227 replies to this topic

[F3SS]

sam12six, on 17 December 2012 - 01:49 AM, said:

I don't think there's ever going to be a way to eliminate poverty. Every society in history has had obscenely rich people and bitterly poor people (unless they enslaved the poor, then they were gainfully employed, I guess). I think it's the cycle of civilization that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer until something breaks and you start all over again (not completely over, but there's a lot of turbulence). I believe this applies to any governmental system ever tried.

I think you're right and that's why I'm tired of people who can't figure it out taking more money from our paychecks and telling me that's the solution as if they have figured it out.

[sam12six]

-Mr_Fess-, on 17 December 2012 - 02:06 AM, said:

I think you're right and that's why I'm tired of people who can't figure it out taking more money from our paychecks and telling me that's the solution as if they have figured it out.

Well, there's something to be said for trying to stave off that collapse for as long as possible. As for taking money from your paycheck, I totally agree. Anyone who actually receives a paycheck who's not an executive for a multibillion dollar corporation probably doesn't fall into the obscenely rich category (forgive me if I'm making incorrect assumptions about your financial status).

The desire to make those obscenely rich pay more is a good thing (reducing that inequality tiggs was talking about). The problem is that the way people keep discussing to do so is by raising income tax - something obscenely rich people don't really pay anyway. Now, taking a good look at capital gains and taxing the use of corporate assets as something other than personal income would go a very long way toward actually making things equitable without increasing taxes noticabely for those who don't make their luxurious living off those things.

[F3SS]

sam12six, on 17 December 2012 - 02:16 AM, said:

Well, there's something to be said for trying to stave off that collapse for as long as possible. As for taking money from your paycheck, I totally agree. Anyone who actually receives a paycheck who's not an executive for a multibillion dollar corporation probably doesn't fall into the obscenely rich category (forgive me if I'm making incorrect assumptions about your financial status).

The desire to make those obscenely rich pay more is a good thing (reducing that inequality tiggs was talking about). The problem is that the way people keep discussing to do so is by raising income tax - something obscenely rich people don't really pay anyway. Now, taking a good look at capital gains and taxing the use of corporate assets as something other than personal income would go a very long way toward actually making things equitable without increasing taxes noticabely for those who don't make their luxurious living off those things.

We are going to disagree about the inequality here because I think the gov won't solve it taking from me or richie rich, which I am not btw. I think it always hurts the average joe and encourages the wealthy to take their business elsewhere and we need their money and their business to stay here. I think the poor never having to do anything but stay poor is never going to help the poor.
And I'm pretty sure obamacare has a capital gains tax hike in it. If I'm not mistaking, it's gone from 15%-35%. So for me, as a middle-class guy I am, or will be if the hike is true, fully discouraged to make any investments that can't pay out enormously. What I'm saying is that its not only rich guys who can make capital gains investments. I'm in construction for a living and I'd love nothing more than to find a house to flip and turn a big profit. But that extra 20% hike in taxes, plus all the labor and payroll taxes and other general costs of dong business really make the ROI so much less appealing. Hell, if anything, now that I'm thinking about it, raising capital gains tax ensures that almost only rich people can get in on that game because they're going to be the only ones who can afford to make the expensive investments that turn the gigantic profits. Small investments won't be worth it to them and will be unaffordable for middle of the road guys like myself. So I'll label that as yet another example of liberalism producing the exact opposite of its stated intent.

Edited by -Mr_Fess-, 17 December 2012 - 02:42 AM.

[sam12six]

-Mr_Fess-, on 17 December 2012 - 02:40 AM, said:

We are going to disagree about the inequality here because I think the gov won't solve it taking from me or richie rich, which I am not btw. I think it always hurts the average joe and encourages the wealthy to take their business elsewhere and we need their money and their business to stay here. I think the poor never having to do anything but stay poor is never going to help the poor.
And I'm pretty sure obamacare has a capital gains tax hike in it. If I'm not mistaking, it's gone from 15%-35%. So for me, as a middle-class guy I am, or will be if the hike is true, fully discouraged to make any investments that can't pay out enormously. What I'm saying is that its not only rich guys who can make capital gains investments. I'm in construction for a living and I'd love nothing more than to find a house to flip and turn a big profit. But that extra 20% hike in taxes, plus all the labor and payroll taxes and other general costs of dong business really make the ROI so much less appealing. Hell, if anything, now that I'm thinking about it, raising capital gains tax ensures that almost only rich people can get in on that game because they're going to be the only ones who can afford to make the expensive investments that turn the gigantic profits. Small investments won't be worth it to them and will be unaffordable for middle of the road guys like myself. So I'll label that as yet another example of liberalism producing the exact opposite of its stated intent.

I get what you're saying. The reason this is a debatable topic is because both sides can be right. Raising taxes can discourage economic activity. The economic activity can also be profitable enough that a tax increase will have no effect but to increase revenues.

Here's my take on things:

We're in a hole. We're digging deeper every day. There's two things that will help - cutting spending and raising revenue. Here's the problem - People who want to cut spending refuse to even discuss cutting the massive expenses we accrue trying to maintain a military that's equal to the rest of the world combined even though it's the biggest chunk of money we throw away. People who want to raise revenue by increasing what super rich people pay refuse to discuss anything but personal income tax even though the super rich set their own salaries and essentially choose how much income tax to pay.

I believe capital gains should be treated like income taxes where there's a graduated scale from 0% for someone who dabbles to big% for someone who makes millions (with no deductions. I wish there were no deductions for income tax - or at least that they were capped).

As for Obamacare, I believe it's a horrible thing. It'll help some people in the short term but a lot of the problems with our health care system are just going to get worse because it doesn't actually fix problems. It just pumps more money into the bad system we have.

[DieChecker]

People can argue all the want and it is not going to stop the fact that even taking every single dollar the Rich make in a year in taxes is not going to even come close to closing a Trillion Plus spending Deficit. Not without other measures being taken. And since we know that no one is going to actually do a 90% or 100% tax on the rich, and that probably the best that will happen is an end to the "Bush" tax cuts, we can say that the extra 50 to 100 billion collected, is also not going to do much to close the Deficit. Especially if legislators take the oportunnity to actually create more debit, such as raising the length for Unemployment Benefits yet again. Taxing the rich is only like 5% of what needs to be done.

Myself, I say do it, but do everything else that needs doing too. Don't just increase taxes and give mouth service to cuts.

Edit: Actually I checked and 100% of the money from the top 4% (Those making over 200,000 dollars per year) would actually be very close to a 1.2 trillion. So that actually might work. Gonig off old numbers, but anyone REALLY cares they should be able to calculate the numbers.
http://en.wikipedia....e_United_States

Edited by DieChecker, 17 December 2012 - 06:55 AM.

[Yamato]

Tiggs, on 16 December 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

I know nothing of the sort.

Evidence, please, that the cost of living index is fraudulent.

I didn't say it was fraudulent.  Wrong courtroom, looking for evidence of that.   When I gave evidence of cost of living increases, you ignored it.

You know plenty of the sort when the government excludes the costs and admits.  How do I need to provide evidence of that to you?  This is all just rhetoric and arguing about nothing.

[Tiggs]

Yamato, on 17 December 2012 - 03:01 PM, said:

I didn't say it was fraudulent.  Wrong courtroom, looking for evidence of that.

If it's not fraudulent, then what is your issue, exactly? That the number the Fed uses isn't sufficiently accurate enough for them to do their job?

Quote

When I gave evidence of cost of living increases, you ignored it.

Possibly. I do tend to automatically filter out a lot of what you say at any given time - such as "Housing prices in California are up 19.3% in the past year alone", when the figure you're actually quoting is the rise in the Median house price sold in California, which is something completely different. As the LA Times story I've linked to goes on to state - "He noted that a big factor in the rising median price is increased sales of high-end homes, which skew the results to the upside. Indexes that track specific home resales, such as Case-Shiller, show far lower price appreciation."

So. Perhaps you'd like to re-present what you think you have that looks like evidence for your position and I'll take another look at it.

Quote

You know plenty of the sort when the government excludes the costs and admits.  How do I need to provide evidence of that to you?

Unless you've become suddenly psychic, you have no idea what I know or otherwise - and there's a completely different forum for that.

As far as I'm aware, the Fed is currently using the most general CPI rate - which, as far as I'm concerned, is a decent representative number for inflation.

[Harte]

DieChecker, on 17 December 2012 - 06:46 AM, said:

Myself, I say do it, but do everything else that needs doing too. Don't just increase taxes and give mouth service to cuts.

I would agree, but go further and say raise everyone's taxes by a percentage or two.

DieChecker, on 17 December 2012 - 06:46 AM, said:

Edit: Actually I checked and 100% of the money from the top 4% (Those making over 200,000 dollars per year) would actually be very close to a 1.2 trillion. So that actually might work. Gonig off old numbers, but anyone REALLY cares they should be able to calculate the numbers.
http://en.wikipedia....e_United_States

It comes to about 900 billion.  However, that is total income.

You'd have to confiscate every cent they made, leaving them in utter poverty, not raise the taxes on their upper marginal rates.

Current proposed tax increases are marginal.  Everything they make up to $200,000/yr would be taxed at the same rate as before.  At your link, it's plain to see that many in the top 5% would experience no tax increase at all.

Obviously, no such tax increase will have any effect at all.  If the Dems think tax increases are part of the solution, then they need to pony up what tax increases they think should be part of the solution.  The fact that no effective plan is in the works for tax increases simply points to the fact that this is a political ploy.  The question is, if the Repubs cave and go along, will we see any effective cuts made in spending, as promised?

I would guess no is the answer to that question.

Like I said, I think all taxes should be raised.

Harte

[DieChecker]

Harte, on 17 December 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

It comes to about 900 billion.  However, that is total income.

You'd have to confiscate every cent they made, leaving them in utter poverty, not raise the taxes on their upper marginal rates.

Your basic hard core Liberal is going to tell you that Joe Billionare is still going to have all his billions and probably should have much of that taken away too. But, they fail to realize that many people who would fall into that 200k+ income level are actually Living at that income level. They have expensive cars, expensive homes and such. And basically without selling stuff they would quickly not be able to pay their own bills. Of course, if Mr 200K was not able to pay his bills, Mr Liberal would not care, and simply call, "Oh, boo hoo.".

[Yamato]

Tiggs, on 17 December 2012 - 04:16 PM, said:

If it's not fraudulent, then what is your issue, exactly? That the number the Fed uses isn't sufficiently accurate enough for them to do their job?




Possibly. I do tend to automatically filter out a lot of what you say at any given time - such as "Housing prices in California are up 19.3% in the past year alone", when the figure you're actually quoting is the rise in the Median house price sold in California, which is something completely different. As the LA Times story I've linked to goes on to state - "He noted that a big factor in the rising median price is increased sales of high-end homes, which skew the results to the upside. Indexes that track specific home resales, such as Case-Shiller, show far lower price appreciation."

So. Perhaps you'd like to re-present what you think you have that looks like evidence for your position and I'll take another look at it.




Unless you've become suddenly psychic, you have no idea what I know or otherwise - and there's a completely different forum for that.

As far as I'm aware, the Fed is currently using the most general CPI rate - which, as far as I'm concerned, is a decent representative number for inflation.

No it's not "completely different" than what I said and in fact it's NO different than what I said AT ALL.   Nitpicking is sometimes useful, but not this time when it's for no reason at all.   Means and medians are common ways of expressing percentage increases in prices, including housing prices in California the past year.   I didn't say that it was AT LEAST 19.3%.  I didn't say that only the most expensive homes were up 19.3%.  I didn't say that the cheapest homes were up 19.3%.   I said HOUSING was up 19.3% and that is a fact, medians or no medians.

Wrong, I do have an idea of what you know and think because I read what you post.

You think it's decent?  What's decent about hiding the true costs that people have to pay in this country?  It's deceptive as hell.  It's a BS number that means nothing.   It's a number that bureaucrats use like a whip to push their pathetic policies on us and you're defending it.  Not impressed.

[Yamato]

The UK tried tax hikes on the rich and it produced LESS tax revenue.   Maybe we should do the same and expect a different result.  

All this class warfare is just a side show.  I don't want to raise ANYONE'S taxes whether they're rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle.  Because the act of raising taxes just pushes money out of the productive private sector and pulls it into the unproductive public sector.    And we still wonder why we get less revenue when taxes go up.

[questionmark]

Yamato, on 17 December 2012 - 09:49 PM, said:

The UK tried tax hikes on the rich and it produced LESS tax revenue.   Maybe we should do the same and expect a different result.  

All this class warfare is just a side show.  I don't want to raise ANYONE'S taxes whether they're rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle.  Because the act of raising taxes just pushes money out of the productive private sector and pulls it into the unproductive public sector. And we still wonder why we get less revenue when taxes go up.

Because the British, to the contrary of the Americans, can just incorporate in Jersey (no taxes) and still be considered a domestic company.

[Tiggs]

Yamato, on 17 December 2012 - 09:36 PM, said:

No it's not "completely different" than what I said and in fact it's NO different than what I said AT ALL.   Nitpicking is sometimes useful, but not this time when it's for no reason at all.   Means and medians are common ways of expressing percentage increases in prices, including housing prices in California the past year.   I didn't say that it was AT LEAST 19.3%.  I didn't say that only the most expensive homes were up 19.3%.  I didn't say that the cheapest homes were up 19.3%.   I said HOUSING was up 19.3% and that is a fact, medians or no medians.

And yet - not a single house has risen in price by 19.3%

Quote

Wrong, I do have an idea of what you know and think because I read what you post.

Wonderful. Perhaps you could show where I've previously written about me knowing "plenty of the sort when the government excludes the costs and admits" then?

Quote

You think it's decent?  What's decent about hiding the true costs that people have to pay in this country?  It's deceptive as hell.  It's a BS number that means nothing.   It's a number that bureaucrats use like a whip to push their pathetic policies on us and you're defending it.  Not impressed.

Do feel free to publish your own inflation figure and petition the government to use it, then.

Obviously - if it's anywhere near as accurate as your 19.3% figure - best of luck with that.

[Yamato]

Tiggs, on 17 December 2012 - 10:31 PM, said:

And yet - not a single house has risen in price by 19.3%




Wonderful. Perhaps you could show where I've previously written about me knowing "plenty of the sort when the government excludes the costs and admits" then?




Do feel free to publish your own inflation figure and petition the government to use it, then.

Obviously - if it's anywhere near as accurate as your 19.3% figure - best of luck with that.

And yet - not a single house has risen in price by 19.3%
What are you talking about?  Housing prices are up 19.3% in California in one year alone.  I'm not misstating anything.  You are deliberately obfuscating and dishonestly at that.   Someone has trained you well to play semantics to deny every instance of inflation ever brought to your attention.  Do you need it read verbatim from the article to include all the little booberries like "median" and then accept it?  No, you can't even accept the article.  You can't accept that housing prices are up 19.3% in one year.  

Wonderful. Perhaps you could show where I've previously written about me knowing "plenty of the sort when the government excludes the costs and admits" then?
Can you follow a discussion?  Again, the government hides the true increases of the costs we must pay for and then admits it.   Why do you even ask me to provide evidence for this when the government admits it?   It's not accurate at all.   How sheltered from living are you?  Do you buy gasoline?   You do have electricity?   Here we go again with mommy's basement because there's no way you're as immune to inflation as you claim you are and even if you are, that's your personal pedestal not any reflection of reality.   Do we need to revisit the same discussions ad nauseum or can we acknowledge that inflation is much higher than what's "reported" by the money controllers down at the bureau if we include what's excluded?

Edited by Yamato, 17 December 2012 - 10:48 PM.

[Tiggs]

Yamato, on 17 December 2012 - 10:46 PM, said:

And yet - not a single house has risen in price by 19.3%
What are you talking about?  Housing prices are up 19.3% in California in one year alone.  I'm not misstating anything.  You are deliberately obfuscating and dishonestly at that.   Someone has trained you well to play semantics to deny every instance of inflation ever brought to your attention.

No. Housing prices are not up by 19.3%.

The average price that a house sold for is up 19.3% because many, many expensive houses have been sold, and not so many cheaper houses.

The average house price rise in Los Angeles, for example - the physical change in the year to year value of someone's property, on average, rose just over 4%.

If you can't appreciate the difference between the two - then I really don't know what to tell you.

Quote

Wonderful. Perhaps you could show where I've previously written about me knowing "plenty of the sort when the government excludes the costs and admits" then?
Can you follow a discussion?  Again, the government hides the true increases of the costs we must pay for and then admits it.   Why do you even ask me to provide evidence for this when the government admits it?   It's not accurate at all.   How sheltered from living are you?  Do you buy gasoline?   You do have electricity?   Here we go again with mommy's basement because there's no way you're as immune to inflation as you claim you are and even if you are, that's your personal pedestal not any reflection of reality.   Do we need to revisit the same discussions ad nauseum because of dementia or can we acknowledge that inflation is much higher than what's "reported" if we include what's excluded?

Gasoline and Electricity prices are currently included in the CPI used by the Federal Reserve. Perhaps you didn't get the memo.

Edited by Tiggs, 17 December 2012 - 11:01 PM.