Tax the rich, pay for 1 percent of budget

We don’t need more taxes is the mantra that we have heard for 20 years and look where we are. The mythical supply-side economic ruse has never been able to gain traction because? Drum roll please!!! Neither Republicans nor Democrats have the the stomach to cut spending. And, voila!!, we have deficits. You know Kyle, whether it be Repubs or Dems in charge the deficits in the future are only going to get worse because no one wants their candy take away. We have become a nation that wants it all with NO sacrifice (except to send our young men and women to war). And, by the way, if you look at CT’s column today you can see where the cuts need to be made. Any bets that can be done?

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Obama knows that tax revenues increased when capital gains taxes were lowered & decreased when capital gains taxes were increased under Reagan, Bush, Clinton & Bush. So why does he want to increase them for 100 million Americans, many of whom have invested their life savings in the stock market for their retirement? Because 50 hedge fund managers who “work the stock market” made too much money & it was NOT FAIR!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpSDBu35K-8

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And we publish voices like yours, Kyle, why?

Because it makes us feel better to think we provide “balance”. Just ask some CNN — sorry, Time Warner – suit sitting in a gleaming midtown (NY that is) office building because in his little mind this notion of balance, while obviously no solution to anything – at least bides a little more time where no one notices that all we have covering our ideological bankruptcy is a fig leaf. (We won’t even talk about Mr. Right wing media from down under.)

Balance – the hobgoblin of little minds who don’t want to face that they’ve already succumbed to the state of being ideologically bankrupt.

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I have been hammered with taxes all my life. By ponying up tens of thousands each year I would consider myself a huge patriot by Biden’s standards. This soaking-the-rich policy in this country by Democrats is a hateful idea and out right discriminatory. I, for one, am tired of carrying all these free-loaders on my back.

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Hey Jefferson- who are you to determine what “fair” share is? Because I make more than you, it’s “fairer” for me to pay a larger percentage of my income in taxes. Note, I say greater percentage because I understand that making more means paying more in actual dollars.

It must be easy for you to be “fair” with other people’s money.

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Tychus F: Last time I checked facism was defined as follows:

often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

Is this what you mean by “taking one for the team is a euphemism for not standing up for your beliefs, taking the easy route because it’s more popular”. I would say that you need to find some other derogatory term to describe your angst: how about socialist, or communist, or liberalist, or Stalinist, Bolshevist, or some other “ist”, pal.

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TF, calm down main, you will still have some left.

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“The irony in this drama is that the money at stake is, in the larger scheme, trivial. Raising taxes on the top 2% of households, as Mr Obama proposes, would bring in $34 billion next year:”

Very interesting sentence.

Trivial works both ways does it not? If $34 billion is trivial to the federal budget, then $34 billion would be even more trivial to the GDP, would it not?

So if that part of the Bush Tax cuts, 2% with over $250K incomes, is just trivial why all the stink about it? Why not just pass what all can agree on; that the extension of the cuts to the “middle class” is a worthwhile objective. Should pass the Senate 100 – 0.

But that is not what the vote is about. The vote is about the election in 5 weeks.

And please, no one tell me about all the jobs that will be created if the $34 billion in tax cuts passes. Economic policy that depends on predicting human behavior always fails.

We tried this starting in 1981 and it has been a total failure, as the $13.4 trillion dollar national debt proves.

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The people who have the most, cry the loudest.

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I say we raise the tax on the “rich” to 100%. Just think about how much of the deficit we could pay down…and it’s not like the “rich” need the money or anything. :rolleyes:

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The only hope for saving this country is a revolution. We need to roll the guillotines into Wall Street and K Street and drag out the evil rich and their government lackies.

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The Tea Party movement began when the Dems. (& a couple of RINOs) passed the Economic Stimulus Bill, the largest spending bill in the history of our country! It cost about the same as BOTH the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq put together for 14 years! It cost about the same as the entire debt to
China at the time! It passed 3 weeks after the inauguration! Our national debt was over $12 T at the time & another $106 T was owed to the social security & Medicare funds, which congress had also depleted!

Americans with common sense were so angry that they marched in the streets. We knew they were spending money we did not have for junk & that tax hikes would be in store for generations. We’ve listened for 20 months at how absurd 90% of the garbage was in the bill. We watched the money go to blue states & blue districts in red states.

We listened to their promises that unemployment would not go up, as unemployment went up & vast numbers of Americans lost their homes & were added to entitlement programs.

And now we have Americans, even some on this blog today, who approve of giving them even more tax money & asking or assuming it will go toward the deficit. Let us pray.

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Keep it real, what do you mean you have seen someone get back more than what they paid out ? You mean that they pre paid more than their tax bill added up to and they got a refund ? I think you need to explain how someone that makes 6 figures gets treated like someone getting the earned income tax credit, that’s not real at all.

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A much more prudent solution (to your mental pollution?) is not to focus on the tax rates for the wealthy.

Simply end their welfare.

The savings by ending the needless giveaways, subsidies, handouts, tax “benefits/loop holes” etc to the wealthy, the speculators/paper shufflers and to the corporations would come to hundred of billions of dollars every single year…

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Hate & envy all you want, but the fact is that among those 2% of the highest earners are at least 750,000 small businesses. That’s about 13,000 average per state. They create 70% of the new jobs & are responsible for almost 1/2 of the employment in the US right now. Take their capital away & see unemployment to remain the same or increase.

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md, there are no supplements.

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“among those 2% of the highest earners are at least 750,000 small businesses. That’s about 13,000 average per state. They create 70% of the new jobs”

Again darn those pesky facts. From Daniel Indiviglio of The Atlantic and Forbes.

Once we add controls for firm age, we find no systematic relationship between net growth rates and firm size. A key role for firm age is associated with firm births. We find that firm births contribute substantially to both gross and net job creation. Importantly, because new firms tend to be small, the finding of a systematic inverse relationship between firm size and net growth rates in prior analyses is entirely attributable to most new firms being classified in small size classes.*

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09/young-not-small-businesses-drive-job-growth/62896/

Bottom line is those high earners are putting that money in thier pocket. If adding an employee is profitable a small business owner will do it at the higher tax just as quickly as at the lower one.

If you want to drive job creation you need to drive STARTUPS not pad the pockets of the already rich.

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So if the theory is that you lower taxes on the ultra-rich and they then somehow produce jobs is true… how come we are in such a mess now after the Bush era tax cuts? Where is the “trickle down”?

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Guilty as charged, Kyle. I was calling you a name. I called you “fair and balanced”, and that was just terrible of me.

But seriously. Your citing the Economist article doesn’t do justice to how, ahem, “balanced” that piece actually is towards the predicament Obama is in. Which is to say how even-handed it is.

It says this for ex: “Around 2015, spending will start a multi-year climb. To attribute that entirely to Mr Obama would be disingenuous. His health-care plan does contribute to it, but rising interest on the national debt and built-in health and demographic pressures are more important.”

Ain’t gonna hear reason like that from Sean Hannity, I can guarantee you that. But maybe I shouldn’t lump you in with him, I realize.

But actually the real interesting point in the piece is this: “Indeed, the problem with the tax debate is not that Democrats and Republicans disagree, but that they mostly agree. Democrats think 98% of Americans should not pay higher taxes; the Republicans say 100% should not.”

But actually, this is not right. It’s not just a matter of a 1% difference in who the parties think should pay more (leaving aside the fact that today 1% of that pie is probably 50 to 100 times the size it was just 40 years ago, which changes the moral calculus of the argument somewhat), it’s the fact that there’s a confusion of time frames here. Democrats (and economists like Krugman) agree that 98% should continue getting a break FOR NOW, but not permanently, which is what the Republicans want. And as we know, how these things get defined and scheduled, that’s where much of the key battle is waged (witness George Bush’s decision to phase them out on Dec. 31 of this year for ex.). I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that taxes shouldn’t eventually be raised for most groups in the long run.

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$34B is a drop in the bucket now, but $34B spent on extended unemployment benefits a few weeks ago was the worst money ever spent and a travesty against mankind if we didn’t cut somewhere else to get it. Now $34B is nothing and will hardly have an impact. Way to stay consistent with your viewpoint!

At least you didn’t say that raising taxes will lead to less revenue or that we should instead lower tax rates to raise revenue. That’s some progress I suppose. At least you quoted a realistic assumption that raising taxes actually does raise revenue.

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I’m a small business owner who makes about $100 trillion a year. If Obama raises my taxes, I’m going to lay off all my employees and stop sharing my manifold small-business-owner gifts with the world. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy some gold.

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“md, there are no supplements.”

Really???

So 2 identical individuals make 2 different choices in high school. One decides to drop out and work at the local quick mart, the other spends time and money pursuing a better education and lands a decent paying job. One pays tax and the other doesn’t make enough to have to pay.

You really think one is not supplementing the other???????

We choose EVERYTHING we do………….

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“You are incredible!! How many of you find yourselves in that 1%?? It’s not raising taxes; it’s bringing it back to where it was before the tax was lowered.”

It isn’t about the money, it is about principles……………..

Should a student that chooses to study 24/7 and makes A’s have to share those A’s with a student that chooses to party 24/7 and makes F’s??

It is about choices……………….

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“where are the jobs that should have been created by the Bush tax cuts up to this point?”

More than likely talking about jobs maintained vs created. The more taken out of the economy, the less there is to pay folks. And the more the gov’t expands, also the less to pay folks in the private sector.

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OK, Kyle, if it’s so trivial, why do you have your panties in a wad?

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“And it comes with the firm instruction that we only advocate for what benefits us personally…”

Wasn’t that Ayn Rand’s whole philosophy? And I thought you guys worshipped her?

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Kyle,

I’m not a Congressional Democrat, you’d have to ask them. $34B is $34B. You can’t make a big deal about it in one column and diminish it in another. It appeared to me that is what you did.

Also, couldn’t we do both raise tax and lower spending and have $68B? If I’m a fiscal conservative, that’s what I’d do. I wouldn’t go on a “Save the Rich” campaign when I know I can raise revenue that way. We’re in a deficit situation and we need more revenue from everywhere to balance the budget. Wouldn’t this $34B help do that?

Personally, I’d raise tax on everyone and cut to the bone until we got balanced, but that won’t happen. Both sides are too busy catering to their pet causes.

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“What needs to be done is to RAISE the corporate taxes for those corporations who take American jobs offshore!! Raise taxes on Corporate CEOs who take jobs offshore!! ”

Add to that the corporations who abuse the H1B Visa program. The program was intended to fill positions that couldn’t be filled with US workers….not to replace US workers with lowered salaried foreign workers.

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forgot to mention….limit to a specific amount porkbarrel for legislators with a published yearly recap in a well accessed publication of record

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“And how many “little people” have their pensions/retirement in all these corporations?? I doubt they will be none too happy that their nest egg takes a serious hit because these corps are not taking those jobs overseas.”

Certainly not those who couldn’t get a job and start a pension/retirement plan because the jobs have been shipped overseas.

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And you’re only talking about the federal tax rate – there are state/local taxes, state local income taxes, etc, which means the marginal tax rate is closer to 60%. Is that ‘fair’?
The only thing trying to be ‘fair’ does is to make things that much more unfair. Seriously – the wealthy will typically always be wealthy…
I grew up near a whole bunch of money. Seriously – serious money. We had ‘nothing’ compared to my neighbors/friends, etc. My parents NEVER EVER told me that I somehow ‘deserved’ the money that anyone I knew had. It would never even have come up. The idea that I had any right to their money is and was preposterous. I was taught to get an education, work hard, and whatever I had was mine – I worked for it – but I had no claim on anyone else’s stuff, ever. This whole – oh, let’s make it FAIR crap – is just that. It won’t become fair because you wish it so.

We really do need to scrap the IRS and the whole tax system we have, because this will never be resolved.

Again, we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem (thank you Dave Ramsey). And if they do make more in revenue – who’s to say that one penny will go towards paying off the deficit. It’s like having a teenager who needs another $20. They didn’t spend the first money you gave them wisely, why would you give them more to spend unwisely? Show us you can make the sacrifices, then I might think that you need more money. Show responsibility and leadership.

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They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In that case, I feel pretty good that Left wing management is using my moniker. However, there is only 1 me.

Here’s what I see in this article. First, they usually project costs over 10 years, and assume that the $34 Billion is correct, and that it won’t change over 10 years (the second is obviously suspect). So, that’s $340 Billion. The cost of the tax cut for that top 2% is been estimated at $700 Billion, so the real swing in this is $1 Trillion (40 Billion) over 10 years. And of course, the cost of doing this is being financed by us (courtesy of the Chinese, the Saudi’s, etc).

I see no reason to blow a Trillion dollars on the most affluent in our society. But hey, I saw no reason to blow a Trillion dollars attacking Iraq, either.

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@md 3:04pm…”We are a spoiled country in relation to many around the world, and it has caught up to us. Our current standard of living is unsustainable in the global marketplace.”

Are you then saying America wages should drop to the levels of developing countries in order to compete in the global marketplace and keep jobs here in America? Would that also mean getting rid of laws that protect American workers as well…such as making sure working environments are safe, not employing children, etc.?

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Kyle wrote

“So, to be fair, I guess I should have said, “three years of jacking up federal spending.”

No actually that would be two years, Duhbya and his crowd own the 2008 budget that ended in Oct 2008 as well. That also means your $750 Billon number is more wrong than it was anyway.

Spending in 1992 the last year of Bush One was $1.381 Trillion. In 2000 the last year of Clinton it was $1.789 Trillion or an increase of $408 Billion or 29.5%.

In 2008 the federal government spent $2.982 Trillion a whopping $1.193 Trillion increase or a 66.7% increase.

Spending is projected at $3.754 Trillion in 2012 a $772 Billion dollar increase from those heady Duhbya days or a 20.56% increase. In 2015 spending is projected at $4.385 or an increase of 1.403 Trillon or 47% when compared to Duhbya.

I would be happy to go back to Reagan if you wish but the nums are worse there. The fact is the Republican Party has sold us a bill of goods starting with Reagan. They have promised to decrease spending and deficits when in fact they have increased spending exponentially and put us in the predicament we find ourselves today.

Now you would have us believe that past performance is not an indicator of future performance!!!!! As for me give me the good old days of Bill Clinton…budget surpluses, limited spending and fast paced growth.

BTW, where were you and rest of the Republican crowd when Ronnie, Bush 1 and Duhbya were getting us into this mess?

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If you don’t like the system, pay politicians off to change it or move. Its been going on for years.

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“Pretty simple actually – many folks from all walks of life borrowed more than they could afford.”

Sounds like our Republican candidate for governor….Nathan Deal.

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I thought Bush only cut taxes for the rich. Isn’t that what was repeated… Bush’s tax cuts for the rich?

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The big money is in a middle-class tax hike, for the simple reason that — contrary to what Democrats want you to believe — the middle class receives about three-quarters of the savings from the Bush tax cuts.

Thanks for the typical obfuscation. The “middle class receives about three-quarters of the savings from the Bush tax cuts” means that the upper-class the aforementioned 2% must receive the other 25%. That sounds familiar.

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@Linda 2:57

I am one of those “high earners” and I can tell you first hand from me and those I know that if an employee is needed and will be profitable they will be hired in spite of the tax rate.

Your $500K earnings and $25K taxes hypothesis is simply incorrect.

First off the actual additional taxes paid by someone earning $500K in 2010 would be $11,866. Second if any decent business person decides to hire someone they require that they earn a profit for the company. Therefore a new hire that earns a profit will be hired if the tax rate is 35%, 39.6% or 75%. In fact the higher the rate the MORE likely the new employee is to be hired.

As for Startups, if you don’t know how to calculate a P&L you will fail anyway so that is irrelevant. Second tax rates are usually not a big factor in startups because taxes are paid on PROFITS. Startups usually don’t make profits for some time and so for them the key point is the ability to raise capital.

That is where we should be spending money, not worrying about a guy making $500K spending an extra $11,866 in taxes.

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atlmom September 21st, 2010
4:11 pm

You don’t see how lowering the corporate tax rate for KEEPING jobs here would do more to spur the economy??

Example: Company A is headquartered in the US…but moves its factory to China. Tax it at current tax rate – let’s say 25%. Take same corporation and tax it at 10% if it keeps its manufacturing capability in the US….that’s an incentive to keep manufacturing here…which would spur employment!!

The current tax laws INCENTIVIZE corporations moving manufacturing OFFSHORE…..shouldn’t the opposite be true??

The reason why the US is in an economic downturn is that our manufacturing bases have been offshored…..and the main catalyst IS manufacturing!!

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Rafe Hollister September 21st, 2010
4:57 pm

What many here are failing to note is that I’m saying to cut the corporate tax rate for KEEPING jobs here…but RAISE it on companies that offshore jobs!!! That would incentivize corporations to maintain a manufacturing base HERE!!

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@ “Keep it Real” 1:37pm

Bro, Your comment is a great example of the problem we have today.

You insinuate that “people that make good money” have that guarantee for the rest of their life.

You don’t just “make” the club for high income and then have it guaranteed the rest of your life.

One might earn $100,000 or more on a given year and earn only $50,000 the next year.

Using your example that you say “they” get more money back than they put in points to the RIDICULOUS tax code that people like you protect, and you and your ilk refuse to address the F’d up tax system that lets a person making $100,000 not pay any taxes.

Read the “Fair Tax” book, educate yourself and put your Marxist philosophy aside. The Fair Tax taxes everyone equally AND gives incentives to “the rich” to bring their money back to the U.S. for investment in our economy. THAT EQUALS JOBS.

Don’t be a slave to the leftwing radicals that instill the “class warfare”, “race hate” and “income envy” mentality in you and your ilk.

THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES IN LIFE!

Now, That’s keeping it real!

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The high unemployment rate is not primarily due to job losses! There were 3.1 million more job losses during the ‘01 recession than in the current recession. Lower job creation accounts for 65% of the current high unemployment rate.
Biden said we had lost 8.8 million jobs. Actually, we lost 55.4 million jobs & added 46.5 million jobs.
Private sector employers have gone on strike!

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“A large company might change a tax location to reduce taxes, but when it comes to offshoring jobs, tax rates are a small part of that decision. ”

I believe pre-ression Ireland would beg to differ. Their entire economic engine was being driven by relocating companies directly due to tax rates.

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HDB: you Dems love to pick winners and losers and assess punishment. I understand your theory, but it does nothing to attract new corporate citizens, just punishes and rewards those already here. New corporations=new jobs=new taxpayers.

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Kyle, I think you will find in the case of almost every budget, the final number is almost exactly the one submitted by the President in question. Some of the line items may shift but we are talking raw numbers so that is irrelevant.

If the inflation adjusted numbers were based on say 1980 dollars I would agree with you, in this case current dollars are a more accurate view because inflation has been constant over the period and the only adjusted numbers are 2005 numbers. For any valid comparison you have to use adjusted numbers from the current year backwards or pick a number from a year prior to any years being reviewed.

This renders your third point mute.

As to your fourth, I am not trying to absolve the current administration. I would do things much differently given the option. My point is that they are better than what came before them (Duhbya, Bush 1 and Ronnie). My point that we have been sold a bill of goods by the Republican Party still stands and that is the main point.

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@ MD

“I believe pre-ression Ireland would beg to differ. Their entire economic engine was being driven by relocating companies directly due to tax rates.”

Actually I located a call center in Ireland during that time period. The main drivers were as I said before wages, benefits and skill set. In fact in the case of Ireland those were the factors thare really drove the growth.

Tax rates were on the list but not near the top.

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“Question: How many companies that offshored their work are coming BACK because of the inferior quality of the work done….or the inability to speak ENGLISH clearly?? ”

Not nearly enough. The ones coming back are a drop in the bucket compared to the ones staying away. We will more than likely never be able to compete in the labor cost arena for a long time. And the quality will do nothing but go up in the developing countries, so that will hurt too.

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HDB: I don’t know about many coming back, I only hear about those leaving. Take the Candy companies, they left because of the price of sugar, nothing to do with taxes or quality, but because of big government. The US Govt subsidy on Sugar costs us jobs. Sugar is cheaper in Mexico, no subsidy or tariff on imported suger. If Sugar was your principal ingredient and consumed most of your raw material cost, where would you make candy?

Other corporations have different reasons, but the only way to get them back and attract others is lower taxes to make up for lower labor and raw material costs in other parts of the world.

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JDW @ 4:49, I’m so impressed that you are a “high earner.”
Small businesses don’t know if they, let alone a new employee, will be profitable next year or even viable.
I used simple math for you & others to understand my point.
New hires & companies CAN’T earn a profit if the tax rate is 75%.
If you believe your hypothesis (the higher the tax rate, the more likely companies will hire), you should join Obama’s economic team.
No company can project profits & losses without being able to fill in the blanks. Uncertainty has morphed into fearfulness & then into panic during this administration.
Companies are having trouble raising capital. The resources the govt. spends comes from the economy. When the govt. increases spending, it crowds out the resources that business owners could have invested in the enterprises. Annual private fixed nonresidential investment has fallen by $327 B (19%).

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Kyle, if you pick a year prior to or after all years compared inflation pegging works well if not you skew the results of the earlier and later years leading to invalid percentage comparisons. If the point were raw dollars I would agree with you but given the point is percentage increase I still maintain, given the data used, the proper comparison is actual dollars.

I think the Administration is spending at a rate less than what came before them, which given the mess inherited is understandable if not optimum.

But lets cut to the meat, why on earth should we reelect the same party that got us into this mess. Especially when the only real successful administration of the last 30 years was a Democratic one?

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“Democrats think 98% of Americans should not pay higher taxes”

The veracity of this statement is highly, highly questionable. Little things like actual tax hikes (Obamacare, for one) and deficit spending legislation keeps sending the other message, over and over again. How stupid do you think we are?

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@ Linda, part of being a successful business person is dealing with uncertainty. I don’t buy the argument that good business people are incapable of projecting profits.

The point you seem to miss is that business operating profits have absolutely nothing to do with taxes. That is why operating profit is a more important number than net profit. It is the number that drives employment not net profit. If you want to talk capital investment that is another subject.

I understand that the fact that higher tax rates make it easier for large companies to add employees is a bit counter intuitive but if you think about it you will understand. If I am going to pay you $100K I am risking $100K in pretax earnings. If tax rates are 35% my real risk is $65K…on the other hand if tax rates are 50% my real risk is $50K. The more taxes increase the less risk there is to hiring assuming the business is generating operation profits.

I agree companies are having trouble raising capital for a variety of reasons. As I recall that is where this discussion started. I don’t think raising tax rates on high earners impacts the job market a bit. On the other hand incentives for investing in NEW companies, not existing ones would have an impact.

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Kyle, you are missing the point. Using a base year in the middle of the data skews the percentage results. If you take the time to find a source that has the nums in 1980 base you will see what I mean. I would do it but I have a hungry 5 year old on my hands.

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There’s a few things that should be taken into account in regards to offshoring of jobs. As has been pointed out, many companies are realizing the savings they thought offshoring would bring about are not always there.

Someone pointed out quality. I’m an IT professional and have spent much time not only working with offshore accounts but I’ve also spent a good bit of time in India. I see the quality. Each time we have to send work back because of quality, the savings starts to erode…this happens quite often. Part of the quality issues have to do with rushing people thru classes where they may learn a coding language but don’t learn or understand concepts or logical thinking. There’s also cultural differences. For instance, I have seen where many do not know or understand what a social security number is much less the importance of it’s privacy and they have access to this information along with bank or credit card account number, etc. Then of course, there’s language issues and customer satisfaction. Companies also realize when they offshore work, they loose some control. There have been many cases where call center employees of credit card companies have given either reduced fees or rates for customers when they are not authorized to do so by the credit card company. Another thing happening is offshored work is being offshored. As IT has exploded in India, quality employees are becoming harder to find and wages are rising. Therefore, many Indian companies are offshoring work that have been offshored to them to other countries. So now we have and American company who offshore it’s work to an Indian company and the Indian company turns around and offshore it to another foreign country where wages or less.

As far as “big government” is concerned. There are laws to protect employees as well as consumers that many countries don’t have. Of course, these have cost to companies. Should we do away with these laws? Cheaper materials can also mean less quality. Think about the past couple of years. We’ve seen unhealthy toys coming from China using lead based paints. We’ve seen cheaper drywall coming from China that has high levels of dangerous chemicals people of getting sick inside their homes.

There’s more than wages or “big government” or taxes to think about when it comes to offshoring jobs.

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JDW @ 6:04, There is no uncertainty. There’s only fear & panic.
There’s not a single person in this country that knows absolutely for sure what ANY of their taxes will be in 2 1/2 mts. Unless businesses have read 20,000 pages of new regulations (unlike the bodies who passed them) AND understand them, they do not know what the new rules are for running their businesses.
Corporations do not pay taxes. Small businesses pay taxes on net earnings & usually file on their personal income taxes. You can spin it every way you want, but 65% & 75% is higher than 35%.
I’ve had my own small business for decades & you remind me of my mother-in-law before she passed.

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JDW @ 6:06, You need to educate yourself on this matter & I suggest starting by reading the synopsis of the Fannie Mae annual reports from the mid ’90’s. The fed. govt. REQUIRED the GSEs to make subprime loans & issued quotas for such.

The NYT even predicted the crisis in 1999!

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit-to-aid-mortgage-lending.html?pagewanted=1

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John,

Walmart sells a lot of crap – but it sells.

The folks that frequent walamart can’t afford quality, that is why they shop at walmart.

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Just as we’re seeing the “unintended” consequences of Obamacare, 11 million low-income families will see a tax increase with the implementation of Obama’s “Child Tax Credit.”

It’s amazing how gullible people can be.

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Usmc Dawg @ 6:30, I’ve seen this before but thanks for sharing it again. I added it to my bookmarks. I’m so tired of the liberals blaming Bush for everything. Affordable Housing does not even sound like a Rep. idea. The Dems. required the GSEs to relax their lending standards that were the backbone of the residential housing market for decades & buy, bundle & sell subprime loans that ended up in MBSs all over the world. Wall St. could not have dreamed this up in a million years.

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@John

Back when the (Bush) tax cuts were implemented, the Democrats said that “the” (meaning “all”) Bush Tax cuts were only for the Rich.
Now Obama and the Dem crooks in Congress are saying that 98% of the Bush Tax cuts are “middle class”. That is so crooked!
Nancy Pelosi, by direction of the Obama administration, is now calling the 98% of the “Bush Tax cuts”, the Obama Tax cuts.
Unbelievable!
Wake up

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Usmc Dawg, What does Usmc stand for?

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John,
In both of your scenarios, the key is you had money to spend, now you do not. How is that going to help a sick economy??

We already know the misfits don’t know how to manage our money, now they want more of it to mismanage.

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Linda, USMC stands for “United States Marine Corps”

Are you in the Real Estate industry or Banking industry?

You sound way too analytical to be an Agent.

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USMC, if you were in the mortgage business then you know full well that most loans were not then and are not now underwritten by Fannie and Freddie. Just because hannity, boortz, limbaugh, beck, and every other right-wing vomiter says it doesn’t make it so (remember the WMDs?).

And if you were in the mortgage lending biz for the last ten years, then you also know or should know that Fannie and Freddie were late coming into the sub-prime market and subprimes were not then and are not now a major source of their market share. You were in the mortgage business, who forced you to give a loan to anybody? Did all these mortgage brokers hold guns to potential client’s heads because of Barney Frank?

The credit card companies send 4 billion solicitations via mail every year. Are they “forcing” people to get credit cards and max them out? Why the hate for Fannie and Freddie but not for, say GMAC, the nation’s largest lender for cars? They are forcing people into either very low quality cars or cars they cannot afford, sometimes both. At least with a mortgage a person can write off the interest, leave equity to heirs, and a house doesn’t depreciate by 35% when you drive it off a lot.

I personally work and pay for my mortgage. But that’s because paying outright for a house is not an option on my 2 income family. I make extra payments, but like all my neighbors, the family is one catastrophe away from bankruptcy. It’s very difficult to save enough money to pay for a very typical house. I think it’s insane that any person has to float a quarter million dollar loan to get into a house. But that’s not even an expensive home in this day and age. Neither high wage doctors or lawyers can pay out of pocket for their houses, let alone the millions of “cube zombies” who work downtown.

The only people forcing home loans on anybody is the private banking cartel. These anti-regulation advocates are willing to pay billions to hold on their power, and based on this blog, their misinformation campaign is even more successful than their 2005 bankruptcy reforms. They have people defending the banks against their own elected representatives. Did PT Barnum know his stuff or what?

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John @ 7:20, Make it easy for us, Sir. Everyone who participates or reads this blog does not have time to research CNN Money. Do you know how to include a website? If not, I will help you. Was that the 1st or 2nd Bush? Was that in the ’80s or 2000s?

Read what I wrote @ 6:04. I NEVER said G. Bush was innocent. What I have proven with reference to a liberal website @ 6:48 was that the Dems. were requiring the GSEs to make subprime loans & that the crisis was predicted years before Bush was elected. This proves that the Dems. have blood on their hands in the worst preventable world-wide economic crisis in history.

And you come back at me blaming one of the Bushes. Man up!

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Hey Old Man,

I partially agree with you that Fannie and Freddie were not the only ones to blame.

Just like George Bush cannot be blamed for the mess we are in now.

Just because Olbermann, Madow, Chris Mathews, Anderson Cooper and the rest of your disingenuous, HATEFUL idols say so. (and Chemical weapons which are WMD’s were found in IRAQ)

Now, I do feel for your scenario with respect to finances as it is very similar to mine. However, don’t ignore the fact that our tax system is broken Congress spends WAY TOO MUCH MONEY.

You and I are in it together, as we all are.

Tell me what is wrong with “The Fair Tax”.

Why do your talking heads (I presume you are a liberal democrat who thinks he is moderate) “pimp” this “class warfare”, marxist mentality of what is “FAIR”?

That Solves nothing.

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Old Man @ 7:53

Your Narcissism is shining through… What do you mean, Why should we pay for the military?
“I didn’t get anything from this or that event…” -selfish Old man

You need to go travel the world. It will enlighten you.

People don’t like us because of our successful history and prosperity.

How ungrateful…

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Old Man,

You said WMD’s. And Chemical weapons ARE WMD’s.

I know that doesn’t fit your smear, but it’s the truth.

And I guess you have forgotten Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and the rest in Congress and the Brits, etc. who ALL(Congress) concurred AND VOTED on going to war. But yet it was only George Bush who just decided to commit political suicide and go to war for NO REASON.
Wake up Sap!

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khc,

What is “limp” is people like you who sit on the sidelines and play “Monday morning Quarterback” with your “by now you know… comment. That’s lame.

There is now a new democracy in the Middle East and One less Evil Dictator and sons.

I guess hundreds of thousands of Kurds getting “Chemically” exterminated by Sadam Hussein was ok with you and Old Man because it was out if sight and out of mind.

But you and your psuedo-intellectualism sit on the sidelines while real leaders are making the tough decisions in the world WITHOUT hindsight…

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I guess it’s the ‘fair’ thing that is causing such a problem
with the nominal tax increase for the wealthy. If the tax
cuts expire that problem will be solved. Anyone check
the Obama tax cuts that were included in the stimulus?

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Iraq had WMD’s but they were disguised as airliners
and eluded detection.

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Actually md,

There is a story that was not verified through the media that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the new name for the KGB, rushed to get the WMD’s that EVERYONE saw via satellite out of Iraq days before the initial invasion.

And further more, the FSB, is on record of helping Saddam Hussein usurp the UN’s blockade sell Billions of dollar$ of oil behind the backs of the UN.

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Kyle,

When you signed the Republican cult oath, was it witnessed?

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Yeah barking frog… it is all a Video Game to you, I guess.

Go have another bong hit and hot pocket. I’ll hit “reset” for you.

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Linda:

So its Clinton’s fault, but we shouldn’t blame Bush for anything because that was almost 2 years ago! You are an idiot.

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fair and imbalanced

I did not see that Linda blamed only Clinton, but he, or his policies, also contributed to this mess.

What about the likes of Maxine Waters, Barney Frank, and Cynthia McKinney? I guess your intellectual dishonesty won’t let you address them.

I guess you are in the “HATE GEORGE BUSH” crowd who doesn’t like “hate speech”.

You certainly do sound imbalanced…

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Enter your comments here

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Old Man

Did you get into the bottle? “Enter your comments here”

I am just kidding

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Amen Linda,

Very well said.

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USMC Dawg @ 9:36, I LOVE those capital letters! The corp deserves to be capitalized in every way! Stand out!
Thank you for taking my back tonight. You are so special! My husband of 34 yrs. will be appreciative & will get a few laughs tomorrow when he reads these posts.

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Thanks Linda, It was actually VERY easy to take your back tonight.
Your comments are intellectually honest and articulate.

@”barfing frog”
Take it easy on that bong of yours and get off of the junk food diet of Hot Pockets and Pogey bait.
I am for legalizing drugs, but that does not mean that I advocate their comsumption.

“Hey Dude, where’s my car?”

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USMC Dawg, What does Dawg stand for?

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USMC Dawg 10:03 What do you expect to do
with legalized drugs? Wear them?

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USMC Dawg 10:22 If you are thinking of marijuana
only, your plan might work. Other drugs might create
consequences much worse than ‘crime’.

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barking frog:

What consequences do you think would come about?

Sure, I know it sounds delusional, but think about it.

If someone wants to do”fill in the blank drug” now, what is stopping them?

If you wanted to do some coke, you would do some coke. Is there anything stopping that now.

And think about what happened with Prohibition. Once they legalized alcohol, the crime VANISHED into thin air.

What do you think?

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USMC Dawg 10:42 The main thing that is stopping a lot
of drug use is illegality. Legal hard drugs would
escalate the use drastically and the resulting
damage to society of increased medical costs and
crime to obtain the drug cost would be hard to
absorb. I believe a person has the right to do with
their body what they will and a totally free
society is desirable but it would take a toll
I don’t think we would want to pay.

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got to the grown-up table late (was reprimanding the kids on CT’s blog). no comment on the politics of raising taxes or budget deficits, but I believe the term “taking one for the team” is a sports metaphor. for example, if a team is in need of baserunners and a batter allows himself to be hit by a pitch, he “takes one for the team” (endure the pain of a fastball in the ribs). it is about sacrifice, not compromising one’s ideals or values. if the wonderful 2% (”rich”) truly care about America it will “take one for the team”. I also agree that the DoD needs to “take one for the team” and the Congress (eschew pork) needs to “take one for the team” but does anyone think these two beasts will “sacrifice” for the greater good. let’s face it folks; $250,000.00 year is the new middle class. the old middle class is now the working poor or below the Mendoza/poverty line (another baseball metaphor), and as I said, the beast needs to be fed so it just looks to the next level on the food chain. and as I noted on CT’s blog, we are not talking about “new” taxes. we are talking about allowing tax cuts to expire. whether they produce revenue or not, the Bush tax cuts failed to curtail spending, and the deficit needs to be dealt with.

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barking frog – September 21st, 2010
8:39 pm

“Iraq had WMD’s but they were disguised as airliners
and eluded detection.”

– (1) Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from
Saudi Arabia – not Iraq. No connection in terms of
nationality were ever uncovered (Saddam did offer
compensation to the families of the hijackers, though).

– (2) All of the planes were tracked by ATC towers
in the Northeast, and even had voice communication
with the cockpits (even after the cockpit doors were
breached).

– (3) Passenger planes are not typically used as
“weapons”. A more accurate description, IMO, would be
“improvised explosive devices (IED’s)”.

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How very Christian of the rich to throw a tantrum over 36% vs. 39 %, while the poor suffer.

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As I asked on Jay Bookman’s blog:

Three questions for those who aren’t opposed to raising taxes, or are just fiscally liberal:

1. What tax rate is too high a tax rate for the top income bracket? Is there one?
2. Since taxation is necessary to operate the government, but taxation is fundamentally the confiscation of wealth of one sort or another, what amount of government as a % of GDP is enough or too big? Is government ever too big?
3. Since there isn’t any “social security fund” to pay future retirees, demonstrating that the government fundamentally doesn’t have the ability to “save”, would you support a gradual transition over decades to “mandatory savings in personal accounts” with high regulations (to protect workers / savers / etc) so that your savings are yours, that cannot be taken by the government and spent, and that you can pass on to your children if you don’t need them for whatever reason?

Just wondering what those opposed to fiscal conservatism think about this,. Or do they think about this?

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“Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise”.

Don’t worry Kyle I won’t, i’ll take your word for it.

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Fair and ethical would be if no one were extorted, if the local, state, and federal governments had to beg for donations. A reasonable compromise might be if government extortions amounted to no more than 10% of earners’ incomes (not 11% per capita as it is now) or retail purchases. When the Fed was created and income extortion imposed federally (some states had income extortion earlier), earnest denials were made in congress that the top bracket earners would ever face a rate as high as 9%.

What has changed as far as federal debt is that the over-spending has gone up and up and up and up. In previous times, after a war, spending was restrained and federal debt was paid off within a decade or two (and usually within 5 years), but not since FDR. As a result of the creation of a multitude of unconstitutional programs, foreign adventurism, and pork at undreamed of levels, all bets have been off.

The only effective solution would be to make it impossible for the federal government to float so much debt. By eliminating the Federal Reserve, they would no longer be able to monetize government debt and extort us all by inflation, i.e. by making our earnings worth less. By eliminating income extortion, we could make plain to the federal government that our tolerance for over-spending and over-taxing and their attempts to divide the citizenry along socialist lines is finite. By consistently rejecting congress-critters who vote for pork and unconstitutional programs — a re-election rate of 5% instead of 95% — candidates would eventually get the message.

Oh, and Democratics are not “liberal”; they are leftists (and not very democratic, come to think of it). Some (like Obama, Reid, Sanders, Frank, Waters and Pelosi) are more extremely flaming radical than others.

“Another signifiant development in the art of verbal cleansing has been changing the names used to describe people who espouse government intervention in the economy and society, as most intellectuals tend to do. In the United States, such people changed their own designation more than once during the course of the 20th century. At the beginning of that century, such people calld themselves ‘Progressives’. However, by the 1920s, experience had led American voters to repudiate ‘Progressivism’ and to elect national governments with a very different philosophy throughout that entire decade. When the Great Depression of the 1930s again brought to power people with the government intervention philosophy — many of whom had served in the ‘Progressive’ Woodrow Wilson administration — they now changed their name to ‘liberals’, escaping the connotations of their earlier incarnation, much as people escape financial debts through bankruptcy. The long reign of ‘liberalism’ in the United States — which lasted, with few interruptions, from president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s [FDR's] New Deal in the 1930s through president Lydon B. Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960s — ultimately ended with ‘liberalism’ being so discredited that later presidential and other political candidates with long records of ‘liberalism’ rejected that label or rejected labeling altogether as somehow misleading or unworthy. by the end of the 20th century, many ‘liberals’ began calling themselves ‘progressives’, thus escaping the connotations which ‘liberalism’ had acquired over the years, but which connotations no longer applied [in the minds of many] to the word ‘progressive’, which was from an era too far in the past for most people to associate any experience with that word.” — Thomas Sowell 2010 _Intellectuals & Society_ pp141-142

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JDW wrote: “the only real successful administration of the last 30 years”

There have been no successful administrations, no successful congresses in the last 65 years… maybe not even in the last 100 years.

Of course, “success” depends on one’s goals. I supposed you can say you “succeed” at being a thug (increasing regulations, taxes, concentration of power, violations of individual rights, violations of oaths of office to uphold the US constitution…) if you’re a thug (and regardless of whether call yourself a Democratic or Republican thug). So, many Republican and Democratic admins and congress-critters have “succeeded” at this over the last century.

If you’re an honest, peaceful, generous, charitable person you can “succeed” at generally increasing liberty, and individual rights including respect for life and property, and quality of living. No administration or congress has succeeded at this over the last century.

Ah, but perhaps you’re cherry-picking your decades. Let’s see, 30 years: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama. Nope, no successes there on an admin by admin basis. Reagan failed to eliminate the unconstitutional departments of educationism and energy, for instance, failed to eliminate the Socialist Insecurity Abomination, Medicare and Medicaid. Congress passed one tax-relief bill, and 13 extortion increases during the Reagan admin. There were no improvements in immigration law over that time, but only a series of worsenings of the flood with repeated amnesties, proliferation and expansion of already excessive visa programs. There has been a partial recovery in the form of moderating crime rates, which had gotten much worse in the 1960s and 1970s. We’ve had a long, shallow economic depression and notably dysfunctional job markets since 1987 (though Lester Thurow wrote in 1980 that unemployment has been elevated back to the late 1920s), and bodyshopping has soared since the early 1980s. We have half as many petroleum refineries as we did in 1982, no new nuclear power plants, and very few coal-fired power plants, though effective scrubbers and other clean coal tech has been deployed since the 1960s. The Saturn was a bust (just as the Cruze promises to be, and what are these slightly insulting over-priced made-in-GA Kia things? Where are our inexpensive air-cars?!).

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John wrote: “Add to that the [executives] who abuse the H1B Visa program. The program was intended to fill positions that couldn’t be filled with US workers….not to replace US workers with lowered salaried foreign workers.”

What they said was they neeeeded to bring in the “best and brightest”, the “pre-eminent”, the “super-stars”. Of course, before that, they (NSF) much more quietly said that they wanted to depress compensation in the USA for people with PhDs by flooding the job market, and that they knew this would discourage US citizens from getting PhDs but so what… and much more loudly predicted terrrrible talent short-falls with numbers which suspiciously varied.

What they DID, which reveals what they intended, was bring in hundreds of thousands of cheap, easily brow-beaten labor who were not especially bright, not especially well-educated (hundreds without the equivalent of US high school diplomas, thousands without the equivalent of US bachelor’s degree), not especially highly-skilled, and not remotely as well-paid as would be appropriate for anyone considered “best” or “brightest”.

Meanwhile, recruiting within the USA has grown extremely dysfunctional since the hatching of the H-1B as automated resume parsers have been deployed to scan resumes and dump the mangled scraps into data-bases, never to be seen by hiring managers; e-mail addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and contact names are being redacted from job ads; series of phone screenings with trivial pursuit quiz-games aimed at declaring all US applicants “unqualified” (see the Cohen and Grigsby videos as this major law firm teaches the techniques; of course Fragomen et al. another major law firm was also an eager player, and the immigration lawyer association declared that such dishonesty is all just part of the way this game of charades is played)…

They made certain the enabling legislation was crafted in such a way that there were no effective minimum skill, intelligence, knowledge and education standards; no effective requirements to match local market compensation for the education, skills, experience, etc. of the worker; no requirement to “test the market” for presence of able and willing US talent to do the job at local market compensation; and no consideration of the ability to relocate US talent within the USA (so that a firm even a mere 20 miles from one of the country’s best engineering colleges or 400 miles from several of them can still declare that they are unable to find “local” engineers even though there’s actually a plentiful supply).

So, what we got were bozos and terrorists like Faisal Shahzad, facilitated off-shoring, 21% fraud rates in the applications for these visas, and a teeny tiny fraction of a percent who might have actually merited being admitted (only we’ll never know because of all the sand thrown in our faces).

Even the unrestricted “Einstein visa”, the O visa, has been abused to bring in sleazy “actresses” who supposedly possess, ahem, “exceptional talent”.

US Department of Labor’s Strategic Plan for 2006 through 2011, on page 35 states: “H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker.”

2000-04-24 Joel Stewart _Immigration Daily_ “Legal Rejection of US Workers”: “even in a depressed economy, employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply.”

Larry Lebowitz [talking about the PERM process for people who already have H-1B or L-1 or J-1 visas and are applying for a green card]: And our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker. And, you know, that in a sense that sounds funny, ahh, but it’s what we’re trying to do here. We are complying with the law fully, ahh, but our objective is to get this person a green card, and to get through the labor certification process. So certainly we are not going to try to find a place [at which to advertise the job] where the applicants are going to be the most numerous. We’re going to try to find a place where, again, we’re complying with the law, and hoping, and likely, not to find qualified and interested worker applicants. So that’s the process that we will go through with you from the beginning onward… what 3 options are we going to select [for advertising the job]…
Jan Barton: The employer is obligated to review all of the resumes that are received in response to all of the ads… What we mean by if they’re interested, if they don’t like the salary [perhaps because you've set it a little lower than local market compensation levels], if they don’t like the work location, they’re not interested. Or if they just don’t like the job itself, they’re not interested. Um, those are ways we can disqualify them and get them out of the market, and focus on the ones who might be more qualified. If it gets to the point where they’re, somebody’s looking like they’re very qualified, we ask them to have the manager of that specific position step in and go over the qualifications with them. If necessary schedule an interview, go through the whole process to find a legal basis to [come up with a pretext to] disqualify them for this particular position. In most cases that doesn’t seem to be a problem… you can eliminate them…
Alex C?: That… is another incentive… 30 days of recruiting, 30 days of waiting… to get the thing final… The longer you leave it out there waiting, the more you are exposed to people possibly seeing something from the paper 6 weeks ago and saying, “Wait a minute, I qualify”.

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