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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (608171)	4/18/2011 2:33:58 PM
From: d[-_-]b	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578142

Interesting how you ignore the cost of two wars Correction - three wars - thanks odumbo!

To: tejek who wrote (608171)	4/18/2011 2:38:48 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1578142

>> The insanity is our war maching; not social spending. This remark comes from a twisted mind. How can you POSSIBLY say this, when everyone agrees the problem is social spending? Even the Democrats now admit that SS and Medicare/Medicaid are failed programs (they don't call them that, of course, but any social program that leaves the government $100T in debt after 45 years is, de facto, a failed program).

To: tejek who wrote (608171)	4/18/2011 2:39:29 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578142

GM hits 52 week low way to go Obama you POS loser

To: tejek who wrote (608171)	4/18/2011 3:02:41 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578142

Ted, we could pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow and the budget deficit for this year would still be over a trillion. And you'd still be blaming Bush. Tenchusatsu

To: tejek who wrote (608171)	4/21/2011 7:42:28 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1578142

Any sane fiscal policy has to make sure the rich pay their way. They already pay much more than their way. A larger percentage of taxes than the rich did in the past in the US, or than the rich pay in most other countries, and large enough average and marginal rates to be harmful. In any case it simply isn't going to help much. Even if increasing tax rates had no negative economic effect (which is a fantasy) taxing 100% of the income of the top few percent would still leave us with huge deficits, combined with exploding entitlement expenditures. Even if you (falsely) assumed that it was some horrible injustice that the rich pay "so little" (when they pay a lot), and you (falsely) assumed that there would be no economic harm, and no increase in efforts at tax evasion, and avoidance, with significantly higher rates; as a practical matter if we are going to be fiscally responsible the reductions in projected future increases in spending (its simpler to say "cuts", but its not accurate as spending will still go up) will have to be much larger than any additional tax revenue. Interesting how you ignore the cost of two wars and the insane allocation to defense. I don't ignore them, I mentioned them. I just point out that the increase in non-military spending has been much larger than the military increase. The non-military increase was also much larger than the lost revenue from tax cuts (even if you use static analysis, but esp. if you consider the negative economic effects of higher tax rates, and the increase in avoidance and evasion as tax rates go higher). That increase was much larger even than the combination of the military increase and the highest estimates of the revenue loss combined. And that's just for the present. Going forward we probably won't get new significant tax cuts any time soon, regular defense spending growth will slow, and the war spending (assuming no new wars) will wind down, but social spending (particularly the entitlements) will keep soaring upwards (absent serious entitlement reform and probably to a lesser extent even with such reform).

To: tejek who wrote (608171)	4/21/2011 8:42:43 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1578142

Obama's misrepresentation of the allocation of the income tax burden From Democracy in America: ONE of Barack Obama's clearest themes in his speech today laying out his latest deficit-reduction plan was that rich people ought to pay more in taxes. ... What Mr Obama means is that the wealthy ought to give up a larger percentage of their income. It's rather less intuitive that fairness demands that the wealthy not only pay more in taxes, but pay a larger percentage of income. But let's accept that fairness does require it. Anyway, high-earners in America do pay higher rates. In 2008, the top 1% paid 38% of all federal income taxes, and the top 5% paid 58%. Indeed, America is the industrialised world's champion of income-tax progressivity! If any country's upper-crust pays its fair share, America's does.But you wouldn't know it listening to Mr Obama. He repeatedly and misleadingly portrayed the tax burden carried by America's top earners as unfairly light, and the top-rate tax cuts under President Bush as a leading cause of America's dire fiscal straits. He even proposed that itemised deductions available to every other American taxpayer be eliminated for the top 2%, which strikes me as precisely the sort of thing a country that values fairness would not do. In any case, to the extent our woes flow from a paucity of revenue, the problem is that America's vast middle-class pays too little, not that its rich do. ... In the absence of middle-class tax increases, or cuts in military spending much larger than Mr Obama proposed, the only realistic hope for putting America's finances back on a sound footing is the structural overhaul of the big entitlement programmes. There's a lot to criticise in Paul Ryan's plan, but at least he grasped this nettle. Fairness means everybody's got to help pull the wagon. A situation in which half or more of the population permanently gets to ride in the wagon is simply untenable. In fairness, I should note that Kevin Drum claims this is all just "bait and switch." What Drum doesn't effectively deny, however, is that you're never going to solve the deficit crisis just by taxing the top 1%. Alan Reynolds made that point quite well in today's WSJ: The individual income tax brought in 7.8% of GDP from 1952 to 1979 when the top tax rate ranged from 70% to 92%, 8% of GDP from 1993 to 1996 when the top tax rate was 39.6%, and 8.1% from 1988 to 1990 when the highest individual income tax rate was 28%. Mr. Obama's hope that raising only the highest tax rates could keep individual tax receipts well above 9% of GDP has been repeatedly tested for more than six decades. It has always failed. ... Both individual income taxes and overall federal taxes have long been a surprisingly constant percentage of GDP—8% and 18%, respectively— regardless of top tax rates on salaries, small business and investors. It follows that the only reliable way to raise real federal revenues over time is to raise real GDP. professorbainbridge.com