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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (15877)	9/9/2004 5:37:38 PM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

I find it hard to believe that the military would opt for such typewriters unless it was a unit doing composition work or some special tasks that required the ability to format with proportional lettering. Let's not forget, this was not the regular Air Force either, but the Texas Air National Guard. I find it doubtful an ANG unit would spring for state-of-the-art technology for simple typing tasks. It's not like they generated reams of typewritten work (as would a law firm, for example).

To: mph who wrote (15877)	9/9/2004 6:00:49 PM
From: Lady Lurksalot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

mph, in case you missed them . . . I feel your pain. <g> - Holly Message 20504382 Message 20504466 Message 20504891

To: mph who wrote (15877)	9/9/2004 6:00:49 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

I was in junior high then.... I don't remember what kind of typewriter I used but it sure didn't have proportional spacing. Here is something I have been pondering about Kerry's proposed reimposing of taxes (taking away the tax cut) on people making more than 200K. If Kerry really intends to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those making over 200K per year, how exactly will he accomplish that? I mean, it makes a nice sound bite for the class warfare crowd, but consider this not so unusual example: Lazarus and Tiffany are married. Lazarus is 55 years old, Tiffany is 22. Lazarus works in some sort of rocket science engineering field that nobody really understands or pays attention to unless the rockets crash or their pagers or satellite TV systems suddenly crap out. Tiffany works at a strip club. Lazarus makes 175K per year; Tiffany makes 180K per year (150K of it in tips). Their dividend income from a bazillion shares of stock in Procter & Gamble and various utilities is 80K. Let's assume they took 25K in long term cap gains and also had 30K in itemized deductions. I guess Kerry is saying that they should have their tax cut taken away, though I'm not sure exactly how. Neither makes more than 200K per year in salary and tips, though together (since they are married -- Laz's mistake for marrying a stripper) they make 355K so I guess that makes them rich according to Kerry. According to Smart Money magazine's Bush tax cut calculator (http://www.smartmoney.com/tax/filing/index.cfm?story=bushtaxcut), Laz and Tiffany would have paid $135,343 in federal income tax before the Bush 2003 tax cut and $108,072 under the Bush tax cut. Kerry seems to be saying that he wants to reimpose that tax cut amount ($27,271) on them. But how? Let's say they sit down, Laz on his easy chair and Tiffany on Laz's lap, and fill out their 1040. Their wages put them over 200K together, but only because they are married. Are we therefore going to repeal the marriage penalty relief (most of which occurs in brackets below 200K) for them by surcharging their income above 200K? To do so we would have to fiddle the married brackets above 200 so they were far worse than the single brackets. Then there is the matter of dividends. Many companies increased dividends after the tax cut, thereby putting money in shareholder's hands and likely stimulating the economy, due to the more favorable tax treatment. Is Kerry going to have us figure our incomes and then decide whether a dividend is taxable at 15 percent or 39.6 percent? How are we going to know in advance how to plan for the tax impact of a stock transaction? Won't that cause the asset valuation of stocks to take a tumble by making them more tax disadvantaged, perhaps causing the markets to do a reverse of what it did in 2003? The interesting thing is that if you take away the marriage penalty and investment tax savings in this example, and just run it with a single taxpayer making 355K with the same 30K in itemized deductions, the tax savings from the Bush tax cuts is only $6,424. It's easy to see how Kerry recaptures the $6,424 simply by raising rates. But to recapture Laz and Tiffany's $27,271 tax cut, Kerry would have to selectively fiddle with the marriage penalty relief and selectively reimpose investment taxes based on the threshold of noninvestment income you happen to earn in a given year. That strikes me as unworkable -- but if he doesn't do that, then his tax increase gets very little revenue. And I have never heard Kerry or any of his supporters, on SI or elsewhere, explain what he really has in mind.