptions (including the loans all being paid back)
By 2017, Social Security is expected to start paying out more than it collects in payroll taxes, according to the 2009 Annual Report from the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees. There is currently a large surplus, but it will be drained by the year 2037. At that point, Social Security will only be able to pay out 75 percent of its benefits.
Let's not pretend that SSA is a scapegoat here. It's a fundamentally unjust program. It's unsustainable because population growth didn't keep up with the baby boomers. It's a pyramid scheme because each generation pays for the previous one, but the later generations don't get the same benefits.
It's making a profit by charging today's generation a higher rate than previous generations ever paid. You know when it started it was under 1% total?
Social Security is fundamentally unjust and should be part of budget considerations because it is TAX MONEY. It is not my own money that goes into a savings account for me.
You've got a real tax increase that takes place right now on one hand, and projected cuts that will be implemented by a future Congress (you know, because future Congressional bodies will be so much more reasonable) over a 10 year period.
How can you consider the tax increase only 5% of the total? It's the *only* thing that would ever actually happen.
Actually spending went down during the Clinton years as percentage of GDP, which is the metric that matters.
That's the metric that matters but it's one that we can't control. We *can* control spending with absolute certainty. Income, as a percentage of what just magically exists, is only partially under our control. The net of that versus the entire GDP is right out the window.
The government has shown time and time again that it cannot boost the economy. It probably can harm it grievously but that would be silly. So basically it's outside of our control.
You should explain this to Warren Buffett or this fellow then I guess:
Hmm. I wonder how tax changes will affect Warren Buffett *after* he's made all his money? You're taking the word of a billionaire who is very old and near retirement/death who wants to screw over the *next* Warren Buffett, because all he cares about is competition and making sure nobody can touch his "record".
Well one major reason is that if you are sitting on a big pile of money then you need the rule of law (ie: FBI, Secret Service, etc) and the military to keep someone else from stealing it. The rich have far more to lose that the poor so it is entirely appropriate they pay a little more for their increased need for protection
If you think of some real-world examples you'll see how wrong that is. Think of any area in the world that lacks rule of law. Somalia, tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, etc. Who benefits the most? The people with the money and power. The rich people aren't harmless bankers and lawyers. They are warlords and international drug dealers.
In the absence of law, rich people turn into little monarchs. They are untouchable by the law because there is no law, or they are the law. They start to remember that primal human instinct for power, not money. Why take your millions and invest in infrastructure? It's much more satisfying to hire a private army and take 50 young virgin brides, whether their poor families who can't afford private armies like it or not.
It's silly. You think poor people get together and become major criminals? That rich people are afraid of them in a no holds barred environment? It's the rich who do that when they are unfettered by the rule of law.
If they're not paying the full tax rate now, what makes you think they were paying the full tax rate back then?
they pay more than 2/3 of the total tax since the bottom 50% are mostly too poor to pay anything.
The bottom 50%??? The median household income is over $50k a year. People earning $20k - $40k should easily be able to pay some income tax. The reason they don't is pandering by politicians, not because they are "too poor".
I earn just over $50k/year. I pay lots of income tax. Why? I don't have tons of deductions and credits for stuff like having 4+ dependents or paying a huge amount in mortgage interest.
If the "too poor" 50% of the population were forced to pay income tax like me maybe they would learn to live within their means and we wouldn't be in such a mess to begin with.
When half the country doesn't pay income taxes and a big chunk of the rest pay little, how much foot stomping will there be?
It's already clear that the government is willing to spend more than it takes in. If it is able to take in more, what on earth makes you think it wouldn't spend more?
Raising taxes and keeping spending under control is equal to cutting spending... that is, unless you think the current level of spending already addresses all needs of the population and everybody is happy.
I don't know, by that argument electronic representations of money are also not property.
There's got to be some protection for intellectual property. On the other hand there needs to be balance -- it's legal for me to share my money for instance, or loan it to a friend. Electronic books shouldn't have more protection than money, that's for sure.
I guess it just goes back to the old phrase, 'if it quacks like a duck'. I've become very practical minded these last few years.
I don't think it's practical to look at one characteristic and ignore all the others. The real phrase is "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."
But from a practical stand point, what the hell difference does it make if I'm being oppressed by my gov't or if I'm being oppressed by a corporation.
From that stand point, why are you against corporations? Like you said it makes no difference which one is oppressing you.
I'll tell you one thing. It's a lot easier to boycott Coke than it is to boycott the federal government. From a practical stand point your position makes absolutely no sense. It would be much smarter to keep your potential enemies smaller and weaker (many small corporations) rather than centralized and all powerful. No matter what evil corporation you look at, it pales in power and size to the government.
The only answer is to cut every single department by the same percentage.
I agree that across the board cuts would work and would make sense, but unfortunately it's not what happened. Social Security was excluded entirely from cuts. Medicare and Medicaid were limited to 2% (iirc).
Anyway, the odds of these cuts actually being implemented in 2013 are low.
Yes, but the rules should lead to bad neighbourhoods being cleaned up, and not in people in good neighbourhoods being unable to leave the house.
Taking away the rights of poor people is not the solution. You're focusing on the enforcement aspect (riot police) instead of the equality of law.
But that makes the analogy really backwards. A rich neighborhood subsidizes the enforcement of poor neighborhoods with higher taxes. Bringing that back to carbon, poor countries (the "good" ones, equal to good neighborhoods) are going to subsidize rich countries (the "bad" neighborhoods) to clean themselves up? I don't think so.
What exactly do you expect to happen in the future? That they get richer but keep walking to the market because they're not allowed to have a car? That everybody drives SUVs until we need to start buying boats?
In the future I expect there to be things more desirable than SUVs that are built with economy in mind. Even something like an electric SUV. Do you see a bunch of rich people driving around in vintage 1959 Cadillacs just because they use a lot of gas and that's their prerogative? Do you see many sales of new Hummers to average income people? No they're already interested in saving money by reducing consumption. Change happens and will continue to happen without you forcing it down their throats. Arbitrary, rapid change does nothing but hurt the economy.
And how exactly do you want to do that? If you love your SUV so much, you probably won't like heavy carbon taxes on your fuel. I think such taxes are absolutely vital to get anywhere, but they will lead to a lot of people being unable to afford the SUVs that they love so much. It will mean prices going up.
Do you not live in the same world as everybody else? In the last decade prices HAVE gone way up. And in the true spirit of fairness, the prices have gone up for EVERYONE, not just the people you decided to arbitrarily punish.
I hate neither myself nor your ancestors. I hate your unwillingness to take responsibility and accept consequences.
Someone who says the US got rich and raped the Earth sounds rather hateful. Did my ancestors in the US lovingly rape the Earth? Was their rape of the Earth actually something pleasant? Do you admire my ancestors for raping the Earth?
As for responsibility and consequences, who says I'm not willing to accept them? What I'm not willing to accept is your top-down authoritarian "solution" to what free people did to make the world a better place.
I'm not angry at people 200 years ago who didn't know better. I'm angry at people now who do.
No you're not -- the people doing it now are in the developing countries. You want to give a pass to them. You obviously are not angry at people who know better (everybody alive now) -- you are angry at the people who built the West (people long dead).
Not sacrifice it, but use it responsibly.
Fair enough, then it has to be implemented in a way that doesn't sacrifice our prosperity. That means you can't arbitrarily pick a number, make laws, exempt certain countries, and encourage the flow of jobs from our economy to others.
You know what these carbon trading schemes are? Nothing but welfare for poor countries. They won't change emissions at all. They force rich companies to pay a sin tax to the poor countries for the sin of being productive. The poor countries -- they pocket the money and do nothing at all. They are just trading their offsets, created on paper by bureaucrats, for cash. The offsets aren't even based on reality, they are based on what these poor countries *could* have done in terms of emissions if they weren't "oppressed" and "held down" by the man for thousands of years, etc. Because of course every country would be equally rich and prosperous if they were only given the chance.
Slashdot Mirror
If I take 5% away from each, I have $200 and $1000 respectively, who hurts more?
Obviously the person with less income will hurt more.
The person with less income will also hurt more when they need to buy their kids clothes for school.
Or when they need to buy a car.
Or when they want to send their kids on a high school trip to France.
Or when they want to buy an xbox.
Having less income hurts in every aspect of life. It's not a reason to have free cars, xbox's, trips to France.. or pay no income taxes.
Please think about what you said for a minute. Let's envision this conversation.
A: "Let's cut $100 spending and also raise $100 revenue."
B: "No."
A: "Okay, let's cut $200 spending and also raise $100 revenue."
B: "No."
A: "Okay, let's cut $500 spending and also raise $100 revenue."
B: "No."
That's just retarded. Who's retarded? Person A. If the revenue increase is the sticking point, THEN GET RID OF IT.
Person A is obviously willing to cut spending, and is even willing to cut more and more spending than they would gain in revenue. I'm just going to throw this out there: Imagine a world where $400 is cut from spending, and $0 is raised in revenue. How different is that world from the one where $500 is cut from spending and $100 is raised in revenue? Well in the latter, we're spending even less, so not a single program has benefited from the raised revenue. And the population is paying more, even though services have been cut.
It makes no sense. No sense at all. If you find spending that you're willing to cut, cut it. Don't play games by trying to include a token revenue raise that accomplishes nothing, and then claim that because that token isn't met the other side is evil and unwilling to compromise. You're the one holding onto the completely irrational token!
Think about it. That doesn't even make sense.
If the Democrats are willing to cut $1 trillion in exchange for $250 billion of new tax, then the obvious compromise is to cut $750 billion and have no new taxes.
But they are unwilling to do that. So obviously something fishy is going on here. In reality they never really planned to cut that $1 trillion and don't want to be called on it. Otherwise they would say "Oh, okay, well since we were willing to cut these programs anyway, let's cut them, just a little less than we planned. We'll just pretend we got our tax increase to offset the originally planned cuts."
You have NO IDEA how much respect and political capital that would earn among disgruntled Republicans, Tea Partiers, etc.
They don't count children with zero income when making those statistics! If by "youth" you mean 20 and 30 year olds, I don't see what's wrong with counting them.
The point is, you can't rely on "necessary tax increases" to cause pain among the population which would lead to spending stabilization (cuts are unrealistic). There simply isn't enough pain for most people. And the indirect taxes you mention are just as much to blame. I would much prefer a plainly visible income tax than the sales taxes and sin taxes (that disproportionately affect the poor anyway). People vote themselves into poverty and vote themselves into handouts and don't even realize how the two are connected. It's a shame.
Obama offered them a jobs bill that was 98% copy-and-paste from previous Republican jobs bills.
It's like people don't realize that some Republicans disagree with other Republicans. You can create an economic package that was endorsed by "Democrats" (such as Joe Lieberman) that includes stuff like boosting defense spending. Other Democrats would be happy to reject that.
Except the democrats have history and the study of economics on their side.
Don't be ridiculous. First of all, history? How can history be on someone's side? If it were that obvious, that this has all literally happened before and we just need to look, there would be no debate.
Second, economics? I'm laughing here. Did Obama have any economists advising him on his last round of stimulus? Yep. Did it work? Nope.
Economists don't know shit, and you know that, or ought to.
Talking about history being on someone's side, I think the only reasonable position is that history is NOT on the side of economists.
I remember in the last round of debates that led to the formation of the supercommittee the Republicans offered a number of "tax increases" (based on eliminating deductions).
So here's the question. If the Democrats are okay with some cuts (which you claim) and the Republicans are okay with some increases (even if they're not real to some people), why wasn't there a mini plan with those?
Hmm.
It doesn't take a lot of thinking to realize that both parties decided they don't want anything.
Personally I don't think it's unreasonable to object to the blatant class warfare of raising taxes on the "super rich" and ignoring everything else. And making that a centerstone of your debate, to the point where you won't agree to anything unless it contains that, is just as obstinate as not agreeing to it.
I know that, that's why I specifically said income tax. Whatever total tax burden you're paying now, if your take home pay went from $1000/month to $950/month (5% tax, which would be huge) you wouldn't notice it. You'll need to eat out less a whole one time per month. Oh no.
And don't tell me "the poor" (50% of the whole damn country) don't eat out.
Why are you obsessing over the super rich, as if they are the problem? They are the ones making the money and paying taxes ALREADY.
"God, I fucking hate that asshole who buys me beer. I wish he would buy me MORE beer."
And who do those easy smear campaigns and dirty tricks appeal to? The 99%. That's why we're screwed.
Don't worry, absolutely nothing has been cut. They are scheduled for 2013.
That is avoiding the real issue.
The real issue is that the surplus, even if it's all paid back, will still run out... before my generation retires. With current assumptions (including the loans all being paid back)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/34941334/Will_Baby_Boomers_Bankrupt_Social_Security
By 2017, Social Security is expected to start paying out more than it collects in payroll taxes, according to the 2009 Annual Report from the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees. There is currently a large surplus, but it will be drained by the year 2037. At that point, Social Security will only be able to pay out 75 percent of its benefits.
Let's not pretend that SSA is a scapegoat here. It's a fundamentally unjust program. It's unsustainable because population growth didn't keep up with the baby boomers. It's a pyramid scheme because each generation pays for the previous one, but the later generations don't get the same benefits.
It's making a profit by charging today's generation a higher rate than previous generations ever paid. You know when it started it was under 1% total?
Social Security is fundamentally unjust and should be part of budget considerations because it is TAX MONEY. It is not my own money that goes into a savings account for me.
You've got a real tax increase that takes place right now on one hand, and projected cuts that will be implemented by a future Congress (you know, because future Congressional bodies will be so much more reasonable) over a 10 year period.
How can you consider the tax increase only 5% of the total? It's the *only* thing that would ever actually happen.
Actually spending went down during the Clinton years as percentage of GDP, which is the metric that matters.
That's the metric that matters but it's one that we can't control. We *can* control spending with absolute certainty. Income, as a percentage of what just magically exists, is only partially under our control. The net of that versus the entire GDP is right out the window.
The government has shown time and time again that it cannot boost the economy. It probably can harm it grievously but that would be silly. So basically it's outside of our control.
You should explain this to Warren Buffett or this fellow then I guess:
Hmm. I wonder how tax changes will affect Warren Buffett *after* he's made all his money? You're taking the word of a billionaire who is very old and near retirement/death who wants to screw over the *next* Warren Buffett, because all he cares about is competition and making sure nobody can touch his "record".
Well one major reason is that if you are sitting on a big pile of money then you need the rule of law (ie: FBI, Secret Service, etc) and the military to keep someone else from stealing it. The rich have far more to lose that the poor so it is entirely appropriate they pay a little more for their increased need for protection
If you think of some real-world examples you'll see how wrong that is. Think of any area in the world that lacks rule of law. Somalia, tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, etc. Who benefits the most? The people with the money and power. The rich people aren't harmless bankers and lawyers. They are warlords and international drug dealers.
In the absence of law, rich people turn into little monarchs. They are untouchable by the law because there is no law, or they are the law. They start to remember that primal human instinct for power, not money. Why take your millions and invest in infrastructure? It's much more satisfying to hire a private army and take 50 young virgin brides, whether their poor families who can't afford private armies like it or not.
It's silly. You think poor people get together and become major criminals? That rich people are afraid of them in a no holds barred environment? It's the rich who do that when they are unfettered by the rule of law.
If they're not paying the full tax rate now, what makes you think they were paying the full tax rate back then?
they pay more than 2/3 of the total tax since the bottom 50% are mostly too poor to pay anything.
The bottom 50%??? The median household income is over $50k a year. People earning $20k - $40k should easily be able to pay some income tax. The reason they don't is pandering by politicians, not because they are "too poor".
I earn just over $50k/year. I pay lots of income tax. Why? I don't have tons of deductions and credits for stuff like having 4+ dependents or paying a huge amount in mortgage interest.
If the "too poor" 50% of the population were forced to pay income tax like me maybe they would learn to live within their means and we wouldn't be in such a mess to begin with.
Aren't the democrats just as uncompromising and extreme?
Attributing blame to one party and adding all the "shuddering" verbiage paints you as uncompromising and extreme yourself.
When half the country doesn't pay income taxes and a big chunk of the rest pay little, how much foot stomping will there be?
It's already clear that the government is willing to spend more than it takes in. If it is able to take in more, what on earth makes you think it wouldn't spend more?
Raising taxes and keeping spending under control is equal to cutting spending... that is, unless you think the current level of spending already addresses all needs of the population and everybody is happy.
I don't know, by that argument electronic representations of money are also not property.
There's got to be some protection for intellectual property. On the other hand there needs to be balance -- it's legal for me to share my money for instance, or loan it to a friend. Electronic books shouldn't have more protection than money, that's for sure.
I guess it just goes back to the old phrase, 'if it quacks like a duck'. I've become very practical minded these last few years.
I don't think it's practical to look at one characteristic and ignore all the others. The real phrase is "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."
But from a practical stand point, what the hell difference does it make if I'm being oppressed by my gov't or if I'm being oppressed by a corporation.
From that stand point, why are you against corporations? Like you said it makes no difference which one is oppressing you.
I'll tell you one thing. It's a lot easier to boycott Coke than it is to boycott the federal government. From a practical stand point your position makes absolutely no sense. It would be much smarter to keep your potential enemies smaller and weaker (many small corporations) rather than centralized and all powerful. No matter what evil corporation you look at, it pales in power and size to the government.
The only answer is to cut every single department by the same percentage.
I agree that across the board cuts would work and would make sense, but unfortunately it's not what happened. Social Security was excluded entirely from cuts. Medicare and Medicaid were limited to 2% (iirc).
Anyway, the odds of these cuts actually being implemented in 2013 are low.
So what you're saying is that even at current pay scales, there are more qualified people signing up, but they are artificially blocked from joining.
Explain again how paying them more will help matters?
Yes, but the rules should lead to bad neighbourhoods being cleaned up, and not in people in good neighbourhoods being unable to leave the house.
Taking away the rights of poor people is not the solution. You're focusing on the enforcement aspect (riot police) instead of the equality of law.
But that makes the analogy really backwards. A rich neighborhood subsidizes the enforcement of poor neighborhoods with higher taxes. Bringing that back to carbon, poor countries (the "good" ones, equal to good neighborhoods) are going to subsidize rich countries (the "bad" neighborhoods) to clean themselves up? I don't think so.
What exactly do you expect to happen in the future? That they get richer but keep walking to the market because they're not allowed to have a car? That everybody drives SUVs until we need to start buying boats?
In the future I expect there to be things more desirable than SUVs that are built with economy in mind. Even something like an electric SUV. Do you see a bunch of rich people driving around in vintage 1959 Cadillacs just because they use a lot of gas and that's their prerogative? Do you see many sales of new Hummers to average income people? No they're already interested in saving money by reducing consumption. Change happens and will continue to happen without you forcing it down their throats. Arbitrary, rapid change does nothing but hurt the economy.
And how exactly do you want to do that? If you love your SUV so much, you probably won't like heavy carbon taxes on your fuel. I think such taxes are absolutely vital to get anywhere, but they will lead to a lot of people being unable to afford the SUVs that they love so much. It will mean prices going up.
Do you not live in the same world as everybody else? In the last decade prices HAVE gone way up. And in the true spirit of fairness, the prices have gone up for EVERYONE, not just the people you decided to arbitrarily punish.
I hate neither myself nor your ancestors. I hate your unwillingness to take responsibility and accept consequences.
Someone who says the US got rich and raped the Earth sounds rather hateful. Did my ancestors in the US lovingly rape the Earth? Was their rape of the Earth actually something pleasant? Do you admire my ancestors for raping the Earth?
As for responsibility and consequences, who says I'm not willing to accept them? What I'm not willing to accept is your top-down authoritarian "solution" to what free people did to make the world a better place.
I'm not angry at people 200 years ago who didn't know better. I'm angry at people now who do.
No you're not -- the people doing it now are in the developing countries. You want to give a pass to them. You obviously are not angry at people who know better (everybody alive now) -- you are angry at the people who built the West (people long dead).
Not sacrifice it, but use it responsibly.
Fair enough, then it has to be implemented in a way that doesn't sacrifice our prosperity. That means you can't arbitrarily pick a number, make laws, exempt certain countries, and encourage the flow of jobs from our economy to others.
You know what these carbon trading schemes are? Nothing but welfare for poor countries. They won't change emissions at all. They force rich companies to pay a sin tax to the poor countries for the sin of being productive. The poor countries -- they pocket the money and do nothing at all. They are just trading their offsets, created on paper by bureaucrats, for cash. The offsets aren't even based on reality, they are based on what these poor countries *could* have done in terms of emissions if they weren't "oppressed" and "held down" by the man for thousands of years, etc. Because of course every country would be equally rich and prosperous if they were only given the chance.
And when they run out of offsets? Do
I didn't realize that would work, good tip. I'll try it next time I'm on a trip.