Re:The logistics of building the Death Star
on
Star Wars Minutiae
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· Score: 1, Informative
Look, I know you're making with the laff laff, but the simple truth is that too damn many mouth-breathers out there are going to take you seriously here.
You might want to mention, you know, in passing, maybe in parentheses, that what makes a terrorist a terrorist is the fact that he deliberately murders innocent people by blowing them to bits for absolutely no reason or by sawing off their heads while they scream and struggle and cry.
You might want to make mention of that. In passing. Just so the impressionable ones out there don't get confused.
Aren't real estate taxes based on the value of a home?
Property taxes you mean? Yes. But those are not federal. They're collected at the county level and used to fund things like public education. Which, if you think about it, is a massive problem and a complete mistake. The idea that the quality of public schools should be entirely dependent on the value of the property surrounding them is a recipe for...well, for just exactly the kinds of problems we see in public education today.
If I were king of the world, property taxes would be among the first things to go. I'm not, unfortunately...unless Proposition 209 passes, and we all pray to God it will.
Oh, now I see where you're coming from. You're thinking of government in completely the wrong terms. That makes much more sense.
You're wrong, but at least I understand why you're wrong now.
(Hint: Government does not pay out settlements when things go wrong. From there you should be able to figure out for yourself why the "government as insurer" model is wrong.)
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
What is a better indicator on how somebody will run the country then the way he HAS run the country.
How about the plan for the country? Let's say you look at George W. Bush's plan and conclude that if everything goes perfectly for four years, things will turn out pretty okay. (Sustainable economic growth, security at home and abroad, lower costs of medical care, reformed tax code, etc.) Then you look at John Kerry's plan and conclude that if everything goes perfectly for four years, things will be pretty bad. (Significantly higher taxes, surrender in the war on terror, a nightmarish boondoggle of a public health system that we can't pay for and that can't work anyway, ever more complex tax laws, etc.) Who, then would you vote for?
I'm not saying that your interpretation of the respective plans for the country will necessarily be the same as mine. I'm saying that failing to look at what the other guy on the ballot has planned for the next four years will lead to your making a really fucking stupid decision in the voting booth.
I'm gonna repeat myself here. This election is not a referendum on the George W. Bush presidency. It is the process by which we choose the next leader of our country. Do not go into the booth thinking only about George W. Bush and 2001-2005. Go into the booth thinking also about John Kerry and 2005-2009.
Incidentally, the reality is, even after Bush's tax cuts, the wealthy pay the lion's share of US income taxes.
That's not an accurate statement, but it's so incredibly easy to understand why you'd think that it is. It's got to do with the way business income is reported and taxed.
If you are the owner of a sole proprietorship or a part-owner in a partnership, your company's gross revenue shows up on your personal income tax return at the end of the year. It looks like you earned (say) three million dollars last year, but in point of fact that's the gross revenue generated by your business. When you apply your deductions --operating expenses, legal and professional fees, supplies, travel, depreciation, etc. --you might end up with a net taxable income of $300,000. But that isn't necessarily personal wealth. Odds are that that money went back into the business to pay for things that aren't strictly deductible.
So when you say that "the wealthy pay the lion's share," what you really ought to say is that "individual tax receipts in the top bracket account for the lion's share." That includes both wealthy individuals and the owners of non-incorporated small businesses.
One can conclude that without a drastic cut-back in government spending, that the flat tax rate would be higher for most Americans than the rate they pay now.
You'd think that, but the math doesn't work out that way. A flat tax of 13% and no deductions beyond a basic EITC would, according to some people who are much smarter than I am, result in increased total tax receipts at the end of the year. People who are in low brackets now and who take essentially no deductions would have their tax burden drastically reduced, while individuals that occupy the top bracket in gross income but that take advantage of a plethora of deductions would have their net tax burden increased.
We don't have to just argue about this in the abstract, either. Three years ago Russia instituted a 13% flat tax across the board, and they've seen both significant GDP growth and significantly higher tax receipts.
So on paper, a flat tax plus EITC is very compelling.
I thought his plan was to remove the tax cut that businesses already get for their overseas ventures.
That's kind of an obfuscation. The tax break in question equalizes taxes on foreign operations in order to allow US companies to be competitive overseas. It has nothing to do with either offshoring or outsourcing --or offshore outsourcing, for that matter. US-based businesses that move jobs overseas do so to take advantage of lower labor costs. And they will continue to do so even if Kerry does nothing more than persuade Congress to roll back the tax break you referred to, because the net savings of moving (say) a call center overseas far outweighs the additional taxes that business would have to pay.
The only way Kerry could effectively stop offshoring and offshore outsourcing would be to levy steep tax penalties, something which his plan does in fact include but that he usually neglects to mention at the campaign stop.
Something like 30% of US corporations pay tax.
That's not really an accurate description of the situation. It's much more complicated than that.
Here's how it works: 100% of US corporations are required to pay taxes on their gross revenues. That's what makes corporations different from other types of businesses. Other businesses --partnerships, sole proprietorships, that kind of thing--pass their revenues on to their owners, and the owners declare that revenue as income on their individual returns and are taxed accordingly. (Which is, incidentally, why Kerry's idea of raising taxes on people who earn more than $100,000 a year would be terrible for business. That would hit virtually ever sole proprietorship and small partnership in America real hard. Kerry likes to talk about it like it's a tax on only rich people, but that's not really true. Sorry for the digression.)
Just like individuals, corporations are eligible for tax deductions based on some types of expenses. If you give money to charity this year, you'll be eligible for a tax deduction on your end-of-year return. Deductions are subtracted from your gross income, effectively lowering your taxes.
Corporations get deductions too. Operating expenses are deductible, as are legal and professional fees, business travel, insurance, depreciation and so on.
If the total of a corporation's deductions approaches the total gross income of the company, that company pays little or no taxes.
Now, because the tax code is so ridiculously complex, it's become possible for corporations --just like individuals! --to find ways to lower their tax burden that were never really intended by Congress. There are practices that are technically legal but that weren't foreseen when the laws were written.
This is good for businesses, because they get to reduce their tax burden. The down-side, however, is that compliance costs for businesses are at an all-time high; the tax code is so complex, it costs a fortune for even a small company to have its taxes prepared. But the good news is that tax compliance costs for this year's return are deductible on next year's return! (The frogurt is also cursed.)
Obviously, the solution is to fix the tax code. The code is too complex, which means (1) it costs WAY too much to comply -- twenty cents for every dollar paid in taxes--and (2) loopholes abound.
George W. Bush's solution is large-scale tax reform. The time has come, he says, to look seriously at our federal tax system and consider alternatives. If there's a better solution than an income tax, let's find it. If the income tax is the right idea but a flat tax is best, let's talk about that. If it turns out that our progressive tax system is the right solution, then let's simplify the heck out of it to both increase receipts and reduce compliance costs.
John Kerry's solution to falling corporate income tax receipts, apparently, is to raise the top rate. Comprehensive tax reform is not a part of his platform. The words "tax reform" do not appear anywhere in the
Um. Not really. Property is a right; wealth is just the accumulation of property. People with more property don't have more or fewer rights than people with less property.
The cost of that protection is born by those who produce -- via taxes on income, capital gains, sales, value added, etc -- not by those who own the rights protected by the government.
Huh? Everybody enjoys property rights. I don't know what "those who own the rights protected by the government" means.
Redeploying ownership rights based on correction of this situation would radically change society for the better.
Well, obviously you're wrong--that experiment has been tried many times over the past century, remember --but that doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter if it would make everything perfect and wonderful, because it's still wrong. It's still morally wrong. So it doesn't matter what the net effect would be.
Three things. First, it's unconstitutional. The 16th amendment gives Congress the power to tax incomes, not net worth.
Second, taxing wealth is inherently immoral. A tax on income is a levy on economic activity. When a dollar changes hands, that dollar is taxed. The government, in essence, takes a piece of what you earn. And since you can't earn the same dollar more than once, it will never be taxed more than once. (There are exceptions, of course. Various Congresses have managed to jack up the tax code to the point where you are sometimes taxed twice on the same dollar of income. These are mistakes that must be rectified.) But a tax on wealth is a levy that's applied to the same dollar in your piggy bank every year. You don't just get taxed twice, you get taxed every year for as long as you hold on to that money. That amounts to the arbitrary seizure of property without due process. It's made worse because the only purpose for such a tax is to rob from the rich and give to the poor. No, a tax on wealth is unacceptable purely on moral grounds.
Finally, and most pragmatically of all, it would make it essentially impossible to save. We're trying to encourage working Americans to save money for their retirement so they don't become a crippling burden on public services like Social Security and Medicare. If we then turn around and tax those savings, we're lighting the fuse on a big ol' bankruptcy bomb.
"Ah," you say, "but we'll build in exemptions and shelters for people to save for a rainy day." The problem with the tax code today is that it's already too complex. And I don't mean that just because it's a pain in the rear. There's a very real cost associated with the complexity of the tax code: it's called the compliance cost. It's the sum of money that Americans and American businesses spend every year to comply with the tax laws. Know how much it is? Twenty cents on the dollar. For every dollar the American people and American businesses pay in taxes to the federal government, they're paying twenty cents in compliance costs. That includes everything from the accountant you hired to prepare your return to the penalty you had to pay because you screwed it up last year to the cost of the stamp you used to mail in your check. Compliance costs are completely out of control.
So making the tax code more complex isn't a very good solution to anything, unless you happen to be a tax accountant. And as we've seen, shelters erected with good intent end up being used for other purposes entirely. So a shelter-ridden wealth tax would end up not working anyway.
No, a wealth tax is not a good idea.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
Of course this is a referendum on whether Bush (the incumbent) is a capable president - that is the case with every mid-term election!
The expression "mid-term election" refers to those elections that take place in non-presidential-election years. The 2002 election was a midterm. The 2006 election will be one too. The 2004 election isn't.
Bush's complete incompetence and disturbing lack of credibility on any issue whatsoever makes him a less desirable candidate.
Setting aside your obvious hatred for a second, less desirable than what? Than Kerry? If that's your opinion, then you've already basically taken the approach I advocated, haven't you? You looked at the two candidates and chose the one you think will do the better job.
I suspect, though, that that's not what you've done. I suspect that you're saying Bush is less desirable than anybody. I suspect you'd cast your vote for Scruffy the Janitor if that's the other name that was on the ballot. I suspect that you're one of the "Anybody but Bush" crowd, and I have no patience for people who make decisions based on hatred.
Heh, when juxtaposed, your statements are exactly the same.
I think you're confused. You just compared my words with...my words. I'm glad they turned out to be the same, but beyond that, I'm unsure of your point.
The other guy -- "killjoe" --said this:
If you are better off, if your country is better off, if the world is a better place then it was four years ago then vote for Bush. Otherwise vote for somebody else.
I said this:
If you think Bush is the better man for the job between the candidates on the ballot, vote for him. If you think Kerry is a better choice, vote for him.
You're clear on the way in which these two things are not the same, right? You see the difference? The other guy, "killjoe," says, "Vote based on Bush's record regardless of who the other candidate is or whether he'll do a better or worse job." He says, in essence, "If you're not perfectly satisfied, vote for the other guy. Period, end of discussion."
I'm saying that this is an incredibly stupid position to take. When you go into the booth on November 2, you're not voting for or against Bush. You're voting for Bush or for Kerry. To cast your vote without giving even a moment's thought to whether Kerry would do be a better or worse president is incredibly wrongheaded.
Unless you're in the "Anybody but Bush" crowd, of course, in which case it makes perfect sense to you. But I've already explained my opinion of those fuckups.
Re:I'm a micro-view of the job situation
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
This would be assuming that you buy into the entire idea of forced government schooling, despite the abysmal failure of the system.
Feel strongly about it much?
I'm not gonna argue with you, but I'm going to give you a counterpoint. Education is the only solution to every social problem we have: crime, drugs, child abuse, public health shortfalls...you name it. The incidence of social problems among the more educated is less than it is among the less educated even when all other factors remain constant.
I'm all for privatizing things like health insurance and retirement insurance. Privatizing these things allows adults to take responsibility for themselves. But privatizing public education does nothing of the sort. A nine-year-old kid can't take responsibility for his education, and expecting parents who are undereducated to somehow acquire the means to thoroughly educate their kids when all too often the can't even be bothered to feed or clothe them properly is a joke.
The one honest-to-God way we have of making live better for successive generations is public education. If we pull dollars out of public education, all we're accomplishing is to give kids different levels of opportunity based on how much money their parents have or where they live. Are you okay with the idea that a kid's access to education ought to be dictated by what street he lives on?
The public education system in this country is flawed. The solution is to fix it, not to abandon it. Public education can work, we saw it work during the baby boom. Between about 1950 and about 1980 we educated some seventy million kids in this country. All of them perfectly? No, of course not. But the system worked. It's tested and proven. When things start to slip, the right answer is not to scrap the system. The right answer is to fix it.
Somehow. Like I said, I haven't figured that part out yet. Neither has anybody else, really. But the Bush "No Child Left Behind" initiative is a good start. Let's stop the hemorrhaging first; let's identify and fix the schools that are squeezing out woefully undereducated kids. Let's get every school up to a minimum acceptable standard, then let's start raising those standards every year. If we can pump more money into schools, great. If we can't, make 'em do more with the money they're already getting. Raise the tide, raise the boats.
Just a counterpoint.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
People are moved from the 'unemployed' to 'not in the labor force' how, exactly?
You are not a very smart person, are ya? I will say this to you for a third time. The monthly survey puts respondents into three categories: employed, unemployed and not in the labor force. If you've got a job, you're employed. If you don't have a job and are available to take one if you find it --not disabled, for instance --and are actively seeking one, you're unemployed. If you're not either of those two, you're not in the labor force.
That's the third time. Did you get it that time?
The last classification apparently includes housewives/househusbands, even if they've joined that part of the sample involuntarily.
The last classification includes anybody that's not seeking a job. If you're a housewife who's not seeking employment, you're not in the labor force. If you're a housewife who's seeking employment, you're unemployed.
This is really not a very complicated thing, you know?
In fact, from what I can see the GOVERNMENT decides who's looking for work and who isn't
No, it's entirely self-selected. A respondent is asked a series of questions, and if that respondent indicates with his answers that he's looking for work, he's marked in the unemployed column. The survey is, in fact, exactly the opposite of what you think it is.
Are you gonna come back with another post about how this is all bullshit, or are you gonna go look it up for yourself and become an educated citizen?
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 0, Troll
It always kinda cracks me up when I see another unrepentant communist come crawling out of the woodwork. It's like, "Where've you been for the past eighty years, man? How come you're living in the 1920s?"
Yes, boys and girls, I wrote "breaks" instead of "brakes." I'm as horrified as anybody at this revoltin' development. Teach me to comment right before bedtime.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
If you aren't drawing unemployment benefits the government has absolutely no way to track whether or not you're looking for work.
Please open your fucking eyes and read, okay? The BLS takes a monthly statistical sample. This sample is called the CPS, the current population survey. That is how the government knows how many people are employed, how many are unemployed and how many are not in the labor force.
This is exactly what I said the first time. You didn't read it. Nor did you go look it up for yourself. You just spewed.
Would you do me the courtesy, this time, of actually reading my fucking post before commenting on it? I don't expect you to go digging on the BLS web site --though you damn well ought to if you don't understand how labor statistics work --but I do expect you to at least read and understand the post to which you are commenting before you render your oh-so-insightful verdict on it.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
If he has not run the country to your satisfaction so far you have every right to expect that he will not run it to your satisfaction in the next cycle.
Again: not the point. We're not talking about what Bush will or will not do next time around. We're talking about which man, Bush or Kerry, is the better choice.
If you are better off, if your country is better off, if the world is a better place then it was four years ago then vote for Bush. Otherwise vote for somebody else.
I'm sure there are people out there with a dumber approach to casting their vote, but I'm damned if I know any.
Better suggestion: If you think Bush is the better man for the job between the candidates on the ballot, vote for him. If you think Kerry is a better choice, vote for him. Shocking, I know, but I'm a rebel.
Re:I'm a micro-view of the job situation
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
I graduated in May with a degree in Education and another in Computer Science. I can't get permanent work in either.
If you had a degree in nursing or an M.D., employers would be fighting tooth and nail just to get you to come by and see them. We have a huge shortage of medical professionals in this country. Not just RN's and MD's, either. Lab technicians, medical technologists, phlebotomists, EMT's, you name it.
The fact that the computer industry tanked around 1997 doesn't extrapolate to the entire economy.
Read again to understand this: there are too many teachers.
That is absolutely false. We don't have nearly enough teachers in this country. And the reason we don't have enough of them is that we can't pay even the ones we have decent salaries. When I figure out how to solve that problem, I'll drop you an e-mail.
Meanwhile, go get your EMT certification. You'll have a job within a couple of weeks.
Re:Ohio is a mess...
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Anyway, the Republicans have never and will never talk about redistribution of wealth.
That's not true. We Republicans talk about it whenever the subject comes up. We say that the redistribution of wealth by the state is (a) immoral and (b) unconstitutional. The conversation rarely goes beyond that, granted.
Cleveland is a mess because its economy is shot. For more than twenty years the city has had a distinctly business-unfriendly fiscal plan, and consequently has failed to attract any significant outside investment. It's a slippery slope, because a city that's seen as bad for business is going to have a hard time correcting that image. But it's not impossible. It just take sound fiscal planning.
The seizure of private property by the state is not the answer. Not only is it not the answer, it's not even an answer. It's immoral and wrong, before you even get into a discussion about whether it's good or bad.
Flat taxes and sales taxes are rigged against the poor
Sales taxes do, in fact, hurt the poor more than the wealthy, because poor people spend a bigger fraction of their income than wealthy people spend. This is offset to an extent by exemptions. Proposals to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax--proposals which have never gone anywhere--have traditionally included a fixed credit that effectively establishes a minimum taxable income level.
Flat taxes, of course, are not "rigged against the poor" at all. All citizens pay precisely the same fraction of their income in taxes. The only way you can come to the conclusion that they're rigged is if you start with the assumption that the wealthy should pay a bigger percentage, which is circular reasoning at its finest.
I can't for the life of me undersand why a the population of a state on the brink of disaster would vote for a party that still talks about supply side economics and trickle down.
'Cause it works? Nice job with the "brink of disaster" line, though. That's a play right out of Terry McAuliffe's book. Good job.
Re:Thats not the major problem
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
Believe it or not, he's actually got a plan for this. Unlike so many of his other proposals, this one doesn't revolve around ludicrously jacked revenue projections or unfunded mandates. Kerry's plan is to get Congress to pass a tax penalty on companies that send jobs overseas.
Might sound good to some, but the net result will be increased labor costs (or increased tax and tax-compliance costs) for business, which will have the net effect of putting the breaks on an economy which right now is growing at a nice, sustainable rate. Since Kerry's spending plan already calls for nothing less than a wildly unsustainable 12.5% GDP growth per year for 10 years, the additional labor and compliance costs will make little difference in terms of tax revenues and a balanced budget. But it will mean that those businesses are generating less overall economic activity, which will have a net negative effect on domestic job growth.
"Backfire," I think is the word I'm looking for here.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
The extra $5/hour is nothing compared to the thousands of dollars taxpayers are forced to spend to pay for healthcare, for education, for increased home prices.
Um, actually it is. Do you want to pay $4 for an orange? How about $8 for a head of lettuce?
Every time you go out to a restaurant, do you want to pay 40% more for your meal?
Illegal immigration is a huge problem. But so are farm labor costs. There's no easy solution. Well, that's not quite true; the easy solution is to increase subsidies. But that wouldn't be a good idea for obvious reasons.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you've been unemployed for more than 6 months, you drop off the charts because you're considered a lost cause.
That's not actually correct. It's been repeated a lot, but it's false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a number of methods to determine the nationwide unemployment figure, not just unemployment insurance claims. They also use something called the CPS, the current population survey. It's a statistical sample in which respondents are divided up into three groups. If you've got a job, you're employed. If you don't have a job but are available to take one and actively seeking one, you're unemployed. If you don't have a job and you aren't unemployed, you're out of the work force.
The 5.4% number, which is the one we're talking about here, does not come from unemployment insurance claims. It comes from the CPS, which means it counts people as unemployed for as long as they are looking for work.
The BLS has a web site, and on that site they publish the monthly employment report, a document called the "Employment Situation Summary." It's got the percentages (5.4% unemployment, employment-population ratio of 62.4%, etc.) but it also has all the raw data you could possibly want. Go look it up sometime. It's pretty interesting.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
It was a ridiculous oversimplification in 1984 and it remains so today. National elections are not votes of confidence. They are the process by which we choose our leaders for the next period of time (two, four or six years depending on the office). You don't vote based on what the guy in office has done. You vote based on which of the candidates you believe will do the better job going forward.
It always dismays me when people on either side of the aisle try to make an election into a referendum on the past four (or whatever) years. It's not.
Re:Where is American Society going
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Please reconcile your comment with recent Department of Labor statistics which report that entrepreneurship is at an all-time high.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When all you want to talk about is classism, every society appears stratified.
I don't even know what that means. The vast majority of the Iraqi people are living in freedom and safety. Things are improving steadily. Yes, there's violence. That's because there are a lot of people out there who really want to see Iraqi democracy fail. They either want to see a failed state --like Afghanistan pre-2002--or the restoration of a tyrannical state. They're not going to give up easily. But are things "spiraling out of control?" Not by any reasonable definition of that phrase.
We need to approximately double (at least) the number of boots on the ground.
And your qualifications as a military expert are what, exactly? On what do you base this assertion that we need to double the head-count? And what, exactly, do you propose that they do? What tasks do we not have enough troops to accomplish? The people that are conducting violence in Iraq are operating out of houses. Do you propose that we wage war against entire towns because terrorists hide somewhere in them? Do you propose that we march the 4th Infantry through the streets and conduct house-to-house searches? Do you propose that we put tanks and Brads at every intersection?
Do you, in other words, propose that we do all those things that "they," the "protesters," the pro-Saddam, pro-Baath marchers demanded that we not do?
What's your plan, Mr. Smart Guy?
I don't think the Republicans will institute a draft either, but then I reflect on the situation, and I can't imagine how they are going to get out of the pickle they are in.
Gee, I dunno. Maybe "they" are gonna continue training Iraqi security forces. Maybe "they" are gonna hold elections in January. Maybe "they" are gonna elect a legislature and write a constitution and establish a legitimate, sovereign government.
Maybe "they" are gonna continue to do what "they" have been doing since the summer of 2003. And maybe you are gonna sit there and cry doom and gloom until, before you know it, it's all over.
The next four years are going to be hell for whoever is in the Oval Office.
As if you had the foggiest inkling what it's actually like to be in the Oval Office.
The ones that were marching under the Answer banner, yes. The ones who were marching in support of --"in solidarity with," in revolutionary parlance --Saddam. They're the ones who were right, in your opinion.
you and your neocon ilk were wrong.
There's that word again. Let me remind you of what that word means. It means "nigger" or "kike." It means "somebody that I hate."
The administration deliberately misled the American people on all of these things.
I'm sure you believe that.
Even you should be able to admit that the occupation of Iraq has been a clusterf*** from beginning to end.
Well, seeing as how I spent nearly a year of my life there, I'm gonna go ahead and say "nuh-uh" at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, I know you're making with the laff laff, but the simple truth is that too damn many mouth-breathers out there are going to take you seriously here.
You might want to mention, you know, in passing, maybe in parentheses, that what makes a terrorist a terrorist is the fact that he deliberately murders innocent people by blowing them to bits for absolutely no reason or by sawing off their heads while they scream and struggle and cry.
You might want to make mention of that. In passing. Just so the impressionable ones out there don't get confused.
Aren't real estate taxes based on the value of a home?
...well, for just exactly the kinds of problems we see in public education today.
...unless Proposition 209 passes, and we all pray to God it will.
Property taxes you mean? Yes. But those are not federal. They're collected at the county level and used to fund things like public education. Which, if you think about it, is a massive problem and a complete mistake. The idea that the quality of public schools should be entirely dependent on the value of the property surrounding them is a recipe for
If I were king of the world, property taxes would be among the first things to go. I'm not, unfortunately
Oh, now I see where you're coming from. You're thinking of government in completely the wrong terms. That makes much more sense.
You're wrong, but at least I understand why you're wrong now.
(Hint: Government does not pay out settlements when things go wrong. From there you should be able to figure out for yourself why the "government as insurer" model is wrong.)
What is a better indicator on how somebody will run the country then the way he HAS run the country.
How about the plan for the country? Let's say you look at George W. Bush's plan and conclude that if everything goes perfectly for four years, things will turn out pretty okay. (Sustainable economic growth, security at home and abroad, lower costs of medical care, reformed tax code, etc.) Then you look at John Kerry's plan and conclude that if everything goes perfectly for four years, things will be pretty bad. (Significantly higher taxes, surrender in the war on terror, a nightmarish boondoggle of a public health system that we can't pay for and that can't work anyway, ever more complex tax laws, etc.) Who, then would you vote for?
I'm not saying that your interpretation of the respective plans for the country will necessarily be the same as mine. I'm saying that failing to look at what the other guy on the ballot has planned for the next four years will lead to your making a really fucking stupid decision in the voting booth.
I'm gonna repeat myself here. This election is not a referendum on the George W. Bush presidency. It is the process by which we choose the next leader of our country. Do not go into the booth thinking only about George W. Bush and 2001-2005. Go into the booth thinking also about John Kerry and 2005-2009.
Incidentally, the reality is, even after Bush's tax cuts, the wealthy pay the lion's share of US income taxes.
That's not an accurate statement, but it's so incredibly easy to understand why you'd think that it is. It's got to do with the way business income is reported and taxed.
If you are the owner of a sole proprietorship or a part-owner in a partnership, your company's gross revenue shows up on your personal income tax return at the end of the year. It looks like you earned (say) three million dollars last year, but in point of fact that's the gross revenue generated by your business. When you apply your deductions --operating expenses, legal and professional fees, supplies, travel, depreciation, etc. --you might end up with a net taxable income of $300,000. But that isn't necessarily personal wealth. Odds are that that money went back into the business to pay for things that aren't strictly deductible.
So when you say that "the wealthy pay the lion's share," what you really ought to say is that "individual tax receipts in the top bracket account for the lion's share." That includes both wealthy individuals and the owners of non-incorporated small businesses.
One can conclude that without a drastic cut-back in government spending, that the flat tax rate would be higher for most Americans than the rate they pay now.
You'd think that, but the math doesn't work out that way. A flat tax of 13% and no deductions beyond a basic EITC would, according to some people who are much smarter than I am, result in increased total tax receipts at the end of the year. People who are in low brackets now and who take essentially no deductions would have their tax burden drastically reduced, while individuals that occupy the top bracket in gross income but that take advantage of a plethora of deductions would have their net tax burden increased.
We don't have to just argue about this in the abstract, either. Three years ago Russia instituted a 13% flat tax across the board, and they've seen both significant GDP growth and significantly higher tax receipts.
So on paper, a flat tax plus EITC is very compelling.
I thought his plan was to remove the tax cut that businesses already get for their overseas ventures.
That's kind of an obfuscation. The tax break in question equalizes taxes on foreign operations in order to allow US companies to be competitive overseas. It has nothing to do with either offshoring or outsourcing --or offshore outsourcing, for that matter. US-based businesses that move jobs overseas do so to take advantage of lower labor costs. And they will continue to do so even if Kerry does nothing more than persuade Congress to roll back the tax break you referred to, because the net savings of moving (say) a call center overseas far outweighs the additional taxes that business would have to pay.
The only way Kerry could effectively stop offshoring and offshore outsourcing would be to levy steep tax penalties, something which his plan does in fact include but that he usually neglects to mention at the campaign stop.
Something like 30% of US corporations pay tax.
That's not really an accurate description of the situation. It's much more complicated than that.
Here's how it works: 100% of US corporations are required to pay taxes on their gross revenues. That's what makes corporations different from other types of businesses. Other businesses --partnerships, sole proprietorships, that kind of thing--pass their revenues on to their owners, and the owners declare that revenue as income on their individual returns and are taxed accordingly. (Which is, incidentally, why Kerry's idea of raising taxes on people who earn more than $100,000 a year would be terrible for business. That would hit virtually ever sole proprietorship and small partnership in America real hard. Kerry likes to talk about it like it's a tax on only rich people, but that's not really true. Sorry for the digression.)
Just like individuals, corporations are eligible for tax deductions based on some types of expenses. If you give money to charity this year, you'll be eligible for a tax deduction on your end-of-year return. Deductions are subtracted from your gross income, effectively lowering your taxes.
Corporations get deductions too. Operating expenses are deductible, as are legal and professional fees, business travel, insurance, depreciation and so on.
If the total of a corporation's deductions approaches the total gross income of the company, that company pays little or no taxes.
Now, because the tax code is so ridiculously complex, it's become possible for corporations --just like individuals! --to find ways to lower their tax burden that were never really intended by Congress. There are practices that are technically legal but that weren't foreseen when the laws were written.
This is good for businesses, because they get to reduce their tax burden. The down-side, however, is that compliance costs for businesses are at an all-time high; the tax code is so complex, it costs a fortune for even a small company to have its taxes prepared. But the good news is that tax compliance costs for this year's return are deductible on next year's return! (The frogurt is also cursed.)
Obviously, the solution is to fix the tax code. The code is too complex, which means (1) it costs WAY too much to comply -- twenty cents for every dollar paid in taxes--and (2) loopholes abound.
George W. Bush's solution is large-scale tax reform. The time has come, he says, to look seriously at our federal tax system and consider alternatives. If there's a better solution than an income tax, let's find it. If the income tax is the right idea but a flat tax is best, let's talk about that. If it turns out that our progressive tax system is the right solution, then let's simplify the heck out of it to both increase receipts and reduce compliance costs.
John Kerry's solution to falling corporate income tax receipts, apparently, is to raise the top rate. Comprehensive tax reform is not a part of his platform. The words "tax reform" do not appear anywhere in the
Wealth is a legal right.
Um. Not really. Property is a right; wealth is just the accumulation of property. People with more property don't have more or fewer rights than people with less property.
The cost of that protection is born by those who produce -- via taxes on income, capital gains, sales, value added, etc -- not by those who own the rights protected by the government.
Huh? Everybody enjoys property rights. I don't know what "those who own the rights protected by the government" means.
Redeploying ownership rights based on correction of this situation would radically change society for the better.
Well, obviously you're wrong--that experiment has been tried many times over the past century, remember --but that doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter if it would make everything perfect and wonderful, because it's still wrong. It's still morally wrong. So it doesn't matter what the net effect would be.
How about a progressive tax on wealth?
Three things. First, it's unconstitutional. The 16th amendment gives Congress the power to tax incomes, not net worth.
Second, taxing wealth is inherently immoral. A tax on income is a levy on economic activity. When a dollar changes hands, that dollar is taxed. The government, in essence, takes a piece of what you earn. And since you can't earn the same dollar more than once, it will never be taxed more than once. (There are exceptions, of course. Various Congresses have managed to jack up the tax code to the point where you are sometimes taxed twice on the same dollar of income. These are mistakes that must be rectified.) But a tax on wealth is a levy that's applied to the same dollar in your piggy bank every year. You don't just get taxed twice, you get taxed every year for as long as you hold on to that money. That amounts to the arbitrary seizure of property without due process. It's made worse because the only purpose for such a tax is to rob from the rich and give to the poor. No, a tax on wealth is unacceptable purely on moral grounds.
Finally, and most pragmatically of all, it would make it essentially impossible to save. We're trying to encourage working Americans to save money for their retirement so they don't become a crippling burden on public services like Social Security and Medicare. If we then turn around and tax those savings, we're lighting the fuse on a big ol' bankruptcy bomb.
"Ah," you say, "but we'll build in exemptions and shelters for people to save for a rainy day." The problem with the tax code today is that it's already too complex. And I don't mean that just because it's a pain in the rear. There's a very real cost associated with the complexity of the tax code: it's called the compliance cost. It's the sum of money that Americans and American businesses spend every year to comply with the tax laws. Know how much it is? Twenty cents on the dollar. For every dollar the American people and American businesses pay in taxes to the federal government, they're paying twenty cents in compliance costs. That includes everything from the accountant you hired to prepare your return to the penalty you had to pay because you screwed it up last year to the cost of the stamp you used to mail in your check. Compliance costs are completely out of control.
So making the tax code more complex isn't a very good solution to anything, unless you happen to be a tax accountant. And as we've seen, shelters erected with good intent end up being used for other purposes entirely. So a shelter-ridden wealth tax would end up not working anyway.
No, a wealth tax is not a good idea.
Of course this is a referendum on whether Bush (the incumbent) is a capable president - that is the case with every mid-term election!
...my words. I'm glad they turned out to be the same, but beyond that, I'm unsure of your point.
The expression "mid-term election" refers to those elections that take place in non-presidential-election years. The 2002 election was a midterm. The 2006 election will be one too. The 2004 election isn't.
Bush's complete incompetence and disturbing lack of credibility on any issue whatsoever makes him a less desirable candidate.
Setting aside your obvious hatred for a second, less desirable than what? Than Kerry? If that's your opinion, then you've already basically taken the approach I advocated, haven't you? You looked at the two candidates and chose the one you think will do the better job.
I suspect, though, that that's not what you've done. I suspect that you're saying Bush is less desirable than anybody. I suspect you'd cast your vote for Scruffy the Janitor if that's the other name that was on the ballot. I suspect that you're one of the "Anybody but Bush" crowd, and I have no patience for people who make decisions based on hatred.
Heh, when juxtaposed, your statements are exactly the same.
I think you're confused. You just compared my words with
The other guy -- "killjoe" --said this:
If you are better off, if your country is better off, if the world is a better place then it was four years ago then vote for Bush. Otherwise vote for somebody else.
I said this:
If you think Bush is the better man for the job between the candidates on the ballot, vote for him. If you think Kerry is a better choice, vote for him.
You're clear on the way in which these two things are not the same, right? You see the difference? The other guy, "killjoe," says, "Vote based on Bush's record regardless of who the other candidate is or whether he'll do a better or worse job." He says, in essence, "If you're not perfectly satisfied, vote for the other guy. Period, end of discussion."
I'm saying that this is an incredibly stupid position to take. When you go into the booth on November 2, you're not voting for or against Bush. You're voting for Bush or for Kerry. To cast your vote without giving even a moment's thought to whether Kerry would do be a better or worse president is incredibly wrongheaded.
Unless you're in the "Anybody but Bush" crowd, of course, in which case it makes perfect sense to you. But I've already explained my opinion of those fuckups.
This would be assuming that you buy into the entire idea of forced government schooling, despite the abysmal failure of the system.
...you name it. The incidence of social problems among the more educated is less than it is among the less educated even when all other factors remain constant.
Feel strongly about it much?
I'm not gonna argue with you, but I'm going to give you a counterpoint. Education is the only solution to every social problem we have: crime, drugs, child abuse, public health shortfalls
I'm all for privatizing things like health insurance and retirement insurance. Privatizing these things allows adults to take responsibility for themselves. But privatizing public education does nothing of the sort. A nine-year-old kid can't take responsibility for his education, and expecting parents who are undereducated to somehow acquire the means to thoroughly educate their kids when all too often the can't even be bothered to feed or clothe them properly is a joke.
The one honest-to-God way we have of making live better for successive generations is public education. If we pull dollars out of public education, all we're accomplishing is to give kids different levels of opportunity based on how much money their parents have or where they live. Are you okay with the idea that a kid's access to education ought to be dictated by what street he lives on?
The public education system in this country is flawed. The solution is to fix it, not to abandon it. Public education can work, we saw it work during the baby boom. Between about 1950 and about 1980 we educated some seventy million kids in this country. All of them perfectly? No, of course not. But the system worked. It's tested and proven. When things start to slip, the right answer is not to scrap the system. The right answer is to fix it.
Somehow. Like I said, I haven't figured that part out yet. Neither has anybody else, really. But the Bush "No Child Left Behind" initiative is a good start. Let's stop the hemorrhaging first; let's identify and fix the schools that are squeezing out woefully undereducated kids. Let's get every school up to a minimum acceptable standard, then let's start raising those standards every year. If we can pump more money into schools, great. If we can't, make 'em do more with the money they're already getting. Raise the tide, raise the boats.
Just a counterpoint.
People are moved from the 'unemployed' to 'not in the labor force' how, exactly?
You are not a very smart person, are ya? I will say this to you for a third time. The monthly survey puts respondents into three categories: employed, unemployed and not in the labor force. If you've got a job, you're employed. If you don't have a job and are available to take one if you find it --not disabled, for instance --and are actively seeking one, you're unemployed. If you're not either of those two, you're not in the labor force.
That's the third time. Did you get it that time?
The last classification apparently includes housewives/househusbands, even if they've joined that part of the sample involuntarily.
The last classification includes anybody that's not seeking a job. If you're a housewife who's not seeking employment, you're not in the labor force. If you're a housewife who's seeking employment, you're unemployed.
This is really not a very complicated thing, you know?
In fact, from what I can see the GOVERNMENT decides who's looking for work and who isn't
No, it's entirely self-selected. A respondent is asked a series of questions, and if that respondent indicates with his answers that he's looking for work, he's marked in the unemployed column. The survey is, in fact, exactly the opposite of what you think it is.
Are you gonna come back with another post about how this is all bullshit, or are you gonna go look it up for yourself and become an educated citizen?
It always kinda cracks me up when I see another unrepentant communist come crawling out of the woodwork. It's like, "Where've you been for the past eighty years, man? How come you're living in the 1920s?"
Yes, boys and girls, I wrote "breaks" instead of "brakes." I'm as horrified as anybody at this revoltin' development. Teach me to comment right before bedtime.
If you aren't drawing unemployment benefits the government has absolutely no way to track whether or not you're looking for work.
Please open your fucking eyes and read, okay? The BLS takes a monthly statistical sample. This sample is called the CPS, the current population survey. That is how the government knows how many people are employed, how many are unemployed and how many are not in the labor force.
This is exactly what I said the first time. You didn't read it. Nor did you go look it up for yourself. You just spewed.
Would you do me the courtesy, this time, of actually reading my fucking post before commenting on it? I don't expect you to go digging on the BLS web site --though you damn well ought to if you don't understand how labor statistics work --but I do expect you to at least read and understand the post to which you are commenting before you render your oh-so-insightful verdict on it.
If he has not run the country to your satisfaction so far you have every right to expect that he will not run it to your satisfaction in the next cycle.
Again: not the point. We're not talking about what Bush will or will not do next time around. We're talking about which man, Bush or Kerry, is the better choice.
If you are better off, if your country is better off, if the world is a better place then it was four years ago then vote for Bush. Otherwise vote for somebody else.
I'm sure there are people out there with a dumber approach to casting their vote, but I'm damned if I know any.
Better suggestion: If you think Bush is the better man for the job between the candidates on the ballot, vote for him. If you think Kerry is a better choice, vote for him. Shocking, I know, but I'm a rebel.
I graduated in May with a degree in Education and another in Computer Science. I can't get permanent work in either.
If you had a degree in nursing or an M.D., employers would be fighting tooth and nail just to get you to come by and see them. We have a huge shortage of medical professionals in this country. Not just RN's and MD's, either. Lab technicians, medical technologists, phlebotomists, EMT's, you name it.
The fact that the computer industry tanked around 1997 doesn't extrapolate to the entire economy.
Read again to understand this: there are too many teachers.
That is absolutely false. We don't have nearly enough teachers in this country. And the reason we don't have enough of them is that we can't pay even the ones we have decent salaries. When I figure out how to solve that problem, I'll drop you an e-mail.
Meanwhile, go get your EMT certification. You'll have a job within a couple of weeks.
Anyway, the Republicans have never and will never talk about redistribution of wealth.
That's not true. We Republicans talk about it whenever the subject comes up. We say that the redistribution of wealth by the state is (a) immoral and (b) unconstitutional. The conversation rarely goes beyond that, granted.
Cleveland is a mess because its economy is shot. For more than twenty years the city has had a distinctly business-unfriendly fiscal plan, and consequently has failed to attract any significant outside investment. It's a slippery slope, because a city that's seen as bad for business is going to have a hard time correcting that image. But it's not impossible. It just take sound fiscal planning.
The seizure of private property by the state is not the answer. Not only is it not the answer, it's not even an answer. It's immoral and wrong, before you even get into a discussion about whether it's good or bad.
Flat taxes and sales taxes are rigged against the poor
Sales taxes do, in fact, hurt the poor more than the wealthy, because poor people spend a bigger fraction of their income than wealthy people spend. This is offset to an extent by exemptions. Proposals to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax--proposals which have never gone anywhere--have traditionally included a fixed credit that effectively establishes a minimum taxable income level.
Flat taxes, of course, are not "rigged against the poor" at all. All citizens pay precisely the same fraction of their income in taxes. The only way you can come to the conclusion that they're rigged is if you start with the assumption that the wealthy should pay a bigger percentage, which is circular reasoning at its finest.
I can't for the life of me undersand why a the population of a state on the brink of disaster would vote for a party that still talks about supply side economics and trickle down.
'Cause it works? Nice job with the "brink of disaster" line, though. That's a play right out of Terry McAuliffe's book. Good job.
Arrogant much, Lowell?
Now what he might do about it I dont know
Believe it or not, he's actually got a plan for this. Unlike so many of his other proposals, this one doesn't revolve around ludicrously jacked revenue projections or unfunded mandates. Kerry's plan is to get Congress to pass a tax penalty on companies that send jobs overseas.
Might sound good to some, but the net result will be increased labor costs (or increased tax and tax-compliance costs) for business, which will have the net effect of putting the breaks on an economy which right now is growing at a nice, sustainable rate. Since Kerry's spending plan already calls for nothing less than a wildly unsustainable 12.5% GDP growth per year for 10 years, the additional labor and compliance costs will make little difference in terms of tax revenues and a balanced budget. But it will mean that those businesses are generating less overall economic activity, which will have a net negative effect on domestic job growth.
"Backfire," I think is the word I'm looking for here.
The extra $5/hour is nothing compared to the thousands of dollars taxpayers are forced to spend to pay for healthcare, for education, for increased home prices.
Um, actually it is. Do you want to pay $4 for an orange? How about $8 for a head of lettuce?
Every time you go out to a restaurant, do you want to pay 40% more for your meal?
Illegal immigration is a huge problem. But so are farm labor costs. There's no easy solution. Well, that's not quite true; the easy solution is to increase subsidies. But that wouldn't be a good idea for obvious reasons.
If you've been unemployed for more than 6 months, you drop off the charts because you're considered a lost cause.
That's not actually correct. It's been repeated a lot, but it's false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a number of methods to determine the nationwide unemployment figure, not just unemployment insurance claims. They also use something called the CPS, the current population survey. It's a statistical sample in which respondents are divided up into three groups. If you've got a job, you're employed. If you don't have a job but are available to take one and actively seeking one, you're unemployed. If you don't have a job and you aren't unemployed, you're out of the work force.
The 5.4% number, which is the one we're talking about here, does not come from unemployment insurance claims. It comes from the CPS, which means it counts people as unemployed for as long as they are looking for work.
The BLS has a web site, and on that site they publish the monthly employment report, a document called the "Employment Situation Summary." It's got the percentages (5.4% unemployment, employment-population ratio of 62.4%, etc.) but it also has all the raw data you could possibly want. Go look it up sometime. It's pretty interesting.
It was a ridiculous oversimplification in 1984 and it remains so today. National elections are not votes of confidence. They are the process by which we choose our leaders for the next period of time (two, four or six years depending on the office). You don't vote based on what the guy in office has done. You vote based on which of the candidates you believe will do the better job going forward.
It always dismays me when people on either side of the aisle try to make an election into a referendum on the past four (or whatever) years. It's not.
Please reconcile your comment with recent Department of Labor statistics which report that entrepreneurship is at an all-time high.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When all you want to talk about is classism, every society appears stratified.
Events are spiralling out of control in Iraq.
I don't even know what that means. The vast majority of the Iraqi people are living in freedom and safety. Things are improving steadily. Yes, there's violence. That's because there are a lot of people out there who really want to see Iraqi democracy fail. They either want to see a failed state --like Afghanistan pre-2002--or the restoration of a tyrannical state. They're not going to give up easily. But are things "spiraling out of control?" Not by any reasonable definition of that phrase.
We need to approximately double (at least) the number of boots on the ground.
And your qualifications as a military expert are what, exactly? On what do you base this assertion that we need to double the head-count? And what, exactly, do you propose that they do? What tasks do we not have enough troops to accomplish? The people that are conducting violence in Iraq are operating out of houses. Do you propose that we wage war against entire towns because terrorists hide somewhere in them? Do you propose that we march the 4th Infantry through the streets and conduct house-to-house searches? Do you propose that we put tanks and Brads at every intersection?
Do you, in other words, propose that we do all those things that "they," the "protesters," the pro-Saddam, pro-Baath marchers demanded that we not do?
What's your plan, Mr. Smart Guy?
I don't think the Republicans will institute a draft either, but then I reflect on the situation, and I can't imagine how they are going to get out of the pickle they are in.
Gee, I dunno. Maybe "they" are gonna continue training Iraqi security forces. Maybe "they" are gonna hold elections in January. Maybe "they" are gonna elect a legislature and write a constitution and establish a legitimate, sovereign government.
Maybe "they" are gonna continue to do what "they" have been doing since the summer of 2003. And maybe you are gonna sit there and cry doom and gloom until, before you know it, it's all over.
The next four years are going to be hell for whoever is in the Oval Office.
As if you had the foggiest inkling what it's actually like to be in the Oval Office.
"They" were the protesters.
The ones that were marching under the Answer banner, yes. The ones who were marching in support of --"in solidarity with," in revolutionary parlance --Saddam. They're the ones who were right, in your opinion.
you and your neocon ilk were wrong.
There's that word again. Let me remind you of what that word means. It means "nigger" or "kike." It means "somebody that I hate."
The administration deliberately misled the American people on all of these things.
I'm sure you believe that.
Even you should be able to admit that the occupation of Iraq has been a clusterf*** from beginning to end.
Well, seeing as how I spent nearly a year of my life there, I'm gonna go ahead and say "nuh-uh" at this point.
I don't think lying is something to be proud of.
Then perhaps it might be wise to stop doing it.