Time to tax churches and NGOS.

armchair_warrior said:

bg time to pull some of those lazy bastards off the government teet. its good time as any. there should be no sacred cows on either side.

Yes, your assumptions and personal observations of poor people are well documented.

Most of my energy for criticism is directed towards the wealthy, their tax breaks, loopholes, non-existent estate taxes, etc.

I then have a tiny bit of criticism left over for people who were born into poverty and actually face a hard life whether they have "a good work ethic" or not.

Don't confuse centrism with proof of being correct.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

Boygabriel said:

Right but in your CC metaphor, I am arguing that if the individual chooses to try to recalibrate their finances right now today, it will put them out of work, and/or dramatically reduce social programs for the less privileged, or make their financial situation infinitely more of a mess, which makes long term prospects for paying off debt even worse, IMO.

On your later post:

You support a flat tax? Am I reading that right?

I don't have the breakout for sales tax. But I do know the bottom 50% made 12% of the taxable income in 2008, and only paid 3% of the taxes. Even if rates don't change, things like child incentive deductions & the mortgage interest deduction would generate a lot of revenue.

I don't disagree that there is value in social programs. My question is where we should draw the line on how we pay for them. To me it makes no sense to put the long term fiscal security of the government at stake for increasingly costly social programs. We can't afford to continue to operate at this level.

Cool The Kid said:

Maybe not a flat tax, but def a flatter tax.

I don't have the breakout for sales tax. But I do know the bottom 50% made 12% of the taxable income in 2008, and only paid 3% of the taxes. Even if rates don't change, things like child incentive deductions & the mortgage interest deduction would generate a lot of revenue.

I don't disagree that there is value in social programs. My question is where we should draw the line on how we pay for them. To me it makes no sense to put the long term fiscal security of the government at stake for increasingly costly social programs. We can't afford to continue to operate at this level.

I personally do not think it is social programs, stimulus(es?), and the like, that are putting us in untenable debt.

By a wide margin my two biggest cost-cutting targets would be national defense (cue WhyNot) and dramatic single-payer health care overhaul.

(I'd also close tax loopholes. Punish corporations that use off shore tax shelters. And severely tax capital gains and especially estates. But we've discussed taxation extensively.)

Cutting social services, raising retirement age, austerity in a time of high unemployment, all of these things are placing more of the burden on the people who can least afford it.

What is the present % of the budget we are spending to make the minimum payments on our present debt?

...does that play a role in how broke we are? We will never "pay it off"

Social Security does not contribute to our debt, at all.

And MC costs could be dramatically reduced with actual health care reform.

We pay the most and get the least medical care of any developed nation in the world.

If we want to attack our debt, I can't think of a better place to start than that statistic.

If the debt limit is not raised by the deadline, that could happen very, very soon!

I don't think we've started putting guns to people's heads for $$$ just yet.

Though the Fed has been robbing the people to lend to the gov't by way of inflation.

No Ron Paul, but putting an end to that nonsense would do a lot more to help the position of the avg American than taking austerity measures off the table. If inflation isn't at 10% a year, that's less money that people depending on the gov't have to spend to survive.

"give money to the people" was a mantra of the Recovery Act.

While it postponed the coming pain and put us further into debt, I'm not sure it did much more.

For example, it did not create the investment in infrastructure that this country needs to compete.

I agree, a lot of the money that is given to corporations by government just ends up going to their shareholders and directors, but our attempts to have federally led investment programs seems equally flawed.

I know I keep "beating this", but I think it is time to stop the myth that we can "stimulate" what we already have. We either need to accept that this is as (ahem) as hard as we are going to get, or somehow get new equipment

The world competition seems to be always stiff.

(ok, I'll stop now)

I don't think there is any shame in admitting our economy doesn't measure up to their expectations, and don't think we can meet their belief of what they need.

They may need to lower their expectations.

After all, we can't all be expected to be John Holmes.

vidro3 said:

It was? I missed that

Yup, we have just funded teachers and fire fighters, etc with federal money (debt)

While it postponed the coming pain and put us further into debt, I'm not sure it did much more.

For example, it did not create the investment in infrastructure that this country needs to compete.

So that's an argument for a larger stimulus, isn't it? And we do have some things there were many tangible projects conducted with stimulus money.

or, one could stop doing something that didn't work, and embrace infrastructure ...combined with (gasp) things like imminent domain for high speed rail.

http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/pages/RecipientReportedDataMap.aspx?ZipCode=11215&datasource=recipient

I agree, a lot of the money that is given to corporations by government just ends up going to their shareholders and directors, but our attempts to have federally led investment programs seems equally flawed.

how so?

There are many programs that fail to achieve their goals. It seems government is about as successful as private industry. That doesn't mean we stop both; it just means that we invest as opposed to merely continue the present state of affairs. If people want fire fighters and teachers, they should not be able to incur debt to pay for them ...they should have to pay taxes. I think they would rise to the occasion.

Afterall, shouldn't their be a correlation between taxes and government services? Any correlation is presently weak at best. We can either cut services, or increase taxes ...I'd be ok with either, IF we also addressed the large debt.

I know I keep "beating this", but I think it is time to stop the myth that we can "stimulate" what we already have. We either need to accept that this is as (ahem) as hard as we are going to get, or somehow get new equipment

The world competition seems to be always stiff.

(ok, I'll stop now)

you seem a little to ready to accept 20% unemployment, stagnant wages, and rising income inequality.

I have no belief that we are exempt from the larger world environment.

Yes, our standard of living must fall.

Yes, we must live within our means. We presently live 40% above our means. ....we can't continue to do this.

However, once wages fall, unemployment will also decrease as we become more competitive.

While I would love to get out this problem by taxing the rich, I don't see it as possible.

We need a different solution. Companies often find that they must compete by lowering their prices and/or improving their product; I'd be ok with the US doing either.

Taxing the rich does neither. ...like the Recovery Act, the problem is merely postponed and we may very well end up simply older and more in debt than we started.

Cheery aren't I? ....my outlook can be described as consistent with a philosophy of "learning to dance in the rain, or learning to build a shelter", as opposed to "trying to make it stop raining".

P.S. I really wish it would stop raining, but I can't control that.

in fact it seems to be falling for most and getting ridiculously better for a very select few.

Objective truth.