Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: Reuters/Ipsos poll

[ChrisL]

you have to take into account the instability in that part of the world

Israel matters, the US doesn't....


Since 1998, that attitude has grown our debt four fold....

Yes, Israel matters, and so does the United States.

What is it with some of you and your absolute obsession with Israel? Yeah, I agree that we give them too much, but that is our own fault. We should at least cut down on the amount of money we give ALL of the other countries and start concentrating on our own problems here at home. However, world stability is a hell of an important issue in today's day and age. That is something we also have to be concerned with because it would definitely affect us sooner or later.

 

[ChrisL]

Our taxation system should NOT be used for democrats' social justice schemes. That is not what it is all about, and that is not what America is all about.

Wrong. That is exactly what taxes are for, and exactly what America is about.

What our taxes are not for is subsidies to oil companies, and defense contractors.

That is not what our taxes are for, or what America is about.

And just so you know, the general welfare of the people is not a scheme. Taking away the general welfare of the people to enrich a few is a scheme.

No, our taxes are not about your social justice schemes at all. I don't think you know what "general welfare" means either.

 

[LaDairis]

The invasion of Iraq

Tucker Carlson of Fox had a "$$ trillions" as the total cost of invading Iraq to date....


Why did we invade Iraq?

Did Iraq have WMD? NO
Was Iraq a threat? NO
Did Iraq have anything to do with 911? NO


So tell us, supporter of Israel, WHY did we, the United States, invade Iraq, and cost ourselves TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS according to the "news" network that supported the Iraq invasion the most - and they ALL supported it....

 

[j-mac]

So, how do we convince the people who are now hooked on voting themselves freebies

The typical "Karl Rove voter" is just as eager to get a handout as the Democrat voter who refuses to work.

How do we convince people who never think, never question, and don't have any intelligence????

I don't know....

I think we need a "climate change" type effort...Look, progs have convinced lots of people in the agenda paid for science of climate change, so we need to do that with our budget concerns.

Idiots in government have already borrowed and spent several future generation's money. This spending spree WILL come to an end one way or another. Trump is pursuing the only hope we have left, aggressive economic growth. We are in a debt hole so large now we can't tax or spending cut our way out.

I refuse to believe there isn't a solution...

 

[ChrisL]

Taxation is supposed to be equal. IOW, unless someone is gaining more of something by being taxed, then they should not have to pay more percentage of their income in taxes. Rich people get nothing more than a poor person does if they pay more percentage of their income to taxes. They get the same roads and all the same benefits as anyone else. It is discriminatory to expect them to pay for our politicians' escapades.

Why do trucks pay more road tax than bicycles?

Because they do more damage to the roads because they weigh more.

 

[Harpy Eagle]

I’ve said this a thousand times before...those here whom love to pretend to care about the debt and deficit spending refuse to wrap their heads around the fact that this nation has obviously reached the point where it will always carry a debt-load relative to GDP.
Trust me when I tell you...none of the self proclaimed fiscally responsible here can tell you how their quality of lives are impacted by debt and spending nor can they tell you how their children and grandchildren will be affected by it....All they know is they are supposed to be outraged by it if the Orange Man is writing the checks...that’s all.
Ain’t that right Golfing Gator ?

The current Debt to GDP ratio is 105.4%, that is more than 3 times what it was when Reagan was elected. And this is during a booming economy. The debt to GDP ratio increased 25% during the last recession, we do that again and all of a sudden our debt to GDP is at 132%, this is not sustainable.

If you do not understand how debt can cause harm in the long run read up on Greece.

In 2019 we paid almost 400 billion dollars just on interest on the debt. That is 400 billion that could have gone to bolster our military or fix our failing bridges and damns and highways. But instead we it was wasted...and you are too fucking stupid to understand why that is bad.

I got 100 bucks that says you are above your head in debt and will die and leave it all for your kids to pay off because you are a sorry fucking freeloader.

 

[LaDairis]

Yes, Israel matters

And THAT is the problem of the post 1998 GOP.....

Israel matters

The US federal deficit and debt do not



Just WHEN will FRAUD JESUS float down from the clouds?

How many more Muslims must the US kill for that to happen??

 

[Harpy Eagle]

So, how do we convince the people who are now hooked on voting themselves freebies

The typical "Karl Rove voter" is just as eager to get a handout as the Democrat voter who refuses to work.

How do we convince people who never think, never question, and don't have any intelligence????

I don't know....

I think we need a "climate change" type effort...Look, progs have convinced lots of people in the agenda paid for science of climate change, so we need to do that with our budget concerns.

Idiots in government have already borrowed and spent several future generation's money. This spending spree WILL come to an end one way or another. Trump is pursuing the only hope we have left, aggressive economic growth. We are in a debt hole so large now we can't tax or spending cut our way out.

I refuse to believe there isn't a solution...

There is a solution, hold our elected officials accountable for their spending, keep voting them out till someone cuts spending

 

[LaDairis]

The current Debt to GDP ratio is 105.4%, that is more than 3 times what it was when Reagan was elected. And this is during a booming economy. The debt to GDP ratio increased 25% during the last recession, we do that again and all of a sudden our debt to GDP is at 132%, this is not sustainable.

If you do not understand how debt can cause harm in the long run read up on Greece.

We need to energize the Libertarian Party. It is our only hope. The typical "Republican" today like Chrisi is TOO DUMB to understand basic math and simply PARROTS the same liars who lied us into Iraq and Afghan....

 

[2aguy]

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The idea of imposing a wealth tax on the richest Americans has elicited sharply divergent views across a spectrum of politicians, with President Donald Trump branding it socialist and progressive Democratic presidential contenders Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders prominently endorsing it.

snip

Among the 4,441 respondents to the poll, 64% strongly or somewhat agreed that “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs” - the essence of a wealth tax. Results were similar across gender, race and household income. While support among Democrats was stronger, at 77%, a majority of Republicans, 53%, also agreed with the idea.

Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: Reuters/Ipsos poll

If this is true, then the experiment called the United States of America as we know it is done....

Most Americans don't understand how a tax on the rich hits the middle income earners right in the face....they are told millionaires will pay, then end up with a tax hike on people who are middle income.......the money is in the middle income, which is why the democrat lie about taxing the rich.....lull the dupes into giving them more taxing power, and all of a sudden, they are taking home less in their checks.

 

[there4eyeM]

Society is a collective effort. Everyone in the society benefits from the others in that society. The amount one benefits, or profits, should indicate the level that the person participates, especially monetarily. That is only fair. It should be voluntary, like tithing.

 

[LaDairis]

hold our elected officials accountable for their spending, keep voting them out till someone cuts spending

The "US" media doesn't do that.

The Democrats do not care.

The post 1998 Republicans do not understand basic math and only care about killing Muslims until FRAUD JESUS floats down from the clouds....


The LIBERTARIAN PARTY is our ONLY HOPE

 

[task0778]

Wealth-tax supporters do not seem concerned about the likely damage to economic growth. But they should know that from a practical standpoint, wealth taxes in other countries have raised little money and have been a beast to administer.

More than a dozen European countries used to have wealth taxes, but nearly all of these countries repealed them, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Sweden. Wealth taxes survive only in Norway, Spain, and Switzerland.

Before repeal, European wealth taxes — with a variety of rates and bases — tended to raise only about 0.2 percent of gross domestic product in revenue, based on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data. That is only 1/40th as much as the U.S. federal income tax raises.

Yet for little revenue, wealth taxes are difficult to administer and enforce. They may require taxpayers to report the values of financial securities, homes, furniture, artwork, jewelry, antiques, vehicles, boats, pension rights, family businesses, farm assets, land, intellectual property, and much else. But owners do not know the market values of many assets, and values change over time, so costly wealth-tax compliance would only make accountants wealthy.

And what about wealth held abroad? There is no way the Internal Revenue Service would be able to track down and value everything U.S. residents owned on a global basis.

In the 1970s, the British Labour government pushed for a national wealth tax and failed. The minister in charge, Denis Healey, said in his memoirs, “We had committed ourselves to a Wealth Tax; but in five years I found it impossible to draft one which would yield enough revenue to be worth the administrative cost and political hassle.”

Another problem is that wealth taxes have disappearing tax bases. In Europe, politicians carved out an increasing number of exemptions from tax bases to appease special interests. Exemptions were often provided for farm assets, small businesses, pension assets, artwork, and other items.

And here’s the kicker: Since the base of wealth taxes is net wealth, debt is deductible. That allowed wealthy Europeans to jack up their borrowing and invest in the exempted assets to shrink their tax bases. If a wealth tax were imposed in the United States, the farm lobby would most certainly get farmland excluded. Then rich people would borrow heavily and invest in farmland, thus shrinking the tax base and distorting the economy.

Magnus Henrekson and Gunnar Du Rietz studied the history of the Swedish wealth tax. They found that “people could with impunity evade the tax by taking appropriate measures,” including taking on excessive debt to buy exempted assets.

The Swedish wealth tax also prompted large outflows of capital and the expatriation of well-known business people, such as the founder of Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad. Henrekson and Du Rietz conclude, “The magnitude of these outflows was a major motivation for the repeal of the wealth tax in 2007.”

It was the same story with the French wealth tax, which was imposed in 1982 and repealed in 2017. Over the years, a parade of French businesspeople and celebrities left the country to avoid the tax — many going to Belgium, which is also a high-tax country but has no wealth tax. The government estimated in 2017 that “some 10,000 people with 35 billion euros worth of assets left in the past 15 years” for tax reasons. French economist Eric Pichet estimated that the outflows were much larger.

As the wealthy moved abroad, the government lost revenues from a range of other taxes they would have paid. Pichet calculated that while the wealth tax raised about 3.5 billion euros a year, the government lost 7 billion euros a year from reductions in other taxes.

In a 2018 article for the International Monetary Fund, economists James Brumby and Michael Keen conclude: “The design of wealth taxes is notoriously prone to lobbying and the granting of exemptions that the wealthiest can exploit. Furthermore, the rich have proved adept avoiding or evading taxes by placing their wealth abroad in low tax jurisdictions.”
.
.
If liberals want tax fairness, they should push to close existing income-tax loopholes. The tax exemption for municipal-bond interest, for example, would be a good target because it mainly benefits the wealthy. Closing such loopholes would reduce distortions and simplify taxation — the exact opposite effects of adding a wealth tax.

Why European Nations Ended Wealth Taxes | National Review


Progressive Liberals always make the same mistake: they get out the calculators and look at the best estimates of current wealth and figure out that by taking 1% or 2% (whatever) of all that means they get hundreds of billions of dollars in more revenue. Except that it never works out that way. NEVER HAS AND NEVER WILL. Why? Because rich people can afford to find ways to reduce their tax burden one way or another, hook or crook. They hire smart people to find loopholes or bribe the pols to create loopholes and then they exploit them. Or they flat out sell out, pack up, and leave. There's an associated cost to that for our economy.

 

[ChrisL]

Yes, Israel matters

And THAT is the problem of the post 1998 GOP.....

Israel matters

The US federal deficit and debt do not



Just WHEN will FRAUD JESUS float down from the clouds?

How many more Muslims must the US kill for that to happen??

You are not supposed to edit people's posts. Why would you cut out that I said "so does the United States." You are just going off the rails now.

If the Muslims are fucking up everything for everyone, then they need to cease and desist by force if necessary. Like it or not, we have a "global economy" and everything that affects the rest of the world, affects us as well.

 

[Mac-7]

National Debt No Big Deal? More Economists Unconcerned With Trillion-Dollar Government Deficits

he Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2019, which ended September 30, was $984 billion. That is about 4.7 percent of the American gross domestic product, and fiscal year 2019 marks the fourth year in a row that the federal deficit increased as a percentage of GDP. Through 2029, if current spending trends continue, the CBO projects that the total national debt will reach $29.3 trillion, or 95 percent of GDP.

That sounds scary to a lot of laypeople. But more and more economists look at those projections, and shrug.

High national debt levels have long been thought to cause interest rates to rise. Investors are supposed to demand higher returns for taking on additional risk, and national debt levels that are too high could stifle growth or trigger inflation. Yet, investors have remained eager to lend to the United States, without seeming to care how much it borrows. It’s been a safe bet. So far, we do not seem to be close to the “too high” threshold.

One thing that is clear: the modern national debt does not function just like a household debt, which is how it was sold as a campaign issue by the deficit hawks who pretended to care about deficit spending before Trump was elected. More national debt is not “bad” under any and all conditions, and less is not “good” under any and all conditions. It really depends on what you’re doing with the money. Try as I might to make it happen though, I don’t think “it’s more complicated than that” will ever really catch on as a successful campaign rally chant.

I’ve said this a thousand times before...those here whom love to pretend to care about the debt and deficit spending refuse to wrap their heads around the fact that this nation has obviously reached the point where it will always carry a debt-load relative to GDP.
Trust me when I tell you...none of the self proclaimed fiscally responsible here can tell you how their quality of lives are impacted by debt and spending nor can they tell you how their children and grandchildren will be affected by it....All they know is they are supposed to be outraged by it if the Orange Man is writing the checks...that’s all.
Ain’t that right Golfing Gator ?

That is what I was asking myself. WHO exactly are my children/grandchildren going to owe money too? It seems our country isn't the only country that owes money to other countries, and the countries we owe money to owe money too!

What
The problem is going to be maintaining the debt

As we all know government spends more than it takes in

When interest rates rise as they inevitably will more of our taxes paid will go to the debt holders and less will go to government services

and when that happens we are all screwed

 

[Harpy Eagle]

hold our elected officials accountable for their spending, keep voting them out till someone cuts spending

The "US" media doesn't do that.

The Democrats do not care.

The post 1998 Republicans do not understand basic math and only care about killing Muslims until FRAUD JESUS floats down from the clouds....


The LIBERTARIAN PARTY is our ONLY HOPE

The only thing I would change is that it is post 1980 Repubs that do not care

 

[ChrisL]

The invasion of Iraq

Tucker Carlson of Fox had a "$$ trillions" as the total cost of invading Iraq to date....


Why did we invade Iraq?

Did Iraq have WMD? NO
Was Iraq a threat? NO
Did Iraq have anything to do with 911? NO


So tell us, supporter of Israel, WHY did we, the United States, invade Iraq, and cost ourselves TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS according to the "news" network that supported the Iraq invasion the most - and they ALL supported it....

Because Saddam Hussein was a pain in the ass who was affecting the "global economy."

 

[ChrisL]

National Debt No Big Deal? More Economists Unconcerned With Trillion-Dollar Government Deficits

he Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2019, which ended September 30, was $984 billion. That is about 4.7 percent of the American gross domestic product, and fiscal year 2019 marks the fourth year in a row that the federal deficit increased as a percentage of GDP. Through 2029, if current spending trends continue, the CBO projects that the total national debt will reach $29.3 trillion, or 95 percent of GDP.

That sounds scary to a lot of laypeople. But more and more economists look at those projections, and shrug.

High national debt levels have long been thought to cause interest rates to rise. Investors are supposed to demand higher returns for taking on additional risk, and national debt levels that are too high could stifle growth or trigger inflation. Yet, investors have remained eager to lend to the United States, without seeming to care how much it borrows. It’s been a safe bet. So far, we do not seem to be close to the “too high” threshold.

One thing that is clear: the modern national debt does not function just like a household debt, which is how it was sold as a campaign issue by the deficit hawks who pretended to care about deficit spending before Trump was elected. More national debt is not “bad” under any and all conditions, and less is not “good” under any and all conditions. It really depends on what you’re doing with the money. Try as I might to make it happen though, I don’t think “it’s more complicated than that” will ever really catch on as a successful campaign rally chant.

I’ve said this a thousand times before...those here whom love to pretend to care about the debt and deficit spending refuse to wrap their heads around the fact that this nation has obviously reached the point where it will always carry a debt-load relative to GDP.
Trust me when I tell you...none of the self proclaimed fiscally responsible here can tell you how their quality of lives are impacted by debt and spending nor can they tell you how their children and grandchildren will be affected by it....All they know is they are supposed to be outraged by it if the Orange Man is writing the checks...that’s all.
Ain’t that right Golfing Gator ?

That is what I was asking myself. WHO exactly are my children/grandchildren going to owe money too? It seems our country isn't the only country that owes money to other countries, and the countries we owe money to owe money too!

What
The problem is going to be maintaining the debt

As we all know government spends more than it takes in

When interest rates rise as they inevitably will more of our taxes paid will go to the debt holders and less will go to government services

and when that happens we are all screwed

Like I said earlier, the more money the government takes in, the more and more and more it spends.

We should definitely demand that they be accountable for every SINGLE penny that they spend, and it should be examined with a fine tooth comb.

 

[ChrisL]

You democrats want a "global economy?" Then be prepared to go to war to protect it.

 

[LaDairis]

post 1980 Repubs that do not care

Newt cared. Newt got us to a budget surplus in the mid 1990s. The GOP did not turn into the party of Zionist Treason against America until Newt was tossed in 1998, and since 1998, the GOP has spent like Democrats, even socialized senior drugs in 2004 by lying to Congress about the estimated cost....