CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I ended up with 39% due to revenue increases and 61% for reduced expenses. The militaries took a heavy hit, as did the rich bastards.
Not 100% true. Like you, I'm definitely cool to government programs which redistribute wealth directly, but I realize that certain types of government spending can have huge impacts on the economy. Mainly, I'm referring here to infrastructure spending. Many types of infrastructure which are essential are too costly, or with too long a return on investment, for private industry to take an interest in building. Indeed, most infrastructure projects don't directly make money on their own. Neverthless, taken as a whole, these projects generate many times the amount of economic activity which they cost to build. In effect, they do create wealth. Infrastructure in my opinion is what we need government to start spending a lot more on right now, even if it's deficit spending. In 5 or 10 years time, this new infrastructure will be generating more than enough economic activity and taxes to pay back the loans. Much of the boom economy in the 1960s, for example, was a direct result of the government investing in the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. Unfortunately, after 40 years we've seen that putting all our eggs in one transportation mode is bad policy. A national high-speed rail system, combined with local transit, would fix this, and provide a transportation system suited for the 21st century economy. We also need to upgrade the electrical gird. Infrastructure spending isn't sexy, but it's really what the government should be doing now.The gov't doesn't create wealth or income. It doesn't hand it out to the well off. The gov't is a parasite on the economy, not the engine of the economy.
I ended up with 39% due to revenue increases and 61% for reduced expenses. The militaries took a heavy hit, as did the rich bastards.
My argument was that attempting to soak the rich wouldn't put a noticeable dent in the deficit.Your original statement in this line was that taxing the rich more couldn't put a dent in the deficit.
Sure it is. You don't understand the magnitude of the deficit vs. the amount of revenue taken in via income taxes and who pays it. The deficit is supposed to be about 1.5 trillion this year. The federal gov't only takes in about 1 trillion in income taxes. ~99% of that comes from the top 50% of wage earners. ~70% of that comes from the top 10% of wage earners.I don't see a difference in those two statements other than spin.
If 10% of Americans make 90% of the money, taxing them 10% more allows you to cut the taxes of everyone else by 90% and keep revenues roughly equal.
If that is the case, it is not possible that increasing taxes on the rich doesn't effect the outcome dramatically.
How can you possibly say that? The top 10% pay ~70% of the federal income tax burden? Exactly how much would they need to pay for it to be "fair"?I agree that significant cuts are the best way to eliminate the deficit, but I also believe that the tax system in this country is structured in such a way that the wealthy are not paying their fair share*.
Don't let the truth get in the way of a little class warfare.The top 10% have 90% of the money and pay 70% of the taxes. That looks like a discrepancy to me.
Don't let the truth get in the way of a little class warfare.
Your comparison is flawed. You're using a widely reported wealth number, not an income number. The fact is the top 10% make 45.77% of the income and pay 69.94% of the income taxes. The bottom 50% make 12.75% of the income and pay 2.70% of the income taxes. So, I'll ask again. What would be "fair"?
They pay a lot more in dollars and more also in percentage. But lots of people say it's not fair. So, I want them to explain exactly what they think would be fair.So it's probably fair that they pay a bit more.
You think the top 10% are rich? What's your definition of "rich"?If 10% of Americans make 90% of the money, taxing them 10% more allows you to cut the taxes of everyone else by 90% and keep revenues roughly equal.
If that is the case, it is not possible that increasing taxes on the rich doesn't effect the outcome dramatically.
The problem is how do you reward / compensate people for not working without encouraging it? There are lots of people who would rather sit home and collect unemployment instead of going out and getting a job that pays slightly more. Extending unemployment to 99 weeks isn't helping those people. It's simply paying them to sit at home whereas they would otherwise go get a job.I actually am in about the 6-7th percentile. I don't feel "rich", but that is mainly because many of my friends are in the 1%-0.1% range.
The concept of wealth redistribution as a whole seems to be what this conversation is boiling down to. Should everyone be allowed to keep their own hard-earned money? Or to spin it the other way, should the poor be allowed only what they can pry from the clenched fists of the wealthy and powerful?
I agree with Stereodude that this nation was made great by intelligent and capable people leveraging what and who they could to best effect. This accomplished amazing feats, like the trans-continental railroad and the first mega-factories that upped productivity and efficiency to levels never before seen.
Rewarding people based on their value to society works great, until you get to the bottom and realize that some aren't worth enough to society to be self sufficient.
On top of that, it is good for society, our economy, and our cities if the poorest have more than their fair share. The slums would be less so, the jails could be smaller, the emergency rooms less packed, and (my favorite) people with more money reproduce less.
Income redistribution is a political third rail that no-one is willing to talk about because it sounds like forced charity, but if we talk about it purely from the perspective of it's economic benefit, it becomes a viable debate point.
We're either going to have some small pain now or have a huge amount of pain later. Unfortunately politicians only kick the can down the road which = huge amount of pain later.I get SD's point that we need to control our spending a lot better otherwise no form/plan of tax/wealth redistribution will matter for the long-term.
I see a similarity of the US government's spending with the huge debt over its head is very similar to the hundreds and thousands of folks who lost or had a reduction in salary either filed bankruptcy or foreclosed on their home when they probably continued to pay for high-end cable service, cell phones, high speed internet, vacations, cars, toys, etc. Sure, not everyone was like that, but I know of a few who were.
The problem is how do you reward / compensate people for not working without encouraging it? There are lots of people who would rather sit home and collect unemployment instead of going out and getting a job that pays slightly more. Extending unemployment to 99 weeks isn't helping those people. It's simply paying them to sit at home whereas they would otherwise go get a job.
If you make it financially advantageous to have kids out of wedlock, guess what, people will have more kids out of wedlock. You implement a minimum wage and minority unemployment goes up. We've had a war on poverty since the 20's and 30's and have transferred trillions of dollars to the poor. Yet we still have poverty. By any and every measure these programs are all abject failures. Everything the gov't touches with the intention of helping ends up destroyed. People used to help out their neighbors or friends personally, charity used to be predominantly a private entity run by churches or other private groups. Now the gov't has taken over the role of "charity" in society and people look to gov't to solve their problems. Frankly that's means we're failing to properly educate people. More gov't isn't the answer to all of societies problems.
I'm not saying that we should eliminate the safety net, but we're way past a safety net. A system where half of the country works and the other half mooches isn't going to last very long.
What we have now is an environment where some people with great ideas would rather just go about their daily life working for someone else instead of starting their own company and trying to strike out on their own in the pursuit of getting rich because they just don't want to deal with the potential pitfalls & headaches.
Finally, we need to realize living costs have grown way faster than salaries. It might be unrealistic at this point to expect much more than 50% of the population to be self-sufficient without some sort of help. In NYC $200,000 is really a middle class salary. You literally can't live on your own, without roommates or family members, if you make much under about $75,000. A lot of jobs here just don't pay that much. Maybe the solution is more multi-generation households. Besides splitting expenses/chores, this would lower demand for housing, which in turn would lower costs. Maybe the problem is the American idea that you leave the house when you're 18 and make it on your own. That may have worked in the 19th century, but I think in the 21st we'll realize people are happy and healthier living with a safety net of relatives. And doing this will save tons of money on entitlement programs. The old saying is charity begins at home.
NYC and other urban areas have high costs of living simply because nationally there is a shortage of urban housing (and a glut of suburban/exurban housing). More people want to live in cities than there is housing, so that drives the cost up. Every person who might leave NYC of out disgust has 5 others willing to take their place and have 5 roommates, or do whatever it takes to live there. Personally, I see nothing wrong with that. Living alone is unhealthy anyway, as well as being much more expensive. People generally manage here because they either bought housing before the price went insane, like my mom, or they live together as needed to bring the costs per person to something reasonable. Eventually, as more housing stock is built to coincide with demand, prices will drop. They've already leveled off and dropped a little. They still need to drop about another 50-60% to approach what they should be based on inflation. Long term, for many reasons, the trend is going to be a lot more people living in high-density areas, so I'm actually in a good location. We simply can't afford to subsidize the spread out infrastructure plus high energy costs needed for spread out living. Some companies are even relocating their main offices from suburban industrial parks to inner cities. They realize the talent they wish to attract simply are the type of people who also prefer living in cities.I realize the cost of living in NYC is very high, so wouldn't this begin to balance out as people leave due to the ridiculously high cost of living? If living in NYC is so important to a person, then I'm assuming that you or anyone else is willing to cope with whatever salary you make so that you can continue to live there, even if it means having 5 roommates. I can understand that if you have lived there most (if not all) of your life that you wouldn't want to be driven out of your home, but perhaps this means it's time to move to another location where $75K means a much better living. Assuming work could be found for similar money, a salary of $45K-$75K in Mass (not in Boston) would let an individual live comfortably. A NYC "middle class" $200K would let you live large...even close to Boston, if not in Boston. Now I'm not suggesting you or anyone else move to Mass, but rather consider other options.
This country has a lot of room. I don't think we are yet at the point where people need to pool up in living spaces or remove the idea that once a person is 18, to begin seeking their own individual life.
It's often not an unwillingness but an inability. Back when I finished college relocation wasn't an option. I had no money to move, no money to buy the auto I would have needed just about anywhere I did move, and to top it off I couldn't deal emotionally with being thousands of miles from everything I knew. The kicker was most of the jobs in my field (electrical engineering) were in places like California or Texas. I hate hot weather with a passion, plus the lifestyle was way too different for me to adjust to. And I would have hated living alone. I might have considered some form of relocation (but not to CA or TX) if I had a significant other to go with me, but I didn't. In the end I took whatever I could get in NYC, figuring I'm way ahead of the game even making 1/3 of what I would make as an engineer, but living with my parents, as opposed to making good money but having every cent of it go out the window for living expenses. If living with parents or other family members is an option, then it's foolish not to take advantage of that, at least for a while. At the time, I personally planned to go on my own only if I got married. I'm still single, and still living at home (mom only since dad died in 2006). Now I'm investing to be able to buy out my brother and sister's share of the house. BTW, mom is still healthy and hopefully will be around a while. There's nothing wrong with extended families. Indeed, had I gotten married, if it was OK with my wife I would have have considered asking my parents if I could make the house into a 2-family (at my expense), or perhaps have done something similar with her parents. Lots of people here do stuff like that. It's good to be near relatives. Parents benefit from this also as they age, and need more help. Society could save a fortune on elder care if more people stayed near their parents, as is common in most of the worldMost limits on people are put there by themselves. For example, the unwillingness to relocate to get ahead. That is 100% self imposed.
Keyboards aren't too bad. It's pressing and/or pushing motions which kill me. That being said, I couldn't deal with keyboards or mice on an occupational basis (i.e. 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year). Notice also that I occasionally take breaks from this place. Guess why?For a guy with carpal tunnet syndrome, you do write a lot. Do you use speach recognition software or you just enjoy the pain of using the keyboard?
You know what. You're absolutely right. We should let unarmed civilians in tall buildings do battle with terrorists with trucks filled with explosives and planes loaded with fuel we must not give in to terror. And, we should apply the same rules to all crime and just ignore the criminals. We'll just ignore the offenders and make no attempt to stop them or catch them because doing so would let the criminals disrupt our way of life.Do you even understand what the word terrorism means? If, by some miracle, the nation was capable of ignoring the attack, or at least ignoring those responsible, then of course the action becomes unsuccessful.
I responded to DD's nonsensical & factually baseless post and then got blindsided by time who apparently agrees with DD that we should have just ignored the attack and by not ignoring it we gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted.What the hell are you two passively arguing about?