LightAttack

Read my original post, Soros is not buying up ammo companies. Do a simple google search. NRA-ILA confirms it is a bogus rumor. Unless you don't trust the NRA.

MaydayMark

Please don't confuse this political discussion with FACTS!

Gunter

I agree with the bold above but am confused by your application of it.

By my calculations, when 47 percent of Americans pay no tax that equals a 0% tax rate. Calling that regressive makes no sense and is unlike any other major industrialized nation. One needs to take into account the great deductions and credits higher earners don't qualify for.

We actually have a progressive system.

The Rich Don't Pay Enough? - Walter E. Williams - [page]

"According to IRS 2007 data, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 22 percent of national personal income but paid 40 percent of all personal income taxes. The top 5 percent earned 37 percent and paid 61 percent of personal income tax. The top 10 percent earned 48 percent and paid 71 percent of all personal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earned 12 percent of personal income but paid just 3 percent of income tax revenues."

This percentage has not changed as of 2009, the last year I could find data.

Huck

The percentage of the total national tax bill is irrelevant. It skews as income skews. Look at Warren Buffett. I'm sure his share of the national tax bill is astronomically more than his maid's. But she pays a higher effective rate than he does.

And 47% of Americans may not be paying income taxes, but the vast majority ARE paying SS and Medicare withholding - currently running 7.6%.

I spent ten years in this business making less than 50k a year. I did my own taxes. There were many years when my income tax rate netted out to less than ten percent. But my withholding ran about 25-30%, and I didn't get much of that back. SS and Medicare are a big chunk of pay when you're making jack squat. How insulting is it to be told you "don't pay taxes."

Gunter

That's a great way to end this discussion. It would have been more powerful had you inserted this.

The Question is Moot - Video

If your point is "Not progressive enough" or "Needs to be twice as progressive as France" then fine. But please don't call a progressive system regressive.

Gunter

I can see that but can assure you no insult is intended. In a discussion about income tax those taxes aren't part of the calculation. Just like sales tax or property tax are not.

That is how European countries soak their lower 90% while appearing to hit the rich harder with higher rates. They have a very expensive VAT.

SS and Medicare have been funded the same way since inception. They support those will low incomes and I support those programs. We should be happy they are not coming out of the general fund. Their demise would be imminent with our ethically challenged congress.

jungle

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. A democratic state may profess to venerate the name, and even pass laws making it officially sacred, but it simply cannot tolerate the thing. In order to keep any coherence in the governmental process, to prevent the wildest anarchy in thought and act, the government must put limits upon the free play of opinion. In part, it can reach that end by mere propaganda, by the bald force of its authority — that is, by making certain doctrines officially infamous. But in part it must resort to force, i.e., to law. One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty. Always they condition it with the doctrine that the state, i.e., the majority, has a sort of right of eminent domain in acts, and even in ideas — that it is perfectly free, whenever it is so disposed, to forbid a man to say what he honestly believes. Whenever his notions show signs of becoming "dangerous," ie, of being heard and attended to, it exercises that prerogative. And the overwhelming majority of citizens believe in supporting it in the outrage. Including especially the Liberals, who pretend — and often quite honestly believe — that they are hot for liberty. They never really are. Deep down in their hearts they know, as good democrats, that liberty would be fatal to democracy — that a government based upon shifting and irrational opinion must keep it within bounds or run a constant risk of disaster. They themselves, as a practical matter, advocate only certain narrow kinds of liberty — liberty, that is, for the persons they happen to favor. The rights of other persons do not seem to interest them. If a law were passed tomorrow taking away the property of a large group of presumably well-to-do persons — say, bondholders of the railroads — without compensation and without even colorable reason, they would not oppose it; they would be in favor of it. The liberty to have and hold property is not one they recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy, hate and loot the man who has it. "Liberty and Democracy" in the Baltimore Evening Sun (13 April 1925), also in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy : New Selections from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (1994) edited by Terry Teachout, p. 35


The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. Prejudices, First Series (1919)
Mencken


What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. Prejudices, Fourth Series (1924)
Mencken

FDXLAG

No the republicans lost because the moocher class has found out they can vote themselves a share of someone elses labor and they have their champion. He is doing for this country what he did to property owners when he was shilling for ACORN in chicago. We are doomed, pretend what you like. Spending 25% of gdp; tax revenue 19% of gdp. Ask yourself is spending going to go down as a percentage of gdp over the next 4 years?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-1...elayed-release

"If you add up the total debt — state, local, the works — every man, woman, and child in this country owes 200 grand (which is rather more than the average Greek does). Every American family owes about three-quarters of a million bucks, or about the budget deficit of Liechtenstein, which has the highest GDP per capita in the world." Mark Steyn

Gunter

Jamesnobrakes,

While you would limit deductions for all, the Democrats in charge have not and will not. In fact they will do just the opposite if left to their own devices.

That is how the election went. For many, lower taxes or more tax "rebates" is all that is important. Any propaganda bestowing virtue on that mindset is well received without critical review. Lie upon lie is believed and repeated. That explains the angry tone. If you can't reasonably discuss an issue, drown out the other side.

Enjoy the party.

Adlerdriver

Characterizing SS and Medicare as taxes is inaccurate at least in the same context as income tax or corporate taxes. Apples and oranges.

SS/Medicare are really a forced government savings plan (a very inefficient one). Participants get some portion, if not all and then some, of their contributions back either in direct money or medical benefits. Hardly the same thing as paying income taxes to fund the everyday operation of our nation. There's still 47% free-loaders not paying anything toward that.