Tax Plan

[Vendetta21]

Originally Posted by u8477

Want to know who's hands it is in? Community Organizers, like Obama (his ONLY "experience"), who go down and bitch and moan to get loans out to the poor people. They bug the banks and send letters, show signs and make threats about the banks to give out these loans until the banks finally give in.

Scapegoat. This has nothing to do with the credit crunch either. The banks didn't "give in," they were completely willing to set up the subprime devices and expand the number of loans they had out. The subprime devices were extremely profitable for a good fifteen years because of the unique way they were set up, and the problem was that they were destined to fail eventually, but no one wanted to put the stop on it because they were, at the time, doing a lot of goods things for a lot of good people, and no one wanted to be the person who said no to that.

It's more in the hands of the Federal Reserve, the Securities Exchange Commission, and the Treasury Department. But not that much. It's a very complicated problem that even the best experts aren't sure about simply because of the incredibly tangled mess.

To say that 12% of a market can fail a worldwide economy would be stupid, and that's what we're talking about. 12% of the Mortgage-backed securities market was subprime. You are grossly misunderstanding the problem if you think subprime is solely to blame. It's just one contingent in a gigantic field of contingents.

[lord_carbo]

Whoa, guys, some of you are getting way too overzealous on the politics. Quit with the name calling and personal attacks on candidates and their supporters.

---

Here's an argument for all of you people against a progressive income tax: people who have an income of $1,000,000 are probably losing less in terms of overall life satisfaction if they are taxed $150,000 of it than a person who has an income of $20,000 who is being taxed $2,000 of it, even though the richer person is being taxed 15% of his income, and the poorer person is being taxed 10%. The more money you have, the easier it is for you to live, and the less each additional dollar to your income matters.

Another argument: Look at this graph:



The poor barely even pay for government, yet taxes on them are probably very distorting on their well-being. We could actually get rid of taxes on the first two or three income quintiles, cut government expenditures by 20%, and lower the deficit.

Ultimately if we have a specific goal for the amount of taxes we want to raise, there is a trade-off between the well being of the lesser-off, and the incentives of the better-skilled. Of course, you can just lower taxes and face little a trade-off between the poor having to pay taxes and the rich having no incentives... but then how would you pay for government programs? Scrap them? Again, another trade-off.

My proposal to face these trade-offs is to scrap some government programs, the useless ones, which may give us room to lower some taxes. Things like the war on terror, the war on drugs, government propaganda programs in school and on airwaves, pork projects, just a few of the things I would scrap. They aren't worth the cost to me. Some people may disagree, and that's OK, but I'm sure they can name some wasteful programs in government that we would be better off without so as to relieve our government's debt and help taxpayers. Things like national security, welfare funding (especially the EITC!), medicare/medicaid, I would keep, because they directly help us. But I'm not omnipotent, now, am I? Oh, one can dream.

Originally Posted by TD_Project

Like communism. Good idea,

Really? Communism, and its ideas of communal property and the Marxist labor theory of value and so on, is a "good idea?" I'm not sure how something that has failed multiple times in practice, along with violating everything we know about how and why capitalism works, can be considered a "good idea." And never mind that there are plenty of moral arguments to be made against communism.

[UphoricSHD]

Hard work makes the world go 'round and nobody in their right mind wants to give up money to the government. Dev said something about government theft? This 'theft' that your talking about is inevitable, unless you live in the wilderness with no electricity, running water, XBOX... the essential PC haha. (government musts)

Howeva! I do agree in your statements about, 'What's mine is mine and nobody can have my hard-earned dollar!' Seriously, come on did we learn nothing about sharing in kindergarten and Sarah just HAD TO HAVE THAT TOY... (B*@$#) It's not that I'm saying incompetent fools deserve your hard-earned dollar, but what else can you do.

Corruption will never end and human beings will never trust each other (give that theory a couple million years... lol). So, the government may in fact always be lying to us and cheating us out of our monies. Hey, if you want to do something about corruption, take office and do America some good. Don't become corrupt yourself!

[Vendetta21]

@Carbo: scrapping taxes for the bottom 3 quintiles is a bad idea. I think that there might be some situations where income taxes really are harmful, but I think everyone should, for the most part, be required to pay taxes so that they at least feel their share of the burden and they have respect in society because they do pay taxes. If 60% of the population didn't pay taxes you'd never hear the end of "well they aren't even paying for these programs." And I'm for keeping income taxes on all quintiles in place because I don't want that to be an endless hot-button issues on news programs and sources for the rest of my life. And yes it's a stupid reason that defies the numbers and data.

[Cavernio]

Just to let the few people know who've implied/said this: hard work doesn't mean being paid more. Working hard at the right job will get you paid more. Heck, slacking at the right job will get you paid more. Is that fair? Yes, ideally the person who gets paid more is doing something more 'valuable' in some way or another, but that doesn't necessarily make it fair. Hard-work at something necessary for society should all be paid the same. Imbedded in this is another unfairness that we're not paid what our value actually is. Parents, for instance, aren't paid at all. Shame on you if you want to actually raise your own child instead of sending them off to daycare because you have to do 'real' work instead.
All you people who simply bitch at people to get themselves educated, you're not thinking things through. We NEED people to do low-wage jobs in order for us to experience the riches we have...those jobs must be filled. If everyone were to get educated, you just get smarter people doing those jobs. (Well, at least until we get all those jobs replaced by machines.)

If you actually wanted people taxed equally though, I would hope that minimum wage would rise drastically to keep the actual money someone at minimum wage makes somewhere near the poverty line. That would decrease company profits too, of course, and give more incentive to get Chinese workers or whatnot, who'll work for a pittance. If minimum wage were not to be raised, much like what's happening now, you'd get an increase in poverty. (And then you'd get a lot more wealthy people wearing those idiotic 'stop poverty' bracelets since it'd be such a hot issue, some of them on those same people who think that it's too unfair to tax unevenly.)

"Telling me that it is my DUTY to give what I've earned and produced from my own abilities to someone who neither earned it, produced it, or intends to give me any kind of compensation whatsoever for it doesn't encourage me to work harder to produce more."

However, your tax money doesn't go into your poor neighbor's pocket who sits on their couch all day smoking pot. It goes to the government who then spends it on programs where various groups of people, including the entire country, benefits.
And as far as having incentive to make more goes, I don't think that the want for money makes that necessary IMO. One's incentive to work should not come from a desire or necessity to make money. It should come from a desire to create a better society, a more fun life, the knowledge that you are making a difference to someone, etc. Having a purpose to work beyond one's own money is necessary for most people to be happy in life. Take, for instance, people who win the lottery. They party and have fun for a bit, and then are notably known to get unhappy. Of course, people who run large, successful companies still want money, but it's because they want power, status, it's become a game for them, etc. I almost feel like having our society revolve around money is a mean trick on ourselves to get us to do things which we otherwise would not make ourselves do.

lord_carbo: Violating capitalism doesn't make something bad.

Also, the OP didn't make much sense. You claim that the people would only get upset when they didn't think it fair about how much of a discount everyone would get. If those people are intelligent at all, then they'd get upset about paying unequal prices for the beer in the first place.

[devonin]

However, your tax money doesn't go into your poor neighbor's pocket who sits on their couch all day smoking pot. It goes to the government who then spends it on programs where various groups of people, including the entire country, benefits.

It doesn't benefit me as much as my keeping all of it would, in theory.

If those people are intelligent at all, then they'd get upset about paying unequal prices for the beer in the first place.

Except that the only people with a right to be upset about it are the ones paying more than someone else, and the general idea is that with a fixed rate of taxation (X% of your income no matter what your income is) the people making more would understand that they had to pay more objective dollars simply because the rate of taxation hits everyone for an equal percentage of their income, which means the more they have the more they pay.

You'll notice that the real point of the OP was that the poor people were perfectly willing to let the rich pay a larger share of the bill, and it wasn't until they readjusted the rate of pay for each person, giving more savings to the ones shouldering more of the bill that they got upset.

The implication here is "The poor are perfectly okay to make the rich pay more in taxes, but get very upset when the rich get tax breaks" which is a pretty accurate reflection of how the tax issue has gone in recent history.

[foxyroxy2693]

Speaking of that poor neighbor sitting on his couch smokin pot, odds are there are several thousand people using marijuana that second in the united states alone. Taxation and Legalization of marijuana would give the economy a boost. Doing this would put the drug in a controlled area and put most dealers out of business. It would also put it in the hands of adults instead of minors. I don't know about you, but it's easier for me to go get a gram than it is to get some kind of alcoholic beverage. It is much less addictive than both tobacco and alcohal. There is also no documented overdose.
I'm no pot head, but it could possibly work..

[devonin]

Your post doesn't really have anything to do with the discussion at hand, and better belongs in other threads that exist. However, in the context of taxes, your suggestion about legalizing marijuana to boost the economy is unfortunately pretty much nonsense.

The argument says that if you legalized it like alcohol or tabacco, it would be sold in government approved locations and subject to taxes, thus the boost.

However, unlike the kind of tobacco the majority are addicted to, or any remotely high quality alcohol, there is no lengthy or costly manufacturing process to turn crops into finished product. Basically grow, harvest, dry, roll, smoke.

As a result, it is so trivially easy to simply grow your own, that it it were made legal, the vast majority of users would either grow their own, or simply get it from friends who were growing their own. It would actually generate very little tax revenue.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by devonin

As a result, it is so trivially easy to simply grow your own, that it it were made legal, the vast majority of users would either grow their own, or simply get it from friends who were growing their own. It would actually generate very little tax revenue.

Haha.

You give the average American too much credit. Most people who want to use marijuana would not grow it themselves. It could be the damned easiest thing ever to cultivate and people would still rather buy it. People don't avoid growing it themselves to buy from dealers just because it's illegal; they're lazy ****s.

Additionally, even if only a small portion of people bought it after legalization, that would still be more income than NOTHING for the government. It would also mean that they could cut back on all the spending that is applied to policing this **** (i.e. "war on durgs") and keeping these people off the streets or in counseling. It would basically be an easy means to cut a large amount of worthless spending and at the same time give themselves an additional income which could range from very small (if you're right) to exceptionally large (if my beliefs hold true).

But yeah, you're totally right. This has absolutely no real bearing on this thread.

ps

It is much less addictive than both tobacco and alcohal.

Nice spelling. It's not addictive at all, by the way. Not chemically, anyway. A person who is actually addicted to reefer is addicted in the same way a person might be addicted to the Internet or to gambling. You're right on basically everything else you said though (the points about the illegal black market, how easily obtained by minors it is, etc.).

ps hey you. Yeah you. I didn't misspell "drug", you dork. I made the choice on purpose as a sarcastic jab at how absurd the very idea of a war on drugs is (especially as far as marijuana is concerned), as well as an inside joke of sorts.

[foxyroxy2693]

Oh you! You've got some nice spelling yourself; you know, we've got to fight that war on durgs.


I think that the fact that whether we like it or not, 80% of Americans identify themselves as Christian will suppress any efforts towards this legalization. Or perhaps people are a little more open minded, like myself. I'm very active in the LDS(mormon) church, personally I don't use the drug but it's safe to say about 2/3 people I know light up the leaves. Haha.

But I was also wondering, if this were to happen, would people still go to dealers for a better product? What kind of weed would be regulated, nasty shwag that middle schoolers get or woud it be some real hairy sour deisel? Or would they put additives in it like the tobacco industry has done? Hm

Originally Posted by devonin

However, unlike the kind of tobacco the majority are addicted to, or any remotely high quality alcohol, there is no lengthy or costly manufacturing process to turn crops into finished product. Basically grow, harvest, dry, roll, smoke.

No lengthy or costly manufactoring process could also mean that it's inexpensiveness and fast pace could allow for more profits to be made.
Not to mention, everybody knows when you roll it, it loses it's flavor. This would make for an increase in pipe sales, which could also be heavily taxed along with anything else you could want at your local head shop.

[devonin]

Please don't double post. Also, back to taxes, leave the drugs for drugs threads.