Nah.

AndyB, if you were in the US you'd become aware of a "think tank" (code for partisan propaganda firm) called the Tax Foundation. They are always screaming about tax rates and publish them along with AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) figures and calculated taxes based on those figures. The inherent lie about that is Schedule A hasn't been computed yet and subtracted from the AGI figure to produce something close to the actual taxable amount. What's on Schedule A? Real estate taxes, state taxes, charity donations, even medical and job hunting costs if they are large enough. What the propagandist figures also don't reveal is that donations can be far larger with rich people (who can make $50,000 annually and afford to give away 40% of their income? But billionaires can.) and real estate taxes can be far above average as well. How is that possible? The middle income person who wants to buy a home is typically restricted by the lender to a monthly payment of no more than 28% of their monthly income. The billionaire, who can afford to live on a very small percentage of their income, has no such limitations.

Now you need not believe me when I say it's a partisan propaganda outfit, take a look at who runs and has run the place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Foundation
Check out the board of directions. It's a who’s-who list of billionaires. Of course people can only stand so much BS being packaged and sold as truth (anyone come to mind?), which leads us to this:


It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand a half truth is often more dangerous than a complete lie. But the half truth does allow more sheeple to accept it as pure truth. You can call it a Faux truth if you like.

The irony of such propaganda outfits is that they claim US class warfare is piled up against them. What they don't report are facts like Romney's actual tax rate paid. Like Warren Buffet it was much lower than their employees, or any of the middle class, ever get to pay. But sheeple believe them, because they want to, and they go out and support the tax breaks for the people who can most afford to live without a couple of percentage points of less income. And with that the middle class becomes the age old victim of “divide and conquer.” I leave it to you to determine why.

Another hidden fact is that rich people often have a very large portion, sometimes all, of their income coming from investments. Schedule D allows them to pay a lower rate than the Tax Foundation's highly publicized numbers.

This is what the US has been reduced to with certain groups, the "Land of Opportunity" used to refer to a chance to work and earn money, now "opportunity" merely refers to when and how exploit and profiteer. The "Land of the Free" will become "The Land of the Free-For-All" more so with one party than with the other. It's a fine line between deregulation and anarchy, if you bother looking for it.

And since most sheeple are clinging to the 2 party dictatorship model, mutual decline is inevitable, all while blaming the other party, with the victors laughing at the lot of them.

Oh, the other billionaire that spews forth his agenda as fact is somebody you may have heard of. His name is Rupert Murdoch, ring any bells?

Does that mean no, or are you imitating a goat?

It means no of course.

bit more on taxes in the US,

if your bank of america, you get to rake in billions and pay no taxes, while foreclosing on snake oil loans they already made 200% on.
if your a oil company you get 4 billion in federal handouts for reaming consumers for unheard of profits.

greatest country in the whole universe. yep.

I think you mean you're (or "you are"), not your. In addition to the fixing the lousy tax laws, the US needs to improve its educational system.

When I was in college and took a course in Taxation (accounting course), on the first day the professor said that federal taxes are not used to raise money, since the US has printing presses for that. He said that taxes are used to encourage or discourage certain kinds of behavior by corporations or individuals as implemented by the tax code in the form of rules regarding taxable income, deductions, tax credits, etc.

If only it were that simple.

That's a secondary reason. As for printing money if the US printed it's total budget requirements annually what would inflation be?

He made my point about half truths, mere Faux facts. And all those naives that bought his oversimplification. Too bad people are so easily indoctrinated.

I'm not sure why you bring up this example. The US Treasury doesn't change the amount of money it prints to deal with the deficits in the budget. Most other countries don't either. (Zimbabwe lacked this self-restraint, which was one of the causes of the recent hyperinflation.)

Given that I'm skeptical about the basic premise of the argument you quoted, the rest of it has lost credibility (even though I agree that many tax laws were created to incentivize consumers/industry in various ways.)

agreed

so you didn't understand what i said cause my "smartphone" picked the wrong combination of letters and punctuation, and you complain about education? or are you nitpicking to be insulting? theres no need for you to be an extra douche. whats next, calling a woman a prostitute for saying her health care coverage is lacking?

I will agree that education needs shitloads of help, unfortunately the GOP fights any educational opportunities every chance it gets, unless its to include the gospel in public schools. -so much better to have a nation of good little faux soldiers and mindless faux consumers, than people than can think and act for themselves. the colleges that teach this bullshit business model that preaches unrelenting greed without any conscience or concern for long term sustainability of the planet and the human race should be brought to trial.

tax laws need fixing from the top down. focus on the gross abuse and perversion the uber rich and corps get away with first. then the fairness can "trickle down" to the bottom earners.

Not sure how you get from what I quoted (which is indeed an accurate statement of what he said) to any conclusions about my credibility. Don't shoot the messenger.

However, for clarification and fairness to the professor, countries do not have to have to print money (with their printing presses), they can also print bonds and sell the bonds for money. Ultimately, there is not much difference. But I am sure the statement was made by the professor for some degree of shock value, and is obviously somewhat exaggerated, even though there is a lot of truth to it.

The reason I brought it up in the first place, is that I don't think the chap from the UK understands the complexity of US tax law. If the only purpose of taxes was to raise money, the laws would be much simplier.

So you're saying what he said wasn't very intellectual. Even better, if wasn't even worth considering or remembering, let alone believing. I finished ECO101 by answering every final exam question, "Well the book answer you want is xxxxx, but if you stick your head out any window and observe life you realize the book answer is crap, followed by a real life example." I still got the A, and I got no replies back.


I once watched a bunch of white supremacists on a talk show. They believed they sounded like they were superior, but they inadvertently stated none had even finished high school. Why mention this? Well had they complete an Ivy League education they may have initially seemed quite knowledgeable, but underneath the facade they are the same white trash they have always been. Think about it, did GWB ever sound educated or articulate? You can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear. This isn't anything new, even Ben Franklin recognized the kind of person you're addressing:


http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quote ... 51596.html

Now regarding your question the answer is both.
1. He's nitpicking, i.e. he has nothing substantial to grab onto and insult, as he usually does, no matter what it is. Example: all my comments are aimed at his delusional political stance (and all others who believe like he does), his comments attacked my personal life, as he did with others. As usual the Faux moral high ground, while draping themselves either in the flag or in his case his education. John Kerry gets criticized for respectfully mentioning Cheney's gay daughter. But it was OK when McCain joked, "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father." Like I said the Faux moral high ground.
2. Insulting, practically ever post that he can't address with his pseudo-logic ends up with some variation of, "What? Are you on the rag or something?" No need to take my word for it, go back and read his responses and see for yourself.

And Xan, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on a "trickle down" economy. In case you haven't noticed we're underneath the leaky diaper, not above it.

One mistake you can blame on your smartphone (if it was too inconvenient to put in the apostrophe, you should have just said "you are" and your smartphone would have complied), but you did the same thing twice in row, so maybe it is operator error and not smartphone error?

Regarding the comment about prostitution, it appears you also need some education in syllogisms and logic, because your argument is non sequitur. You should also try and refrain from ad hominem attacks, to avoid being perceived as a adolescent or a cad.

Au contraire

I was searching for the right word.
By jove, I think you have it.
Ta Ta

Greetings,



Wow -- did your BS meter get pegged, too? Whoever this "professor" was should have stuck to accounting, and left the political science and economics to others. Do they ever get tenure? This piece of "wisdom" is pure and utter tripe. Laughable codswallop...

Why would we ever incur debt, if we could just print money? Why bother trying to balance the budget? Why bother trying to control anything or anyone?

Little bit of trivia: who was the most recent president to balance the budget? (Hint: there was actually a surplus left to his successor, which was not only squandered but we were treated to skyrocketing debt...)

And who was the next most recent president to have a balanced budget?

hey clueless in denial, there's no apostrophe using a swype keyboard. besides the characters don't really matter, its the message that YOU ARE missing entirely.

no other forums i belong to would allow this kind of flame/troll to stick around for even a week.

I think he actually does get it.

And people in the UK complain about taxes being too complex, your system is way more horrible (by horrible I mean unnecessarily complex).

In the UK there are 2 basic types of income tax, they are simply "NI" (National Insurance), and "Income Tax", both of these vary by how much you earn, NI is a relatively small sum whilst Income Tax is relatively high, Income Tax has is broken down into "brackets" and is a pretty fair system whilst not being so complex to work out that it is expensive for the government to administer.

Income Tax has an un-taxed level of £7,475 (currently), which means that if you are part time and earn £8,000 per year you will only pay tax on £525 of your earnings, which at at 20% is £105 as well as £92.64 in NI. However if someone is earning £18,000 per year, they will be taxed at 20% for £10,525 of their earnings, giving £2,105 to the government, whilst also giving £1,292.64 in NI, and if someone is earning £28,000 per year they will pay £4,105 in Tax and £2,492.64 in NI.

The next bracket up for income tax is £42,475, anything over this point is taxed at 40%, a person earning that much will pay £7,000 in Tax and £4,229.64 in NI.

The total tax taken from each of these examples by the governments 2 income taxes are as follows.

Earn £8,000 - Total tax 2.5%

Earn £18,000 - Total tax 23.2%

Earn £28,000 - Total tax 30.8%

Earn £42,475 - Total tax 35.9%

The overall percentage of tax taken by the government goes up the more you earn, which is the way it should be, rather than going down like it does with rich people in the US (legally) or by rich-people in the UK (increasing illegally, as the government is cracking down on this immoral behavior).

I assume everyone here considers this a fair kind of tax system, and that the mega-rich should not be able to dodge taxes in the way that they are doing, and can only do because they earn enough to pay other people to avoid their taxes.


Andy

That's nowhere as significant as the unquestioning sheeple that bought it.


Yeah that takes a lot intellect.

Oh by the way, I graduated with a 3.86 average in both cybersecurity and my core courses, I just never wear my education on my sleeve, and I recognize and accept prose what for it is. <- Wow, that's just too many words to convey a simple idea - DUH!

By "the rest of it has lost credibility", I meant the argument you quoted, not you yourself.

I disagree. When any government issues bonds for money, they are (in effect) taking out a loan from the purchaser of the bond. While this solves cash flow problems, it doesn't affect the deficit in anyway. (or technically, I guess it increases the long-term net deficit, since the bond needs to be paid back with interest.) Issuing bonds is fundamentally different from actually printing more money, which increases the total monetary supply.

Well this scrap of information he conveniently tucked away in the willful blindness section of the brain.

I want to clarify something, of all the candidates out there Romney is the only one carrying any human DNA. If he uses his skills for real and impartial results, which require bi-partisanship, then perhaps he can get things done. If he uses his skills for nothing more than cronyism then things will get worse. Looking at today's news article about the breakdown of Romney's contributors, very few small, and many maxing out the limit, I do not have high hopes for him, but at the same time I would actually enjoy if he won and proved my cynical thinking to be flat out wrong.

Neil, yeah Clinton didn't overspend or start wars, but let's grade the current leader, or mess maker, or leading mess maker. He bit off more than he can chew when he used to act like a democrat, and then he started making right wing mistakes when he went to the center. No wonder he's becoming America's fastest growing bi-partisan pinata.

I don't think you understand what he said. As to why we would not just print money, instead of printing bonds and selling them to get money, if the current level of deficit spending and total debt continues much longer there will be no difference between printing bonds and printing money, because the interest and principal payments will be just as burdensome as hyper-inflation. That is why the dollar is worth so little today compared to the Yen, Euro, Canadian Dollar, etc (even though the Euro has its own gigantic problems). Also, the Federal Reserve has the power to introduce money into the money supply simply by printing it (this is no joke, its true). I am not saying that the Federal Reserve should be abolished, just explaining how it works.

As to why politicians want to control the actions of people and organizations with the tax code, you can ask them, but it seems rather obvious that it is often done. For example, making mortgage interest tax deductible encourages home ownership. Offering tax credits (much better than tax deductions) available for purchasing energy efficient appliances and cars encourages people to buy those items, replacing their old inefficient ones, and help reduce greenhouse gases and make the country more energy self-sufficient, etc. If you look at the full list of tax credits, most are for social benefit purposes as perceived by those who pass the tax laws.

I think if you ask any economist about these things, they would agree.

Regarding Clinton balancing the budget, that was largely the result of the 1994 mid-term elections where the Democrats in Congress were slaughtered and Republicans took control of both houses of Congress (took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years). Had the Democrats remained in control as in the first 2 years of Clinton's presidency, the budget would not likely have been balanced (revenues would have been the same, but they would have increased spending). Also critical at that time, was the fall of the Soviet Empire just a few years before, which allowed military spending reductions. People over-estimate the power of the presidency in spending matters (unless the president is willing to veto a spending bill and the veto is not overridden, which I doubt that Clinton ever did).

Issuing bonds does not affect the deficit? Well I guess if they print and sell bonds for no reason, and actually had enough cash on hand to pay the bills without selling bonds, that would be true, but I have never heard of the Treasury printing and selling bonds unless they needed to borrow money they did not have.

There are definitely big differences between printing money and printing bonds. What the professor said is that Congress passes spending bills and tax code without much worrying about whether the budget is balanced. The government has printing presses to print bonds if the spending exceeds revenues. This is called fiscal policy. I am not endorsing this, just explaining it.

Only the Federal Reserve can print money to add to the money supply if they think it is needed (as they have done in huge amounts since the 2008 financial meltdown). This is called monetary policy.

But in the long term, if too much debt is taken on by printing and selling bonds (US is averaging about 1.5 Trillion of new debt per year and almost 15 Trillion total) there will not be much difference in the long term between printing money and printing/selling bonds. The US dollar will decline rapidly in value in either case, as has happened quite a bit so far.

There's good reason to doubt that Romney has any human DNA. When he assumed office as governor of Massachusetts (in January of the year) one of the first things he did (and it was his prerogative, although I don't remember the details) was to cut back the already terribly sparse funds for the homeless. As a direct result of that, a shelter in Worcester that the homeless had as a refuge during the days of that frigid 0 to 10ºF winter had to close, and they had to wander the streets or get kicked out of public buildings all day until getting scooped up at nightfall to literally avoid death. Would a human being do that? No. If the budget is strapped, then let the potholes remain in the roads for a while longer, or something.

Recall that not long ago Romney was asked what he would do for the very poor, and his reply was, essentially, nothing, that there already was a 'safety net'. I guess some people have forgotten that every homeless person displays the very inadequacy of the safety net. In any case, he indicated that he wasn't going to do anything to improve their lot -- it's like, it's OK for the desperately poor to remain desperately poor as long as they can survive. The implications of that are breathtaking.

I think it's safe to say that he's an ambition machine with a pathological lack of sympathy. Of the other candidates, Gingrich is his equal, coming at it from blunt meanness. The other two are misguided souls who might actually have a heart buried somewhere in their chest.

I'll reiterate what Neil said, that a venture capitalist would be precisely the worst choice for managing the economy.

I only said he contained some DNA, not that it was the dominant type, and when compared to the other candidates.

Your reasons are why I am cynical about him. I expected more of the same. More for the more, less for the less, which is a big plus for the "Let them die" crowd.



I dare say no other type of person can become president because of the way the current system works.

Really? A Venture Capitalist is at the top of his game and he was the CEO which means he managed the business rather than did the majority of the leg work on picking companies to invest in. There are several lines of work that would make good presidents because the president is such a varied position. A lawyer or judge would understand the law that he enforces and should be effective at generating policy (even though that's Congress's role, in today's politics the president play a major role). An Ambassador would have foreign policy knowledge. A General would have military experience. And a CEO would have business experience. It's your choice in what you think is the qualities we need to emphasize most, but there is no way you can argue that a CEO of a private equity firm isn't a good qualification for managing the worlds largest economy. Or maybe we should just make that homeless guy president, because he would know what needs to be done in the homeless community to keep people warm, as that seems to be your biggest priority rather than putting the economy back together so you can help the other 99%. Its very kind of you to care about the homeless, but that's not the most important thing to look for in a president. An improved economy will help get those homeless people that want to work, back to work. But you're never going to eliminate poverty by giving people free stuff. Trillions has already been spent and the poverty rate is more or less the same. The war on poverty, like the war on drugs has failed.

I don't see much choice if I am honest. They are all cut from the same cloth (sadly)
Current moron, or new moron pretending to be "different"

And you can apply that to just about every nation out there. Lots of promises, mostly brown envelopes and a desire for "power/glory" fuel these people. Not a lot else