[OT] Another heated discussion about the Iraq siutation, war and politics.

[Alpha Kodiak]

Ok, let me see if I can follow the logic thus far:

1) I didn't really get a tax cut, even though I have significantly more money in my pocket.

2) The tax cut I didn't get is bankrupting my childrens' future.

3) I would have gotten a bigger tax cut than the one I didn't really get if it had been a payroll tax cut, and it wouldn't bankrupt my childrens' future.

4) The Mad Hatter is giving a tea party and I'm late, I'm late....

Mind you, I have nothing against a payroll tax cut. My head is just spinning amidst all of the contradictory statements.

[Erax]

Just to get this thread away from US taxes for a bit :

In another thread, Baron Munchausen posted a link to Orson Scott Card's website (www.ornery.org). Compulsive reader that I am, I started going through most of his essays, until I hit the following passage :

"I was a Mormon missionary once. In Brazil, in the great city of Sao Paulo and some of the smaller cities in the surrounding countryside. I got a lot of hate Messages, too -- shouted from passing cars and buses, or muttered as I was shoved by passersby.

Funny thing was, they didn't hate me because I was a Mormon missionary.

They hated me because I was an American.

They called me "CIA." (Apparently they thought America would send its spies two by two through suburban neighborhoods wearing white shirts and ties.)

Isn't it ironic that in foreign countries, Mormon missionaries often have to bear personally the hatred that American foreign policy has provoked, while in the United States, the same Mormon missionaries get the identical hatred from Americans whose religious sensibilities are offended."

I live in the exact region OSC mentions, and American Mormon missionaries are a common sight around here. There is a time difference, though - he was probably here in the 70s. At the time, Brazil was under military rule and there were many who believed that regime had been 'set up' with American help. The feelings he describes still exist, although perhaps not as intense; I don't think the missionaries today are harassed as much as he was back then.

So what am I trying to say ? I'm not sure myself. Maybe I'm just trying to explain why everyone down here (and probably throughout Latin America) is against the war in Iraq.

[ September 18, 2003, 15:43: Message edited by: Erax ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Oh here we go again, lets blame Bush for all of the woes in the universe. If not for Clitonomics and the fact that he opened the flood gates for the chines so they could swamp our markets and under cut our industries with their products, our economy would not have tanked. 1998 was the beginning of the end for the Semi Conductor industry and many many other companies. (Oh ya, don't forget about NAFTA too and all the jobs that took away from us and sent south. Did you know that under article 11 of the NAFTA Treaty if a state passes a law that says a product can not be sold in the US, the company that makes it in a foriegn country can sue. And under the terms of NAFTA, they always win. Just ask California about that. They were sued by a Canadian company who makes poisonious gas cleaner addatives that the state had banded for being harmful to the environment.)

Clinton sold us down the drain to the chines for election money. This bad economy is mostly his doing, and to blame it on Bush is absurd. Ok you can blame a little of it on him. But not all of it.

Oh here we go again, let's blame the other wing of the Corporate Party for the behavior of ALL OF THEM. NAFTA was negotiated by the Reagan-Bush dynasty, and Clinton was trying to prove he was a 'New Democrat' who was friendly to business by supporting ratification. Same thing with the opening for Chinese goods into our markets. Republicans wanted it, Clinton went along to prove he was a 'moderate' and not an anti-business 'liberal' Democrat who does evil things like protect the general public. It's not the 'Democrats' or the 'Republicans', it's the POLITICIANS who are betraying us all.

[ September 18, 2003, 18:18: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[rextorres]

AK here's another explanation

The top 20% pay mostly income tax to the govt. The rest of us pay mostly payroll tax. (It sounds from your description that your with the rest of us.)

The tax cut that passed only dealt with income tax.

An analogy would go like this:

a. a room with 100 people

b. 20 people pay $1000 to the govt in mostly income tax.

c. 80 people pay $1000 to govt mostly in payroll tax.

d After the income tax cut the top 20 now pays $900 to the govt. mostly in income tax. The other 80 (people like you AK) now pay $990 to the govt. mostly in payroll tax. Sure those 80 got a tax cut BUT . . .

The reason it seems like the top 20 pay so much more is that some people only look at income tax and ignore payroll tax.

To answer your questions ALL those tax cuts will probably bankrupt the govt. Since there was going to be a tax cut then it should have been spread more. And yes you would have gotten a bigger share of the tax cut under a different plan.

[ September 18, 2003, 18:21: Message edited by: rextorres ]

[Narrew]

This is a VERY simple way to understand the tax laws.

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner.
The bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something
like this.

The first four men -- the poorest -- would pay nothing;
The fifth would pay $1:
the sixth would pay $3;
the seventh $7;
the eighth $12;
The ninth $18.
The tenth man -- the richest -- would pay $59.

That's what they decided to do.

The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement -- until one day, the owner decided to give them a break.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to educe the cost of your daily meal by $20."

So now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay
their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free.

But what about the other six -- the paying customers?

How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being *paid* to eat their meal.

So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each
man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of his earlier $59.

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth. "But he got $7!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar,
too. It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night he didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him.

But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something
important.

They were $52 short!

And that, journalists and college professors, is how the tax system works.

[ September 18, 2003, 19:22: Message edited by: Narrew ]

[teal]

Cute story, but I don't even know where to begin pointing out inacuracies in the analogy.

First off, the story only deals with a progressive income tax. Sales tax, excise taxes (e.g. gasoline taxes), property taxes, payroll taxes, etc. are all completely ignored and yet extremely important to the tax system. Telling only part of the story is not a good way to understand the tax system.

So I feel that when discussing taxes we should discuss the total effect of all taxes on an indivual. Presumably Narrew disagrees, discussing as he does only the progressive income tax in his story. I see no reason why one should not include the effect of these other taxes, considering that they are just as much a part of the tax system as the income taxes. Please Narrew, make a case for why we should only be focusing on income tax here.

Another important question is how should we measure a fair amount of taxes to be paid (putting aside the important question of how much taxes should be paid to a later date, only anarchists believe that NO taxes whatsoever should be paid to the state). There are two basic approaches here, an absolute measure, promoted by Rush Limbaugh and others, which decides to measure the absolute amount of dollars that someone gives to the tax system and a relative measure which measures the percentage of a persons income which they pay in taxes.

Say we have two people, one who makes $200 a year and one who makes $20,000 a year. Now the $200 a year person pays $20 in taxes while the $20,000 a year person pays $2,000 a year in taxes. Now Rush Limbaugh comes along and screams, "holy cow, this is totally unfair, let me show you a graph, the richest person is paying 90.9% of the total taxes!!!! My god that is so wrong, rich people are over taxed and should definately be paying less in taxes." This is very very wrong analysis. Both person A and person B were paying 10% of their income in taxes, which is a perfectly reasonable starting point and quite fair. But if you listened to Rush you would never hear about this. That is why whenever you hear someone talking about abo****e tax numbers in terms of whoever pays absolute amounts (like Rush's little pie graph earlier) little bells should be going off in your head saying, "distortion alert, distortion alert, someone is probably trying to trick me, I should be extra careful here." Talking about absolute numbers in tax terms is almost never a fair thing to do and anyone who willfully does it after being shown quite clearly that this is a bad thing to do is either an ignoramus and very bad at math, or else deliberately deceptive. In Rush's case I know where I am putting my money, but you can decide for yourself.

[Narrew]

That Last post was something I came across a while back when I heard the same old crying "the rich always gets the breaks".

Teal...When I read "progressive tax" all I can see is punitive or punishment, why should someone that earns more be made to pay incrementally MORE, in my ideal world, everyone above a specific amount (ie to not make the lowest earners carry the brunt, because of all the "other taxes" out there) would pay 10%. You see in my universe, math is simple, the sum of 10% of $500k is MORE than the sum of 10% of $50k. Of course all deductions would need to be eliminated. As far as the national sales tax, there would be many items not taxed, such as raw/non-processed foods but if you want to go out to a restaurant, then your going to pay a tax, no one makes you go out and eat. When a person with low income goes out to buy a car, they do not shop at the Hummer dealership. I think we need to get rid of all these nuisance taxes, I think as it is now all those local and state taxes you bring up (which I agree hurts the lower class) only makes it hard for anyone to get above the tide and make a positive income.

As I said before, I am not naive enough to think things will change, but I have a hard time not thinking a TOTAL tax change would not be for the better, but to get all the local/county/state/nation to make the changes would be near impossible.

When people complain about tax breaks bankrupting our future, why do they not think instead the bloated and inefficient programs will bankrupt our nation. I do not want to live in a socialist country (nothing personal my friends that live in such countries), but these programs are there, will always be there, but by god I want the money to go to the people that need it, not gobbled up because of an inefficient bureaucracy that could care less where the money is going. Our politicians when they leave office get paid a yearly salary and insurance benefits, you tell me what incentive do they have to make SS and Medicare viable, they will never use the service so they only have to pay lip service to the voting public.

As far as living in Washington, yep I thought California was a heavy tax state, but hell they tax the snot out of you here. Nice weather though. I had a house that wasn't fancy, I paid $145k for, but paid $200 per month for property tax, OMG is that sick or what? No wonder retirees have to sell their homes because they cant afford the sales tax.

Atrocities--Sorry you feel the way you do about Republicans, I can see where your feelings come from since that is all we hear from liberals and their attacks on people that only want the freedom to better themselves and not punished for success. I will say that the Democrats do not want their constituents to become educated and better themselves, because if they do, the will realize that all the rhetoric they have spewed is just that. So instead they ask "vote for us and we will get goodies for you from the government (which comes off the backs of them evil rich people)". But they never really come through, ohh they get government pork sent their way, but it doesn't really help the POOR, it just keeps the poor there, and I think the past 30-40 years prove it. And if anyone does better them selves, well they are evil and should be punished.

I will finish on this note, I am by no means rich (in American terms), the most I have ever made is around $45k (lots of over time), I got laid off after 9-11 and am going through retraining and will be finishing my schooling in the spring of next year. I hope to start my own business. But I remember a long time ago in my first real job, I was making $11/hr. and my supervisor overheard a conversation I was having with another co-worker. He asked me how could I be a conservative when I make so little money. I was floored by his question, I told him "What does the amount that I make have to do with fairness? I want to be able to better myself, and the amount that I am making now shouldn't make any difference".

Fairness. I do not think a progressive tax system is fair, it is punitive. Do I think it will change, no, not unless as I said above to Teal every level of taxes get changed so it will not be regressive as he said. I no what the socialists will say, it is only fair that the rich pay more since they have more, and my answer to that is who gives you the right to decide who should be punished more than someone else (yes, I contend that it is punishment). If I remember correctly, the IRS thinks you are rich if you make around $96k, that's a hell of allot of money true, but incrementally increasing their tax rate to make them "pay" more is not fair, why should the be punished because they make more. As long as there is class hatred and class envy, we will never focus on the real issues, which is, how can we be more efficient with the money we are spending now.

ACK, another tomb I am going to stop posting, since I know that most of use believe what we do, and it will be near impossiable to change our minds.

[Fyron]

Teal:
The problem with that is the poor and rich person do not in reality pay the same percent of their own income in taxes. You have them both paying 10% of their income, which is in no way at all like reality. It is the differences in percent taxed that most people complain about, not the overall percentage of tax revenues... (even that evil Rush Limbaugh...)

[ September 18, 2003, 20:28: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[geoschmo]

So what if the lower income person pays a greater percentage of their income in taxes? That is simple economics. The more money you have to begin with, the more you have left over after you pay for all those things which are the neccesities of life, food, shelter, clothing.

If I buy a new shirt for 20 dollars, that is a much greater percentage of my total monthly income then if Bill Gates buys the same shirt? So he should pay more for it and get nothing more out of it then I do? Just because he can? That's not fair.

The payroll tax is not a X amount per person tax guys. It's may not be graduated like income taxes, I am trying to find that out, but the more money you make the more you pay in payroll tax. And gas and other use taxes do constitute a greater percentage of total monthly income for a poor person then for a rich one, but so what? See above. Payroll tax and use taxes don't make things level. The poor person doesn't end up paying the same because of them. The rich person still pays a much greater share of the tax bill. And that's fine. Of course the rich person will pay a smaller percentage of their total income in taxes, but using the tax code as a method of income redistribution to change that is just wrong. Of course that's simply an ethical position I choose to take. Can't really debate it with those of you that feel it should be.

[ September 18, 2003, 20:52: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Narrew]

**Please Narrew, make a case for why we should only be focusing on income tax here.**

Because when people say the tax cut that Bush passed supposedly benefited the rich, that tax break was on the INCOME tax side, which was across the board, so DUGH (not aimed at you Teal, it's the people that plays the class envy card), the rich are going to get a break since they pay proportionally more of the income tax bucket.

Its all politics and rhetoric, I just hate the blanket liberal mantra "Tax breaks only help the rich". What you say is true on all the "OTHER" tax's, but can you even imagine anyone attacking them? I don't think any politician on either side would care to tackle that. SS and Medicare taxes are split between you and your employer, now we could make the employer pay 100%, but that may look good, but it is still coming out of all our pockets, the employer will factor that in your wages and pass it along to the consumer (no matter how long that chain will be).

I agree with you that all them other tax's hurt, but I dont see anything that will change. Will we have another Boston Tea party? I don't know that answer. I still think that progressive tax rates are punishment, but as you say how can we even out things *shrug*.

I just thought about trying to lower property tax's here in Washington state, I don't see it happening.

Whats the answer? heck if I know, I think we are allready to far down the socialist slope to make changes.