to each his own, I guess.

Just a week and a half left of spin before the tears and meltdowns come. Can't wait.

I know this is probably the wrong time since we are bashing away at each other, but I just want to say again how much I like this board. I started this thread hoping it would lead to some interesting discussion about the coming race, and because I know there are such diverging view-points on this board I always get a chance to see arguments coming from a different perspective. As much as people might get mad, bitch, moan and down right mean sometimes, when I look at the utter crap most political discussion threads become pretty quickly on the internet, I'm pretty proud of this board. We get about as ugly as the politicians do, but there are kernels here in there of some really good, thought out opinions.

Thank you guys. Keep it up.

Quoted for truth. I've added absolutely nothing to this thread but have found it to be the only election thread I've found to be tolerable anywhere on teh internetz.

Don't pretend that you are part of some sort of unbiased middle and then pull this statement out. If you really believe this you are no better than anyone on the right to far right who call Obama a socialist primarily on the back of one impromptu response to a question on the campaign trail.

Obama's proposals are hardly any different than the Clinton's in 1992. Same tax levels proposed under Clinton, proposing universal health care, ect. Yet the Clinton's didn't get the same type of rhetoric, they weren't called wealth re-distributors and socialists like Obama is. It's hard to pretend to be critical of the far right when you buy into its rhetoric of the day.

Absolutely. At the very least it does a good job of spotlighting FOFCers that are probably mentally ill.

Man, I'm going to miss this thread. This thread makes me feel like I'm watching someone set a cat on fire in order to get rid of its fleas.

Anyways, one of my students in my high school economics class brought up a question:
At what income tax % can a country be considered socialist? we were talking about obama's top 5% increase, which seems to me to be about a 4-5% increase. is there a threshold that this increase passes?

Interesting stuff:

Obama only talks good game on gender pay equity

:lol:

Since you are in teh large minority here, could you explain to us how McCain's social and financial policies are responsible, as opposed to Obama's irresponsible ones? I see these accusations thrown around, but I do not know the reasoning behind the statements.


As other people have said, I don't agree with those statements saying that "America Sucks", but I completely accept your reasoning. I'm sure plenty of people think that Palin is merely saying, "you guys are great," not "the other guys suck." So, what I'm saying is, thank you for giving an actual example that at least represents some form of reasoning. :)

The income tax rate isn't really a good barometer for determining socialist/not socialist. The level of government control over the production and distribution of the produced goods is a much better barometer. Of course, if the income tax rate was 100%, then it is a moot point. :) But at the other end of the spectrum, you can have socialism at 0% income tax rate. Look at some of the oil oligarchies, where the state provides everything. Those are socialist places, and they have very low tax rates.

That's the problem, it isn't being used as anything close to intelligent discourse. Socialist and Socialism are the new conservative swear words against the left. Never mind that with tax rates Obama is seeking to move back to the tax policies of Clinton. Liberal doesn't have the same bite anymore, so attack politics moved on.

My pleasure.

Why does John McCain think America sucks?

I agree with you. However one of the points of contention for some of us is that while a change will likely head in a different direction, that does not mean that it still won't be the wrong direction.

:)

100% agreed. Anybody who is sure Obama will lead us in the right direction is just as far off (in my opinion). It's just about who to give the chance to at this point and whose basic tenets you agree with (in my opinion).

I wanted to find a nice bar chart or something, but what I found was this: History of Federal Individual Income Tax Rates

I'm not sure what it means, I will leave that to the rest of you that know more about the history and politics, because I don't know how the rates correlate to economic successes and failures (I suppose I could probably find that data as well, but I think people here know it without looking).

Good to see someone ask rather than assume. As you rightly point out, the assumption is made that because I oppose many of Obama's policies, that I must think that a McCain administration would handle it well. While I will likely vote for McCain based on my belief that he'd be a better foreign policy president and the fact that I prefer his tax cut across all levels, I think some of his economic policies are outrageous. Top of my list is health insurance. McCain's plan is a great way to screw up a health care system that's already plenty screwed up. I also heavily disagree with the mortgage buyout that he's proposing for bad loans.

My guess is that most voters likely won't have to worry about it anyway. Considering the current financial situation, I doubt that either candidate will be able to make any substantial health care changes and McCain's mortgage buyout doesn't have a chance in hell of passing.

:+1:

I'll be overjoyed if either of these candidates make 20% of the impact that they claim they'll be able to make in 4 short years, especially given the financial troubles.

So that chick in Pittsburgh admits making up the story about being attacked.

http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.....2.847628.html

Frankly, I'm glad she's facing charges, and I hope they don't allow her to plea bargain. This is exactly the kind of bullshit that drives me crazy. Her dishonesty will end up reflecting badly on College Republicans and I'm sure, to a certain extent the McCain campaign. What a twit.

At least you don't support taxing health benefits. :)

Thanks for the answer. I think everyone on here gets foggy on the fact that supporting one candidate over another does not mean that you support them on every issue. I would say this board (and, if the rest of America thought about it, I think it would be very widespread) is largely in the "we need more parties" camp. I would actually say I am more in a Libertarian camp, but social issues are more important to me than fiscal issues, thus I lean Democrat. Most people I know that feel they follow Libertarian values are more concerned with fiscal issues than they are social issues, so they lean Republican.

Give me a party that supports staying out of social issues (legalize marijuana, allow same sex marriages, allow stem cell research, etc) and a minimal (but not extinct) federal/local government to handle infrastructure and MINOR social programs (unemployment, for instance) and I would be very happy.

"In other words, send us the cure, we've got the sickness already."

-Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof

I don't see how it hurts McCain, and it shouldn't hurt the College Republicans. Along with facing criminal charges, I hope she gets some good mental health help. That level of personal destruction isn't at all healthy.

Quite the opposite. I support a straight tax rate. It can still be stairstepped as it is now or it can be a flat rate. I don't care in that regard. The credits, deductions, tax shelters, etc. are ridiculously out of control. I just want a system where I pay XX% of my salary with no futher calculations.

McCain does not favor that method, so I suppose we disagree about that as well.

With ya for the most part.

Well, I think Republicans, as much as they want to lower taxes, would certainly be against removing loopholes. However, maybe the argument that is they want the loopholes there to get closer to a "flat" tax rate. I should really just remain a spectator in these conversations because I don't know/care enough about it to be a valuable contributor regarding tax rates. :)

There was an interesting article I read about an IRS study that showed something like 60% of "rich" people underreport their income, and that doesn't even include a lot of these offshore hiding places. Something that people in the middle class are actually "better" about paying their taxes. Sort of defends raising the levels of those over a certain amount since they appear to be cheating more. Not that it matters since I'm not sure what % of tax revenue those different classes account for.

I agree with the point in the study that the wealthy either underreport their income or they have the tools/money to hire people to manipulate their assets to help with tax avoidance.

With that said, that's an argument that the government needs to do a better job of policing the enforcement of the tax code and/or to remove the credits/deductions/shelters that those people use. It is not a reason to raise the level of taxes for those individuals. That approach is a band-aid that does little to solve the inherent problems of the current tax code. My opposition to any deductions/credits/loopholes is that the wealthy are much more likely to exploit those advantages within the law rather than the middle and lower classes. Rarely do the benefits to the middle and lower class outweigh those handed to the wealthy simply because they aren't in a position to capitalize on those rules when compared to the wealthy.

Another excuse they use is all of the tax business like HR Block that will have to find other sources of income along with firing some workers since a major portion of their income will be gone with a simplified tax code. I agree in the months after the change that will cause some pain, but the overall benefit would be much greater over the long haul.

This is why the tax rate should be the same for everyone and across all sources of revenue (ie capital gains). The only deduction is for kids.

Of course, making everyone's tax rate 20% would require doing away with our militaristic foreign adventures, which at this point is about as likely as McCain becoming President.

Could we still bail out wall street executives?

Eh. Flatter would be fine, but still needs to be somewhat graduated. 15/20/30, or something like that.

Shame that HR Block won't be able to operate as a loan shark then.

Yeah, kick it in at about 5k per person, and get rid of all the stupid things like EIC, SS tax and medicare tax.

Why do we need it to be graduated?

Take it to another thread, flat taxer.

Because it will never go to college unless it graduated.

It makes all feel just a little bit better about people that have more money than us.

Yeah, my wife would be out of a job. :) (No, she does not work for HR Block)

Just curious on some of your thoughts as long as we are on the tax subject.

This probably pertains to any business but it is somewhat of a loophole we use on our farm. Before December 31st, we buy as much in inputs for the following year that we possibly can in order to under-report our income from the current year for tax purposes. In essence, we have two sets of books. One is for the banker, and the other is for the IRS.

Anything wrong with that picture? Or just smart business practice?

Yup, it is all about punishing success. :)


No. I think the post ealier from one of the founding fathers of our economy said it best. Taking very little money from lower incomes is much more detrimental to them than taking an even higher amount from the rich. ie. 15% from the lower class hurts them more than 30% from the upper.

If it is legal, then just smart business practice. I had the same thing on a personal level where I had some very good tax advantages that allowed me to legally under-report taxable income, but when I went to the bank it was all accounted there.

Ya, it's all about how much of your paycheck goes to essentials. The poorer you are, a higher percentage of your pay gets eaten up just by food, clothing, housing, basic transportation, etc. As you earn more money, the percentage of it that is more 'disposable' rises, so taxing you at a higher percentage doesn't affect your standard of living to the same degree.

I agree, and am just being cynical. There's people that have opinions based on legitimate, if debatable, economic ideas and those who just don't like the fact that people have more then them.

Obama is about the former, but can't help but rally the latter up into a tizzy as well. You can feel it, I won't call it "class warfare", but he's appealing to that kind of element, which is a tad scary in a way that it wasn't with Clinton.

I'm curious, wouldn't that only work once (the first year)? Because next year you have all these excess inputs kicking around so you don't actually need to buy as many, and then when you do the same thing on Dec 30 at the end of the year, aren't you just where you would have been?

Dola

Or if you keep using all your extra money to buy more inputs regardless of need, don't you eventually end up with an excess of inputs?

Of course it's legal. I guess it's kind of a no-brainer stupid question so let me word things a little differently.

Is it fair that a business owner can under-report his/her income by practices such as that to avoid taxation while a regular Joe that picks up a paycheck really can't do the same thing?

The way around it is to have a bit higher floor where income is tax free; say 10k instead of 3k (or whatever it is now).

Exactly, and it isn't like "tax them to the poor house" kind of need for equality. Just an "fair" spread of the damage, basically. A good tax would be the one equally felt IMHO. About as much damage done to the $35,000 income as to the $125,000, even if one is paying 15% and the other 25%.

Not necessarily, because inputs are in different classes. For example, a new piece of machinery may be needed one year which can soak up any excess income. The next year it could be an improvement to a building or other upgrade that is completely different than the year before. All are inputs, just inputs of varying kinds.

All I know, for as long as I can remember, our farm appears to have made no money whatsoever when you look at the bottom line at the end of the year. But when you dig deeper, that's the not the story whatsoever.