Don't Biatch Conservatives

[MSimon]

Ah. Well then we tax the rich into poverty that will fix it.

Ohhh, come on now. Nobody is taxing the rich into poverty. They are still paying way less taxes now than they did before Reagan, who gave them large tax cuts. There are also lots of loop holes for the very rich to avoid paying taxes. The middle class is what is carrying the country. They need a tax releave more than the rich.

Why not slash spending and let 10,000 investors decide where to invest rather than one Government?

The Hayek identified problem. Look up his Nobel Lecture.

Well of course we don't want to tax the Rich into Poverty. Who would cover the dole?

And who needs rich investors to create jobs when the government can do it so much more efficiently? $90 billion for 901 jobs I hear. $10 million a job. But OK. Give me $10 million and I will create 2 jobs at $2.5 million per and pocket $5 million for myself. I swear it will be worth it to you. Isn't it worth big bucks to double the rate of job creation you can do for $10 million?

[Skipjack]

Why not slash spending and let 10,000 investors decide where to invest rather than one Government?

The Hayek identified problem. Look up his Nobel Lecture.

Well of course we don't want to tax the Rich into Poverty. Who would cover the dole?

And who needs rich investors to create jobs when the government can do it so much more efficiently? $90 billion for 901 jobs I hear. $10 million a job. But OK. Give me $10 million and I will create 2 jobs at $2.5 million per and pocket $5 million for myself. I swear it will be worth it to you. Isn't it worth big bucks to double the rate of job creation you can do for $10 million?

What is the point of answering all these questions that you seemingly already have all the answers for?
Well let me try it anyway:
1. Because investors dont invest into things that are for the common good, but only that are for their own benefit.
2. We and especially the US are a loooong, long way from that anyway. In fact the opposite has been happening. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer and the middle class is almost completely destroyed. "Good job"!
3. Lately the rich investors have been creating jobs mostly over in China to save themselves a few extra cents per share. From all that I could see it has not really helped the US economy much.
4.

$90 billion for 901 jobs I hear.

Where did you hear that? Fox noise?

[MSimon]

1. Because investors dont invest into things that are for the common good, but only that are for their own benefit.

Could you explain how they can profit only from investing in things for their own benefit?

But I get it. If they are not doing things that are generally approved the government should steal their money. Oh. Wait. I forgot. It is not theft. It is a TAX. I hope when you come to America you will be living in California. They need all the help they can get. Lots of TAXes. Not very business friendly. But you can give with gratitude the government your money since they are so much more efficient at spending it than you are.

[WizWom]

Well, we've got 4 million fewer employed now than when Obummer took office.
We've got much higher cost of living than when QE started, exactly as could be predicted by Friedman.
He didn't get us out of the depression started by the DOJ Microsoft judgement collapsing the dot-com bubble. But - no government program will.

[Skipjack]

Well, we've got 4 million fewer employed now than when Obummer took office.

When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further.
You can not blame Obama for a process that was already way under way when he took office.

Since then a lot has improved. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then (by 2011), the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. Thats better than Reagan...

A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition.

Just saying...

[seedload]

Also and just in case some people here actually think that Obama is taxing the rich more. He actually has not undone the Bush tax cuts for the very rich. Just saying.

For a very sound reason. In his first two years when he had the votes he was afraid it would further tank the economy - which it would have. You dry up the investment pool and you do not get investment. Unless you count Solyndra. Now with the House in the hands of the Rs he isn't going to get a tax bill through.

But his attacks on the rich - even though rhetorical - have dried up campaign donations from that sector of the economy.

Completely and utterly not true.

The liberals were demanding he remove the Bush tax cuts (rather tax loopholes and exemptions). Bush rewarded those who put him in power very well, those entities did not want to see their rewards be taken away. Obama didn't push the remove the cuts as a peace offering to the GOP, thus was during his early naive "lets work together" time. He hadn't realized yet that the GOP had absolutely zero plan to support anything with Obama's name on it. He hadn't realized that they were ready and willing to sabotage the country for political purposes. There have been several other issues that the liberals have demanding he fix "their way" that he's refused on. The liberals are not happy with Obama right now, he's not "liberal enough" for them.

About all this horse hocky on "slavery". In a sense EVERYONE is a slave to someone else as the moment one person makes a choice that inhibits the choice of another, that person has enslaved the other. So until you have a government rounding up people, putting them in iron chains and using whips to force them to mine rocks, you don't have slavery. To attempt to use that as a point of debate only weakens your position.

Large governments tend to be a bad thing, yet how do we measure government size? By cost, by number of departments or by number of people employed? Cost is relative to the wealth of those within it. The government of Greece is miniscule compared to the government of the USA, yet it's too large for it's own citizens. Number of people employed should be the more appropriate term to determine government size, and in that sense the US government is not that large.

What needs to happen isn't "reduction" in government size but reduction in wasted money coupled with better distribution of tax income. Right now the middle class is bearing the brunt of the tax, the class that most of the US posters here should be part of. The poor class has nothing to give, you can't tax a stone. This leaves only the upper class (7+ figure yearly income) remaining and they've paid for the privilege of not paying taxes. That needs to come to a full stop.

I fully believe in reducing the percentage tax rate, I also fully believe in closing tax loop holes, all of them. There is no reason for an entire library's worth of books on the tax code.

What's really amusing, and a good case study, is that what would be best for the posters here is to support removing tax loopholes for the upper class. Yet their faith to their political party is such that they refuse to see that, even when that faith itself is to the very same people who stand to gain from those loopholes being kept open. Then those faithful have the gall to rant about .. slavery of all things, something they've willingly entered into via their blind faith. The only motivator more powerful then greed is human faith. Kinda funny to see a religion being made out of political views.

The only significant rich people tax issues are capital gains rates, social security deductions stopping, and inheritance tax. I am not sure you can call these loopholes though. I think they are highly publicly debated issues and not what I would think of as backdoor loopholes.

Otherwise, what significant loopholes are you talking about?

[Skipjack]

I am not sure you can call these loopholes though. I think they are highly publicly debated issues and not what I would think of as backdoor loopholes.

Foundations, e.g. I am not sure about the situation in the US, but in Austria most of the super rich have all their money in family trusts that have tax advantatges. E.g. the income into the trust is not subject to income tax. I think I mentioned that elsewhere, but generally these people have all the luxury you can dream of, but officially it does not belong to them, but the trust.

Here is an article highlighting how someone like Romney can get away with an effective income tax rate of less than 15%, less than most middle class people pay.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/us/po ... wanted=all

[WizWom]

Well, we've got 4 million fewer employed now than when Obummer took office.

When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further.
You can not blame Obama for a process that was already way under way when he took office.

Since then a lot has improved. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then (by 2011), the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. Thats better than Reagan...

A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition.

Just saying...

OK, lets start with the history:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/12statab/labor.pdf - to 2010
146,047,000 employed in 2007
139,064,000 employed in 2010 - 7 million lost.

http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceshighlights.pdf - May 2012
Shows a growth - very slow - since 2009.

So, now you say he's gained back 2 million. Woop de do.

The solution chosen was and is wrong.

[Skipjack]

OK, lets start with the history:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/12statab/labor.pdf - to 2010
146,047,000 employed in 2007
139,064,000 employed in 2010 - 7 million lost.

You do understand that whatever measures a government takes to defeat a runaway situation like the one when Obama came to office, would take a few years until they work, right? There is no "fix it emmediately" solution to a problem like that. Any child can understand this!

[hanelyp]

1. Because investors dont invest into things that are for the common good, but only that are for their own benefit.

In a free market you make a profit by producing something that someone finds worth paying you for. You and the person you sell to are both better off. Everyone else is nominally unaffected. "Common Good" problem solved.

[Skipjack]

In a free market you make a profit by producing something that someone finds worth paying you for. You and the person you sell to are both better off. Everyone else is nominally unaffected. "Common Good" problem solved.

Uhm and that matters in the context exactly how?
Msimon 's take was that private investors would invest their money in a way that would help the disadvantaged and I doubted that.
I think hat in your opinion, those that were unfortunate would simply be "the nominally unaffected", which is the problem that I was referring to.
Clear?

[jnaujok]

You do understand that whatever measures a government takes to defeat a runaway situation like the one when Obama came to office, would take a few years until they work, right? There is no "fix it emmediately" solution to a problem like that. Any child can understand this!

Sadly for Obama, Skipjack, any child can understand that, historically, no post WWII recession has ever lasted as long as this one, and no recession has ever gone over 47 months before returning to pre-recession levels. This recession has the slowest rate of recovery in history. Slower even than the Bush post-dot-bomb/9-11 recession, which Democrats screamed about as the worst economy since the great depression. But when it's your president, it's all good, and everything is wonderful.

The private sector is doing fine!

[/img]

Obama lied from the beginning. Remember this promise?

With this stimulus we can guarantee that unemployment will not go over 8%.

Face it, the man over-promised and under-delivered. He's either a failure or a huge liar. You can't have it both ways.

[Teahive]

Why not slash spending and let 10,000 investors decide where to invest rather than one Government?

Sure, cut government spending to whatever level necessary to maintain core government tasks. But at the same time get rid of the idiocy of borrowing "investors"' money to fund the government. Tax as much as you need to balance the budget, and don't treat "investors" any differently.

[Skipjack]

Sadly for Obama, Skipjack, any child can understand that, historically, no post WWII recession has ever lasted as long as this one, and no recession has ever gone over 47 months before returning to pre-recession levels. This recession has the slowest rate of recovery in history. Slower even than the Bush post-dot-bomb/9-11 recession, which Democrats screamed about as the worst economy since the great depression. But when it's your president, it's all good, and everything is wonderful.

This recession was not like any post WW2 recession either. It was quite a bit more severe and went a lot deeper and was not limited to the US, but happened world wide, which also hinders recovery.

Obama lied from the beginning. Remember this promise?

Actually no, he did not. The 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9!
If you factor this misscalculation (which was not made by him), then he actually is right where he should be.

[TDPerk]

"If you factor this misscalculation (which was not made by him), then he actually is right where he should be."

The miscalculation is his. He adopted and endorsed it as the correct one, and made corrections based on it he said would correct matters. He either blew the call or lied, on top of which his corrections could not have corrected the problems which his party's policies created, they could and did only worsen them.