'Taxing the Rich'

[Cecilie1200]

Whats so wrong with being successful??

Besides, creating wealth is not a bad thing.

IMO, in modern times the government is guilty of racketeering.

Dude... you aren't paying attention to your surroundings.

There's nothing "Wrong" with being successful. What is wrong is fucking the country to GET SUCCESSFUL!!!

Of course, in your eyes, simply being successful is de facto evidence that one fucked the country to become so, which tells us a lot about you, but not a lot about financial reality.

Which the way a hell of a lot of these have gotten their Huge jumps in personal Income. By taking it away from the populous... By Outsourcing, By Corporate Welfare and gerrymandering, by convincing people like you that THEY ARE JUST LIKE YOU!

I think I'd like to see something other than your petty, envy-ridden vitriol to prove that "a hell of a lot" of people became successful by "taking away from the populous [sic]". Outsourcing? That assumes that the "populous" has a RIGHT to a job from me, or that they didn't try to fuck ME first by making the taxes and regulations in my area so onerous and burdensome that I couldn't effectively do business there any more. I doubt you could clearly define "corporate welfare", much less demonstrate that any significant percentage of the people YOU are proposing to fuck over receive it. And I would be utterly FASCINATED to see you explain what gerrymandering has to do with private sector success, but alas, I feel certain you're not brave enough to ever address that question.

They are good at it too. How much you think they pay Rush and his fellow goons to shout from the rooftops what I personally feel is a masterfully designed Marketing campaign to talk a large chunk of people into voting away from their own self interest and voting for even more power into their hands?

I could look up the advertising rates for a commercial on Rush's show, (which is all that "they" actually pay him for anything) but I'm pretty sure that what you mean is some sort of half-assed, juvenile "conspiracy and bribery" scenario, based largely on your inability to believe that anyone could disagree with YOUR opinions because they actually decided your opinions were ignorant and laughable. No, no, if someone's taking the opposing position, it can ONLY be because he's a paid shill, coldly and cynically lying and betraying the revealed wisdom and gospel truth for filthy lucre.

They know what they're doing.... you are the one who bought it hook line and sinker. They tell you that any taxation and regulation is SOCIALISM! That's a good, scary word... COMMUNISM... there's another one.

Because they know you don't have the brains in your head to really understand the concept of OLIGARCHY or PLUTOCRACY.... those are relatively new terms to the mainstream, so they don't scare you like SOCIALISM and COMMUNISM.

I give up...and I really don't mean to pick on you alone... sorry about that. You were just the guy I responded to.

Let me ask a simple question... How much is enough? How much control and power over us do they have to have before you realize that unabated Capitalism is JUST AS BAD as unabated SOCIALISM OR COMMUNISM?

Who the fuck is this "they" you keep diddling on about? Specify exactly which dark, sinister conspiracy theory the voices in your head are subscribing to this week, please. It's hard to know how to respond without knowing whether we're discussing the Illuminati or the Flying Space Elvises from Mars.

When will you guys realize that we need both. Both of those sides... Capitalism and Socialism keep things in balance.

I never plan to "realize" any such fallacy, unless you and your ilk manage to legalize forced lobotomies on your political enemies. That's the only way my IQ points are going to drop that far.

The real problem is... and I am not picking on one party or the other... is that we have given way too much control over our corporate structure and the banking industry.

"Given" too much control to whom? The corporations and banks themselves? I'm not sure THAT control was ours to give, since WE aren't the ones who started those businesses. The government? Well, who's fault is THAT? The shadow conspiracy du jour? I think you could wrest that control back merely by upping your med dosage.

They have accumulated so much wealth and power that we are either AT or very near the same levels as the Robber/Baron days at the turn of the 20th Century.

The vast majority of which was an overhyped, fictionalized liberal myth. Highly colorful and entertaining, but not long on reality.

They can do anything... and no one really questions it. Sure, every once in a while a Bernie Madoff gets inextricably caught and is punished... but never on the scale that it needs to be. Why? Fear... fear of losing jobs? Hell.... Jobs for people who USED to work in factories have already gone... sold to the lowest bidder in a country where the cost of living is incredibly lower than ours.

How do YOU know what scale "it" (whatever "it" is) needs to be punished? If you're in possession of evidence admissable in a court of law concerning criminal malfeasance on the part of anyone, you need to be turning it over to law enforcement, not kvetching and whining about it on a message board. If not, then all you really have to offer us is your personal conviction that all of "them" (whoever exactly "they" are) are crooked, you just KNOW it. Which carries all the weight of a puff of warm hydrogen.

So what is it? How much is enough. Don't answer a question with a question, like I know you guys are apt to do... How much Governmental control is enough?... it's like I can read your fucking minds, isn't it? I'll tell you the answer to that when you guys answer mine honestly.

How much WHAT is enough? How can any of us answer a question when we don't know what you're asking it about?

How much governmental control? Was that a second question, or a clarification of the first one? The answer to THAT one is "a fuckload less than we have now".

Obviously, you didn't read MY mind, because you did a shitty job of predicting my response. Maybe you should try debating REAL people, rather than the ones you make up in your head. Although granted, real people are more likely to laugh at you than to fall to their knees and shout, "You're right! Oh, lordy, I've been such a fool! You're SO BRILLIANT!" So it might be a lot less satisfying for you.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Wherever did you get the ridiculous idea that raising tax rates automatically corresponds to raising tax revenues? They aren't the same thing at all, you know.

It doesn't "automatically" - but right now it would. Historically tax receipts as a % of GDP is about 20%. Attempts to raise taxes far past that usually fail because of the de-stimulating effect on the economy. But right now taxation as a % of GDP is around 17%. We've got some room to raise taxes and get higher revenues.


Right wing morons like yourself will say "raising taxes will result in lower revenues" ALWAYS - but if that were ALWAYS true, then obviously we could maximum revenues with a 0.01% tax rate, which is absurd.

God you are dumb.

We have the highest levels of sustained unemployment since the Great Depresssion.

The reason that tax receipts are down is that far less people are working and paying taxes, and more of them are receiving transfer payments for a record low (since women entered the workforce) Labor Force Participation Level.

So lowering taxes increases revenues,

except when it doesn't.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Every dollar you cut from the tax burden of the Rich, you have to make up in tax revenue somewhere else,

or go without.

Since almost everyone here is NOT rich, that means YOU have to make it up.

Is that what you want? Is that the working/middle class conservatives' quest?

...to take the tax burden off the backs of the Rich and put it on their own shoulders?

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

Rather hypocritical of you, isn't it? You want to tax the doctor and businessman who make a million a year AND the investor far more than Republicans want

Actually no. If the capital gains rate were the same as earned income, we could cut the top tax bracket rate significantly, at least to 30%, maybe more.

Tell me: After you've run out of other people's money to be generous with, what are you going to spend?

When you're ready to talk about policy specifics instead of regurgitating cheap right wing bumper sticker slogans let me know.

 

[daveman]

So lowering taxes increases revenues,

except when it doesn't.

Yeah! Don't people know the only way to make everyone prosper is to take money away from people who earned it and give it to people who didn't?

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

We have the highest levels of sustained unemployment since the Great Depresssion.

Under what particular measure? unemployment under Reagan peaked at 10.8% and was over 7% for years. Really depends on what you define as "sustained" unemployment. I'm sure it will be convenient to your point whatever it is.

The reason that tax receipts are down is that far less people are working and paying taxes, and more of them are receiving transfer payments for a record low (since women entered the workforce) Labor Force Participation Level.

Did you read what I said? I said tax receipts are down as a PERCENT of GDP. If the rate of taxation remains the same but the GDP goes down - the rate as a PERCENT of GDP remains the same.

No, if you raise taxes when GDP growth is anemic, you will just further deflate GDP growth, resulting in no real increase in tax receipts.

Bullshit. When taxes are raised the money is spent right back into the economy. And any tax hike wouldn't necessarily need to take effect immediately - you could phase them in, even put in a provision that freezes the phase in if GDP shrinks.

U6 unemployment has been above 15% for quite a long time - i.e., during the entire Obama Administration to date.

Here, learn something:

Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization

I love how you based your remark the GDP and then go to quote unemployment figures.

 

[daveman]

Rather hypocritical of you, isn't it? You want to tax the doctor and businessman who make a million a year AND the investor far more than Republicans want

Actually no. If the capital gains rate were the same as earned income, we could cut the top tax bracket rate significantly, at least to 30%, maybe more.

...except you wouldn't. Hey, they can afford it, right?

Tell me: After you've run out of other people's money to be generous with, what are you going to spend?

When you're ready to talk about policy specifics instead of regurgitating cheap right wing bumper sticker slogans let me know.

That particularly amusing, coming from you, Mr. Tax The Rich.

 

[NYcarbineer]

So lowering taxes increases revenues,

except when it doesn't.

Yeah! Don't people know the only way to make everyone prosper is to take money away from people who earned it and give it to people who didn't?

That's not what we do. We take money from people like me to pay YOUR salary.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Rather hypocritical of you, isn't it? You want to tax the doctor and businessman who make a million a year AND the investor far more than Republicans want

Actually no. If the capital gains rate were the same as earned income, we could cut the top tax bracket rate significantly, at least to 30%, maybe more.

Tell me: After you've run out of other people's money to be generous with, what are you going to spend?

When you're ready to talk about policy specifics instead of regurgitating cheap right wing bumper sticker slogans let me know.

Don't invest anything valuable in that expectation.

 

[elvis]

It doesn't "automatically" - but right now it would. Historically tax receipts as a % of GDP is about 20%. Attempts to raise taxes far past that usually fail because of the de-stimulating effect on the economy. But right now taxation as a % of GDP is around 17%. We've got some room to raise taxes and get higher revenues.


Right wing morons like yourself will say "raising taxes will result in lower revenues" ALWAYS - but if that were ALWAYS true, then obviously we could maximum revenues with a 0.01% tax rate, which is absurd.

God you are dumb.

We have the highest levels of sustained unemployment since the Great Depresssion.

The reason that tax receipts are down is that far less people are working and paying taxes, and more of them are receiving transfer payments for a record low (since women entered the workforce) Labor Force Participation Level.

So lowering taxes increases revenues,

except when it doesn't.

that's exactly right.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Second of all, who the fuck are YOU to say who should and shouldn't get richer, anyway?

I'm not.

Who the fuck are YOU to say ANYTHING about someone else's finances?

Tell you what, go take a fake valium, and come back when your fake rage has subsided.

Wait, wait, let me check . . . Nope. I'm utterly unsurprised that you responded to two sentences out of the entire post, both of them were minor commentary rather than the meat of the topic, and your "responses" can only be called that in the sense that they involved letters, because they certainly didn't actually SAY anything. Oh, and one of them not only answered nothing, it was a meaningless insult.

I WISH I was surprised about your cowardice and unwillingness to address substantial questions, but I had you pegged as an ignorant, lightweight poltroon four pages of drivel ago.

Pick up your testicles from the floor and run along, Junior. Your surrender is accepted.

 

[Toro]

It doesn't "automatically" - but right now it would. Historically tax receipts as a % of GDP is about 20%. Attempts to raise taxes far past that usually fail because of the de-stimulating effect on the economy. But right now taxation as a % of GDP is around 17%. We've got some room to raise taxes and get higher revenues.


Right wing morons like yourself will say "raising taxes will result in lower revenues" ALWAYS - but if that were ALWAYS true, then obviously we could maximum revenues with a 0.01% tax rate, which is absurd.

God you are dumb.

We have the highest levels of sustained unemployment since the Great Depresssion.

The reason that tax receipts are down is that far less people are working and paying taxes, and more of them are receiving transfer payments for a record low (since women entered the workforce) Labor Force Participation Level.

So lowering taxes increases revenues,

except when it doesn't.

Lowering income taxes decreases the amount of revenues there would have been had rates not been lowered. Bush's former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Greg Mankiw, estimates that for every $1 cut in income taxes, revenues decline by $0.83, meaning that the marginal amount of taxes per dollar of GDP rises when rates are cut but the absolute amount of tax revenues declines.

 

[Cecilie1200]

The hardcore leftists and progressives would rather have the government take a larger share of a smaller pie, than to allow the free markets to bake a much larger pie, and for the government to take a smaller percentage yet absolutely bigger slice.

Dude, if you can't make an argument without using a watered down trite analogy - you don't know what you're talking about. Go bake a fucking pie.

In other words, "I can pretend that lack of originality is the same as false and meaningless, and thereby once AGAIN avoid providing a substantive response. Woo hoo!"

 

[daveman]

So lowering taxes increases revenues,

except when it doesn't.

Yeah! Don't people know the only way to make everyone prosper is to take money away from people who earned it and give it to people who didn't?

That's not what we do. We take money from people like me to pay YOUR salary.

...which I earned. (I retired as of March first.) It's funny how leftist morons such as yourself conflate military members with welfare recipients. And by "funny", I mean "stupid and pathetic".

I know it really pisses you off that the United States even has a military, but you're just going to have to put on your big boy pants and get over it.

 

[elvis]

Yeah! Don't people know the only way to make everyone prosper is to take money away from people who earned it and give it to people who didn't?

That's not what we do. We take money from people like me to pay YOUR salary.

...which I earned. (I retired as of March first.) It's funny how leftist morons such as yourself conflate military members with welfare recipients. And by "funny", I mean "stupid and pathetic".

I know it really pisses you off that the United States even has a military, but you're just going to have to put on your big boy pants and get over it.

NYCuminhisrear loves to piss on the military. It's his favorite hobby.

 

[daveman]

That's not what we do. We take money from people like me to pay YOUR salary.

...which I earned. (I retired as of March first.) It's funny how leftist morons such as yourself conflate military members with welfare recipients. And by "funny", I mean "stupid and pathetic".

I know it really pisses you off that the United States even has a military, but you're just going to have to put on your big boy pants and get over it.

NYCuminhisrear loves to piss on the military. It's his favorite hobby.

He'd better ask permission first, or he'll get his ass kicked.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Yeah! Don't people know the only way to make everyone prosper is to take money away from people who earned it and give it to people who didn't?

That's not what we do. We take money from people like me to pay YOUR salary.

...which I earned. (I retired as of March first.) It's funny how leftist morons such as yourself conflate military members with welfare recipients. And by "funny", I mean "stupid and pathetic".

I know it really pisses you off that the United States even has a military, but you're just going to have to put on your big boy pants and get over it.

No, I'm pointing out that most of our tax money goes to people who WORK for the government (directly or indirectly).

Very little of it goes to people who don't work, or, as you put it, who didn't earn it.

So you are simply mathematically wrong by a mile. That's all I was pointing out.

 

[NYcarbineer]

That's not what we do. We take money from people like me to pay YOUR salary.

...which I earned. (I retired as of March first.) It's funny how leftist morons such as yourself conflate military members with welfare recipients. And by "funny", I mean "stupid and pathetic".

I know it really pisses you off that the United States even has a military, but you're just going to have to put on your big boy pants and get over it.

NYCuminhisrear loves to piss on the military. It's his favorite hobby.

I was veteran when you were still learning how to suck cock, fatso.

 

[daveman]

Rather hypocritical of you, isn't it? You want to tax the doctor and businessman who make a million a year AND the investor far more than Republicans want

Actually no. If the capital gains rate were the same as earned income, we could cut the top tax bracket rate significantly, at least to 30%, maybe more.

Tell me: After you've run out of other people's money to be generous with, what are you going to spend?

When you're ready to talk about policy specifics instead of regurgitating cheap right wing bumper sticker slogans let me know.

Don't invest anything valuable in that expectation.

What's your DU username?

 

[elvis]

...which I earned. (I retired as of March first.) It's funny how leftist morons such as yourself conflate military members with welfare recipients. And by "funny", I mean "stupid and pathetic".

I know it really pisses you off that the United States even has a military, but you're just going to have to put on your big boy pants and get over it.

NYCuminhisrear loves to piss on the military. It's his favorite hobby.

I was veteran when you were still learning how to suck cock, fatso.

then how about you stop pissing on the military.