Obama--the grumblings

[classicman]

Hey TGRR- thats what this thread is all about - the "evil other side" and what they are saying.
And yes, you can be relied upon for one thing - on that we agree.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by classicman

Hey TGRR- thats what this thread is all about - the "evil other side" and what they are saying.
And yes, you can be relied upon for one thing - on that we agree.

First you have to assume that there's another side. One "side" bankrupts you paying for stupid wars, and the other bankrupts you paying for stupid bankers.

I fail to see a practical difference.

[Kaliayev]

Bankers are less aesthetically pleasing than wars. There are no booms on the news, and you can't get all jingoistic about it.

I mean, they're not even jumping out of windows yet. So far, Bush wins points for stage-management and cliffhangers.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by Zhuge Liang

Bankers are less aesthetically pleasing than wars. There are no booms on the news, and you can't get all jingoistic about it.

I mean, they're not even jumping out of windows yet. So far, Bush wins points for stage-management and cliffhangers.

Point. War porn for the redneck crowd is kind of hard to top.

[Kaliayev]

Yes. Now, if Obama started actually declaring war on bankers, instead of throwing money at them to maintain the illusion of their independence, maybe he'd claw back a few points. Pfft, some crypto-Marxist this guy is. He hasn't even threatened to shoot a single member of the hated oppresser class, nor throw them into Bagram for a bit of slap and ticke with some Afghan security service members.

[classicman]

HA HA HA HA HA @ TGRR

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by classicman

HA HA HA HA HA @ TGRR

They also, it seems, do not make loudmouth republican rednecks the way they used to.

Are they outsourcing, or something?

[classicman]

The 2% Illusion
Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.

President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."

This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.

But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006.

Mr. Obama is of course counting on an economic recovery. And he's also assuming along with the new liberal economic consensus that taxes don't matter to growth or job creation. The truth, though, is that they do. Small- and medium-sized businesses are the nation's primary employers, and lower individual tax rates have induced thousands of them to shift from filing under the corporate tax system to the individual system, often as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. The Tax Foundation calculates that merely restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets would hit 45% to 55% of small-business income, depending on how inclusively "small business" is defined. These owners will find a way to declare less taxable income.

The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well.

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.

Meanwhile, reality: the rich had so many exemptions as to pay equal or less taxes then the average American. Warren Buffet was quite blunt about this years ago when wackos were promoting tax cut myths and lies. Buffet was paying less in taxes than his receptionist. Such facts get lost when partisans promote their political agendas rather than first learn the facts.

Nobody who is honest can criticize Obama. Nobody has facts to justify all this criticism. The 36% ownership of Citigroup may have been necessary because wackos in Citigroup will not do what must happen. Citigroup probably must be broken up and sold off. Therefore no decent Americans lose jobs. Irresponsible top management and stock holders who failed to demand changes all lose.

Is that Obama's intent? Nobody knows which again demonstrates the foolishness of those partisan inspired criticisms. A person dealing in facts does not yet have sufficient facts to justify that hate and so much criticism.

We do know one fact. Tax cuts without spending reductions only create short term economic improvement followed by worse economic downturns. Eliminting those destructive tax cuts are necessary to restore actual productivity (and responsiblity) to the economy.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by classicman

The 2% Illusion
Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.

Do you honestly think a lot of those people report all their income? They have it hidden offshore. It's not like they get a W2 like working people do.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Do you honestly think a lot of those people report all their income? They have it hidden offshore. It's not like they get a W2 like working people do.

Do you honestly think that individual contractors and small business owners report all of their income? I know three people who are good friends who make well over $70 a year and report only $30. In this economy it is even easier to report a loss and get further tax breaks. If all the people who ran a cash business reported their income and let it be taxed we wouldn't need to raise taxes. You have a hang up with socio-economic classes.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Do you honestly think that individual contractors and small business owners report all of their income? I know three people who are good friends who make well over $70 a year and report only $30. In this economy it is even easier to report a loss and get further tax breaks. If all the people who ran a cash business reported their income and let it be taxed we wouldn't need to raise taxes. You have a hang up with socio-economic classes.

Anecdotes aren't evidence.

You have any presentable evidence to demonstrate that small contractors cheat on their taxes at the same rate that the "2%" do?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by TGRR

Anecdotes aren't evidence.

You have any presentable evidence to demonstrate that small contractors cheat on their taxes at the same rate that the "2%" do?

60%:

http://archive.gao.gov/d26t7/139722.pdf

the GAO cited an IRS estimate that the annual tax gap caused by self-employed individuals (including independent contractors) who did not report all of their income was $20.3 billion.

http://www.treas.gov/tigta/auditrepo...0130132es.html

2. State income tax revenue: According to published data, workers classified as independent contractors are known to underreport their personal income; as a result Illinois suffers a loss of income tax revenue when employees are misclassified. According to the IRS reports, wage earners report 99% of their wages whereas non-wage earners (such as independent contractors) report approximately only 68% of their income. This represents a gap of 31%. Other reliable studies estimate this gap to be as high as 50%.

Based upon IRS estimates that 30% of the income of misclassified workers is not reported, we estimate that an average of $125 million of income tax was lost annually in Illinois for 2001 through 2005. In just 2005, we estimate that $149 million of income tax was not collected in Illinois.
Based upon the higher estimate that up to 50% of the income of misclassified workers is not reported, an average of $208 million of state income tax was lost annually in Illinois from 2001 through 2005. For just 2005, we estimate this loss to have been $248 million.

I wonder how much I could save if I didn't report 30-50% of my income?

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Do you honestly think that individual contractors and small business owners report all of their income? I know three people who are good friends who make well over $70 a year and report only $30. In this economy it is even easier to report a loss and get further tax breaks. If all the people who ran a cash business reported their income and let it be taxed we wouldn't need to raise taxes. You have a hang up with socio-economic classes.

Duh. That goes without saying. Of course people don't report all their income. If people making only 70k/year are doing it, imagine how much people are doing it who make a lot more.

And I am not the one with the hangup. I just want people who make a lot of money to pay what they should be paying. They don't. You just admitted that people you know don't report all their income. You said you don't care about taxes being raised because you will hide most of your money. So how is it I'm the one with the hangup? If you're really doing that, how is that fair? It isn't.

[Undertoad]

We'll know by second quarter next year.