Putting a face on tax increases

Originally posted by AngryAlien
No, I don't consider him a small business owner, I consider him a frachise owner.

How would he be different from a family owned Sub shop chain with 33 locations? I'm curious. It's his money at risk. It's his profit or loss to be had. Enlighten me.

Originally posted by pavil

Originally posted by MrXYZ
3...2...1 until the GOP/TP tries to spin this as if EVERYONE had to pay more taxes

Without tax increases, the deficit will never be fixed. No amount of spending cuts alone can solve the issue...

2. Trim the bloated Federal Budget.

One word:
Where?

Originally posted by narwahl

2. Trim the bloated Federal Budget.

One word:
Where?

Everywhere.

First off stop the growth. Maybe a 2 or 3 year freeze on growth of all budgets, Defense included, Medicare included. There are no sacred cows in my book.

Then take a 3-5% across the board cut. Maybe more, but I will take that for a start. I would get my cabinet together and tell them they have one month to come up with a plan to cut 5% from their budgets, no ifs and or buts. It's seems that Washington has an obesity problem like the rest of America, only that they can't ever reduce a budget or an expense. I would seriously consider eliminating some departments altogether or combining them.

That's a good start at least.

Originally posted by narwahl
Looks like the GOP tries to put a face on the proposed 2.5% increase in the top tax bracket.
It also looks like a seriously bad Idea.

Take John Flemming
www.huffingtonpost.com...
He also claimns to spend 547$ and 95 cent a day on "feeding his family" Has this guy never heard of Subway?

Bill O'Reilly said he might quit if taxes went to 50%
O Really?
The highest income Bracket starts at 372,951
O'Reillys fox contract alone is worht 10 Million. I really can see him go to Roger Ailes and say "You need to cut my salary by 9,700,000$ It's really not worth it after you pay the taxes"

Bad strategy if you ask me.

Bill O' Reilly will quit? Hey that's enough of a good reason to raise their taxes at least one thing good will come out of it!!!!!!

Originally posted by SmedleyBurlap
reply to post by TreadUpon

 

You blowhard. You'll burn down everything you have, yeah, haha, sure. Another spoiled rich brat doesn't want to pay into the system.

Ring, ring. Ring, ring.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Kettle? This is Pot, you're black!"

Click.

What system exactly are you the Pot advocating? Why this one here:

The supply-side argument is insane. Apparently, when you tax the rich, you reduce their motivation to work (so sad!!) but when you tax the poor, you do not reduce their motivation to work! The poor will be happy to work all day every day and not even have enough money to survive!

As if this were lifted straight out of a Dickens novel, the blowhard Pot would have us all believe that the poor are all just like Sweet Old Bob Cratchet and his long suffering family, including the tear jerking crippled son, the adorable Tiny Tim. Sweet Old Bob is only too happy to work all day every day (including Christmas) and will gladly do it for not nearly enough money because...well, because in your Dickensian world the poor are - by the very nature of their social status - the most noblest of humans, possessed with an ethic and morality that the rich cannot even begin to fathom.

The rich, on the other hand, in your fantasy Dickensian world, are greedy little palm rubbing Ebeneezer Scrooges, who never really worked for the wealth they do have, and if they were taxed for that wealth they didn't earn, they would do even less just to spite the ever vaunted system advocated by Pot's and Pan's calling Kettle"s blowhards. Of course, it is not as if the Pot's and Pan's who dream of Dickensian characterizations are ever happy with the system. These Pot's and Pan's have plenty of problems with the system, not the least of those problems being that the pesky greedy palm rubbing rich still have influence in their world, but it is the system they worship, like a mindless laity ever fearful of their irrational and dangerous gods they kneel before the alter of "the system", and for all the world to see, show their piety.

Clinging desperately to the promise that one day the Pot's and Pan's will inherit the earth, they pray religiously to their system, and dutifully vote for their shaman's and priest's, and chant their mantra's of "hope" and "change". The oh so noble poor have carried the parasitic greedy miserly Ebeneezer Scrooges, in Mr. Pot's Dickensian world, for far too long, and while Mr. Pot clearly expects the rich to continue to acquiesce to this system of legal plunder, it is also clear that Mr. Pot doesn't understand why the rich are not plundered enough. Perhaps some ghosts will come along on Christmas Eve and scare the crap out of the rich collectively, so that you Mr. Pot, and whatever long suffering family you may have, may have their turkeys and plum pudding.

Outside of this fantastical, ghost infested, Dickensian world, there is a different world that most call the "real world". In that world, some rich people are lazy and got their wealth through either nefarious means, or by inheritance, and some poor people are lazy too, even if hard work will never gain them wealth, they are lazy just the same. In this same world, most call the "real world", there are rich people who are remarkably productive, and there are poor people as equally productive. In between are various degrees of other people at various degrees of wealth, and all are just doing their best to get through Mr. Pot's vaunted system.

In the world of physics, and in regards to the chemical reactions of heat, all closed systems tend towards entropy. This is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or The Law of Entropy. While governments and economies are not heat systems, it seems observably so that closed systems in this regard also tend towards entropy. We are, rich are poor, clearly stuck in an entropic economy these days. One could, such as Mr. Pot, take a fantastical Dickensian view of things, or one could use a little more critical thought and consider more than just the simplistic tale of noble poor versus the evil rich.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Much sound and fury signifying nothing. I do love how your tone changes from condescending self-righteousness to ponderous self-congratulatory navel-gazing halfway through your story about pots and pans.

You misunderstand me. The anti-tax revolters frequently claim that raising taxes on the rich will reduce their desire to work. Then they hypocritically turn around and say that raising taxes on the "50%" that do not pay income tax is a good way to increase government revenue. Why are the poor exempt from the revolters' ironclad rule that higher taxes are demoralising?

The rich, if they have to pay taxes, will work just as hard to be less affluent. The poor, if they have to pay taxes, will work just as hard to barely survive. There is a significant difference between "I have to sell my house and move into an apartment :C" and "I have to live on the street because I can't afford an apartment." There is a significant difference between "I have to manage a Home Depot because my business went under :C" and "I have to sell my body because McDonald's doesn't pay me a living wage." I trust that you can see it!



reply to post by pavil


I did the math. $600,000 a year divided by 52 weeks in a year comes out to $11,538.46 per week in income.

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

Much sound and fury signifying nothing. I do love how your tone changes from condescending self-righteousness to ponderous self-congratulatory navel-gazing halfway through your story about pots and pans.

How does Mr. Pot follow up such a bold assertion? Why, of course, with the weak complaint that:

You misunderstand me.

Ever the victim, now Mr. Pot is "misunderstood".

The anti-tax revolters frequently claim that raising taxes on the rich will reduce their desire to work. Then they hypocritically turn around and say that raising taxes on the "50%" that do not pay income tax is a good way to increase government revenue. Why are the poor exempt from the revolters' ironclad rule that higher taxes are demoralising?

In your fantasy world, where fiction is continually presented as fact, all who oppose higher taxes are ridiculously labled "anti-tax revolters", when all they are doing is revolting against higher taxes. Mr. Pot steadfastly ignores the actual anti-tax revolters who deride a perpetual income tax as immoral and a tax on freedom, and why? Well because the actual anti-tax revolters want the income tax abolished for all people, rich and poor alike, but this will not do for Mr. Pot and his Pan's, no siree Sweet Old Bob, Mr Pot wants an income tax and he wants all of you to pay into the "system" so he can have his plum pudding. Pay up people and let poor poor pitiful Mr. Pot have some plum pudding, will you?

The rich, if they have to pay taxes, will work just as hard to be less affluent. The poor, if they have to pay taxes, will work just as hard to barely survive. There is a significant difference between "I have to sell my house and move into an apartment :C" and "I have to live on the street because I can't afford an apartment." There is a significant difference between "I have to manage a Home Depot because my business went under :C" and "I have to sell my body because McDonald's doesn't pay me a living wage." I trust that you can see it!

What I see is bloviated histrionics. How many people do you know, currently working at McDonald's who upon clocking out go out into the streets and begin prostituting themselves? Who do you think you're kidding? A genuine poor person all ready knows your absurd bloviations have nothing to do with reality, and I being one of those poor people, look at you like a rich poser knee jerk progressive. You could care less if all your advocated government programs don't really work. You have no idea what it means when it is said that help as betrayal is not help, all you care about is feeling like you've done something good for "society" with your passive aggressive hostility. Demonize an economic class so you can feel better justified in plundering that group in order to feed a bloated bureaucracy that feeds itself and virtually ensures whatever money does get plundered never makes it to its intended target, which would be, in this case, the poor.

You can be rest assured that no government worker is clocking out and going out into the streets to sell their bodies because the tax dollars that pays them is not enough. You can be rest assured that the social workers who show up to work Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 don't really care if the money they've been tasked with distributing actually helps the poor, all they really care about is that they get paid as much as they can squeeze out of the public and work as little for that money as possible. This is your system, Mr. Pot, a failed system, and your only answer to its failure is: "Blame the rich! It's the rich who brought this upon us!"

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


You're right. There are no people prostituting themselves because they need to make ends meet. None at all. After all, you are poor and you would know everything about the reality of being poor, which is in all cases identical to your own situation of poverty. Your own experience is the template of all experiences of poverty and of lower-class living. Those people who claim to be desperately poor? Feh! They are lazy mooches on the system, they are welfare queens and not truly poor! After all, no true poorman benefits from the system!

I guess I have to confess I was wrong.
I thought it would be a bad strategy to link top rate tax increases to faces and through that to actual numbers, but this thread proves that people don't care about numbers.
The only thing I can say about that is: Yuck.

Originally posted by SmedleyBurlap
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

You're right. There are no people prostituting themselves because they need to make ends meet. None at all. After all, you are poor and you would know everything about the reality of being poor, which is in all cases identical to your own situation of poverty. Your own experience is the template of all experiences of poverty and of lower-class living. Those people who claim to be desperately poor? Feh! They are lazy mooches on the system, they are welfare queens and not truly poor! After all, no true poorman benefits from the system!

There you go, pretend that in your last post you didn't tell the world that there were people working at McDonald's and prostituting themselves because they cannot make ends meet from what they get paid at McDonald's. Pretend instead that you are lamenting prostitution as a whole, and that the possible reason for prostitution must be that those selling their bodies for sex are doing so because they need to make ends meet. You can pretend all you want, pretense will not solve all the problems you pretend to care about.

Your pretentiousness is clear to anyone paying attention by your sarcastic attitude about my own poverty. You don't care a whit about the poor, and it is becoming increasingly clear that you don't. If not the poor you truly advocate, then what? Why, big government and oppressive tax schemes, that is truly your game, is it not?

Originally posted by pavil

Originally posted by AngryAlien
No, I don't consider him a small business owner, I consider him a frachise owner.

How would he be different from a family owned Sub shop chain with 33 locations? I'm curious. It's his money at risk. It's his profit or loss to be had. Enlighten me.

Franchise owners get more benifits from the company they are with, and the franchise owner must pay a portion of their profits to the company. The company has some oversight in the franchise, and has the ability to dictate where the franchise owner will get their supplies from. The company also does alot of the leg work for the franchise owner, such as training, advertising (paid with royalties), detailed blueprints, handle the leasing negotiations, etc...

When I think "small business" I think of a local business, ran by the owner. I think of liquor stores, book stores, local eateries, and other small businesses. When I hear Subway or McDonalds, I don't think small business owner. I think corporation selling a piece of their mega company to someone, so they can make more cash for the cow.

In your example, I'll assume that they opened the 33 shops on their own, with no corporate assistance. They choose any location they want, hire someone to draw up some blueprints, learn on their own, build the business, but most of all, they are putting their name on the line. If your store fails, people know you, and know you failed. A franchise is only putting the companies name on the line, and people will only remember that another Subway closed. In your example, yes they are small business owners, just like the subway founders were. Once their subshop crosses to a corporate industry, and they start franchising, then no.

Answer this. Would higher income taxes levied against the poor encourage or discourage them to work harder?

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Yes or no, are there people who prostitute themselves to make ends meet?

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

Yes or no, are there people who prostitute themselves to make ends meet?

What does this question have to do with the disingenuous claim that you made that there are people working at McDonald's who are turning to the street to prostitute themselves because McDonald's doesn't pay enough?

Who do you think you're kidding? You have relied on the most odious of propaganda in order to advocate bigger government and oppressive tax schemes, and your continued pretense of lamentation for the prostitutes of the world does very little to obfuscate this fact.

reply to post by TreadUpon


Not to mention, just two Subway sandwiches with drinks cost 20 bucks. Family of 6 that's 60 bucks, just for one meal one day. Multiply that by 7 is 420 bucks for ONE meal for ONE week. That's if you dont add bottled water, milk, cereal or anything else. I don't know about you guys but I can't walk out of the grocery without spending double what I did 5 years ago.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I ask again: would higher income taxes levied against the poor encourage or discourage them to work harder?

The question I asked you about prostitution has a simple purpose. I know from experience that many poor people, myself included, have been faced with a choice between going hungry and doing something dangerous and possibly humiliating or unhealthy to raise money for the bare necessities of life. Examples of these profitable but dangerous ways to raise money are: dealing illegal drugs, prostitution, gambling, medical experiments, smuggling, et cetera. These are options that most affluent people would not seriously consider because of the risks involved. However, to a person in great need, they are rational choices to make.

I ask you whether or not there are people who prostitute themselves to make ends meet because I want to know what your stance on this reality is. Are you criticising me because of the rhetorical example that I used, that of a McDonald's employee selling sex? Or are you criticising me because you don't believe that any poor people sell sex to make ends meet?

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

I ask again: would higher income taxes levied against the poor encourage or discourage them to work harder?

You are going to have to start paying attention. Income taxation in perpetuity is immoral, and bad government policy. The only justifiable tax upon any person's income is directly and only temporarily so to pay off whatever unavoidable debt government may have incurred, but to impose such a tax indirectly and use it as a scheme to plunder people, both rich and poor, is vile and inexcusable. Tax neither the income of the rich, nor the poor. That is my answer.

The question I asked you about prostitution has a simple purpose. I know from experience that many poor people, myself included, have been faced with a choice between going hungry and doing something dangerous and possibly humiliating or unhealthy to raise money for the bare necessities of life. Examples of these profitable but dangerous ways to raise money are: dealing illegal drugs, prostitution, gambling, medical experiments, smuggling, et cetera. These are options that most affluent people would not seriously consider because of the risks involved. However, to a person in great need, they are rational choices to make.

In a nutshell, you are arguing the tired old canard that "desperate times call for desperate measures". It matters not what your economic social status is, you are always capable of rational thought - and by rational thought I do not mean redefining rational thought to become excused emotional responses to tragic circumstances - and the rational thinker understands that desperate times require measured response, not desperate measures. The one truly willing to confront desperate time, under the circumstance of poverty, will not waste their time comparing their dilemma to that of the "most affluent" and will not waste their time on any games of envy at all, and will instead, endeavor to fix the problems at hand so that they do not have to even consider making irrational decisions.

I ask you whether or not there are people who prostitute themselves to make ends meet because I want to know what your stance on this reality is. Are you criticising me because of the rhetorical example that I used, that of a McDonald's employee selling sex? Or are you criticising me because you don't believe that any poor people sell sex to make ends meet?

It does not take an astute critical thinker to understand at this point that I am most assuredly taking you to task for your histrionics and your disingenuous claim, and by implication, that McDonald's employees are turning to prostitution as some sort of 2nd job to make ends meet. I am taking you to task over this because it is nothing more than propaganda, and its intent is to disguise your true purpose. Let's make no mistakes about this, your true purpose is to advocate big government and oppressive tax schemes.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


So do you agree or disagree that there are people who decide that prostitution is a viable way to make ends meet?

Originally posted by SmedleyBurlap
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

So do you agree or disagree that there are people who decide that prostitution is a viable way to make ends meet?

Is this what you consider to be a valid method of debate? This thread is about "putting a face on tax increases", not prostitution, and your disingenuousness still doesn't change the fact that you actually tried to justify income taxation by making the absurd claim that employees for McDonald's have a second job as hookers. It is irrelevant why people prostitute themselves, particularly in regards to this thread.

Arguments for or against tax increases only perpetuate the bad idea that income taxation in perpetuity is a valid form of taxation. It is not, and no one, rich or poor, should have to pay such an oppressive tax.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I agree with you that taxing the poor is unfair and unjust. The poor cannot afford to pay higher tax rates, it is difficult enough to survive as it is.

I agree with narwahl that an increase in the tax rate of the wealthiest Americans has much less impact on their livelihoods than it does on the livelihoods of the poor. Congressman Fleming makes over $11,000 a week. Is he going to suffer if that decreases to $10,500 a week? No, no he is not. But that money is added to the Public Trust and when it is pooled with the taxes of other affluent citizens it becomes a significant fund. $500 a week is extremely substantial to the poorest citizens. As narwahl said, money has diminishing returns. What seems small to the rich seems large to the poor; a tiny decrease in the livelihood of the rich translates to a great increase in the livelihood of the poor.

Of course, you think that the government never did no thing for no body. My own experience testifies otherwise. If it were not for public healthcare, I would have died many times over in the past. If it had not been for government-subsidized loans, I would not have been able to attend university. If it had not been for public schools, I would not have attained any level of education. If it had not been for employment insurance, my parents would have been bankrupted and we would have starved several times over in my youth. Now we have survived the hard times in our lives and are productive members of society, paying our taxes and feeding the corporate machine, too.

I believe in an egalitarian society and I know that the welfare state brings us closer to it. When progressive taxes are applied, it works better. Notice that it worked best in the WWII and post-war years, when the highest marginal tax rate was 92%!

Improving the livelihood of the poor and marginally decreasing the livelihood of the rich brings us closer together as a people, society, and civilization. I think that the cost of being successful on the backs of others' hard work is that you have to pay more into the Public Trust than your lower employees do. Do you really think that this congressman pieces together the sandwiches in his stores? Do you really think that he delivers the parcels from his UPS franchises? Do you think that he oversees and manages the inventory in any of these locations or that he is responsible for ordering or maintaining or repairing what needs to be replenished? Or do you think that he hires other people to manage his businesses for him, to manage his managers for him, to run his business for him because he's a congressman and has better things to do than run sandwich shops?

Maybe he worked hard in the past to build up this franchise, but he takes home four hundred thousand dollars a year and that is after he pays his household costs. He has reaped the reward of his hard labour for many years. I doubt that he worked his way up from the lowest rung. But he probably struggled with paperwork and securing loans, and that is stressful in its own way. He has earned a break from the hard work of running 33 franchises. But he is not working for his earnings and he ought to pay more into the Public Trust because he no longer earns it and he owes it to his substantially poorer employees.

Or do you not believe in a meritocracy?

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

I agree with you that taxing the poor is unfair and unjust. The poor cannot afford to pay higher tax rates, it is difficult enough to survive as it is.

Your disingenuousness and willingness to obfuscate knows no bounds! You are not agreeing with me, you are attempting to rephrase what I said into something other than what I said.

I said: Income tax in perpetuity is immoral, and it matters not who that tax is applied to, it remains immoral as it functions today. Income taxation is unfair period, not just on the poor, but on all people. This is what I am arguing, and you clearly do not agree with that.

I agree with narwahl that an increase in the tax rate of the wealthiest Americans has much less impact on their livelihoods than it does on the livelihoods of the poor.

Do you see what I am saying? I say no income tax at all, unless imposed directly on income and apportioned among the several states, and then repealed the moment the crisis that led to this tax is handled, otherwise no income tax period. When, in 1913, this income tax was passed, it was sold as a "tax the rich" scheme then, now you pretend to "agree" with me that such a tax is unfair on the poor, while continuing to sell that unrealized promise of taxing the rich to pay government employees enough to enjoy a middle class lifestyle while pretending to help the poor.

What seems small to the rich seems large to the poor; a tiny decrease in the livelihood of the rich translates to a great increase in the livelihood of the poor.

Of course, because in your limited Dickensian world, economy is a pie...shaped much like a plum pudding pie, if you will, and if the rich get to have two slices each, this means that some will not get to have any pudding! No pudding for the poor, cries Smedley Burlap, we must impose a selective income tax upon the rich because they're eating up all the plum pudding pie and will not share it with the poor!

Without even a hint of irony, you perpetuate the same scarcity paradigm that many rich people do. There just isn't enough to go around, so forget about your rights people, forget about freedom, this is about what is fair, and what is fair, according to Mr. Pot, is that everyone get a smidgeon of plum pudding pie, and that everyone accept the fairy tale that once that plum pudding pie has been distributed fairly and evenly among the masses that no one can endeavor to serve the plum pudding pie market demand, and only the licensed corporations who can afford to pass FDA muster can sell plum pudding pie, and lo and behold that corporation, much like you, Mr. Pot, is telling us that plum pudding pie is a rare commodity and the prices to that pie must keep going up. What's that, asks the government? Plum pudding pie prices have risen? Well, perhaps we should raise the taxes upon plum pudding pie too! Wait...while we're at it, say's the government, we should regulate who gets to eat this plum pudding pie too. After all, if plum pudding pie gives you diabetes, then you are a drain on the public coffers, so there will be no pudding for you tonight!

Thus, we have advocates who claim that not everyone can have plum pudding pie and this is unfair, so these advocates demand a government that in turn regulates and limits the amount of plum pudding pies that can be made only ensuring that if they are to be distributed evenly, everyone gets only just a taste, but as time goes on, government who declared they wanted to fairly distribute plum pudding pie among the masses decides that some of those masses have no fundamental right to plum pudding pie, and they need to tax their share of plum pudding pie they have no right to so that they can create a law enforcement agency that would keep them from illegally sticking their thumbs in a pie, and pulling out a plum declaring; "Look, what a good boy am I?"