It's idiocy to imply that anyone who works fast food and isn't young is not motivated.
And its equally stupid to assume that because someone works in fast food they are *that* was what was being asked how is either one a vaild statement?
And neither you nor he have the balls to go into a McDonalds and say what you say here.
And what exactly have I said? I have said that if a person is not going above and beyond to improve their situation they are not motivated. Why dont you up your meds and read it again... Hell when consulting dried up (7 months with no work) I took to selling trinkets at parades, spending 8 hours in a van and two hours on the street for 50$...
You know what I was doing in the van? reading electronics and computer textbooks I borrowed from the library. So dont you give me crap about not working my way up and not knowing what its like. If any of those people go home from work and play X-box, or just smoke and watch TV I will absolutly say to them that they are unmotivated..
I was not suggesting it was easy, I was suggesting it was doable. My point is what that because someone works in fast food does not mean they are a motivated adult, its what they do above and beyond to imrpove their situation that matters..
"a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons for public purposes"
Note that social security is not for public purposes it provides no service for the general public, I pay money in that I will get out.. So no by that definition it is most definatly not a tax.
My point is that Bush wanted to cut taxes across the board so he opened up a new low 10% bracket, and reduced the percentage of federal revenue comming from the middle class (by increasing the percentage of federal revenue comming in from the top tax brackets). He did such a good job at middle class tax cuts that the bottom 25% of Americans spend a larger percentage of their income paying taxes then the middle class. Because these guys put in so little anyway, he should have cut their taxes as well.
Really? I dont quite buy that definition. Do they go home and study something, do they spend their spare time at an unemployment office looking for better work?
But lets say that two burger flipper get married lets even say they only work 36 huors a week so they dont count as full time hires.
The lowest Minimum wage in the nation is 5.15 (http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/minimumwage/ staterates.cfm)
That couple makes 19 thousand a year which is above the poverty line so good for them. In some states the minimum wage is much higher (CT, OR, CA) are all around 7$ an hour in those states they make 25K a year, almost the poverty level for a family of four.
So does this person go home and make something happen or do they piss and moan about the crappy job they have?
Social Security and unemployment benefits are giant horribly run pyramid schemes that have no place in America.
Than do away with is all together dont shift the cost into income tax
Reguardless on where you stand on any of this, it is unfair for someone who is poor to spend a larger percentage of their income on taxes then someone in the middle class.
Except SS is not a tax like income is a tax. The government can do whatever it wants with income taxes, SS is marked for a retirement fund in which I will get the same as somebody making half as much as me so why should I pay more? thats the reason SS and income are seperate in the first place.
I can't think of any reason they should spend more.
Bush still didn't do what I wanted to see, completely eliminate payroll taxes and use the income tax to fund it.
What? you have to be kidding, I was under the impression that payroll taxes cover things like Social security. Social security is supposed to work like this: you put something in you get something out. My SS benefit will be the exact same as someone who makes half of what I do, to you this is not fair? No instead we should more focus on income re-distribution.
If you graph salary v. % of income spent on taxes, it's really low as you approach that middle 50% but as you get up to the top 25% it goes up (no surprise here).
Because unlike Income taxes SS is aimed at all people equally is not so much a tax as an entitlement.
The best thing to do is scrap income tax altogether and go to a sales tax. I would keep the IRS around to precess receipts (everyone would be exempt on $amount a year in purchases so that the truely poor would not be taxed on food, cloths and the like. I would keep SS tax only because its not so much a tax as a fund, in princaple the government has to give that money back to you when there is retirement.
Someone really rich who already owns everything he needs getting a 20000$ tax reduction won't be spending that tax reduction.
Most likely they will buy stock, or invest. Rich people dont throw money in their matress they invest it which create puts the tax cut money right back into the economy.
However 100 lower to middle class people getting a 200$ tax break will use the tax break to get the urging things in their life, like changing that timing belt or fixing the crack in the foundation. Heck I know I could use 200$ less taxes this year.
Pretty much everyone is getting a 3% cut in their taxes. Contrary to popular beilef thie was not a cut for the rich (The highest bracket pays 37.5% and the lowerst pays 15%..
That trickle down economy principle only works in some cases, when the rich don't mind spending the money they get. But the truth is a trickle up economy is more likely to work.
The rich buy IBM stock and the poor shop at walmart both create jobs, *in china*..
We, the poorer people are the ones who spend money because we don't have all we want or *need*.
Anyone who honestly believes that poverty is an extreem problem in America has *zero* perspective. Your worried about a timing belt? Do you think that is fomone owns a car, a tv, has access to the internet, has foor, a roof over their head, that somehow the system has failed them?
Lowering taxes for us does something substantial to the economy and to jobs in general. Lowering for the rich just makes rich people richer.
Again I am not rich but the CEO of my company is, he is very open and I watch him like a hawk to see just how he got where he is (he was not born into money). He works his tail off and invest money when I worked on the network at his house I saw not one dime hidden in a jar, he did however let me see his stock portfolio and trust me he does more for the economy than you or I do..
This might hold some water if the democrats actually did something in the senate. they are hell bent on keeping Bushes judical nominees through filibuster but voted for his tax cut, for NCLB, for the patriot act, for the war, for everything bush has done the democrats voted *for*..
Calm down. I don't recall the source, it was several months ago. And I agree with you that the bubble caused a lot of problems. My point was that the 5.4% of today is not nearly as accurate as the 6.7% back in '96
But you have no basis for that point, the two numbers measured the exact same thing in the exact same way.
Greenspan's strategy of inflating another bubble (housing) as one pops has been interesting to say the least, if I weren't a player, this would be a very enjoyable situation to watch.
I was very hard on greenspan in the late 90's and early 2k but I have to say that lately I have seen why he is Chairing the Fed and I am not. Hopefully other areas of the economy will recover before housing goes but I am already seenig it start to pop.
My wife and were looking for a house but at almost 200K for anything half way decent in MSP we held off. Well we just got pregnant (heh: we, not like Im the one with Morning Sickness) so now the search begins and in the few weeks we have been looking not only have we noticed the prices are slightly lower than they were a year ago but they seem to be going down further. We would wait a few more months if moving in the middle of a MN winter would not be hell..
What about all the money bled uselessly into Iraq?
Putting aside the useless comment. In a nation with a GDP of nearly 11 Trillion Dollars what exact impact do you thing 120 Billion would have?Seriously I have heard Kerry say he would use that money to provide health care, college education, more on homeland security (the name still gives me the willies). The fact is for all the Vietnam comparisions the amount of mony being spent on this war is *nothing*.
What about the immense budget deficit (spending what you don't have, essentially)? I suppose that has no effect on the economy too.
Hey who exactly spends the money again?? oh yea thats right congress... And how did the democrats vote on the tax cut? well it passed 92-3 in the senate.
Of defecit spending is on par with western nations in Europe. I agree is troublesome and I would love a balanced Budget amendment but neither party will let that happen..
Uh, no, not really. The 5.4% number is not counting all those people out of work for longer than six months.
Nor did Bill CLintons 6.7% whats your point?
I read one estimate that the true number of Americans of working age who do not have jobs is closer to 10%.
Source?
Anecdotally, I can believe it. I know people in recent years who tooks many, many months to find jobs.
Oh you have an Anecdote, well that cinches it.. We dont need any one to actually study the economy any more because we have you anecdotes. So long as we are throwing them Around I have changed Jobs 4 times sience October 2K and at no point in time was I without a job, I went from one to the next steadly increasing me pay..
In 1996 I was looking for work and the job market was much better than it is now.
Thats the nature of a Bubble, you know the tech bubblwe that burst under Clinton?
Same type of work, same area, different results in a dramatic way. Things have been much worse recently than they ever were in the mid-1990s, even pre-boom.
Because before the boom the was teh buildup to the boom..
What we have here, if it is a tranceiver, is almost certainly off-the-shelf, the type of stuff sold by regular commercial outfits for private investigators and to the police, or possibly even to conference organizers and other groups involving people who need to speak publically with prompting without it being overly obvious. It would have been installed under the assumption that Bush's back would not have been visible.
So when Bush is seen with a 'traceiver' its because his campaign is not good at chaeting, they dont have the resourses or skills to do it right. But when CBS Screws up a memo its a grand and well organized plot...
As for the other explanations, I'm not buying them.
Of course your not it much more likely he was cheating than wearing a vest..
That is assuming of course that all things are equal. That the proportion of working age adults to children/elderly the country entering the country is the same as the existing percentage..
screw you buddy - this administration has had 4 years to fix whatever the problem was - and since they couldnt do that in 4 years, we should give them another chance?
Look Im not voting for Bush but I think he has done a decent job with the economy, the bubble burst during the Clinton administration, and then we had 9/11 but if you look at
http://www.dallasfed.org/data/data/us-charts.pdf
It been pretty clear that with the exception of trade the economy has been gorwing at a steady rate. GDP has grown at a bit more than 3% a year for his term.
On the whole unemployment thing what is left to fix, its at the same place it was in 1996 under the all wise Bill Clinton.. Heck he has done even better, in 1996 September Unemployment was 6.7%, in september 2004 it is at 5.4! (http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/lfhist/cal$hlf.txt)
But hey why runi a good bush bashing with facts right?
Wonderful post, voting is no longer being treated as a right, its being treated as a job... If an election does not go youre way there has to be massive cheating, if it goes your way then you obviously cheated.
in 1996 Both parties decided to exclude Perot from the debates, in 2000 it was nader. Now the democrats have went even further than keeping Nader out of the debates, they are actively trynig to kick him off the ballot all together! I think that not requireing ID is amazingly stupid, given massive fraud on both sides how can a state *note this would only be the states job* require a photo ID. Either provide a voter card with a picture or require a license / non driver identification card with a non picture voter card..
But if the signal had to be very low strength and descrambled in some way (in order to avoid detection or bleed-over), wouldn't it be likely you'd need a larger piece of hardware for amplification/decoding?
Better yes, Larger no... Keep in mind the is the POUS, Im sure something less than the size of a cell phone would more than do the job of getting the signal, and decrypting it..
He has access to the best technology the CIA/NSA has..
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer! Jeffords didn't defect until 2001
Thank you for correcting me, so in 2001-2002 what bills did the democrats bring? (I was off by 5 months)
He appearently wasn't ideologically pure enough for the Bushies so Karl Rove decided to hold a dinner for Vermont Teachers and not invite him
All I know is Zell Miller gives a speech at the RNC and people are aflutter with massive reasons why he is only looking out for #1, Jefford changes parties thus shifting the balance in the senate and he is some sort of hero.
Fact is in 2001 the democrats, and many pundits really thought that the 2002 election would bring a democratic majority to the senate, and Jeffords would no be caucasing with that majority. Jeffords defection seemed to be another nail in the coffin.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh thanks thats insightful..
It's idiocy to imply that anyone who works fast food and isn't young is not motivated.
And its equally stupid to assume that because someone works in fast food they are *that* was what was being asked how is either one a vaild statement?
And neither you nor he have the balls to go into a McDonalds and say what you say here.
And what exactly have I said? I have said that if a person is not going above and beyond to improve their situation they are not motivated. Why dont you up your meds and read it again... Hell when consulting dried up (7 months with no work) I took to selling trinkets at parades, spending 8 hours in a van and two hours on the street for 50$...
You know what I was doing in the van? reading electronics and computer textbooks I borrowed from the library. So dont you give me crap about not working my way up and not knowing what its like. If any of those people go home from work and play X-box, or just smoke and watch TV I will absolutly say to them that they are unmotivated..
I was not suggesting it was easy, I was suggesting it was doable. My point is what that because someone works in fast food does not mean they are a motivated adult, its what they do above and beyond to imrpove their situation that matters..
Note that social security is not for public purposes it provides no service for the general public, I pay money in that I will get out.. So no by that definition it is most definatly not a tax.
My point is that Bush wanted to cut taxes across the board so he opened up a new low 10% bracket, and reduced the percentage of federal revenue comming from the middle class (by increasing the percentage of federal revenue comming in from the top tax brackets). He did such a good job at middle class tax cuts that the bottom 25% of Americans spend a larger percentage of their income paying taxes then the middle class. Because these guys put in so little anyway, he should have cut their taxes as well.
So they should get free SS?
This does not answer the question of the persons motivation? how busy are they trying to learn things that will make them more marketable..
But lets say that two burger flipper get married lets even say they only work 36 huors a week so they dont count as full time hires.
The lowest Minimum wage in the nation is 5.15 (http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/minimumwage/ staterates.cfm)
That couple makes 19 thousand a year which is above the poverty line so good for them. In some states the minimum wage is much higher (CT, OR, CA) are all around 7$ an hour in those states they make 25K a year, almost the poverty level for a family of four.
So does this person go home and make something happen or do they piss and moan about the crappy job they have?
Than do away with is all together dont shift the cost into income tax
Reguardless on where you stand on any of this, it is unfair for someone who is poor to spend a larger percentage of their income on taxes then someone in the middle class.
Except SS is not a tax like income is a tax. The government can do whatever it wants with income taxes, SS is marked for a retirement fund in which I will get the same as somebody making half as much as me so why should I pay more? thats the reason SS and income are seperate in the first place.
I can't think of any reason they should spend more.
They dont SS is not a tax...
Yes in 1996 there was no bubble burst, and nobody slammed planes into buildings... It was a different situation...
Are they motivated adults?
What? you have to be kidding, I was under the impression that payroll taxes cover things like Social security. Social security is supposed to work like this: you put something in you get something out. My SS benefit will be the exact same as someone who makes half of what I do, to you this is not fair? No instead we should more focus on income re-distribution.
If you graph salary v. % of income spent on taxes, it's really low as you approach that middle 50% but as you get up to the top 25% it goes up (no surprise here).
Because unlike Income taxes SS is aimed at all people equally is not so much a tax as an entitlement.
The best thing to do is scrap income tax altogether and go to a sales tax. I would keep the IRS around to precess receipts (everyone would be exempt on $amount a year in purchases so that the truely poor would not be taxed on food, cloths and the like. I would keep SS tax only because its not so much a tax as a fund, in princaple the government has to give that money back to you when there is retirement.
Most likely they will buy stock, or invest. Rich people dont throw money in their matress they invest it which create puts the tax cut money right back into the economy.
However 100 lower to middle class people getting a 200$ tax break will use the tax break to get the urging things in their life, like changing that timing belt or fixing the crack in the foundation. Heck I know I could use 200$ less taxes this year.
Pretty much everyone is getting a 3% cut in their taxes. Contrary to popular beilef thie was not a cut for the rich (The highest bracket pays 37.5% and the lowerst pays 15%..
That trickle down economy principle only works in some cases, when the rich don't mind spending the money they get. But the truth is a trickle up economy is more likely to work.
The rich buy IBM stock and the poor shop at walmart both create jobs, *in china*..
We, the poorer people are the ones who spend money because we don't have all we want or *need*.
Anyone who honestly believes that poverty is an extreem problem in America has *zero* perspective. Your worried about a timing belt? Do you think that is fomone owns a car, a tv, has access to the internet, has foor, a roof over their head, that somehow the system has failed them?
Lowering taxes for us does something substantial to the economy and to jobs in general. Lowering for the rich just makes rich people richer.
Again I am not rich but the CEO of my company is, he is very open and I watch him like a hawk to see just how he got where he is (he was not born into money). He works his tail off and invest money when I worked on the network at his house I saw not one dime hidden in a jar, he did however let me see his stock portfolio and trust me he does more for the economy than you or I do..
This might hold some water if the democrats actually did something in the senate. they are hell bent on keeping Bushes judical nominees through filibuster but voted for his tax cut, for NCLB, for the patriot act, for the war, for everything bush has done the democrats voted *for*..
Well Im pro-life, but I can point you at the libertarian candidate..
His claim that motivated teenagers work fast food or that motivated adults manage fast food? How is the any lsee substancial than your claim?
What would put an end to all of this stupidty would be pictures of his lef ant fight ears from the debate...
But you have no basis for that point, the two numbers measured the exact same thing in the exact same way.
I was very hard on greenspan in the late 90's and early 2k but I have to say that lately I have seen why he is Chairing the Fed and I am not. Hopefully other areas of the economy will recover before housing goes but I am already seenig it start to pop.
My wife and were looking for a house but at almost 200K for anything half way decent in MSP we held off. Well we just got pregnant (heh: we, not like Im the one with Morning Sickness) so now the search begins and in the few weeks we have been looking not only have we noticed the prices are slightly lower than they were a year ago but they seem to be going down further. We would wait a few more months if moving in the middle of a MN winter would not be hell..
Putting aside the useless comment. In a nation with a GDP of nearly 11 Trillion Dollars what exact impact do you thing 120 Billion would have?Seriously I have heard Kerry say he would use that money to provide health care, college education, more on homeland security (the name still gives me the willies). The fact is for all the Vietnam comparisions the amount of mony being spent on this war is *nothing*.
What about the immense budget deficit (spending what you don't have, essentially)? I suppose that has no effect on the economy too.
Hey who exactly spends the money again?? oh yea thats right congress... And how did the democrats vote on the tax cut? well it passed 92-3 in the senate.
Of defecit spending is on par with western nations in Europe. I agree is troublesome and I would love a balanced Budget amendment but neither party will let that happen..
Nor did Bill CLintons 6.7% whats your point?
I read one estimate that the true number of Americans of working age who do not have jobs is closer to 10%.
Source?
Anecdotally, I can believe it. I know people in recent years who tooks many, many months to find jobs.
Oh you have an Anecdote, well that cinches it.. We dont need any one to actually study the economy any more because we have you anecdotes. So long as we are throwing them Around I have changed Jobs 4 times sience October 2K and at no point in time was I without a job, I went from one to the next steadly increasing me pay..
In 1996 I was looking for work and the job market was much better than it is now.
Thats the nature of a Bubble, you know the tech bubblwe that burst under Clinton?
Same type of work, same area, different results in a dramatic way. Things have been much worse recently than they ever were in the mid-1990s, even pre-boom.
Because before the boom the was teh buildup to the boom..
So when Bush is seen with a 'traceiver' its because his campaign is not good at chaeting, they dont have the resourses or skills to do it right. But when CBS Screws up a memo its a grand and well organized plot...
As for the other explanations, I'm not buying them.
Of course your not it much more likely he was cheating than wearing a vest..
That is assuming of course that all things are equal. That the proportion of working age adults to children/elderly the country entering the country is the same as the existing percentage..
Look Im not voting for Bush but I think he has done a decent job with the economy, the bubble burst during the Clinton administration, and then we had 9/11 but if you look at
http://www.dallasfed.org/data/data/us-charts.pdf
It been pretty clear that with the exception of trade the economy has been gorwing at a steady rate. GDP has grown at a bit more than 3% a year for his term.
On the whole unemployment thing what is left to fix, its at the same place it was in 1996 under the all wise Bill Clinton.. Heck he has done even better, in 1996 September Unemployment was 6.7%, in september 2004 it is at 5.4! (http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/lfhist/cal$hlf.txt)
But hey why runi a good bush bashing with facts right?
in 1996 Both parties decided to exclude Perot from the debates, in 2000 it was nader. Now the democrats have went even further than keeping Nader out of the debates, they are actively trynig to kick him off the ballot all together! I think that not requireing ID is amazingly stupid, given massive fraud on both sides how can a state *note this would only be the states job* require a photo ID. Either provide a voter card with a picture or require a license / non driver identification card with a non picture voter card..
That is most likely body armor..
Better yes, Larger no... Keep in mind the is the POUS, Im sure something less than the size of a cell phone would more than do the job of getting the signal, and decrypting it..
He has access to the best technology the CIA/NSA has..
Thank you for correcting me, so in 2001-2002 what bills did the democrats bring? (I was off by 5 months)
He appearently wasn't ideologically pure enough for the Bushies so Karl Rove decided to hold a dinner for Vermont Teachers and not invite him
All I know is Zell Miller gives a speech at the RNC and people are aflutter with massive reasons why he is only looking out for #1, Jefford changes parties thus shifting the balance in the senate and he is some sort of hero.
Fact is in 2001 the democrats, and many pundits really thought that the 2002 election would bring a democratic majority to the senate, and Jeffords would no be caucasing with that majority. Jeffords defection seemed to be another nail in the coffin.