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Originally posted by buster2010
Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by David9176
"Now, it would be nice if we could keep every tax break, but we can't afford them,"
Right there, from the OP's quote. We can't afford them? It's NOT THEIR MONEY!!!
Obama seems to think that it is HIS money.
Wrong.
It's my money. It's you and you and you and your money. It's not HIS!
He can't afford to take less?
It is not his money.
He is taking all of our money.
And he is building a case where he needs to take more because he can't afford not to.
Unbelievable!
Unless your being paid in potatoes it is his money. All currency is government issue.
Originally posted by DemonicAngelZero
Little Charles is receiving health & welfare and has a low income job. He pays no taxes what so ever,
Originally posted by inforeal
As for the tax increases of the rich under the second Bush, after that the economy tanked.
Under Bill Clinton, when he raised taxes on the rich, the economy blossomed so much so that he left office with a surplus in the budget that Bush destroyed with his tax cuts for the rich and other bad republican policies.
Originally posted by Kitilani
Originally posted by inforeal
As for the tax increases of the rich under the second Bush, after that the economy tanked.
Under Bill Clinton, when he raised taxes on the rich, the economy blossomed so much so that he left office with a surplus in the budget that Bush destroyed with his tax cuts for the rich and other bad republican policies.
So many posters in this thread claiming you are wrong and not one of them can even begin to explain the reality you just highlighted that no one with eyes can deny.
Originally posted by macman
reply to post by Kitilani
Ok then, Grand Wizard of Economics and All Knowledge. Enlighten the idiots.
Originally posted by OuttaTime
reply to post by Misoir
But then we also have the comparison of the Clinton tax increases which spurred economic growth (albeit a false growth) and the Bush tax cuts which did nothing to improve the economy or revenue.
I may be off base, but wasn't it during the Clinton administration that the Glass Steagal act was wrecked? It allowed the banks to go on their dot-com frenzy and crawl into investing and other questionable prcatices. Clinton was able to grow the economy by allowing over-leveraging and jumping into derivatives and Credit Default Swaps. It also seemed like there was a great deal of financial 'restructuring' during the Bush admin. Lehman fell, but we threw over $130B at AIG. Freddie and Fannie are now govt run but we jumped to save BofA and Citicorp. The whole global economy is held together with string and gum, and maybe some duct tape
The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act pressured banks to relax lending standards to dispense mortgages more broadly across communities. In 1992, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston purported to identify racial discrimination in the application of traditional lending standards to those, Morgenson and Rosner write, “whose incomes, assets, or abilities to pay fell far below the traditional homeowner spectrum.”
In 1994, Bill Clinton proposed increasing homeownership through a “partnership” between government and the private sector, principally orchestrated by Fannie Mae, a “government-sponsored enterprise” (GSE). It became a perfect specimen of what such “partnerships” (e.g., General Motors) usually involve: Profits are private, losses are socialized.
There was a torrent of compassion-speak: “Special care should be taken to ensure that standards are appropriate to the economic culture of urban, lower-income, and nontraditional consumers.” “Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor.” Government having decided to dictate behavior that markets discouraged, the traditional relationship between borrowers and lenders was revised. Lenders promoted reckless borrowing, knowing they could offload risk to purchasers of bundled loans, and especially to Fannie Mae. In 1994, subprime lending was $40 billion. In 1995, almost one in five mortgages was subprime. Four years later such lending totaled $160 billion.
Under Johnson, an important Democratic operative, Fannie Mae became, Morgenson and Rosner say, “the largest and most powerful financial institution in the world.” Its power derived from the unstated certainty that the government would be ultimately liable for Fannie’s obligations. This assumption and other perquisites were subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac worth an estimated $7 billion a year. They retained about a third of this.
Morgenson and Rosner report that in 1998, when Fannie Mae’s lending hit $1 trillion, its top officials began manipulating the company’s results to generate bonuses for themselves. That year Johnson’s $1.9 million bonus brought his compensation to $21 million. In nine years, Johnson received $100 million.
Fannie Mae’s political machine dispensed campaign contributions, gave jobs to friends and relatives of legislators, hired armies of lobbyists (even paying lobbyists not to lobby against it), paid academics who wrote papers validating the homeownership mania, and spread “charitable” contributions to housing advocates across the congressional map.
By 2003, the government was involved in financing almost half — $3.4 trillion — of the home-loan market. Not coincidentally, by summer 2005, almost 40% of new subprime loans were for amounts larger than the value of the properties.
Sen. Barack Obama: No. 2 on the Fannie/Freddie list of favored politicians after just four short years in the Senate.
Read more: www.foxnews.com...
Originally posted by macman
Originally posted by Kitilani
Originally posted by inforeal
As for the tax increases of the rich under the second Bush, after that the economy tanked.
Under Bill Clinton, when he raised taxes on the rich, the economy blossomed so much so that he left office with a surplus in the budget that Bush destroyed with his tax cuts for the rich and other bad republican policies.
So many posters in this thread claiming you are wrong and not one of them can even begin to explain the reality you just highlighted that no one with eyes can deny.
The surplus was Tax money. Last I checked, it is not the Govt's money, but belonged to the individual. There should have never been a surplus, as the Govt is not supposed to be run that way.
There are many many many reports and stats that suggest that Clinton's 'surplus' was manufactured many different ways, including creative accounting.
Oh yeah, some of the first teachings in Statistics is how to put them together to fit the study.
Stats can be shown that green skinned people in the arctic love the snow, yet hate ice.
Originally posted by Kitilani
Originally posted by sonofliberty1776
How about asking "the poor" to pay ANY taxes. Currently almost half of the electorate pays no income taxes at all.
Everyone pays taxes. You have any kind of proof to go with your amazing claim?
Originally posted by Kitilani
Originally posted by DemonicAngelZero
Little Charles is receiving health & welfare and has a low income job. He pays no taxes what so ever,
This lie has been repeated and repeatedly debunked already. Maybe you have a new source? No one pays no taxes.
Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
reply to post by macman
This is like saying that the money in the till of a business belongs to the customers who shop there.
i.e., that's a really stupid thing to say.
Originally posted by Kitilani
Originally posted by macman
reply to post by Kitilani
Ok then, Grand Wizard of Economics and All Knowledge. Enlighten the idiots.
That is your go to cop-out? I believe I asked you to explain it to me. Why would I do that? Maybe because I am just an ignorant little girl in awe of your vast knowledge and intellect. Here I come grovelling at your feet, merely begging to be enlightened and you blow me off then toss derision at me? High praise from Caesar indeed.
Originally posted by The Old American
The argument being made here appears to be that everyone must be equal and must pay equally. Are you "tax the rich" champions of freedom advocating an unequal taxation system against one class of people? If not, you need to state your case more clearly. If so, you're complete hypocrites.
Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
reply to post by macman
Since Kitilani does not wish do do so, I will.
Charles, like everyone else on welfare, does in fact pay taxes. Like everyone else on welfare, he actually does have a job (or at least tries to, in today's market). Perhaps it's a minimum-wage job, which would explain why he's on welfare at the same time, since minimum wage is totally unlivable these days. Every paycheck, he loses about 30% of his income to taxes. Income taxes, SSI taxes, medicare taxes, etc.
Since this is already a tiny income, and inflation is ever-rising, he's actually losing a larger portion of his income to taxes than you probably do (since of course, all tax-bitchers on ATS are self-employed and make six figures annually).
When it comes time to do his taxes, he probably does miss out on property taxes and the like. odds are, he does in fact get a return (unless he's like me and makes a clerical error that takes months to get fixed... ). However this only returns a portion of his income tax. All the money paid toward other taxes is gone. And that once-a-year return of, on average, $800 is not going to help him much when he's still living paycheck-to-paycheck, each of which gives him only 66% of his earned income.edit on 3/7/2011 by TheWalkingFox because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
Originally posted by The Old American
The argument being made here appears to be that everyone must be equal and must pay equally. Are you "tax the rich" champions of freedom advocating an unequal taxation system against one class of people? If not, you need to state your case more clearly. If so, you're complete hypocrites.
Of course, a "flat tax" - which if I'm not mistaken is what you seem to support - is a deeply unequal tax. The reason being that prices do not fluctuate according to the personal wealth of the customer. Say you advocate a flat 12% taxation rate or something. 12% of an annual income of $16,000 is a pretty large loss of financial security for that poor schmuck working the drive through window, while 12% of $320,000 annual income doesn't impact that person's financial security much at all. So in effect, the flat tax is a greater burden for those with less to spare.
So we use progressive taxation instead; those who make more money pay a larger percentage. This is actually fair, especially when compared to the flat tax and its problems. More so because, despite the constant whinging from people like you about the ~$600 - $800 monthly stipend granted to people on assistance programs, it is in fact the wealthy and semi-wealthy who make the greatest use of government resources and infrastructures, and it is big businesses that tend to impose the largest costs on their communities.
Basically the wealthier you are, then a) the more wear and tear you put on "the system" and b) the less your functional income is actually impacted by taxation.
if you've got a seven-figure income, taxes aren't going to put you on the street, or make you lose your house, or any of this other stuff. If you only make five figures, well... it might be a possibility