Not an apology. Not an update on information he didn’t have all those weeks ago (8% of Americans do NOT pay income tax, not 47%). Not a clarification.
“Ooooh, please, look at all the flags!”
More:
This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2012 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Economics, History, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Republican Party. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
(The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense)
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump:
Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
 | Ed Darrell on Was Darwin racist? My long ago… |
| Ed Darrell on John Wooden’s favorite p… |
 | Richard K Hardin on Why is the US flag displayed o… |
| Ed Darrell on Blinken takes down Republican… |
 | Ben Gan Ganowicz on Blinken takes down Republican… |
 | topperj15 on Who said it? ‘Better to… |
| Ed Darrell on Who said it? ‘Better to… |
| Spenser Clarke on Who said it? ‘Better to… | |
 | Joseph Ehlers on Who said it? ‘Better to… |
 | The Coastal Crone on Annals of Global Heating: Karm… |
| Ed Darrell on Nate White’s stunning an… |
| Ed Darrell on Nate White’s stunning an… |
| Ed Darrell on Lake Powell drought ended? Don… |
 | caitcasali0 on Who said it? ‘Better to… |
 | John Mohan, RN on Gun nuts twisting the words of… |
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control. My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it. BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-01/raise-taxes-on-the-rich-to-reward-job-creators-commentary-by-nick-hanauer.html
It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop.
Trouble is, sometimes the things that we know to be true are dead wrong. For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false.
I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.
That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.
Theory of Evolution
When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around.
It is unquestionably true that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can’t have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. But it’s equally true that without consumers, you can’t have entrepreneurs and investors. And the more we have happy customers with lots of disposable income, the better our businesses will do.
That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion’s share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.
And that’s what has been happening in the U.S. for the last 30 years.
Since 1980, the share of the nation’s income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1 percent has increased a shocking 400 percent, while the share for the bottom 50 percent of Americans has declined 33 percent. At the same time, effective tax rates on the superwealthy fell to 16.6 percent in 2007, from 42 percent at the peak of U.S. productivity in the early 1960s, and about 30 percent during the expansion of the 1990s. In my case, that means that this year, I paid an 11 percent rate on an eight-figure income.
One reason this policy is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, I go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.
It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA (AM)), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.
More Shoppers Needed
I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.
If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.
It is mathematically impossible to invest enough in our economy and our country to sustain the middle class (our customers) without taxing the top 1 percent at reasonable levels again. Shifting the burden from the 99 percent to the 1 percent is the surest and best way to get our consumer-based economy rolling again.
Significant tax increases on the about $1.5 trillion in collective income of those of us in the top 1 percent could create hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our economy, rather than letting it pile up in a few bank accounts like a huge clot in our nation’s economic circulatory system.
Consider, for example, that a puny 3 percent surtax on incomes above $1 million would be enough to maintain and expand the current payroll tax cut beyond December, preventing a $1,000 increase on the average worker’s taxes at the worst possible time for the economy. With a few more pennies on the dollar, we could invest in rebuilding schools and infrastructure. And even if we imposed a millionaires’ surtax and rolled back the Bush- era tax cuts for those at the top, the taxes on the richest Americans would still be historically low, and their incomes would still be astronomically high.
We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.
So let’s give a break to the true job creators. Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth by putting purchasing power back in the hands of the middle class. And let’s remember that capitalists without customers are out of business.
(Nick Hanauer is a founder of Second Avenue Partners, a venture capital company in Seattle specializing in early state startups and emerging technology. He has helped launch more than 20 companies, including aQuantive Inc. and Amazon.com, and is the co-author of two books, “The True Patriot” and “The Gardens of Democracy.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
LikeLike
To quote:
That problem can be fixed by toning down the rhetoric, and 1) Bipartisan efforts to control the deficit and work toward it’s elimination 2) Get the fed and government out of the marketplace as a substantial player (sell all remaining GM shares, stop quantitative easing, etc) and back as a simple regulator. 3) Simplify both regulations and taxes. Notice I’m not saying eliminate or reduce, just create a simplified and easily understandable system of rules and regulations. One that is fair (define as you will) and transparent. Best of all, 2 and 3 cost us nothing.
Then let us know when you get your party to agree to tax hikes on the rich and to actually engage in bipartisanship.
As for #2..yeah thats the eventual plan. But at the moment if the people aren’t spending and the corporations aren’t spending then exactly how does the government stop spending grow the economy?
As for simplifying taxes…let me know when you’re going to get your party to get rid of all those tax loopholes they’ve set up for the 1% and corporations.
And as for “Repealing tax cuts for the rich = $80 billion, assuming increasing taxes doesn’t suppress growth,”
Since it didn’t suppress growth before…lets see..taxes on the rich were higher under Clinton, under Reagan and very much higher under Eisenhower. And there was plenty of economic growth. Raising taxes on the rich doesn’t suppress growth just like cutting taxes on the rich doesn’t create growth.
From 1947-1979 the income growhth for the top 20% was 99% and that was the smallest percentage of any of the groups. The poorest 20% had the highest percentage of income growth at 116%.
Since 1979 the top 19% (minus the top 1%) has seen their income grow at 31%, the top 1% has seen their income grow at around 300% and the others all saw their income growth shrink to sub 30%. With the lost 20%..the poorest 20% seeing their income grow at best 15%.
Part of the problem with this country’s finances that you and your side simply don’t even want to acknowledge or even deal with is this massive tilting of the economy so that it benefits the richest of the rich has screwed over the economy for the rest of us. Part of the reasonf or that massive debt you claim to be so worried about is that your party rigged the economy to benefit the few instead of benefitting everyone. That needs to be fixed because if it isn’t the economy will lurch from crash to crash to crash to crash. Why? Because there are simply too few 1% to sustain the economy. Supply side economics is an abject failure. It isn’t the rich who create jobs..it is the middle class and the poor who do by spending money and thanks to the GOP we have an decreasing amount of money to spend.
TO quote:
The current fed policy is setting the stage for massive inflation in the future.
And yet the last time inflation was over 10% it was 1981.
We can deal with the deficit and the debt when the economy is strong and growing. But that’s not going to happen under your sides planned austerity for the middle class and the poor coupled with your sides massive tax cuts to the rich and your sides increasing our military spending by 2 trillion dollars.
Now answer my question from a few days ago, High. If your party doesn’t want to raise taxes on the poor..if your party doesn’t want to make those people pay the federal income tax…..
…then why does your party keep on harping about the supposed fact that they don’t pay the federal income tax?
LikeLike
Our deficits today are lower, as a percentage of GDP, than they were after World War II. At the end of World War II we faced international crises, including a post-war depression around the world. What did we do then? Did we cut spending at reduce taxes?
No, we multiplied our spending, creating a Marshall Plan to rebuild our war-time allies, AND rebuild our war-time enemies, on the understanding (finally, after an unnecessary second World War) that making trading partners of nations and improving their economic standing would be more likely to produce peace than any other possibility. Domestically we undertook the greatest education program in history, the GI Bill, to educate millions of GIs (and later, again under the aegis of defense, to educate kids in primary and secondary schools). We undertook the greatest housing aid program in history — again, under the GI Bill — and built hundreds of thousands if not millions of homes, employing millions of people in the doing, housing millions of people, and creating a great, booming economy.
How to address the problem? If we take Romney’s plan, we’ll all be selling apples on the streets of New York again.
The Greatest Generation wrote the script for us, and all we need to do is follow their example. Don’t tell me that we cannot afford to be great anymore. Ryan was wrong to say that in his budget, and Romney was wrong to jump on that bandwagon. Surrender monkeys? Or just stupid? I don’t know. But their path is the wrong one.
We have not yet got to a healthy level of inflation — it is too low. Runaway inflation is not a danger now, and it won’t be with massive tax cuts and spending cuts. Deflation will be the issue. Demand must be stimulated, to create a taxpaying pool that can cover what is now deficit spending. Cutting back now, and inviting economic collapse, is not an answer.
LikeLike
Gee guys, lighten’ up. You’re manufacturing a lot of unnecessary outrage.
We are running unsustainable deficits. We can’t go for more than a few more years like this without some sort of radical changes. Obama knows this. Romney knows this. The question is how to address the problem. There are (I think) four possible answers: Higher taxes, spending cuts, increased economic growth, or massive inflation.
Repealing tax cuts for the rich = $80 billion, assuming increasing taxes doesn’t suppress growth, in which case it may generate considerably less. Our current deficit is $1.327 trillion for 2012. Obviously whether we remove the tax cuts for the wealthy or not the end result is rounding error. I’m not sure why anyone bothers to argue about it – it doesn’t matter as part of the discussion except philosophically.
Repealing Bush tax cuts for everyone = $494 billion. Again, subtracting out whatever amount of growth increased taxes suppress. Still and all, somewhat better in dealing with the problem.
Repubs propose various spending cuts that get us closer, but even the most radical plans are pretty modest. The Ryan plan for example proposes balancing the budget by 2040. As far as I can tell, Dems haven’t proposed anything meaningful regarding spending cuts.
Unless we tackle medicare and social security, nothing else matters.
Both side propose increased growth strategies. Dems argue for large investments in various industries and infrastructure, Repubs argue for tax cuts. I’m not sure which might work – as with all things the devil is in the details. Realistically we probably can’t afford to do either, so why fuss over it?
The current fed policy is setting the stage for massive inflation in the future. Of course this may be the only way forward out of the liquidity trap we are currently in. But it is going to be ugly.
Different parties are proposing different solutions, as one might expect. I don’t think either party “hates” seniors, or welfare recipients, or the rich, or large corporations, etc. All the rending of garments by James doesn’t add much to the discussion.
Ed said: “We are in an unusual situation where businesses could spend the money without borrowing . . . but they won’t.” Now you’re on it. Why won’t they? I mean, the reason a company exists is to make money. All those greedy business owners…why won’t they invest? The money is doing them no good in the bank at essentially zero interest and rising inflation. Why are they not doing their jobs? Simple. Uncertainty. Europe, China, the Middle east. Tax policy fluctuation. The election. Health care. Real estate. Debt ceiling fights. The budget deficit. Interest rates. Fear. Crazy talk from both parties (“bold persistent experimentation? Sheesh.) Some of it is external, some of it internal. It all comes down to increased and persistent risk.
That problem can be fixed by toning down the rhetoric, and 1) Bipartisan efforts to control the deficit and work toward it’s elimination 2) Get the fed and government out of the marketplace as a substantial player (sell all remaining GM shares, stop quantitative easing, etc) and back as a simple regulator. 3) Simplify both regulations and taxes. Notice I’m not saying eliminate or reduce, just create a simplified and easily understandable system of rules and regulations. One that is fair (define as you will) and transparent. Best of all, 2 and 3 cost us nothing.
LikeLike
Then there is the fact that money spent at a mom & pop store stays in the community.
Gee..when Bain owned Staples I wonder where the vast majority of the money spent there went….
I suspect its the same answer as to where the money went when Mittens and Bain bought and then ran Kaybee Toystores into the ground…
LikeLike
Oooh, Pangolin, you hit one of my sore spots.
I have a Bostitch stapler I bought — probably cost me $8 — in 1971, when I headed off to college. I bought it at Priday’s Office Supply on State Road in American Fork, Utah. At the time, I bought three boxes of the deluxe, B8, 1/4-inch, PowerCrown Bostitch staples. They have an inverted V shape on the top, which adds power to the punch, and they go in straight every time. The stapler itself is small and light, never jams, and has been going great guns now for 41 years.
Staples doesn’t carry the staples. Nor does OfficeMax, nor Office Depot, nor Wal-Mart, nor Sam’s, nor CostCo, nor Target. You can buy them through Amazon.
I know this, because after 41 years, we ran low on the staples, and I looked for more than a year before resorting to Amazon.
The stapler? Hah. Good luck.
I’ve got a bunch of other office supply stuff in my desk from Priday’s. They’ve been out of business since the Wal-Mart went in.
Staples is a fun store to browse. But they have cheap versions of almost everything. They compete almost solely on price, not on utility. Mr. and Mrs. Priday, though they may never have known my name, knew that I was off to university, and when I dropped by, for pencils, or cheap pens, or whatever, they’d often have some new little toy to show, just what a college-student would need. Then I started working research in the mountains and field. Son-of-a-gun if they didn’t have a Fisher pen, perfect for writing while hiking canyons or hanging upside-down off of a rock. Does Staples even carry Fisher?
Before that there was Spencer’s Stationery and Office Supply in Burley, Idaho. Ledgers, adding machine tapes, high quality pens (not Mont Blanc).
Small town America was better off with smaller stores, even with slightly higher prices. Value is not always denoted by a cheap price tag.
It’s the American values we’ve lost with stores like Staples. Real American values, where a small entrepreneur could make a go of it, and not where you needed an infusion of tens of millions from Bain Capital to make an idea work — an America where hard work still counted for more than the banker’s check.
You know, after 41 years, even the cardboard box the staples came in still stood up. Even the cardboard was better then. Even the cardboard was better, then.
LikeLike
I remember what happened when Staples and other similar office supply superstores opened up. Tens of thousands of little mom and pop office supply businesses conveniently located in downtown, small town U.S.A shut down.
If you ran out of something you couldn’t walk out of your office and down the block and pick it up from a clerk you knew by name who would walk you right to the exact spot on the shelf; you had to drive out to the edge of town. Romney made a fortune; hundreds of thousands of small businesses lost staff time to the employee lost at Staples.
LikeLike
Let me know, David, when Faux news is going to talk about those Libyans. And let me know when they’re going to talk about the Muslims that got injured and killed defending our embassies.
In other words..let me know when the right wing is going to stop painting all Muslims as terrorists.
LikeLike
And for Hightower to chew over there’s this:
http://margaretandhelen.com/2012/09/18/53-of-americans-no-longer-have-dinner-seated-at-an-ironing-board-some-still-eat-tuna-fish/
LikeLike
Here’s something for David as this will never ever appear on Faux News:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/world/africa/libya-benghazi-counter-protest/index.html
LikeLike
High, take one dollar out of your wallet and hold it up in front of you.
That dollar..that one single dollar is more then the taxes paid by Exxon and BofA combined.
And your party wants to worry about the 47% that supposedly…allegedly pay no federal income taxes?
LikeLike
No relation to Jim Hightower, I presume.
Let’s be more clear, because you’re chasing an answer that is grossly misleading: 8% do not pay income taxes. 39% pay taxes (probably), but get it refunded in April when they file their tax returns, because their total income, when offset with standard deductions, declines to the point that they are close to or in poverty and, consequently, are not required to pay taxes. So we have a bunch of hard-working people who are can’t get ahead (and who will be harmed by Romney’s plan to make them pay more taxes so the rich can get bigger refunds, but I digress).
Some percentage of that group of “non-payers” — we fear it’s large, but at least 1 million — earn more than $250,000 a year, but manage to stoke it away, hide it, or otherwise get “tax breaks” so they don’t pay taxes. In any just society, they would be paying a fair share to support the military and other security apparatus, National Parks, safe food regulations, etc. — but they, like Romney, use “legal” means to reduce their contributions to America to zero, as if they were in poverty.
But for the 8%, they all PAY TAXES. But they get it back (without interest) later. I think it’s misleading to pretend they don’t pay taxes at all, and I think it’s grossly misleading to claim they are dependent on the government. As Ezra Klein put it, it’s not that they are not responsible, they literally are drowning in their responsibilities and carrying them out as well as they can.
As a side note, the Dallas Morning News this week published the map of Zipcodes showing which income levels pay most in charity. Sure enough, most of those Zipcodes that give the highest percentage of their incomes to charity were those where Romney-definition non-taxpayers live. (Romney’s a real jerk, you know?)
Now, in addition to income taxes, they pay property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, and in many other ways, they contribute to the tax take of the nation, their states and their cities. Net, they pay a lot of taxes, and net, they pay more of the more regressive taxes (gasoline and sales taxes). These people carry more than their fair share of the burden. They make about 20% of the money made in the nation, if that much. They own about 5% of the property in the nation. They are taxed in their blood and sweat more than higher income people, and it’s unfair, inaccurate, and cowardly, to say they don’t pay taxes.
Do they depend on government handouts? Probably not. So it’s dead wrong to call them dependent on government. If they did depend on government handouts, is it because they are lazy and they think that’s the way things should be? No.
None of those people we’re talking about get significant money from the government, except the oil and banking executives, and very large farmers. Why Romney thinks they are “dependent” on government is a mystery. Perhaps many of the 8% do rely on the government for help in housing; looking at the numbers, many of those people rely on food stamps for at least part of the year, to feed their kids when they are not collecting a pay check (a too large portion of the food stamp recipients are military families
So he should be careful, then. People like Romney, who got millions in government money to bail out his business, have no moral high ground to complain about the woman who scrubs his toilet.
But they don’t vote. Most of them don’t participate in the political system. They don’t have time, between the three jobs they hold down. Romney’s got a bully’s viewpoint, and it’s ugly. They are not more likely to support anyone promising more benefits — and here’s the profound, ugly lie: Obama isn’t promising them more benefits. Congress has to do that, and Congress has cut them off or reduced all of those benefits, to “drive them into the workforce,” but instead increasing poverty, ill health, and putting a drag on the economic recovery.
Romney’s an idiot. What has to give is we have to get the poor and middle classes buying and consuming, and to do that, they need money. It doesn’t matter, for the economic recovery, whether that money comes as a “benefit” from the government to offset poverty or unemployment, or whether it comes in the form of a paycheck from any entity. The fact is that big businesses sit on a pool of some $3 trillion (IIRC), idle money that Romney claims would be spent to create jobs. Well, clearly, Romney is wrong.
So if we are to save the nation, we’ll have to rely on government to do it, because the top 53% are shirking their duties (actually the top 5%)
Insulting working people is not only stupid, it indicates Romney doesn’t know his burro from a burrow, and that while he may, as he claims, have the resources to get Americans to work and get us out of the recession, he refuses to do so. If a foreign nation were doing that to us, we’d regard it as an act of war. Maybe that’s what he intends, a hostile takeover of America, with a leveraged buy out. You’ll be fired at the end, you know, and the nation’s assets sold off to the highest bidder. That’s Romney’s expertise, and he said he promises to bring it to the oval office. May God save us from that.
In the classic business cycle economics, the government spends because it can, because stuff to build roads and bridges and airports and ports is cheaper; if the government lacks the money (the GOP gave it away on the promise that giving it away would prevent this recession, remember?), then the government must borrow to do the spending, because the government can and businesses can’t. We are in an unusual situation where businesses could spend the money without borrowing . . . but they won’t. Other than a tax to take that money and put it to use saving the nation, what would you suggest? Cutting spending now will bring greater disaster. We cannot trim budgets until more the middle class is working, and wages are rising steadily.
When there are more “taxpayers,” and when their tax brackets are increasing, a modest increase will wipe out the debt quickly.
But if we don’t spend now, and do not create more taxpayers with rising wages, then we will be in for at least a decade of poverty for the nation, and maybe more. Maybe forever.
Paul Ryan says America cannot afford to be great anymore. I’m not a Romney-Ryan surrender monkey. I think we cannot afford NOT to be great, we can’t afford NOT to spend the money to double foreign aid, to build new schools, to repair old roads and bridges and build new ones, to repair our sewers, to repair our ports, to modernize our air transport system. If we fail to spend to do those things, your best bet is to teach your children to read and write Chinese and Arabic.
LikeLike
Bravo!! Lest we forget what the alternative to democracy is it’s monarchy interrupted at intervals by revolution and occasionally the headsman’s ax. Arrangements such as dictatorships are really monarchies with silly costumes to pretend they aren’t what they are. Observe North Korea’s hand-off of the presumably communist party leadership to the Dear Leader’s Son and then Grandson.
LikeLike
And lastly let me suggest that you actually read Karl Marx’s book.
Not that I’m recommending what he says in it but the fact still is he’s right on his prediction.
That socialism, and I’m talking about actual socialism and not what you conservatives pretend is socialism, will only arise when the moneyed class *points to mittens* will so rape and pillage those beneath them..will steal so much of what belongs to the middle class and the poor that the middle class and the poor rise up in protest, those protests turn violent and the heads of the 1% will roll.
In other words, High, it isn’t the actions of the middle class and the poor that triggers the onbringing of a socialist society…it is the overexploitation of those classes by the rich.
Considering what I’ve seen..yeah the people are getting exactly that pissed off. So I suggest for once you conservatives back off, agree that there has to be balance, that no..the 1% can not be allowed to own such a mass amount of the wealth..that it isn’t good for the country and quit being the docile little servants of Mittens and his cronies.
Those “entitlements” you guys so love to kvetch about..are part of that balancing out the excesses of the 1%…they’re what softens the edges of capitalism.
LikeLike
Oh and let me know when you and your fellow Republicans are going to attack all the US companies that pay nothing in federal income taxes or very little while sucking at the government teat.
Start with these:
Lockheed Martin: $16,000,000,000
Northrop Grumman: $11,000,000,000
Boeing: 10,000,000,000
Raytheon: $6,000,000,000
KBR: $5,000,000,000
LikeLike
To quote:
No one can argue that the current situation is unsustainable – there is simply too much spending, and not enough revenue. Something has to give. In Romney’s calculation, 47% of the people will be in favor of higher taxes to close the gap, 53%
Yeah except its more like about 70-80% of the country thinks taxes should be raised. On the rich.
And as for “too much spending and not enough revenue” well that’s your party’s fault. Its the one that’s insisted on cutting taxes on the rich for the last 40 years over and over and over again. And it’s also your party that’s insisted on spending like a drunken whore with john’s Platinum credit card that she just stole.
And we should put your party back in charge? It was your party that created the mess.
Does your party want to raise taxes? Well yeah on the middle class and the poor but certainly not the rich. Your party wants to hand the 1% 4 trillion dollar in tax cuts, increase military spending by 2 trillion dollars and gut the safety net for the rest of us. The results will be a crashing of the economy that makes the Great Depression look like an off day at a bake sale. And the other result will be a ballooning of the deficit/debt to such a scale that Rush Limbaugh will look like a 120 pound weakling by comparison.
And when that happens Mitt Romney and his fellow fat rich parasites will take their money and flee the country like rats jumping off the Titanic. and the rest of us? Well we’ll be living in a society that makes Somalia look like the Roman Empire at it’s height.
So since your party refuses to take responsibility or propose anything that would actually fix the mess…to be blunt…**** the Republicans. They deserve no power until they stop swallowing the supply side voodoo and quit drinking the tax cut to the 1% koolaid. until they get their heads out of their arses your party doesn’t even deserve to be county dogcatcher.
Its time you and your fellow Republicans put country ahead of party for once in your lives.
LikeLike
To quote:
I’m not arguing the poor should pay more taxes (Romney wasn’t making that argument either).
Oh really? Lets see..he insulted them, called them lazy, called them irresponsible.
And what’s the point of continously bringing up “47% don’t pay any federal income tax” if not to get people to think that they should have to pay that tax?
And it’s convenient that you, like every other conservative, ignores the fact that they pay the payroll tax. As well as other federal taxes.
So its not like these people aren’t actually paying taxes. It’s not like these people are the “freeloaders” that your side likes to claim.
The vast majority of that 47% are either retirees living on Social Security or are our military soldiers. The rest? Simply don’t make enough to pay the income tax. And you can bet the ones on Social Security were paying the federal income tax when they were working. And they were doing it at a higher rate then mittens and his fellow 1% parasites were.
So if it isn’t to raise the taxes on these people then why does your party keep on bringing them up?
If it isn’t class warfare and to demand that these people pay the federal income tax, High, then why does your party keep on attacking and insulting them?
LikeLike
“8% of Americans do NOT pay income tax, not 47%.” That is what you wrote. I’m merely pointing out that the statement you just made is incorrect. 47% of the public doesn’t pay income taxes. Not net anyway, which is what matters. The why and how that happens…should it happen…well that is an entirely separate issue.
I’m not arguing the poor should pay more taxes (Romney wasn’t making that argument either). Romney’s argument boils down to that your view of politics is influenced by whether you are currently paying into government, or currently getting benefits from government. People that benefit from the current system are unlikely to support significant changes to the system. They are more likely to support someone promising more benefits.
No one can argue that the current situation is unsustainable – there is simply too much spending, and not enough revenue. Something has to give. In Romney’s calculation, 47% of the people will be in favor of higher taxes to close the gap, 53% will be in favor of lower spending to close the gap.
Of course the answer is probably both will be needed, but who would vote for someone who said that?
LikeLike
‘GE didn’t pay taxes last year — is it fair to say GE considers itself a “victim” and “dependent on government handouts?”’
Well, yes, now that you mention it, that person surely does consider itself a victim (with the full agreement of Republicans); and as for dependence on government handouts: can you ask?
All right, it doesn’t publicly *consider itself* dependent on them. Which tells us nothing we didn’t know about dependency.
LikeLike
Hightower…most of that “47%” is retirees and people in our military.
You want them paying the federal income tax?
As for the 8%..yeah thats the people who don’t make enough money at their jobs so they get a tax credit under the earned income tax credit..which the Republicans used to love as recently as Reagan and Gingrich.
And that same 8% still pays taxes like the payroll tax..which the 1% don’t pay at all. Or rather they only pay for the first $112,000 of their income. So for example Mitt Romney made 50 million dollars last year. For just under 49.9 million dollars of that he paid absolutely no payroll tax. And the income tax he paid was a lower rate then the payroll tax that 8% paid.
So you want to make the 8% who don’t make enough to pay the income tax poorer?
I have a better idea. How about you and every other Republican support and push for that 8% being paid more so that they’re lifted above the EITC cap so therefor they’d have to pay the income tax too.
Or is what you really after is making the poor poorer just so you can justify giving the 1% 4 trillion dollars in tax cuts as Mittens is trying to do?
LikeLike
I think there should be a distinction between “not paying taxes” and “getting enough credits to cancel out the tax obligation.” One suggests great poverty or great criminality; the other suggests not enough income or great criminality. GE didn’t pay taxes last year — is it fair to say GE considers itself a “victim” and “dependent on government handouts?” Most of the executives at GE probably aren’t even voting Democrat, regardless their CEO’s involvement in administration job creation panels.
8% of Americans don’t pay taxes because they don’t make enough to file, if I recall correctly. That’s a separate problem. I don’t regard people living on Social Security, and therefore not paying taxes because their earned income is not high enough, to be leeches on society as the GOP does, and as it appears Mitt Romney does.
LikeLike
Um….8%? Look this isn’t that hard to look up. He is right about the percentage not paying federal income taxes, but I think you are confusing that statement with payment of all federal taxes.
Click to access 1001547-Why-No-Income-Tax.pdf
That source of info was quoted by the Washington Post so I assume it is fairly authoritative. It is in the first sentence of the abstract.
LikeLike
He sounds like a guy trying to explain to his wife that what he was doing naked in bed with the babysitter wasn’t relaxing after sex but helping with her biology homework. Just talk real fast in a reasonable tone until we get tired of hearing you Mitt. Keep it up.
LikeLike