Do you agree with cutting social security or medicare?

[Yugl]

I understand that, but I'm wondering what action would it take for us to be protecting our allies? The reason I ask is because actions do not necessarily spell out intent. People are susceptible to take action that strays from their intention. You bring up a valid point, which is that we could simply be protecting self-interest resources. At the same time, I think these are the same things these countries would want us to protect in the first place.

[Maguspk]

I agree to an extent Finesse.



I was pointing out how easy you say it is to come up with these means tests, yet there are certainly factors that will make it difficult to derive.

Are you stupid? We already bracket people based on their income among other factors for things like taxes. Also, saying something will be difficult to derive is pointless, there is no magical panacea, if you're only argument against a proposal is 'that iz hard', then you've already failed.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

As indicated in your post, the rich rarely pay taxes because of special interest lobbying, tax shelters, and teams of accountants hiding or writing off income. There should be a salary cap enforced on the top 5% of earners in this country with excess income being taxed 100%.

Ummm the IRS's own data shows that like the top 10% of income earners pay 90% of all taxes or something ridiculous like that.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Ya, it's kindof a byproduct of our actions abroad. I mean in the end the basic structures we need to have in place are fully functional nation-states that are sympathetic to our needs. So basically all of our allies are essentially resources for that purpose.

America doesn't want to be in the business of what Great Britain was doing in the 17th and 18th centuries and actually ruling over colonies abroad and trying to tax and govern them. We've obviously shown that can be undone quite easily.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Ummm the IRS's own data shows that like the top 10% of income earners pay 90% of all taxes or something ridiculous like that.

Read on buddy I've addressed this to Plow.

[Yugl]

Are you stupid?

No, are you?

We already bracket people based on their income among other factors for things like taxes.

Already aware of this. When did I suggest otherwise?

Also, saying something will be difficult to derive is pointless, there is no magical panacea, if you're only argument against a proposal is 'that iz hard', then you've already failed.

I didn't say the proposal being difficult is a reason for inaction. Read properly. I mentioned that saying it's "easy" is an ignorant perspective.

Edit: Stop making assumptions out of my posts and take them for what they say, not what you believe they say.

[Koul]

this might be a stupid question/not belong here but what exactly will happen if the country goes completely broke/can't pay for anything/can't borrow from other countries? or even if the entire world economy dies. serious question also.

mass chaos?

[Maguspk]

Read properly. I mentioned that saying it's "easy" is an ignorant perspective.

Edit: Stop making assumptions out of my posts and take them for what they say, not what you believe they say.

I never said it was easy, maybe my first replies didn't make that clear enough when I repeatedly said the formula is not something I claim to know. I am simply saying it would be a viable and obvious solution to means test it. Stop being retarded.

this might be a stupid question/not belong here but what exactly will happen if the country goes completely broke/can't pay for anything/can't borrow from other countries? or even if the entire world economy dies. serious question also.

mass chaos?

It won't happen. Before we collapse everybody else will and as that happens people will flock to our currency to invest and that will, ironically enough, save us. We will be the last to fall and so we won't fall, at least not from this. One of the many benefits of being the leader of the world's economy and the currency by which everybody else bases theirs.

[Yugl]

I never said it was easy, maybe my first replies didn't make that clear enough when I repeatedly said the formula is not something I claim to know. I am simply saying it would be a viable and obvious solution to means test it. Stop being retarded.

\
Means test it; fucking simple, just provide it to those who need it.

I would say that implies it's easy. More specifically, the words "simple" and "just". If you didn't mean it that way, then take responsibility for what you said and state it clearly. Simply saying you don't know the formula doesn't mean you could not have been implying that the formula isn't easy to figure out. For example, I don't know how some economists derive the questions they use. That doesn't mean I cannot imply that it's not simple for those with knowledge in economics to figure out. In short, your post blurred the distinction between saying means tested is simple and saying it's an obvious solution.

[BadKarma]

No, we should cut welfare programs!

Idk if your serious or not, but this.,

[Plow]

Read on buddy I've addressed this to Plow.

My point was just on who it affects, but I'm assuming what you're referring to is this:

It shouldn't be based off of a percent it should be a flat dollar cap including stock options and holdings.

I don't really want to get into an argument over rather or not it's acceptable to say "You can't make any more than x amount of money, and if you do, every bit above that line goes to taxes." All I'll say is... good luck with that.


Anyway, to clarify the numbers people are throwing out, we've all heard before it's just hard to remember specifics. This is *PURELY INCOME TAX*, in 2007:

top 1%: paid 40.9% of all FPIT
top 5%: 60.63%
top 10%: 71.22%
top 50%: 97.11%
bottom 50% (32k household income and below): 2.89%

sauce: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pa...ome-taxes.html


For a bit more detail there's this: http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

Which shows the top 1% paying over 40% of taxes while receiving 22.8% of total agi.


Food for thought: taxing the top 1% of earners (average income: 1.5m per year) an extra $10,000 a piece would provide a whopping 14 billion extra tax revenue...

Taxing everyone an extra $10 a piece would provide about the same.


Now, extrapolate those numbers to quantities that would result in the kind of deficit reduction we actually need, and you see why it's so hard to get that kind of money out of a million people in a 200 million+ person society.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

My point was just on who it affects, but I'm assuming what you're referring to is this:



I don't really want to get into an argument over rather or not it's acceptable to say "You can't make any more than x amount of money, and if you do, every bit above that line goes to taxes." All I'll say is... good luck with that.


Anyway, to clarify the numbers people are throwing out, we've all heard before it's just hard to remember specifics. This is *PURELY INCOME TAX*, in 2007:

top 1%: paid 40.9% of all FPIT
top 5%: 60.63%
top 10%: 71.22%
top 50%: 97.11%
bottom 50% (32k household income and below): 2.89%

sauce: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pa...ome-taxes.html


For a bit more detail there's this: http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

Which shows the top 1% paying over 40% of taxes while receiving 22.8% of total agi.


Food for thought: taxing the top 1% of earners (average income: 1.5m per year) an extra $10,000 a piece would provide a whopping 14 billion extra tax revenue...

Taxing everyone an extra $10 a piece would provide about the same.


Now, extrapolate those numbers to quantities that would result in the kind of deficit reduction we actually need, and you see why it's so hard to get that kind of money out of a million people in a 200 million+ person society.

Right, they pay a higher dollar amount as obvious math dictates, but in the end they pay less of a percent ( of their total income ) because of tax breaks, tax shelters, etc.

This is the point I so ineloquently tried to reach at 3am last night.

If I make $1,000,000 a year and pay 5% taxes of course I pay more of a percentage to the total budget than someone who pays 10% of their $100,000 a year. Quoting percentages of the FPIT is misleading because it's not representative of actual taxation of income per person.

[Rhinox]

are you seriously plow that the rich are overtaxed?

[Plow]

Right, they pay a higher dollar amount as obvious math dictates, but in the end they pay less of a percent ( of their total income ) because of tax breaks, tax shelters, etc.

This is the point I so ineloquently tried to reach at 3am last night.

If I make $1,000,000 a year and pay 5% taxes of course I pay more of a percentage to the total budget than someone who pays 10% of their $100,000 a year. Quoting percentages of the FPIT is misleading because it's not representative of actual taxation of income per person.

You're wrong. The rich pay higher percentages than most, unless they're cheating. (Fix the cheating and you'd gain a huge amount of money)

Example from one of the links I posted:

Average tax rate on top 1%, total, not just FPIT, is 22%. Average total tax rate on 51-75% is 7.01%.

With just FPIT it would be even more skewed, as the top bracket is taxed at 35%.

Don't underestimate just how big the chunk of your income that goes to taxes becomes as you get near the top end.

But...

are you seriously plow that the rich are overtaxed?

Nope, not saying that at all. The rich are fine. They can handle quite a bit more.

I'm just giving food for thought in that it's tough to argue for charging the highest bracket, who already pays the most per income, being taxed *BIG* fat additional chunks when you can share a burden literally 500 times smaller and gain twice the revenue.

My point is really pretty simple: It's not that simple. This isn't even considering the fact that the top 1% in a given year (2007 for the examples I've posted) starts at 450k, which is not that rare, or even that rich, and peaks with tens to hundreds of millions of income in a single year.

Which doesn't consider that someone like an actor or an athlete might make 30 million one year and never make 100k in a year again the rest of their life, or investors that might make 10 million one year and lose 20 million the next, etc. etc.

Taxes is teh hrd. Rly.

[Akucaen]

Late to the party, but I'll say it again: Drop so much defense spending and put it towards education. So many of our ridiculous problems would solve themselves.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Except DC spends more per pupil than anyone yet has one of the worst education systems.

[Marootsoobutsu]

If this wasn't happening then it would be self-sustaining, because a single worker's contribution would cover the entirety of his benefits. The 5:1/2:1/etc issue is a product of the fact that we keep dipping into the honey pot.

This is wrong, and you should feel bad for saying it.

My SS, coupled with my employer's portion, does not provide anywhere near the funds to sustain livelihood. The nature of inflation pretty much means that the first 20 years of my "investment" is useless by the time I retire, and the third decade is barely breaking even. You do not pay your own way through; no one in SS does. You are paying to support the previous generation, not yourselves.



Finesse-- our military was pretty much garbage and an afterthought until WWII, so... previous expenditures there really have no bearing on where we're at today. Also, it's kind of awkward calling America "isolationist" when we had the Spanish American War pre-WWI, the banana wars between the WWs, and a host of smaller engagements between. America was determined to be isolationist in regards to other major powers, but we still pursued our own agenda. Also, the "America was solidly isolationist" myth needs poked... about half of America was isolationist, but the other half was fairly well torn on whether they were pro-German, or pro-British/French. The lack of uniformity in *WHO* we should support, combined with the negative "support no one with our military" led to the lack of action in WWI. World War II was as much a response to the experiences of WWI as it was true isolationism, but while Americans didn't want to be militarily involved, they were very eager to supply the British, French, Russians, and Chinese in terms of materiel. Of course, FDR was profoundly in favor of military involvement, but the bad times following WWI stopped a lot of people short on actual engagement of troops. It was not isolationist in a pure sense-- we still wanted to be, and were involved, in the war effort on one side more notably than the other... we just didn't want to die for it.

America's massive military buildup wasn't motivated by "LET'S HELP OUR ALLIES!" but the end result of our massive military buildup was that the primary threat Europe faced (or thought it face), in Russia was more-or-less sufficiently covered by America. This left Western Europe mostly responding to the non-USSR members of the Warsaw pact, and East Germany and Poland aside, they didn't amount to much. Their military budgets, particularly in West Germany, France, and England, were no where *NEAR* where they were at during their empire building phases, in very strong part because they had an ally in the US there to back them up.

But yes, the maintenance of our military to deal with the Soviet Union absolutely and unarguably led to the diminished military financing by European nations.



As for comparing Britain in the 1950s/60s to Britain now, are you being serious? Rome used to control almost all of Europe; that doesn't mean a comparison with the Roman Empire and Italy now are fruitful or worthwhile. England, now, is tiny. England, now, manages its social welfare dramatically differently than it did when it was an empire, and even when it *WAS* an empire, Hong Kong, India, and most of England's Middle Eastern and African interests were never treated really as standard British citizens (though Hong Kong's financial success left them in a different box than other British holdings).

Indeed, part of Britain's failings were because it was trying to exert central authority across a wide-spread and differentiated populace, not because (somehow), the government wasn't doing enough to make everyone the same. So, in that respect, the analogy of Empirial Britain and America should provide a better case for less "Empirical meddling", not more.

Overall, I think you are misunderstanding me. I do not claim that we have built up our military to protect our allies; certainly, our *motivation* was our own interests. The *result* has been that our allies-- particularly those who were rebuilding their infrastructures in the 1950s and 60s-- had a lowered need and capacity for military buildup, and correspondingly devoted smaller percentages of their federal budget to the military. If the US were perceived as a threat, and they had no other allies, you can bet your ass that social welfare programs would have had smaller budgets in European countries as they struggled to more autonomously secure their own interests.





As for the tax burden, the wealthiest 1% and 10% pay disproportionately more in taxes than they earn. The rich pay, right now, when all is said and done, more per dollar earned than the poor, and from the top quartile to the bottom, it's about a 4:1 ratio Sorry, no. The rich don't only pay more in terms of absolute dollars, their total percentage of the pie exceeds the percentage of the national wealth they earn.

Think of it this way: 9 people are employed at the same company. The total value of their employment is 100,000/year. One guy earns 20,000/year, the others each earn 10,000 year. That one guy pays 6,000 in taxes, the others each pay about 1,000 in taxes. This is close to the real world scenario. Not only is the one guy paying more in absolute dollars (he should; he's earned more), he's paying a higher percentage of the *total* than his earnings represent.

One can make a case that the rich can well afford their current tax burden. That's fine. To say they aren't paying their own share, based on their earnings, is patently false.

[Rhinox]

Except DC spends more per pupil than anyone yet has one of the worst education systems.

http://www.archive.org/details/dde_1953_0416

The Republican party specifically the current conservative movement should be ashamed of yourselves.


You guys use to have principles.

[Marootsoobutsu]

Late to the party, but I'll say it again: Drop so much defense spending and put it towards education. So many of our ridiculous problems would solve themselves.

Federal dollars spent on education have shown little to no influence on the quality of education.

County and city dollars spent on education have been shown to have a greater influence on the quality of education, though there's question as to whether it is actually causal, or that other circumstances in wealthier counties skew the data.


If the federal government 100% removed its money from education, the state loses a scapegoat to blame for its problems, and accountability returns to being local. In most things, being able to hold a local politician accountable is easier than national politicians, because a state senator or congressman can blame red/blue states as appropriate. Within ones own state, absolute control lies within the state voters in the regions affected.

To realistically solve the problem, though, it would not lessen the tax burden on citizens; it would simply transfer the current tax burden toward education from federal funds to state funds. This would serve to help urban areas, and states with massive urban populations, more than the more rural states, but that is in part because urban areas pay more into the system than rural ones.

[Akucaen]

Okay, I'm sorry I didn't spell it out. I thought the implication of quality of education would come with that original statement since throwing money at issues has never solved anything.