What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[mercury14]

Well duh...that's why they call it "other people's money."

It's easy and painless to reallocate, especially if you're the government.

Yeah it must suck for you guys to live in a first world country. I hear Angola has a system of government that lets the rich get pretty much a free ride.

Move to Angola?

 

[jeninflorida]

This already happens. Not news.

yes but it wasn't painful before....we found a little loop hole to get around obamacare. what a total pia and I don't want health care at level of Canada or UK....we had great healthcare! I got a bad feeling about obamacare

 

[firespin]

Yeah it must suck for you guys to live in a first world country. I hear Angola has a system of government that lets the rich get pretty much a free ride.

Move to Angola?

How much did you say your family gets paid by the government each year?

 

[mercury14]

yes but it wasn't painful before....we found a little loop hole to get around obamacare. what a total pia and I don't want health care at level of Canada or UK....we had great healthcare! I got a bad feeling about obamacare

It wasn't painful before but now it is?

A 0.9% medicare tax increase on couples making 250k per year (singles 200k+) makes it painful???

Huh?

That's barely any change at all, or virtually no change for the vast majority of Americans.

 

[mercury14]

How much did you say your family gets paid by the government each year?

I work for a private company.

My wife makes Major's pay which is like high 50s per year, plus crazy retention bonuses. Her W-2 said $97K last year.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Yeah we would fight not to leave on teh 31st. Leaving after say the 15th was bullshit as far as most of us were concerned. When did they start pro-rating? Do they have actual stats for how much that's saved?

 

[mercury14]

Yeah we would fight not to leave on teh 31st. Leaving after say the 15th was bullshit as far as most of us were concerned. When did they start pro-rating? Do they have actual stats for how much that's saved?

I don't know the particulars. But I live on an overseas base with only military channels. There are commercials on about the prorating.

 

[firespin]

I work for a private company.

My wife makes Major's pay which is like high 50s per year, plus crazy retention bonuses. Her W-2 said $97K last year.

So your household is getting more from uncle sam than you're paying in taxes.

That seems like it might color your perspective a bit.

 

[mercury14]

So your household is getting more from uncle sam than you're paying in taxes.

That seems like it might color your perspective a bit.

Why would it color my perspective?

Are military families a bunch of big-government fans?

 

[mercury14]

Incidentally, I fall under no Federal or State income tax jurisdiction. So I keep what I make.

The exception is that I pay FICA, Medicare, and SS. So we will definitely be paying the extra .9% into Medicare.

It's going to be SO PAINFUL!

 

[firespin]

Why would it color my perspective?

Are military families a bunch of big-government fans?

At least where their income is concerned, yes, for the most part.

Government employees are quite protective of their benefits and perks.

 

[firespin]

Incidentally, I fall under no Federal or State income tax jurisdiction. So I keep what I make.

The exception is that I pay FICA, Medicare, and SS. So we will definitely be paying the extra .9% into Medicare.

It's going to be SO PAINFUL!

Ohhh....I didn't see that part.

Nice of you to be so cavalier about taxes that other people have to pay, but you don't.

If you had any conscience, you'd make voluntary contributions equivalent to what you'd have to pay if you lived in the states.

 

[mercury14]

Ohhh....I didn't see that part.

Nice of you to be so cavalier about taxes that other people have to pay, but you don't.

If you had any conscience, you'd make voluntary contributions equivalent to what you'd have to pay if you lived in the states.

Why? I don't drive on roads in the States, use waterways, police departments, hospitals, bridges.

I still pay sales tax on things I buy online, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, capital gains taxes, etc. And I'm still paying into the new health care system while not being eligible to draw upon it. And my wife pays federal tax on that 97k by the way.

If Uncle Sam wants more of my money then he can establish a tax jurisdiction in this little Asian valley we live in.

 

[mercury14]

At least where their income is concerned, yes, for the most part.

Government employees are quite protective of their benefits and perks.

Huh?

Whereas private sector employees such as myself are just fine allowing their benefits to slip away?

You're making no sense here. None at all.

 

[firespin]

Why? I don't drive on roads in the States, use waterways, police departments, hospitals, bridges.

I still pay sales tax on things I buy online, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, capital gains taxes, etc. And I'm still paying into the new health care system while not being eligible to draw upon it. And my wife pays federal tax on that 97k by the way.

If Uncle Sam wants more of my money then he can establish a tax jurisdiction in this little Asian valley we live in.

How is it you pay capital gains tax and support Medicaid without paying income taxes? That seems odd.

You do benefit from many of the things that income taxes (paid by people like myself) pay for: the US national defense, income transfer to the less fortunate...actually everything else like EPA and OSHA and FEMA are small potatoes compared to those things.

Huh?

Whereas private sector employees such as myself are just fine allowing their benefits to slip away?

You're making no sense here. None at all.

If somebody who worked for the private sector lobbied to be able to transfer money from people across the country to their enterprise under penalty of fines and imprisonment, that might seem a bit of an overreach, don't you think?

The least a government employee can do is to abstain from discussions of things that would give the government yet more money.

 

[eyer]

Meanwhile, another Dr. has shut down his practice because of socialized medicene...

...front page, lower left section of the San Antonio morning newspaper today reports the story of a 65 year-old doctor who's calling it quits because he hasn't taken a paycheck in over a month (because he has so much difficulty getting govt to pay), and he's tired of always being angry and frustrated with compiling with the hoops govt-ruled healthcare dictates. The doc's ex-practice had grown to 80% govt healthcare patient rate, and he had to employ two people for his tiny practice just to deal with govt required red-tape.

Evidently (and not surprisingly in the least), Texas has an unusally high percentage of doctors who are quitting their profession specifically because they choose not to play the socialized medicene game.

The TRUTH of the issue is, folks, there is NO private medical practice anymore in the United Socialist States of America. Govt makes and enforces ALL the rules, requirements and regulations of the field and of the ex-private insurance industry as well.

I do not admire this doctor for doing what's obviously right - that's what he (and us) is/are supposed to do. I do reckon there are a few of his patients whose quality of care will suffer, just as the more time goes by under socialist healthcar, the more, more people will suffer...especially those who were to benefit initially: widows and orphans.

Eventually, years from now, the only doctors this country will have will be those wankers who see nothing wrong with the "free" ride they're getting from govt throughout their entire lives...

America once had the finest healthcare system in the world - without a doubt.

Today, our rank steadily declines,,,just trying to find our socialist dumbing-down point among our peers...

 

[mercury14]

How is it you pay capital gains tax and support Medicaid without paying income taxes? That seems odd.

I still get a W-2. I just have $0 federal and state taxable income and my employer doesn't withold. Then in the medicare/medicaid boxes it shows witholding. I still file with the SEC when I invest and pay capital gains taxes like normal.

Why does this seem odd?

You do benefit from many of the things that income taxes (paid by people like myself) pay for: the US national defense, income transfer to the less fortunate...actually everything else like EPA and OSHA and FEMA are small potatoes compared to those things.

So do people who have no job. Housewives?

I don't have any income in the USA from my job. The USA does not and cannot tax foreign income earned by Americans who aren't even in the country.

The least a government employee can do is to abstain from discussions of things that would give the government yet more money.

Yes because military folks are in it for the money. Damn money-grubbing Airmen making 17k per year. And to think some of them might want more money!

Regardless I'm not a government employee so it's a moot point.

 

[mercury14]

Meanwhile, another Dr. has shut down his practice because of socialized medicene...

...front page, lower left section of the San Antonio morning newspaper today reports the story of a 65 year-old doctor who's calling it quits because he hasn't taken a paycheck in over a month (because he has so much difficulty getting govt to pay), and he's tired of always being angry and frustrated with compiling with the hoops govt-ruled healthcare dictates. The doc's ex-practice had grown to 80% govt healthcare patient rate, and he had to employ two people for his tiny practice just to deal with govt required red-tape.

Evidently (and not surprisingly in the least), Texas has an unusally high percentage of doctors who are quitting their profession specifically because they choose not to play the socialized medicene game.

The TRUTH of the issue is, folks, there is NO private medical practice anymore in the United Socialist States of America. Govt makes and enforces ALL the rules, requirements and regulations of the field and of the ex-private insurance industry as well.

I do not admire this doctor for doing what's obviously right - that's what he (and us) is/are supposed to do. I do reckon there are a few of his patients whose quality of care will suffer, just as the more time goes by under socialist healthcar, the more, more people will suffer...especially those who were to benefit initially: widows and orphans.

Eventually, years from now, the only doctors this country will have will be those wankers who see nothing wrong with the "free" ride they're getting from govt throughout their entire lives...

America once had the finest healthcare system in the world - without a doubt.

Today, our rank steadily declines,,,just trying to find our socialist dumbing-down point among our peers...

And nowhere in your sage analysis did you consider that the USA has 40 million people without health care coverage - a figure which is growing at 1 million per year.

And that doesn't count the under-insured with paper thin coverage.



Funny though, when I did did a year of residency in Melbourne, Australia where they have single payor health care that's MUCH more socialized than the new US model, there were heaps of psychiatrists.

In private practice.

Doing just fine.

 

[firespin]

I still get a W-2. I just have $0 federal and state taxable income and my employer doesn't withold. Then in the medicare/medicaid boxes it shows witholding. I still file with the SEC when I invest and pay capital gains taxes like normal.

Why does this seem odd?

It seems like the rules for federal income tax would be the same as for capital gains and retirement / medical. Not saying they are, just seems odd that they are apparently not.

So do people who have no job. Housewives?

I don't have any income in the USA from my job. The USA does not and cannot tax foreign income earned by Americans who aren't even in the country.

Housewives have a job, they just don't get paid.

I don't know much about foreign source income, but the IRS does say this:

"If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside"

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=97324,00.html

 

[mercury14]

I fall under the foreign earned income exclusion.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=96968,00.html

I have to be abroad for 330 days out of the year. Each year I have to send a form to the IRS saying that I expect to be gone for 330 days, which then allows witholding to be... witheld.

 

[eyer]

"And nowhere in your sage analysis did you consider that the USA has 40 million people without health care coverage - a figure which is growing at 1 million per year."


Of which I am one - and your point was?

Oh, let me guess I am unable to "take care" of myself, obviously, because I don't have "health care coverage", so socialists "like" you wanna make me take my medicene anyway...what a wanker. What's the difference between you - dictating what's good "healthwise" for people - and those wankers in another thread (who you just can't even avoid chiding because they're "Republicans") who aim to dictate what's good for people "morally"?

Guess what, Bozo? There is NO diff between you wankers - you're both about control.


"...heaps of psychiatrists...Doing just fine."


Yeah - that, no doubt, goes a long way in explaining how mentally f'd-up that country has become - socialism is always a "head" trip...

Face it, mercury - you're a socialist. Take responsibility for who you truly are. Maybe then you can begin to deal with it instead of continually existing in your present state of denial.

 

[mercury14]

Lol, another right winger who decided that Democrats don't exist anymore. There are now only Republicans and Socialists....

Meanwhile, Republicans support Medicare and Medicaid, which are clearly "take from the rich, give to the poor" socialized programs. So using your rationale they're socialists as well.

Kind of dumb even for you...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

RotundDownSouth is a victim of a self imposed selective input. He has a sick desire to attack our children and saw off the boobs of the conservative females here. Who knows why?

He has unresolved frustration issues.

Hoffer nails him over and over, at least his type, in True Believers.

People like him are actually very scary because they will, with the right community organizer, turn their frustration into action.
__________________
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
Eric Hoffer

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The Psychology of Recession

Victor Davis Hanson
NRO

I asked a businessman two weeks ago why he said that he was neither hiring nor buying new equipment. He started in on “rising taxes.”

“But wait,” I interrupted. I pointed out that income-tax hikes haven’t taken effect. The old FICA income caps are also still applicable. Health-care surcharges haven’t hit us yet.

He countered with “regulations” and “bailouts.” I said, “Come on, get specific.” He offered up “cap and trade” and “the Chrysler creditors.” I parried with more demands that he tell me exactly how the federal government has suddenly curbed his profit margins, or how his electric bill had gone up since January 2009, or whether he had lost money on any investment because the government had violated a contract.

Exasperated, he talked now instead of more cosmic issues — the astronomical borrowing, the staggering national debt, and the new protectionism. I pressed again, “But aren’t interest rates historically low? Inflation is almost non-existent, isn’t it? New products are still comparatively cheap? Rents and new business property are at bargain-basement prices?”

This give-and-take went on for ten minutes; but you get the picture. Private enterprise is wary, hesitant, even frightened, but nevertheless hard pressed to demonstrate in concrete fashion how Obama has quite ruined them in just 18 months.

So why are a lot of cash-solvent financial firms, banks, and manufacturing companies not hiring, not expanding, and not buying new operating equipment as they did in past bottoming-out recessions?

In a word, fear. Remember that capitalism is in large part psychologically driven. Confidence, optimism, and a sense of calm about the future foster risk and investment, while worry, pessimism, and a sense of foreboding ensure timidity and stasis.

This is why we said, at the outset, BUSH didn't cause the massive sell-offs after the election OBAMA did by running his mouth...

Only when he stops bashing America and its business while chasing oil companies out of our waters will people buy into his economy.

Words MEAN things.
__________________
The US economy for a long period of time was the engine of world economic growth. We were sucking in imports from all across the world financed by huge amounts of consumer debt. Because of the financial crisis, but also because that debt was fundamentally unsustainable, the United States is not going to be able to serve in that same capacity to that same extent.
Barack Hussein Obama

"As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, D.C. as the 'capital of the free world, but it seems to me that in this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title."
Joe Biden

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

This is too good not to continue:

Barack Obama — who is mostly a creature of the university and the dependable government payroll — does not seem to grasp that fact. If one were to deconstruct any one speech, any particular piece of proposed legislation, or any single executive order, one might not necessarily conclude that Obama’s agenda bodes poorly for the creation of capital. But after 18 months, put the pieces together, and the once jumbled-up jigsaw puzzle starts to form a disturbingly coherent picture.

First, there are the appointees and their various public statements — again, insignificant in isolation, but telling in their totality. Why would any executive hire the self-avowed Communist gadfly Van Jones as his adviser for “green” jobs? Regulation is one thing, but an interior secretary promising a “boot on the neck” of a company is quite another. Why does a labor secretary reassure, gratuitously, illegal aliens that they are not really subject to lawful enforcement of the laws?

What is California agribusiness to make of the energy secretary’s prediction that Golden State farms will soon dry up and blow away? Is that a promise or a prediction? If the latter, is it lamented or welcomed?

Was not Mao the world’s most lethal Communist? Why then would a White House communications director see him as an inspirational figure?

NASA historically marries private enterprise and government purpose to study and explore space; why then would President Obama direct its head to put “foremost” the use of our resources to make Muslims feel good about their scientific past?

Why ram through on a recess appointment a new health-care czar who has repeatedly warned that good health care is synonymous with redistribution of resources and wealth?

Second, there is Obama’s own history, which suggests that his subordinates are competing in parroting the world view of the man at the top. On the campaign trail, Obama touched upon the need for “redistributive change,” a desire for “skyrocketing” energy prices, and the imperative of “spreading the wealth” in a fashion that sounded like a refined version of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s crude liberationist socialism. But the reversal of the payout to Chrysler creditors, the absorption of large insolvent private companies, and the promises for intrusive cap-and-trade energy legislation only seem to confirm that the president has no understanding of the historical role of entrepreneurship and businesses in creating the sort of wealth that he takes for granted can be redistributed. Obama, past and present, seems always to talk of how someone else’s money should be spent, dispersed, and redistributed, but never to worry about how it can be made in the first place.

So, fairly or not, when the president talks, business people do not gain confidence that he knows, or cares, much about them or what they do. If he thinks even surgeons are greedy profiteers, who then escapes presidential disdain?

Third, the real worry is not for 2010 — after all, few revolutionaries create their utopias in a mere 18 months — but for the years to come, for which business people must right now schedule purchases, hire, and in general gamble that their investments will pay off when the boom returns. Yet at one time or another some administration official has talked of new inheritance taxes, new FICA tax schedules, new income-tax rates, new health-care surcharges, or a possible VAT or federal excise tax — all at a time when state income and sales taxes are climbing.

It does not matter whether all or some of these proposals are merely trial balloons. They still have a depressing effect in reminding the productive classes that the government is going to take a much larger percentage of their rewards and spend it for purposes that might just make things worse still. That notion kills rather than spurs investment.

And climbing taxation is not the only reason why business is now worried about fiscal policy. There is also a depressing realization that any additional revenue will hardly balance the budget, given the astronomical spending. Do not underestimate the psychology of deficits. The owner of a tire store or a pool-cleaning company may not like handing over more hard-earned money to government, but he hates the notion that it is all in vain anyway — already pledged away as interest on the rising debt before it is collected.

Out-of-control government spending depresses small businesses in other ways beyond leaving them with less cash. Growing government entitlements and redistribution are seen as undermining personal initiative. The more we provide subsidies for housing, health, education, food, and entertainment, the more the individual seems to want more compensation for less work — and the more the employer feels he has been had, as he works while others do not.

Finally, business operates best under the assumption that the law is applied equally and that there are no insider cronies who are favored by government because of their contacts, cash, or politics. The problem with socialism as we see it practiced abroad is not just that it hates private business in general, but that it hates some private businesses far less than others. Crony capitalism is the statist habit of farming out government concessions to friends and fellow travelers who spout the same revolutionary slogans, or who promise bribes or jobs to their particular government overseers. We would have more readily believed Barack Obama’s Wall Street populism had he not been the largest recipient of Wall Street cash in presidential history, and Goldman Sachs’s largest political beneficiary.

So when immigration law is unenforced; when an arbitrary $20-billion punitive payout is mandated from BP; when some creditors are deemed more important than others; when some states are sued for racism, but cases against racist individuals are dropped — then a general impression takes hold among business people that it is safer to lie low and avoid the gaze of government — lest a particular law be applied in punitive fashion.

Why is this recovery L-shaped? It is not just what Barack Obama has done, but far more what he most certainly would like to do in the future. When business people look at the confiscatory government in Venezuela, crony capitalism in Russia and China, democratic socialism in Greece, and sky-high taxes in most of the European Union, they do not see a connection between those policies and individual prosperity and freedom. So even the faintest hint that America is no longer exceptionally at odds with state-run systems, but may in fact wish to emulate them, simply stuns private enterprise into inaction.

That is mostly where we are now, as an unpopular president tries to convince the wary, time-out private sector that what he said so emphatically in the past is now not quite what he really meant to say.

Good luck with that.

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.