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Progagandist and Dittohead insist that "taxing the rich," will solve the US budget problems, not reducing spending is the answer.

We've reach a plateau where taxing more will yield less. I've shown this graph before of revenue rising after Bush's tax cuts. A rising economy will produce even more, than a flat lined one.

But, once more:

Removing the tax cuts would yield $40 billion annually, the Democrats said.

Problem is, that the projected FY 11 deficit will be about $1.65 trillion. Another $40 billion would be a drop in bucket.

Now, as to taxing more:

Per: en.wikipedia.org/wiki.household_income_in_the_United_states

There are 1,699,000 household incomes of $250,000 and above make up 1.5 percent of all households.
Another 1,325,000 household incomes with income from $200,000 to $249,999 make up another 2.87 percent of all households for a total of 4.37 percent.

Per: www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

The upper 5 percent of taxpayers in the country had a total income of $2,926,701,000 for which they paid $605,718,000 or about 20.7 percent of their income. Increasing that to $1.65 trillion would take about 56.4 percent.

The government might collect that one time. Afterward, the taxpayers would either flee the country, simply refuse to earn more, or hide their income in shelters.

Removing that much income from the economy would ensure a flat lined economy, or a double dip recession.

You can only shear the sheep so close.

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If I may add this interventer:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion...ear-rein-government/

quote:
Paul Krugman, Since You Don't Like Paul Ryan's Budget Plan, Please Tell Us How You Would Rein In Government Spending

Paul Krugman: it’s your turn. Having denounced Paul Ryan’s budget proposal in your Friday New York Times column as “ludicrous” and having excoriated every prior effort by Republicans to begin to remedy our country’s fiscal woes, it is now up to you to rein in government spending. What would your suggestion look like? Let me help you out.

It is clear that you consider any attempt to slice the government pie – at least in the near term -- wrongheaded and dangerous for the tentative recovery. You have argued consistently that the Stimulus program was not too large, but rather too puny to pump up demand.

By your standards, government spending, now cruising along above 24 % of GDP – an unprecedented peace-time level -- should have moved higher over the past two years. Consequently, the nation’s deficit of about $1.7 trillion, which is running at nearly 10% of GDP, the highest in 65 years, should actually have been higher. It’s hard to imagine.
..............................

In your world, not only are American consumers ignorant of the country’s fiscal plight, but international lenders are similarly clueless. How comforting it must be to be the only person who really understands how the economy works.

We understand that the only way that you see us getting out of this mess is to raise taxes on the wealthy. Let’s be clear: this year you would have had to raise individual taxes by 70% -- on the entire country – to close the budget gap. Of course, just targeting the top earners would have meant an even greater increase. You may not have noticed, but an rising number of people are not paying taxes. In 2007 – before the financial crisis took hold – some 33% of those filing tax returns had zero or negative tax liabilities – up from 21% in 1990, for instance.

As to the top 5% of earners-- that group that you would like to shoulder an increased burden – they already contribute far more than the bottom 95% of taxpayers. How much more should they bear? In any case, OMB projections already include a sizeable step-up in taxes, from 14.9% of GDP last year to 19.3% in 2016 – among the highest levels since World War II. In the past sixty years, that figure has averaged 18%. It isn’t taxes that are askew Mr. Krugman, it is spending, which is too high.

On your blog, you highlight the foolish notion contained in Mr. Ryan’s proposal that spending for health care as a percentage of GDP should go down. As an energetic supporter of President Obama’s health care plan, you must surely have noticed that he claimed to push in the same direction. In fact, you blogged last year that Obamacare would “cut government spending.” Perhaps you should reconsider Mr. Ryan’s proposal.

The bottom line, Mr. Krugman, is that you have yet to put yourself on the line. It takes courage to propose that our country make tough choices; it takes none at all to deride those who do so.
Japan tried the stimulus route to lift their economy from the doldrums. So much infrastructure was built practically every Japanese has a road named after himself. It didn't work. Now, Japan has a national debt equal to about 230 percent of their GDP. As Japanese are fanatical savers, they invested in Japanese national bonds paying 1.39 percent and the postal savings that pays 1 percent. With the present catastrophe, I don't know how Japan may stay a first world nation.

The EU tried stimulus and are now in early austerity mode. Except, the PIGS who are in full austerity mode.
Supply-side Spin
June 11, 2007

Sen. John McCain has said President Bush's tax cuts have increased federal revenues. But revenues would have been even higher without them.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has said that the major tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 have "increased revenues." He also said that tax cuts in general increase revenues. That’s highly misleading.

The Source of the Growth

The CBO analyzed data to uncover the causes of revenue growth since 2003 in response to a request from Sen. Kent Conrad, chair of the Senate budget committee. In a letter to Conrad, CBO Director Peter R. Orszag says that overall receipts increased by 1.9 percentage points as a share of GDP and that the increase “disproportionately” comes from a rise in corporate income tax revenues.

Orszag attributes two-thirds of the bump in corporate taxes to an increase in corporate profits. The rest he pins to tax policy. For instance, when provisions allowing partial expensing of investment in equipment expired, tax revenue increased. In other words, revenue declined when the provisions were enacted and bumped up again when they expired.

Orszag says there was growth in capital gains realizations in individual tax receipts, but measures such as lower rates on dividends and an increase in the child tax credit, as well as a drop in job wages, caused a reduction in revenues. A CBO chart in Orszag's letter shows that legislation (not counting an impact on capital gains) had a total negative effect on revenue growth.

The impact of the tax cuts on economic growth is a matter of debate among economists. We're not voicing a view on whether the tax cuts should have been enacted; that, too, is a separate discussion. But it is clear they did not "increase revenues."

http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html
I'll explain a bit further. Letting all taxpayers keep more of their money allowed more funds to invest and purchase things. Investments and purchasing things, placed more money in the hands of the corporations. Corporations made more money, showed a higher profit, resulting in higher corporate taxes being paid. As I stated earlier, its not a one for one formula, several factors are involved.
Tax revenues have to increase in order to balance the budget and ultimately pay down the national debt. Take the chart you posted and decrease the fedgov tax revenue each year by the amount of the annual budget deficit and you will see that overall income to the fedgov was flat. The USA is a nation of debtors. Right now our total debt as a nation is about equal to our total net worth, both somewhere around $55Trillion. Total net worth was about $65Trillion in 2007.

As to the corp tax:
quote:
Finally, in a U.S. Treasury report of global competitiveness (Table 5.3), it is revealed that U.S. corporations paid 13.4% of their profits in taxes between 2000 and 2005, compared to the OECD average of 16.1%.

The Treasury Dept. report is consistent with a PayUpNow.org analysis of the 10-K financial statements of 100 of the largest U.S. companies, which found that less than 10% of pre-tax profits in 2010 were paid in non-deferred U.S. federal income taxes.

These 100 companies, with $5.67 trillion in 2010 revenue and almost $600 billion in pre-tax earnings, paid $57 billion, or 9.7%, in federal incomes taxes. If these 100 companies had paid the 35% tax designated by U.S. tax law, an additional $150 billion would have been collected in federal taxes in just one year. This is approximately equal to the total budget deficits for all 50 states.

From 2008 to 2010, Chevron paid less than 5% a year. Merck paid 5%. Hewlett-Packard 3%. Exxon 2%. IBM 2%. Carnival 1%.

Verizon and Boeing and Dow and DuPont all made profits three years in a row, but all paid zero taxes over the three-year period.

Banking leaders Citigroup and Bank of America, with a combined $8 billion of pretax earnings in 2009 and 2010, each paid zero taxes two years in a row.

So go ahead, cut the corporate tax rate to 25%. 25% of zero is the same as 35% of zero.
quote:
Originally posted by Mr.Dittohead:
Tax revenues have to increase in order to balance the budget and ultimately pay down the national debt. Take the chart you posted and decrease the fedgov tax revenue each year by the amount of the annual budget deficit and you will see that overall income to the fedgov was flat. The USA is a nation of debtors. Right now our total debt as a nation is about equal to our total net worth, both somewhere around $55Trillion. Total net worth was about $65Trillion in 2007.

As to the corp tax:
quote:
Finally, in a U.S. Treasury report of global competitiveness (Table 5.3), it is revealed that U.S. corporations paid 13.4% of their profits in taxes between 2000 and 2005, compared to the OECD average of 16.1%.

The Treasury Dept. report is consistent with a PayUpNow.org analysis of the 10-K financial statements of 100 of the largest U.S. companies, which found that less than 10% of pre-tax profits in 2010 were paid in non-deferred U.S. federal income taxes.

These 100 companies, with $5.67 trillion in 2010 revenue and almost $600 billion in pre-tax earnings, paid $57 billion, or 9.7%, in federal incomes taxes. If these 100 companies had paid the 35% tax designated by U.S. tax law, an additional $150 billion would have been collected in federal taxes in just one year. This is approximately equal to the total budget deficits for all 50 states.

From 2008 to 2010, Chevron paid less than 5% a year. Merck paid 5%. Hewlett-Packard 3%. Exxon 2%. IBM 2%. Carnival 1%.

Verizon and Boeing and Dow and DuPont all made profits three years in a row, but all paid zero taxes over the three-year period.

Banking leaders Citigroup and Bank of America, with a combined $8 billion of pretax earnings in 2009 and 2010, each paid zero taxes two years in a row.

So go ahead, cut the corporate tax rate to 25%. 25% of zero is the same as 35% of zero.


Agreed, that the debt overwhelms the revenue. However, lower revenue would grow the debt. What's your point!

The national debt is about $14 trillion including treasury notes and bonds to private lenders and internal bonds for social security, medicare and federal pensions. $14 trillion is also the value of the GDP.

The president's debt commission recommended closing loopholes in corporate tax law and a small reduction in the rates. Obama did nothing with any of the recommendations.
We just need to reintroduce the Clinton tax plan. He raised taxes which resulted in increased fedgov revenues, and also decreased the annual deficit to zero. He also fundamentally changed welfare which decreased the annual expenditures.

OBama is not about to do anything new, he is a mainstream politician, interchangeable with any other. OBama has $600million in campaign pledges from corp-America, he will do what they tell him to do. THose are the qualities that win elections and why a Paul or Trump have zero chance of winning.
quote:
Originally posted by Jennifer:
Democritic thinking: Tax the rich more and more. Then I can sit back and suck on the government tit. If you give them a break that might create jobs. Then I'd be expected to actually work for a living. Oh hella no!!


Jennifer, you are a true bi-polar. You often say smart things on the religion forum, but your brain goes into Glen Beck mode here in politics. It is an amazing transformation.
quote:
Originally posted by The Propagandist:
Supply-side Spin
http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html


The only spin is coming from your site Prop. Factcheck is not unbiased and hated Bush. To use their site to check his economics is like asking Pelosi to judge Glenn beck.


quote:
From Factcheck, owned by the Anneburg Public Policy Center

FactCheck.org (Annenberg Political Factcheck), is a nonpartisan[?], nonprofit, consumer advocate[?] web site to inform voters and reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.

This web site is owned by Annenberg Public Policy Center. Which had Barack Obama as the first Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was a Division, or Project, of the Annenberg Foundation. Obama spent four plus years (1995-1999) as Chairman of the Board.
William “Bill” Ayers, a Weather Underground terrorist and a friend of the Obamas, was instrumental in founding the Challenge, with his ties to Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley.


You need to do better than that.
quote:
Originally posted by b50m:
quote:
Originally posted by The Propagandist:
Supply-side Spin
http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html


The only spin is coming from your site Prop. Factcheck is not unbiased and hated Bush. To use their site to check his economics is like asking Pelosi to judge Glenn beck.


quote:
From Factcheck, owned by the Anneburg Public Policy Center

FactCheck.org (Annenberg Political Factcheck), is a nonpartisan[?], nonprofit, consumer advocate[?] web site to inform voters and reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.

This web site is owned by Annenberg Public Policy Center. Which had Barack Obama as the first Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was a Division, or Project, of the Annenberg Foundation. Obama spent four plus years (1995-1999) as Chairman of the Board.
William “Bill” Ayers, a Weather Underground terrorist and a friend of the Obamas, was instrumental in founding the Challenge, with his ties to Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley.


You need to do better than that.


Annenberg was a lifelong Republican, and best buddy of your one and only God, Reagan.
quote:
Originally posted by Jennifer:
Democritic thinking: Tax the rich more and more. Then I can sit back and suck on the government tit. If you give them a break that might create jobs. Then I'd be expected to actually work for a living. Oh hella no!!




Republican thinking: Tax the rich less and less until we have a big deficit. Then, to close the deficit, we don't tax the rich more like we used to; instead, we start cutting spending on social programs people depend on.
Watch video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21...vp/42503559#42503559
Last edited by The Propagandist
Now we're in the midst of the biggest world wide financial collapse since the Great Depression. The crystal ball wizards on Wall St. have laid a giant egg. The provisions of Glass Steagal that prohibited banks from gambling federally insured money, in the stock and commodity markets, were stripped away, for a gaudy casino. The money is gone. All that remains, are the million dollar salaries for those who led the charade.

Unbridled capitalism is dead. A pure free market does not work. This is something the New Dealers knew, all along.

I first became familiar with the Glass Steagal Act at Temple University in the 1980's. A professor explained, that this bank regulation law, from the Roosevelt administration, would have to be modernized. There was a provision in Glass Steagal that forbade banks from gambling federally insured deposits in the stock market. I believed then, as I believe now, that this provision should have remained law.

The sub prime mortgages that are now defaulted, would never have been allowed, years ago. When poor people were tricked into buying homes they couldn't afford, the regulators and the bankers, looked the other way. The Wall St. financiers carelessly climbed over the bodies of defaulted home owners, with war cries of no regulation. The house that greed and indifference built has collapsed, but the cracks were there a long time ago.

President Clinton said that every child should go to college. This didn't make a lot of sense to me, when I had trouble finding a good tailor, shoe repairman, etc. Over educated yuppies, with fancy resumes and job descriptions that stretched credulity, were everywhere. The woman who worked behind the counter at my local Y, now had a masters degree.

The media began to extol the virtues of the woman who has everything. Yes, you can have beauty, and balance a glamorous career, with child rearing. The unreality, of having everything, in a world rampant with suffering, didn't seem to matter.

Larry Cudlow extolled the merits of 200 million dollar salaries on CNBC. At the same breath, he denounced the long suffering steel workers for being over paid. This judgment seemed absurd to me. The last time I had been in a steel mill, the workforce was only a fraction of what it had been just 10 years before.

My parents believed that all Americans who worked hard, should have the right to a good life. And that's a whole lot better than the morally and financially bankrupt leadership, that put our country in the predicament that we are in now. Long live the New Deal.

http://www.associatedcontent.c...financial.html?cat=9

quote:
Originally posted by JimiHendrix:
quote:
Originally posted by Jennifer:
Democritic thinking: Tax the rich more and more. Then I can sit back and suck on the government tit. If you give them a break that might create jobs. Then I'd be expected to actually work for a living. Oh hella no!!




Jennifer, you are a true bi-polar. You often say smart things on the religion forum, but your brain goes into Glen Beck mode here in politics. It is an amazing transformation.


and now SHE is glen beck? good god, Jimi.. make up your mind.. this new glen beck even has boobs. i'm glen beck.. she's glen beck.. is every one who thinks your as smart as a brick glen beck?

and i thought BG had a one track mind..
hows this?

10% federal sales tax on everyone for everything.
no exceptions. no 'non profit status' for anyone for any reason.

the more money you have.. the more you buy.. the more tax you pay.

no lawyers, no accounts needed. no loopholes. no exceptions.
everyone pays. period.

someone give me a sound reason why this wouldn't word, with the only variation being the % of tax charged.

i've seen many people reject ideas like this outright.. just ignored them, but no reason why has ever been offered. i'm willing to learn.
Without the existence of Fannie/Freddie, an out sized market for mortgages wouldn't have existed. The two interjected an extra trillion dollars into the market.

That artificial increase in funds caused home values to grow well beyond market value. No government interference, no artificial increase in home prices well beyond the price of many.

FDIC limits of $100,000 were too large, as well. The new limits are $250,000 per the new financial reform act.

Government was the problem. And, remains so!
quote:
Without the existence of Fannie/Freddie, an out sized market for mortgages wouldn't have existed. The two interjected an extra trillion dollars into the market.

That artificial increase in funds caused home values to grow well beyond market value. No government interference, no artificial increase in home prices well beyond the price of many.


The guv'ment was indeed a problem in putting people in homes they could not afford.

From: http://online.wsj.com/article/...298982558700341.html

quote:
Beginning in 1992, Congress pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their purchases of mortgages going to low and moderate income borrowers. For 1996, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave Fannie and Freddie an explicit target -- 42% of their mortgage financing had to go to borrowers with income below the median in their area. The target increased to 50% in 2000 and 52% in 2005.

For 1996, HUD required that 12% of all mortgage purchases by Fannie and Freddie be "special affordable" loans, typically to borrowers with income less than 60% of their area's median income. That number was increased to 20% in 2000 and 22% in 2005. The 2008 goal was to be 28%. Between 2000 and 2005, Fannie and Freddie met those goals every year, funding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loans, many of them subprime and adjustable-rate loans, and made to borrowers who bought houses with less than 10% down.


Fannie and Freddie also purchased hundreds of billions of subprime securities for their own portfolios to make money and to help satisfy HUD affordable housing goals. Fannie and Freddie were important contributors to the demand for subprime securities.

Congress designed Fannie and Freddie to serve both their investors and the political class. Demanding that Fannie and Freddie do more to increase home ownership among poor people allowed Congress and the White House to subsidize low-income housing outside of the budget, at least in the short run. It was a political free lunch.

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) did the same thing with traditional banks. It encouraged banks to serve two masters -- their bottom line and the so-called common good. First passed in 1977, the CRA was "strengthened" in 1995, causing an increase of 80% in the number of bank loans going to low- and moderate-income families.

Fannie and Freddie were part of the CRA story, too. In 1997, Bear Stearns did the first securitization of CRA loans, a $384 million offering guaranteed by Freddie Mac. Over the next 10 months, Bear Stearns issued $1.9 billion of CRA mortgages backed by Fannie or Freddie. Between 2000 and 2002 Fannie Mae securitized $394 billion in CRA loans with $20 billion going to securitized mortgages.

By pressuring banks to serve poor borrowers and poor regions of the country, politicians could push for increases in home ownership and urban development without having to commit budgetary dollars. Another political free lunch.


As to the repeal of Glass Steagall Act, Bill Clinton pushed it to cover the creation of Citigroup. From a lefty website the propergander would appreciate:

quote:
In 1998, the $70 billion merger of Travelers insurance (owner of the investment house Salomon Smith Barney) and Citicorp (the parent of Citibank) created Citigroup Inc., the world's largest financial services company. But the merger had somehow to get around Glass-Steagall, which was enacted in the first place to prevent precisely this kind of union. A full-court lobbying press began, with Traveler’s chief Sanford "Sandy" Weill meeting with Greenspan, who gave a thumbs-up.

But an OK from the chief wasn't enough. If Glass-Steagall remained on the books, the merged company would have only a few years before it must divest itself of the Traveler’s portion of the business.

Fortunately for Weill and John Reed, chairman of Citigroup, they found sympathetic ears throughout Washington, including in the White House. Shortly after the administration agrees to support repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who was formerly co-chair of Goldman Sachs, joins Citigroup as Weill’s right-hand man.

A year previously, when Weill had given Treasury advance notice of the merger, Rubin

said: "You’re buying the government."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...Steagall-Fat-Chance-
Don't forget -- we have Bill Clinton to blame for NAFTA, too. How many behinds did he smooch on to get that passed? Ross Perot made a point in the Presidential debates that NAFTA would cause a "giant sucking sound of jobs going south." And they did, as well as elsewhere.

Fundamental law was changed that protected domestic industry and threw the doors wide open for capital to flow unhindered anywhere in the world. It didn't used to be that way; government's job used to be to protect the country and it's citizens -- not to grease the skids for corporations to make sure they have a healthy balance sheet.

But that's what bribes, uh, I mean, campaign contributions buys you these days.
quote:
Originally posted by thenagel:
hows this?

10% federal sales tax on everyone for everything.
no exceptions. no 'non profit status' for anyone for any reason.

the more money you have.. the more you buy.. the more tax you pay.

no lawyers, no accounts needed. no loopholes. no exceptions.
everyone pays. period.

someone give me a sound reason why this wouldn't word, with the only variation being the % of tax charged.

i've seen many people reject ideas like this outright.. just ignored them, but no reason why has ever been offered. i'm willing to learn.


It wouldn't work because it would be way too "FAIR" and one side doesn't like fair.
quote:
Originally posted by LE89:
quote:
Originally posted by thenagel:
hows this?

10% federal sales tax on everyone for everything.
no exceptions. no 'non profit status' for anyone for any reason.

the more money you have.. the more you buy.. the more tax you pay.

no lawyers, no accounts needed. no loopholes. no exceptions.
everyone pays. period.

someone give me a sound reason why this wouldn't word, with the only variation being the % of tax charged.

i've seen many people reject ideas like this outright.. just ignored them, but no reason why has ever been offered. i'm willing to learn.


It wouldn't work because it would be way too "FAIR" and one side doesn't like fair.


Never before have so many said so much without ever getting rid of an idea.
quote:
Originally posted by thenagel:
hows this?

10% federal sales tax on everyone for everything.
no exceptions. no 'non profit status' for anyone for any reason.

the more money you have.. the more you buy.. the more tax you pay.

no lawyers, no accounts needed. no loopholes. no exceptions.
everyone pays. period.

someone give me a sound reason why this wouldn't word, with the only variation being the % of tax charged.

i've seen many people reject ideas like this outright.. just ignored them, but no reason why has ever been offered. i'm willing to learn.


If 10% is good enough for Jesus it should be good enough for Uncle Sam.

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