McCain's Tax Cuts Would Cause the Deficit to Explode

The reality is that Governments of ALL types waste money, they are by nature inefficient. You have been provided examples by people that know how the system works.

Let me give you another.

I ran accounts in the US Marine Corps, I spent a year running all billeting aboard Camp Courtney in Okinawa. I had 2 accounts to spend from. I got my first taste of Government think on those accounts when I took over the job just before the end of the Fiscal year.

The account had 6000 dollars in it. I had no idea what I might need as I just took over ( and in reality it turns out generally speaking the position usually needs little money at all) I was told my second day, as I was given the info on the account " to spend the 6000 dollars before a set date about 2 weeks away" The money was to be spent on anything and everything, not cause I might need anything, but because if the account had money in it at the end of the fiscal year , someone higher up might decide it did not NEED that money and the next year take it for some other account.

There is absolutely NO reason or desire to save with in the Government. If you do not spend every penny given to you, you lose it the next year no matter the reality of what you may or may not need. No Incentive what so ever.

By the way, I got in trouble with the Account people cause I just couldn't waste 6000 dollars in 2 weeks. I did manage to spend 2000 dollars on items and material I had absolutely no use for, before I quit buying in disgust. And most of what I bought I gave to other entities aboard the camp. The camp services had a pitiful account and the Admin center never had enough copier paper, so I usually ask them what they needed and spent money FOR them. I do not enjoy wasting money just cause. All justified because , well I used the copier and Camp Services was my work crew.

Now multiply that by every office and department in the entire Government.

Wow, Gunny, we had the SAME experiences.

My first budgetary based job in the Air Force was an Standardization and Evaluation Chief. This was back during the height of the Reagan defense buildup. I had three months left in my fiscal year and had roughly $50,000 to spend by year's end and was told, "You Spend it or you will be fired!".

We worked in a condemned building and were moving out to new quarters the next year. I bought 25 new desks even though the 25 we had were only three years old and perfectly functional. I bought 5 massive magnetic boards for flight scheduling at $1500 apiece even though we had plastic grease pencil boards that worked just fine. I recarpeted the entire building even though it was being demolished the next year! I bought 5 new computers and never took them out their boxes until we bought a set of computer games to play on them!

In the end I blew about $42,000 and got hammered because I came up $8,000 short!
 
Take another case for example. Suppose that instead of giving money to consumers that will be spent on plastic lawn ornaments made in China (just a hypothethical), the government uses that money to improve the domestic infrastructure (i.e., roads, bridges, airport expansion, rail links, etc.). The improvement of the domestic infrastructure will a) create jobs and b) provide a platform for even greater domestic growth. Spending on public goods does allow for economic expansion in ways that private consumption may not.

This is the ultimate in suicidal economic lunacy! No "public works" project has EVER resulted in permanent job growth because when the works are done, that is it! When the dam is built, the road paved, that's it! SOme maintenance but that's it.

When money is invested in a viable, proven business venture it lives and grows and produces jobs for decades or centuries.
 
It isn't my example. It is John Maynard Keyne's example. The point is not that digging holes is the optimal use of government spending. The point was that even inefficient government spending (in this case, digging holes) can put money into people's pockets, which will then be spent on goods and services, which will increase demand, which will stimulate production and job growth, which will increase wealth.

It is the idea that got us out of the Great Depression.

We abandoned Keynesian economics a LONG time ago, replace by supply side principals which has been our model and that of most of the capitalistic world since the early 1980's.... Private enterprise has ALWAYS been a superior facilitator of creating jobs and putting pumping money into the pockets of the working man than any government has ever done.
 
When you asked, "Why not stimulate the economy with what we spend rather than the government?", you hit on my reasoning tangentially. As I explained elsewhere in this thread, tax cuts for the wealthy have less "bang" because "the wealthy . . . put a large chunk of it into activities that generate meager or no economic stimulus." Post #41.

That means that the government is no longer spending "X" number of dollars, the wealthy get a large portion, and they only spend a fraction of it.

This is shear lunacy and defies even fundamental reality and logic. The "wealthy", whoever the hell that may be, are responsible for the OVERWHELMING proportion of economic impact because they buy virtually ALL of the nonessential goods and and services in the economy. The top 10% not only pay 70%+ of all taxes, but they CONSUME about the SAME percentage of the non-essential goods and services offered.

The bottom half? They pay only 3% of all taxes. They buy only 5% of the non-essential goods and services. And it's those non-essentials that drives the global economy.
 
2) Mail -- obsolete service no longer needed. What is left can be much better handled by Fed-Ex, DHL, UPS, etc...mostly because their workers are cheaper and non-unionized (i.e. not gov't subsidized).


Whoever told you this has no clue what the hell he/she is talking about.

In fact, US postal service has never seen better times regarding volume of transactions precisely because of product orders through the internet.
 
The top 10% not only pay 70%+ of all taxes, but they CONSUME about the SAME percentage of the non-essential goods and services offered.

Got any evidence to back this up? I've read IRS reports and I have never ever seen this figure ever forwarded.

The rich do not pay 70 per cent of "all taxes."

If you have evidence, share it.

I'd love to discuss it.
 
Got any evidence to back this up? I've read IRS reports and I have never ever seen this figure ever forwarded.

The rich do not pay 70 per cent of "all taxes."

If you have evidence, share it.

I'd love to discuss it.

http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6

I think his comment was referring to US Federal Personal Income tax. The top 10% of earners did contribute 70.3% of the total Federal income tax in 2005 - and a similar share in other recent years.
 
http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6

I think his comment was referring to US Federal Personal Income tax. The top 10% of earners did contribute 70.3% of the total Federal income tax in 2005 - and a similar share in other recent years.

Read his post again.

I never disputed the top earners pay more of an income tax percentage.

But what he claimed was different. He said "70 per cent all taxes".

It's right there clear as day. "All taxes" is not the same as percentage of income taxes.
 
Well, if you want to get technical, how do you define "rich"? Those who have earned the most income in a given year, or those with the greatest net worth?

There are wealthy people who pay taxes on their wealth, but might not earn much in a given year and therefore not pay much income tax.

His point seemed fairly obvious to me: the people who claim the most income in a given year (the top 10% of earners), pay 70% of the income tax burden that year.
 
Well, if you want to get technical, how do you define "rich"? Those who have earned the most income in a given year, or those with the greatest net worth?

There are wealthy people who pay taxes on their wealth, but might not earn much in a given year and therefore not pay much income tax.

His point seemed fairly obvious to me: the people who claim the most income in a given year (the top 10% of earners), pay 70% of the income tax burden that year.

The IRS, If I can remember from memory, defines the wealthiest one per cent as those exceeding $330,000.
 
Well, if you want to get technical, how do you define "rich"? Those who have earned the most income in a given year, or those with the greatest net worth?

There are wealthy people who pay taxes on their wealth, but might not earn much in a given year and therefore not pay much income tax.

His point seemed fairly obvious to me: the people who claim the most income in a given year (the top 10% of earners), pay 70% of the income tax burden that year.

It is obvious - when only mentioning income tax.

However, add gas taxes, social security taxes, sales taxes etc. and a very different picture emerges.
 
The IRS, If I can remember from memory, defines the wealthiest one per cent as those exceeding $330,000.

Well couldn't find the top 1% wage earners but here is the top 5%.

In 1999, the richest 1 percent of Americans took in 19.5 percent of the income. But they paid 36.2 percent of the taxes. The figures are similar for the top 5 percent, who made 34 percent of the money but paid 55 percent of the taxes. So much for rich people escaping taxes with sneaky loopholes, sleazy accountants and offshore shelters.

Want to bust more stereotypes? The income cutoff for the richest 5 percent is just over $120,000. In a good-sized city, a college graduate in his late twenties could probably expect to make about $60,000 per year. If two people making this much money get married, they'd find themselves in the top 5 percent of income earners — the filthy rich. These aren't trust fund babies. They’re Gen-Xers from the suburbs with a bachelor's degree.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,49908,00.html
 
That's right, because we all know the rich don't pay THOSE taxes.

Again, where did I say the rich do not pay those taxes? Its clear we were talking in terms of percentages.

Stop lying and attributing words to me I have never said.

You're getting tiring.
 
Well couldn't find the top 1% wage earners but here is the top 5%.

In 1999, the richest 1 percent of Americans took in 19.5 percent of the income. But they paid 36.2 percent of the taxes. The figures are similar for the top 5 percent, who made 34 percent of the money but paid 55 percent of the taxes. So much for rich people escaping taxes with sneaky loopholes, sleazy accountants and offshore shelters.

Want to bust more stereotypes? The income cutoff for the richest 5 percent is just over $120,000. In a good-sized city, a college graduate in his late twenties could probably expect to make about $60,000 per year. If two people making this much money get married, they'd find themselves in the top 5 percent of income earners — the filthy rich. These aren't trust fund babies. They’re Gen-Xers from the suburbs with a bachelor's degree.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,49908,00.html

I'd rather see figures from a more authoritative non-partisan source like the IRS.
 
Even then, how can you possibly discern who really pays sales taxes?

Is it the retailers who actually submit the paperwork to the IRS?

Or is it the consumers who pay it indirectly through marginally higher prices?

Furthermore, if you assume that it's consumers who pay, how would you even go about "assigning" that tax burden among groups of consumers? Every time someone buys a pack of gum, a couple pennies go to taxes. So what socioeconomic group gets credit for those pennies? There's no way to know the wealth of every individual who makes every purchase, and there are countless transactions that take place every day.

Income tax burden is pretty much the only wealth metric that can be easily quantified.
 
I like John McCain and may support him for President. I believe that his proposals to continue the Republican policies of destroying this country's fiscal balance is a political reaction to the political immaturity and denial of the Republican Party more than a reflection on McCain himself.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882415111033181.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

Question: Why does it have to result in cutting one third of DOMESTIC spending?

Are you including the "freebies" we give other countries in "domestic"? My definition is domestic means HERE. Just asking for clarification, because by my definition, we could cut spending outside the borders of the US to make up the amount as well.
 
I'd rather see figures from a more authoritative non-partisan source like the IRS.

The IRS data below include all of the 132.6 million tax returns filed in 2005 that had a positive AGI, not just the returns from people who earn enough to owe taxes. From other IRS data, we can see that 90.6 million of the tax returns came from people who paid taxes into the Treasury. That leaves 42 million tax returns filed by people with positive AGI who used exemptions, deductions and tax credits to completely wipe out their federal income tax liability. Not only did they get back every dollar that the federal government withheld from their paychecks during 2005; but some even received more back from the IRS. This is a result of refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, which are not included in the aggregate percentile data here.

Including all tax returns that had a positive AGI, those taxpayers with an AGI of $145,283 or more in 2005 constituted the nation's top 5 percent of earners.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

As a nonpartisan educational organization, the Tax Foundation has earned a reputation for independence and credibility.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/about/
 

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