Raise My Taxes, Mr. President!

[lincoln8740]

If taxes are raised on the wealthy, we don't all get a cut of that, you know. But it would go a LOOOOOONG way toward balancing the budget that the Republicans and Tea Partiers so badly claim they want.

I'd like to think I do pay my fair share. On the other hand, you can't tell me that someone with 100 times my income eats 100 times the food, wears 100 times the clothes, drives 100 times the cars, takes 100 times the vacations, and has a housing payment 100 times mine. Certainly that person can get by with paying AT LEAST the same effective tax rate I do, if not greater.

You want to talk about "fair share"? Then why does Warren Buffet's secretary pay a higher effective tax rate than her boss?

This is way too easy

His secretary makes his/ her money on income generated from a job
buffet makes his income on the buying and selling of stocks/securities

Income generated from a job is taxed differently than income generated from the selling of stocks/securities

One is taxed at 15 percent[[give or take a few percentage points) the other is based on a persons AGI

Quick question:

What tax percentage would you consider "unfair" on income above 250k a year?

Looking for a number here not the usual three paragraph answer filled with "maybes" "buts" "howevers" etc.

[Detroitej72]

Cons always scream they are against welfare yet they continuously support welfare for the wealthy elite.

If we went back to placing tariffs on all goods imported, we could eliminate the income tax. That system worked fine a hundred years ago, back when the U.S. actually produced goods and products.

[ghettopalmetto]

This is way too easy

His secretary makes his/ her money on income generated from a job
buffet makes his income on the buying and selling of stocks/securities

Income generated from a job is taxed differently than income generated from the selling of stocks/securities

One is taxed at 15 percent[[give or take a few percentage points) the other is based on a persons AGI

Good idea! Maybe we should be taxing dividends as the same rate as ordinary income. Perhaps that will restore a modicum of fairness to the tax system.

[lincoln8740]

Good idea! Maybe we should be taxing dividends as the same rate as ordinary income. Perhaps that will restore a modicum of fairness to the tax system.

Yes! We agree--15 percent across the board!

See there can be compromise

No answer to my question?

Come on

[Jimaz]

Drop the diversion tactics. Nobody's falling for that. Stick to the topic.

[lincoln8740]

Drop the diversion tactics. Nobody's falling for that. Stick to the topic.

Uh the topic is raising taxes

I asked how much of a raise on tax rates above 250k would he think would be "fair"


How am I off topic again?

[oladub]

If taxes are raised on the wealthy, we don't all get a cut of that, you know. But it would go a LOOOOOONG way toward balancing the budget that the Republicans and Tea Partiers so badly claim they want.

I'd like to think I do pay my fair share. On the other hand, you can't tell me that someone with 100 times my income eats 100 times the food, wears 100 times the clothes, drives 100 times the cars, takes 100 times the vacations, and has a housing payment 100 times mine. Certainly that person can get by with paying AT LEAST the same effective tax rate I do, if not greater.

You want to talk about "fair share"? Then why does Warren Buffet's secretary pay a higher effective tax rate than her boss?

At the beginning of this thread we had a few voices of support for the good old days before Bush got in and lowered the taxes of the. Bush [[ and Obama) also raised federal spending significantly. I proposed that we raise the taxes on the rich to pre-Bush levels and also drop spending to pre-Bush levels. Then we would return to a time when liberals remember being happier. The voices of support for the good old days of President Clinton then fell silent. Remember Daddy Bush. He raised taxes in a compormise with Democrats so they would back off on some of their spending increases. It was a compomise for which he lost his job but it did set up Clinton pretty good. Taxes for the rich have gone down as federal spending has increased. It is only logical that to balance the budget, we get back to where we were before Bush. That means cutting spending by $1.2T. We have been promised that Obamacare will actually reduce federal spending so that isn't even an issue here.

By the way, gp, How much of Obama's $1.7T budget shortfall will raising taxes on the rich bring in? I don't mean to take away from the idea of taxing the rich at a higher rate in exchange for a $1.2T spending cut but I'll bet Bill Gates creates 100 times more jobs than you do. On the other hand, if we took all of Bill Gates money, then President Obama could subsidize a lot of Americans who wanted to buy Volts and Leafs - at least until the money runs out.

[Jman]

You want to talk about "fair share"? Then why does Warren Buffet's secretary pay a higher effective tax rate than her boss?

Why does Warren Buffet donate to charity 1,000,000 times more than his secretary?

That's where entitlements should be created. Voluntary donations.

[ghettopalmetto]

Oladub, the wealthy aren't the only ones who create jobs, so it's really a straw man argument to keep sucking their dicks while spurning the 97% of small business owners who don't fall into the top two income tax brackets.

[gdogslim]

Anyone who wishes to pay more taxes, please go ahead and pay more.
No one, including Obama, the IRS or any state government will prevent you from paying more.
So please, all democrats, pay more than you are now and no one will say a peep.
The libs are spending this country into bankruptcy and taxing our great grand kids with the spending going on now for the entitlements the fat pigs are eating now.
Just stop the out of control spending that congress keeps doing to buy votes for themselves.

The Republican congress during the Clinton administration balanced the budget by slowing entitlement spending. Congress spent too much during some of the Bush years that was the problem.
John Kennedy lowered taxes and spending and the economy took off, Reagan same, Bush , same. The c

[ghettopalmetto]

The Republican congress during the Clinton administration balanced the budget by slowing entitlement spending. Congress spent too much during some of the Bush years that was the problem.
John Kennedy lowered taxes and spending and the economy took off, Reagan same, Bush , same.

Your ignorance is showing. Ya might wanna cover that up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/op...21krugman.html

[oladub]

Oladub, the wealthy aren't the only ones who create jobs, so it's really a straw man argument to keep sucking their dicks while spurning the 97% of small business owners who don't fall into the top two income tax brackets.

I didn't say that rich prople were the only ones creating jobs although Microsoft might not have gotten past the small business phase if Bill Gates had been subject to higher levels of taxation. I was responding to your comment, "you can't tell me that someone with 100 times my income eats 100 times the food, wears 100 times the clothes, drives 100 times the cars, takes 100 times the vacations, and has a housing payment 100 times mine" by pointing out that Bill Gates has probably created 100 times more jobs than you and I put together.

My main point, which you neglected, was that to return to the talking point glory days of Clinton's balanced budget, we have to not only rescind the Bush tax cuts for the rich, we also have to cut out $1.2T of spending. You previously stated,

If taxes are raised on the wealthy, we don't all get a cut of that, you know. But it would go a LOOOOOONG way toward balancing the budget that the Republicans and Tea Partiers so badly claim they want

I then asked you, "How much of Obama's $1.7T budget shortfall will raising taxes on the rich bring in? That seems central to this discussion but you haven't come up with any numbers. So, again, how LOOOOOONG of a way will it go toward balancing the budget? To make it easy, don't even try to subtract the effects of the investments or spending the rich would otherwise contributed to the economy if they didn't have to pay higher taxes. Just try to present a number of how much extra tax revenue the rich might contribute toward balancing the $1.7T annual Obama budget shortfall.

[ghettopalmetto]

My main point, which you neglected, was that to return to the talking point glory days of Clinton's balanced budget, we have to not only rescind the Bush tax cuts for the rich, we also have to cut out $1.2T of spending. You previously stated,
I then asked you, "How much of Obama's $1.7T budget shortfall will raising taxes on the rich bring in? That seems central to this discussion but you haven't come up with any numbers. So, again, how LOOOOOONG of a way will it go toward balancing the budget? To make it easy, don't even try to subtract the effects of the investments or spending the rich would otherwise contributed to the economy if they didn't have to pay higher taxes. Just try to present a number of how much extra tax revenue the rich might contribute toward balancing the $1.7T annual Obama budget shortfall.

I believe OMB and GAO have numbers on this. I don't have the time to look them up.

[oladub]

I believe OMB and GAO have numbers on this. I don't have the time to look them up.

I was going to suggest that everyone pitch in and help gp substantiate his claim with numbers, because he doesn't have time, but it only took a couple of minutes to find them myself. Reenstating the Bush tax cuts would increase tax revenue $338B over ten yeas according to this ABC article. Including some other tax increases on the wealthy and middle class, President Obama hopes to increase taxes $1T over the next ten years. That works out to just $100B a hear to offset President Obama's annual spending defecit of $1,7T. That hardly goes "a LOOOOOONG way toward balancing the budget" as gp claimed. and other cheerleaders for this proposal found at the beginning of this thread had suggested.

Obama's Budget: Almost $1 Trillion in New Taxes Over Next 10 yrs, Starting 2011

This is where we are. To restore the Clinton era of fiscal responsibility with inflation taken into account, we could restore the Bush tax cuts and add some proposed new Obama taxes to make up 1/17th of the difference. The other $1.6T needed to balance the budget would have to come from spending cuts, like getting out of wars as Whitehouse suggested, unless anyone else has some other taxing ideas that won't kill the economy. None of this even gets us to the point of paying down the national debt.

[rb336]

Income generated from a job is taxed differently than income generated from the selling of stocks/securities
One is taxed at 15 percent[[give or take a few percentage points) the other is based on a persons AGI
Quick question:
What tax percentage would you consider "unfair" on income above 250k a year?
Looking for a number here not the usual three paragraph answer filled with "maybes" "buts" "howevers" etc.

The whole "cut the capital gains tax and you will increase job creation" BS just doesn't cut it. The low capital gains tax created an era of get-in, get-out maximize short-term profits at the expense of jobs and long term growth mentality. bump cap gains taxes to 50% for any asset held less than a year, then drop it 5% for every year it is held down to 15% after 7 years.

The top tax rate should make it so that the 5% who control 95% of the wealth pay 95% of the taxes.

[Detroitej72]

The libs are spending this country into bankruptcy and taxing our great grand kids with the spending going on now for the entitlements the fat pigs are eating now.
Just stop the out of control spending that congress keeps doing to buy votes for themselves.

So you think Bush and his administration were a bunch of libs? Hell, Cheney even said deficits don't matter. Last I checked the neo-cons wasted the surplus Clinton handed them as well as drove the national debt into the stratosphere. Way to rewrite history there, Scooter.

John Kennedy lowered taxes and spending and the economy took off, Reagan same, Bush , same. The c

You forget that St. Ronny sent the national debt to the moon and that caused his veep to be a one-term president.

[Jman]

Last I checked the neo-cons wasted the surplus Clinton handed them as well as drove the national debt into the stratosphere. Way to rewrite history there, Scooter.

Talk about rewriting history. Don't confuse the national deficit with national debt.



"You forget that St. Ronny sent the national debt to the moon and that caused his veep to be a one-term president."


Wow, there you go again. Don't you remember "Read my lips, no more taxes"?

[ghettopalmetto]

Talk about rewriting history. Don't confuse the national deficit with national debt.



"You forget that St. Ronny sent the national debt to the moon and that caused his veep to be a one-term president."


Wow, there you go again. Don't you remember "Read my lips, no more taxes"?

"Debt" is when your accumulation of "deficits" exceeds your accumulation of "surpluses". So when you add "deficits" on the scale of those during the Reagan administration [[~6% of GDP), your "debt" increases. Of course, Reagan's deficits weren't necessary, as in the case of needing to stimulate the economy out of a massive recession. Reagan's deficits, like those of Bush Jr., were deficits of choice, born out of a desire to cut taxes to the wealthiest of Americans and widen income disparities.

For those who choose not to remember the 1990s, taxes were raised on the wealthy during the Clinton administration, taxes were cut on the middle class, budget surpluses were achieved, interest rates fell, and the economy had its largest continuous expansion ever. Yet, the Republicans would have you believe that doing the same at this point in time will somehow propagate the existing recession--just as they selectively choose to believe that the debt is suddenly of utmost importance--even as they casually tossed aside such concerns in 1981 and 2001.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2004-06-0...fense-spending

To some economists, the impact was clear. Interest rates rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the economy slowed, then slipped into recession, and productivity barely advanced. Americans feared their nation had slipped into the shadows of Japan and Germany.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

[jiminnm]

Of course, Reagan's deficits weren't necessary, as in the case of needing to stimulate the economy out of a massive recession. Reagan's deficits, like those of Bush Jr., were deficits of choice, born out of a desire to cut taxes to the wealthiest of Americans and widen income disparities.

You couldn't be more wrong about the recession. There was a huge recession in the early 1980s, coupled with sky high inflation and interest rates. Many economists think that the recession of 1980-1982 may have been as bad as the current one.

[ghettopalmetto]

You couldn't be more wrong about the recession. There was a huge recession in the early 1980s, coupled with sky high inflation and interest rates. Many economists think that the recession of 1980-1982 may have been as bad as the current one.

Two key differences:

1. The recession of the early 1980s was nowhere near as painful and dramatic as the current one.

2. Reagan did not enact deficit spending in order to stem the recession, but instead enacted a series of permanent tax cuts slanted toward the top income brackets. Reagan entered office with the agenda of cutting government to the bone, not one of overcoming the recession. One can even argue that the recession of the early 1980s was, in fact, the direct result of Reagan's policies [[see below). George W. Bush repeated the same mistake 20 years later, which makes modern "tax cut conservatism" all the more ridiculous.

When, in August 1981, Reagan signed his Recovery Act into law at Rancho del Cielo, his Santa Barbara ranch, he promised to find additional cuts to balance the budget, which had a projected deficit of $80 billion -- the largest, to that date, in U.S. history. That fall, the economy took a turn for the worse. To fight inflation, running at a rate of 14 percent per year, the Federal Reserve Board had increased interest rates. Recession was the inevitable result. Blue-collar workers who had largely supported Reagan were hard hit, as many lost their jobs.

The United States was experiencing its worst recession since the Depression, with conditions frighteningly reminiscent of those 50 years earlier. By November 1982, unemployment reached, nine million, the highest rate since the Depression; 17,000 businesses failed, the second highest number since 1933; farmers lost their land; and many sick, elderly, and poor became homeless.

While Reagan finally agreed to a moderate tax increase on businesses, he steadfastly refused to raise income taxes or cut defense spending, despite a growing negative sentiment toward the buildup. In January 1983, with his approval rating at an all-time low, the economy slowly began to right itself. Unemployment, as high as ten percent in 1982, had improved enough by 1984 for his popularity to be restored, and by the November presidential election, it was hard to believe that a second term was ever in doubt.

The harsh economic medicine of the Federal Reserve Board, backed by Reagan, squeezed inflation out of the American economy and set the nation on the right economic course. During Reagan’s second term America prospered. Although the budget deficit continued to grow -- arguably the price tag of ending the Cold War -- the United States experienced the longest sustained peacetime prosperity in its history.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan/...s/pande06.html

[maxx]

EASY. Barry and Joe didn't specifically say they were going to flush the country down the crapper.

Neither did Cheney and Bush.

And Reagan's treatment of the Air Traffic Controllers gave the green light to businesses to bust unions.
http://www.counterpunch.org/gaspar06062004.html

[Zacha341]

Here we go with the 'dems VS repubs' turn at the wheel of fiscal shipwrecking debate! The "who did what when - so now it's our turn now!" cube we keep turning in on end....

Bottom line: The dems and repubs we have running now are BOTH 'kicking' the can of fiscal debt down the road...

They are too short-sighted to understand the fundamentals of cost and debt ratios, withstanding their ability to quote various theories and cost projection models.

And oh yeah, taxes are going up! Watch out new 'rich': those making over $45,000. Thought it would pass you over and just get the really rich folk? As we've been told.......

Neither did Cheney and Bush.

And Reagan's treatment of the Air Traffic Controllers gave the green light to businesses to bust unions.
http://www.counterpunch.org/gaspar06062004.html

[Jman]

"Debt" is when your accumulation of "deficits" exceeds your accumulation of "surpluses". So when you add "deficits" on the scale of those during the Reagan administration [[~6% of GDP), your "debt" increases. Of course, Reagan's deficits weren't necessary, as in the case of needing to stimulate the economy out of a massive recession. Reagan's deficits, like those of Bush Jr., were deficits of choice, born out of a desire to cut taxes to the wealthiest of Americans and widen income disparities.

For those who choose not to remember the 1990s, taxes were raised on the wealthy during the Clinton administration, taxes were cut on the middle class, budget surpluses were achieved, interest rates fell, and the economy had its largest continuous expansion ever. Yet, the Republicans would have you believe that doing the same at this point in time will somehow propagate the existing recession--just as they selectively choose to believe that the debt is suddenly of utmost importance--even as they casually tossed aside such concerns in 1981 and 2001.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2004-06-0...fense-spending



http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

Not sure of what your post has to do with mine. I was simply pointing out that while Clinton did leave a surplus from the budget, many think that he left not only no debt but a surplus in the treasury which is not true. Clinton increased the national debt just like every other president.

Also, the main reason for Bush Sr. having only one term was the fact that he promised no more taxes and reniged on same.

[Detroitej72]

I was simply pointing out that while Clinton did leave a surplus from the budget, many think that he left not only no debt but a surplus in the treasury which is not true. Clinton increased the national debt just like every other president.

Also, the main reason for Bush Sr. having only one term was the fact that he promised no more taxes and reniged on same.

And I was simply pointing out the myth that cons keep selling that only Dem's spend the nation's money like there is no tomorrow.

The reason Bush Sr. had to raise taxes was to help offset the budget that was way out of wack, thanks to Ronny's frivolous spending.

[lincoln8740]

Also, the main reason for Bush Sr. having only one term was the fact that he promised no more taxes and reniged on same.

uhhh I think a little rich guy from texas had more to do with his defeat than the read my lips line