Obama Vs. Mccain

Clinton promised tax cuts his entire campaign and the taxes were only raised. Politicians will tell you anything and everything you want to hear. Their job is to earn votes and stay popular. No president will run on the platform of "I'm going to raise your taxes". You may read the news but, you don't understand a politicians game.



Yes, it was in jest. The suggestion of a couple people from a Hentai forum could run the country better than previous presidents is an obviously humorous statement. Calm down and go smoke a bowl,fap, play a game or something. Damn.



A lot of European countries are basically socialist and they aren't totalitarian as well so it's not only Sweden. Sadly the store didn't have the book in stock (very little political material). While a socialist country may not use military force to maintain power. Economic control can be just as powerful as a soldier standing in the street with a gun. We could debate this until the end of time but, I'll just say I'll keep looking for the book.



I want to see you run a multimillion and/or multinational company. Prove to me that any guy off the street can run such a company. Then you'll have a point but, as it stands the average guy off the street won't be able to run a company like that nor would they be able to successfully build a company up to that level even if they were given every opportunity. Some people just can't do certain things. I can drive any vehicle below a 18 wheeler that isn't a motorcycle and I can manage my finances. That doesn't mean I have the ability to drive a Indy race car or manage a bank.

So you do. Then ask yourself this; you believe that Obama would raise taxes because the government needs more money? After all, you said that the government loved to spend money like baby, assuming there's money to be had now since everyone's reduce/stopped buying things and GDP is going down, not to mention the rising unemployment rate. And if he did raise taxes, wouldn't you think people would wonder why they're getting taxed in a time of recession? It'd be a total public outcry.

We get comparisons made between Obama and FDR, and did FDR raise taxes? I don't believe he ever did, except when he repealed the Prohibiton act which in turn generated tax revenue. If he'll raise taxes, he can kiss his seat goodbye for sure. Economically, the government wouldn't have anything to gain by taxing us, rather, it would hurt the economy, econ101 basics. And you can't compare Clinton's term to now. We're in a recession, he wasn't. And he did cut taxes with his 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act and other subsidies, so I don't know where you're pulling information from that he raised taxes.

Your careless statement didn't sound humorous to me, and Obama's responsibility is huge. But whatever, it was a joke so I'll brush it aside.

Lean to take a joke then. Not every joke will be funny to fucking person in the whole world. It was a joke not a careless statement. The Italian president makes careless statements. I on the other hand made an intentional joke pointing out the fact that I am disappointed by the actions of presidents going back as far as Carter.

Get the stick out of your ass. It can't be comfortable.

Yes, I also know that our "suntanned" president is very "young" and "handsome". That I agree was a careless statement. Sorry, I don't got a stick up my butt, but not for the lack of someone trying to put it there. A joke doesn't have to be funny, but there are bad jokes out there, and your post struck me as a bad joke.

Understandable, everyone tells a bad joke from time to time. Now that this is settled I believe we're cool again, correct?

Yea, we're good.

Back on topic, I wonder if McCain's retiring now. He's really old, and that scared a lot of people under the condition that if he died in office, Palin would take over.

From the senate? I don't think he will. 165K a year is a hard paycheck to walk away from.

The only question I have lingering is. Would McCain have done better if Mike Huckabee was his VP instead of Palin? The few Female votes that Palin netted him after Clinton's defeat probably walked away as fast as they joined.

Pretty much no one in the senate actually needs the money. They collect it and it's nice, but being rich is generally helpful in campaign funding. McCain married and heiress and the 165k is pocket change for him.

The easy, do nothing, job then? Not like he has anything else to do. Golf? Senators get a lot of vacation time. Maybe he will take up model ship building. When you boil it down all the whole thing is old men talking to other old men for a few hours and getting paid more than most of us will earn in a few years (total)

Personally, I always thought it was the influence, attention, and power that came with being a senator versus a rich fop. But it's true, if you don't want to, you don't really have to do anything as a senator. Probably won't get many agendas done though.

An average guy off the street may not be able to run a multinational company, but just because a person can, does that mean he should be treated like a gift from God? People who do construction are nothing like the guy who's in charge of Wal-Mart, but I respect the people who do construction a lot more than the guy who runs Wal-Mart. The guy runs a huge company and makes a ton of money. So what? He didn't start the company. He didn't get it where it is today. He just came in and took over. He may know how to make good business decisions, but he doesn't do anything to help people, and he doesn't put himself at risk. Of course, Wal-Mart is a shitty company, so it's a little unfair to use it as an example of why I don't respect the people who run the huge businesses, but a lot of other businesses are just as shitty as Wal-Mart, or close, or even worse.

Also, you and I may not be able to drive an Indy race car or manage a bank, but if we wanted to, we could probably learn how to do those things and be able to do them. It might take time, but we could learn, just like the people who do those things did.

EDIT: I have to say, I am by no means an economic expert, or a political expert. I'm a simple person who lives in this country and hates some of the things I see. I speak my mind, and I may be misinformed about some things, though I'm certainly not misinformed about all things. I would never want to be a senator or the president or even a governor or mayor, and that's not because I wouldn't know what to do. My reason is simple: Getting involved, firsthand, in politics is the worst thing you can do to yourself. You either become corrupt and lose sight of what you really wanted to do, or you feel like shit all the time being surrounded by people who are corrupt and don't actually care about bettering the country. I don't understand why any good person would ever want to enter the political arena.

That said, anyone out there can say, "He just doesn't know what he's talking about" and dismiss all of my words. Or anyone can say, "His view is similar to others who don't watch five hours of news a day and read every article in the newspaper." I don't care. The truth is, I know some things, I see a lot, and I have my own views, but I am not the first person people should go to for political advise. I'm not the last, but I'm not the first, and I want people to know that I don't think that I'm some political mastermind who knows everything and could fix the world if I had the chance. I don't believe that. I just believe that I could make some things better, something almost everyone believes.

So just because you don't make bad decisions when running your company somehow you don't deserve to keep what you earn. Now what about the small businesses? Do the owners of those companies deserve to have their income taken from them? Those people work every day in their stores/office/where ever. Then again the idea to envision a fat guy in some office building with a suit every time you think of a "rich guy". How about the guy who runs a construction company? He has to constantly secure contracts and manage the various aspect of his company. How about a guy who opens a bar or pub in a major city. In a good year he could gross into the governments idea of "rich" then he gets taxed for being "rich"

The government's idea of "rich" is people who earn over 250K a year. So everyone between 250K to "*Snap* I just bought you" rich just paid 90% of the federal income this year. They will also do it next year.

It's not a matter of if they can handle the taxes or not. Its a matter of why is it somehow acceptable to tax people based on a single characteristic when we would find it unacceptable to tax people over any other characteristic.

what would you like people to be taxed for? income is the only fair and legal characteristic that should be considered... You make more therefore you should be better suited to pay more and help run your country. The government can't run on good will and dreams, no matter what anyone says.

National retail sales tax. No taxes taken out of our income at 33c/$1 then a 7 cent sales tax on the state and county level (the level here probably higher where you live) which you pay 40% of every dollar you earn in taxes. The poor people have taxes taken out of their income and they get taxed on the food,cloths and gas they buy. So why not give everyone the entire paycheck then only tax people on the money they spend.

On a deeper level the removal of the other taxes (Death,gift,gas,inheritance) tax would lift a larger burden off the poor. A large sales tax would only really hit the expensive items like luxury cars and planes. Which would also include the large amount of money in the "underground economy" such as drug money and such that isn't accounted for in income tax. People could invest money towards whatever they want (IRA's or similar things if they were smart)

To alleviate the burden of the increase sales tax on items such a bread and milk. The government would write a check to every American equal to the amount of taxes they would pay on basic items up to the poverty level (the government will get the money back).


A side note: The Government saves money by eliminating the IRS and April's "tax day" would just be anther beautiful spring day.

tl;dr
I direct you here
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer

I don't think the government is bankrupting people who make 250k a year.

But otherwise, what's the alternative? Regressive taxes have mostly been out of use for a long time. Tariffs, as well as being regressive, also hurt trade and make stuff more expensive.

Generally, the rational for progressive taxes vs. making everyone pay the same thing or percent is that it widens the gap between the rich and poor, since the money is more expendable the richer you are. Having a weak middle class and a wide wealth gap is believed to lead to social unrest, and there is certainly evidence. After all, that stuff was part of why the Bolsheviks were successful in Russia with their communist ideals. People don't go riot and engage in violence for fun, usually they have to be pretty upset about something, or in the case of Russia, have a life so bad that it's unlivable.

Milton Friedman favored, at one point, a concept known as negative income tax. The idea is that everyone pays a set percentage of their income to the government and then receives a check for a set amount of money. It's progressive, since if you are poor enough, the government actually pays taxes to you, while if you are rich the money you get back is negligible. However, it could also theoretically eliminate the need to some social programs and let people spend the money instead of the government, though who knows what they'd spend it on. It has other problems too, but it's an interesting concept.

It's not that it's bankrupting them they have money. It's just morally unacceptable but, since people are jealous of those that have leads us to this general mentality that the rich should pay more. Instead of people wanting to become rich we have this mentality that because they are rich they are never paying their "fair share" of taxes. Thus anytime there is a tax increase it's always on the rich. It may not bankrupt the now but, eventually it will.

Alternative. Fairtax (i.e. National Retail Sales tax) Read previous post for a general rundown. Visit the site for more info.

That "single characteristic" is all that matters when it comes to paying taxes. Income should definitely matter when it comes down to taxes.

As for it being "morally unacceptable" I don't think anything concerning money can really be "moral." If morality came into play, you'd have people saying that it'd be immoral for people who earn less than $30,000 a year to pay any taxes at all since they already have so little, and other people saying that it'd be immoral for anybody to not have to pay any taxes. It'd be an endless debate because "morality" would suggest that people only keep as much money as they absolutely need and give the rest away to others, and there's no way that would, or could, ever happen.

The truth is, people who earn more can stand to give more. Not everyone who understands that believes that all "rich people" are fat cats trying to suck every nickel out of Joe Nobody, either. It's just the truth. If you make $250,000 a year, then you have plenty of money. You could buy a new car every year, if you wanted to, and there'd be no problem (as long as you didn't spend all your money on blow or something, as stars are apt to do). So why not give up some of that money? You wouldn't miss it, unless you liked to gamble with hundred dollar bills instead of pennies.

The rich don't need anybody to defend them. They don't even have to defend themselves. Because they have money, and money makes the world go round. If things look even slightly bad, they can take a bunch of cash and move away, to a place where things don't look bad.

Unfortunately, the FairTax website reads mostly like a set of campaign talking points and pretty much says that everyone would have more money without providing any good evidence. However, in order to maintain the same level of revenue while decreasing tax burden on the rich, it would seem to me that tax burden on the middle class would have to be raised significantly, since attempting to shift the burden to the poor would be ineffective and objectionable to most.

To think about it further, we would be taxing consumption, which is necessary to a certain level, and not things like capital gains, so stockpiling money and investments is not taxed. Maybe this is good for the economy, but the effectiveness Reaganomics and the "trickle down" school of thought was rather dubious in the past.

Shifting tax burdens to the middle class and laxing them on the rich increases the wealth gap, which is a potential societal cost. Historically, the middle classes have been an important stabilizing factor, as well as an important source of reform and progressiveness in society. The poor don't have the resources or organization generally, and by time they start acting out, tensions are already extremely high. There are always a few philanthropists, but the extremely wealthy are small in numbers and often see no reason to change things, because they are already very well off. The middle classes seem to be in just the right place in order to be motivated towards these goals and have a reasonable degree of success. The ranks of the progressives from the Gilded Age and Industrial Revolution, who enacted many changes that we consider important today, were largely composed of and supported by the middle classes. Thus, many people see regressive tax policies as having a societal, rather than monetary cost, by increasing unrest and crime and such.

Ultimately, it seems like this

The best part - You only tax consumption, not savings and investment, so saving money, investing in the economy, etc, are easier

The worst part - You only tax consumption, not savings and investment, so you either get less revenue, or have to make the consumption tax higher, which shifts the tax towards regression(or else you assume FairTax is some sort of economic panacea, as a few of its supporters have).


On the point of the morality of taxation, one of the problems is, economics often looks at morality from two different perspectives: individual and collective.

I think Fiery presents the individual perspective on taxes, while Shaggy presents the collective.

However, there are some other economic fields where libertarians and conservatives(and some others, for example, myself; I wouldn't describe myself as either conservative or libertarian) have embraced the collective morality argument, specifically, free trade and comparative advantage. Free trade promotes outsourcing, which is bad for a subset of people on an individual level(causing someone to lose their job and upset their financial status might be considered to be economically immoral on this level), but provides comparative advantage, which on a collective level, theoretically makes everyone have more goods(which might be considered economically moral). Similarly, with minimum wage, many morality advocates claim that morally, employers have an obligation to pay a living wage. However, collectively, paying a living wage increases unemployment and decreases purchasing power.

23% National Retail Sales tax was the amount found to generate roughly the same amount of money the Government recieves from the current system. Under the current system there are

1. 67,500 pages of tax code.
2. $265 billion spent yearly in tax code filing and compliance.
3. Government takes 1/3rd of your paycheck before you ever see the check itself.
4. You get taxed on every dollar you spend as well as every dollar you earn. (Your house, you car, food,etc)
5. Hurts students (especially poor students) Since Tuition is federally taxed.
6. Currently, harms production and manufacturing since every company pays payroll taxes and taxes on every nut, screw and bolt they buy. Those costs are passed onto the consumer.
7. Foreign companies pay no taxes on goods that enter into America. Thus giving foreign countries an advantage over
American producers who have to pay payroll and income taxes which raises the cost of business.
8. Encourages companies to move overseas to reduce the cost of business while leaving people jobless here.
9. Taxes are paid on social security benefits which hurts senior citizens.
10. Hurts students who pay income taxes on their part time jobs while attending school (they don't earn much to begin with)
11. You get taxed for dieing. If you can't pay that tax then your next of kin are forced to.
12. You pay taxes on any kind of investment (stocks,I.R.A.,etc)

The fair tax system would
1. Eliminate the 67,500 pages of tax code
2. Save the Government the money and resources spent on maintaing the current system.
3. You keep your entire paycheck (look at your paycheck think what you could do with all that extra money each week)
4. You only get taxed at the point of sale for new items. The fairtax removes taxation on used items such as used homes and cars
5. The government gives you a check every month equal to the amount of taxes you would spend on necessary items up to the poverty level thus elimination basically 90% of your tax burden if you are middle class and eliminating the entire tax burden on the poor. The rich don't care because they are rich to begin with.
6. Students recieve an untaxed education so Tuition and other systems are easier on poor families.
7. Companies save money by eliminating the income tax, payroll tax and various other taxes they pay on every item as part of production. Everything from equipment to parts to build your counch. They currently pay taxes on and that cost is passed to the consumer.
8. Foreign and Domestic companies pay the same tax on the same goods. The only taxes Domestic companies pay would be eliminated thus giving domestic companies the advantage thus keeping jobs in America.
9. Untaxes social security benefits for seniors thus saving them money to be invested again.
10. The poor, students, etc don't pay taxes (Income, Fica Medicare) on their wages. Thus the money can be spent where it needs to go.
11. You don't get taxed on inheriting or giving anything.
12. You don't get taxed for dieing.
13. The people who don't pay income tax (illegal immigrants, people "paid under the table") have to pay taxes when they buy something.
14. Tourists help pay into our economy by spending money while they are here.
15) Helps small businesses by removing their primary burden (remember 70% of U.S. Economy is small business)
16). Removes your investments from taxation thus netting you more money.

All of this is just by sweeping away the taxes that clutter up the system. None of these need to be explained beyond the common sense notion of 1+1=2. We save the government money and increase the funding a little by expanding the taxation base. No increased burden on Low and Middle class families. Gives the low and middle class families better chances to invest for retirement or for their own well being. Politicians can't muck up the system with political motivations since if they raise the tax then they have to sign a bigger check to each of us every month.

It's not an economic panacea. It's just a smarter way of doing things. The current system is just outdated and politically motivated.

That still reads like a list of campaign talking points?

Who did what model to determine that 23% national retail tax would generate enough revenue? Have these findings been consistently confirmed? I'm not saying it wouldn't, but I'm curious to see the economic work done on this.

I think some of your "talking points" are a bit unrealistic too.



There would be a new tax code, less complicated hopefully, but fairtax already allows for all sorts of exceptions. Then do you get any sort of tax breaks for charity? The legality of tax credits on certain items? Plus, various interest groups would lobby for loopholes on consideration of what is taxable and not taxable. It would soon become a mess again anyways.



You still have to force people to comply, police retail transactions, make sure people are selling what they claim to sell and not something else, cracking down on people trying to sell off the books to evade taxes, etc.



That's because the state taxes sales and the feds tax income. With a national sales tax, presumably state sales tax would just be tacked on top of that, states have to get revenue somehow.



Ethics and labor costs will still make this happen. They are a much bigger motivation for outsourcing.

Eliminating capital gains and estate taxes would certainly happen, if one opposes them.


And the purchasing power of the money is reduced because prices are higher. How much did your real wealth, measured in the goods you can afford, change?



Thus creating a complex situation requiring government regulation so that people don't cheat and sell new cars as used cars, etc.


One of the best sounding ideas.


So isn't the federal government getting less money?



Isn't that the point of tariffs? They didn't work out so well.



They don't now? Stuff is a lot cheaper here, all the Europeans I know buy as much crap as they can get away with bringing back.


Ultimately, the problem I see is this. The fairtax website promises that everyone's tax burden will be lowered but the government will keep the same level of revenue. So where is the difference being made up? Nonsense like corruption, implementation costs, etc, are certainly unfortunate, but generally only compromise a small amount of money in relation to the totals we are talking about. Besides, even fairtax will have its problems, so putting a zero in this field and counting it all as savings is unrealistic. The only other possibility that I see is that the advocates of fairtax are taking into their calculations the assumption that fairtax grows the economy, and that they know how much it will grow by.

It seems like a bit of a leap of faith. I'd like to see some work on the models, small scale implementations, case studies, and such before taking the plunge.