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

[4est_4est_Gump]

Not going to write a full treatise on your whole belief system here, sorry. Even if I wasn't pecking away on a tablet I wouldn't be interested in something like that. If you'd like to refer to a very specific aspect of economics and tell me what you think if it then I'd love to read it.

Sling me another F-bomb I guess.

No. You know you've been put into a losing position so you spin, dodge, deflect.

And then you'll turn right around, like you just did above with disability and let people know exactly what I believe and then demand I defend it.

You're a real piece of work there...

Admirable!

 

[mercury14]

No. You know you've been put into a losing position so you spin, dodge, deflect.

And then you'll turn right around, like you just did above with disability and let people know exactly what I believe and then demand I defend it.

You're a real piece of work there...

Admirable!

No I'm serious. I'm not going to write a while essay on you or anyone else. But you can write one on yourself if it's such a simple thing to ask of someone else. Wouldn't that make much more sense?

You shouldn't extoll the virtue of Busybody's posts if you don't agree with them.

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You seem to think its pretty simple.

None of us hardly thing it would require an essay.

Even a short outline since you so obviously have it so clearly framed in your mind...

Something like my post @ 06:34

Are you not smart?

Hmmm...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Even if we were to assume, just for the sake of argument, that 90 percent of what a successful person has achieved was due to the government, what follows from that? That politicians will make better decisions than individual citizens, that politicians will spend the wealth of the country better than those who created it? That doesn’t follow logically — and certainly not empirically.

Does anyone doubt that most people owe a lot to the parents who raised them? But what follows from that? That they should never become adults who make their own decisions?

The whole point of the collectivist mindset is to concentrate power in the hands of the collectivists — which is to say, to take away our freedom. They do this in stages, starting with some group that others envy or resent — Jews in Nazi Germany, capitalists in the Soviet Union, foreign investors in Third World countries (where the government confiscates investments and call this theft “nationalization”).

Freedom is seldom destroyed all at once. More often it is eroded, bit by bit, until it is gone. This can happen so gradually that there is no sudden change that would alert people to the danger. By the time everybody realizes what has happened, it can be too late, because their freedom is gone.

All the high-flown talk about how people who are successful in business should “give back” to the community that created the things that facilitated their success is, again, something that sounds plausible to people who do not stop and think through what is being said. After years of dumbed-down education, that apparently includes a lot of people.

Take Obama’s example of the business that benefits from being able to ship its products on roads that the government built. How does that create a need to “give back”?

Did the taxpayers, including business taxpayers, not pay for that road when it was built? Why should they have to pay for it twice?

What about the workers businesses hire, who have usually received an education from government-financed schools? The government doesn’t have any wealth of its own, except what it takes from taxpayers, whether individuals or businesses. They have already paid for that education. It is not a gift that they have to “give back” by letting politicians take more of their money and freedom.

When businesses hire highly educated people, such as chemists or engineers, competition in the labor market forces them to pay higher salaries for people with longer years of valuable education. That education is not a government gift to the employers. It is paid for while it is being created in schools and universities, and it is paid for in higher salaries when highly educated people are hired.

One of the tricks of professional magicians is to distract the audience’s attention from what they are doing while they are creating an illusion of magic. Pious talk about “giving back” distracts our attention from the cold fact that politicians are taking away more and more of our money and our freedom.

Even the envy that politicians stir up against “the rich” is highly focused on those particular high-income earners whose decisions the politicians want to take over. Others in sports or entertainment can make far more money than the highest-paid corporate executive, but there is no way that politicians can take over the roles of Roger Federer or Oprah Winfrey, so highly paid sports stars or entertainers are hardly ever accused of “greed.”

If we are so easily distracted by self-serving political rhetoric, we are going to see not only our money but our freedom increasingly taken away from us by slick-talking politicians, including our current slick-talker-in-chief in the White House.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/310019

 

[mercury14]

None of us hardly thing it would require an essay.

Are you not smart?

Reading you're posts certainly don't make me more smarter.

 

[mercury14]

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/310019

Tax rates are the lowest in 50+ years. Go back and look at the rates themselves. How come you believe that we're having to give more and more to the government then?

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

Which part of this says that the government is taking more money from us, AJ?

http://www.supportingevidence.com/images/IndividTaxRatesOverTime.png

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

It takes it from you in other ways, namely inflation.

Except inflation rates are much lower now than many periods in the past when taxes were much higher (ie 1975).

Regardless, no amount of inflation is going to make up for those huge differences in the marginal rates.

EDIT: Note that inflation has been a mere 1.7% the past couple months...

 

[JohnnySavage]

Which part of this says that the government is taking more money from us, AJ?

Your point is correct, but stop using marginal tax rates. There's no value in comparing marginal tax rates because the allowable deductions changed.


...but this has to be the 20th time I've told you this.

 

[mercury14]

Your point is correct, but stop using marginal tax rates. There's no value in comparing marginal tax rates because the allowable deductions changed.


...but this has to be the 20th time I've told you this.

Have deductions been net added or subtracted from the tax code over time? I'm thinking they're increased a ton. Lower rates, more deductions equals lower overall tax burden.

Are you disagreeing with this?

 

[JohnnySavage]

Have deductions been net added or subtracted from the tax code over time? I'm thinking they're increased a ton. Lower rates, more deductions equals lower overall tax burden.

Are you disagreeing with this?

There are fewer deductions available now - mostly as a result of the tax code changes in the early 90s. People today pay closer to the Marginal rate then they did in the past, and those marginal rates are historically low.


Tax payers today are paying a lower percentage of income in taxes then they have since prior to WWII. But it's not fair to compare marginal rates because in the past, marginal rates were an even bigger joke than they are today.

 

[mercury14]

There are fewer deductions available now - mostly as a result of the tax code changes in the early 90s. People today pay closer to the Marginal rate then they did in the past, and those marginal rates are historically low.


Tax payers today are paying a lower percentage of income in taxes then they have since prior to WWII. But it's not fair to compare marginal rates because in the past, marginal rates were an even bigger joke than they are today.

Not saying you're wrong but where are you seeing this? Isnt this what Republicans complain about today - low income folks not paying their marginal rate?

Also you said "fewer" deductions but what about their overall value now vs then?

 

[Byron In Exile]

Post fixed for accuracy.

tyvm.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Not saying you're wrong but where are you seeing this?

Also you said "fewer" deductions but what about their overall value now vs then?

I'm seeing in both personal experience as one having had complicated taxes for 25 years, from articles like the one I linked you to the other day, and from looking at revenue as a percentage of incomes.


Also, note the graduations in the tax rates.

To make an extreme example for clarity - imagine two tax brackets. One of 10% for income up to $1m, then 80% for income over $1m. Dullards would argue that someone making $1,000,001 has to pay 80% to the government, and such is unconscionable. But that's not the persons effective rate because he only paid 10% on the first million.

Such is the argument today. The income brackets have risen and the tax brackets have lowered.

 

[mercury14]

I'm seeing in both personal experience as one having had complicated taxes for 25 years, from articles like the one I linked you to the other day, and from looking at revenue as a percentage of incomes.


Also, note the graduations in the tax rates.

To make an extreme example for clarity - imagine two tax brackets. One of 10% for income up to $1m, then 80% for income over $1m. Dullards would argue that someone making $1,000,001 has to pay 80% to the government, and such is unconscionable. But that's not the persons effective rate because he only paid 10% on the first million.

Such is the argument today. The income brackets have risen and the tax brackets have lowered.

Again, not saying you're wrong. But your personal anecdote isn't really data... And a change in revenue as a percentage of income doesn't necessarily mean that the value of deductions in the overall code are the cause.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Fuck you.

Explain my political belief system since you are so cocksure as to what it is...

Then maybe, of you get it right, I'll tell you what I think about disability and the economy.

Your basic political philosophy is described here.

A couple of more specific items that pertain just to you:

• "Rules for thee, but not for me"
• "It's not 'racism' when *I* do it"
• "It's not 'racism' when my friends do it, either"

 

[RobDownSouth]

It takes it from you in other ways, namely inflation.

The Vettebigot delivers a hanging curveball, belt-high over the plate...DownSouth swings, there's a drive....it's OUTTA HERE! A tape measure home run!

Once again, it is my happy duty to inform you that the Vettebigot is absolutely 100% wrong.

The federal tax code has been indexed for inflation since the Tax Reform Act of 1986, preventing the dreaded "bracket creep" that used to erode people's purchasing power.

Now, having said that, one particular twist of the tax code that has NOT been indexed for inflation is the AMT (alternative minimum tax), which kicks in at $150,000 AGI. Needless to say, it's highly unlikely that Vetteman ever reached that threshold.

 

[koalabear]

Stocks slide on eurozone jitters

 

[eyer]

Former Treasury Official: QEs ‘Are Like Morphine’

A third round of quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve would be good for stocks but not real growth, former Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari told CNBC on Wednesday.

“We think QE3 would be good for the stock market, not necessarily for real economic growth. QEs are like morphine. It makes you feel better, makes the headlines look better, pushes up risk asset prices but doesn’t translate into real economic growth,” he said on “The Kudlow Report.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48234958

Friggin' statist junkies...

 

[bra_man69]

Another bubble that's going to pop

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

merc, stfu

What the hell are tax rates compared to pie slices of wealth?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48257611

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Golden Gateway to Dependency
By Mark Steyn, NRO
July 21, 2012

On the evidence of last week’s Republican campaign events, President Obama’s instant classic — “You didn’t build that” — is to Mitt Romney what that radioactive arachnid is to Spider-Man: It got under his skin, and, in an instant, the geeky stiff was transformed into a muscular Captain Capitalism swinging through the streets and deftly squirting his webbing all over Community-Organizerman. Rattled by the reborn Romney, the Obama campaign launched an attack on Romney’s attack on Obama’s attack on American business. First they showed Romney quoting Obama: “He said, ‘If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’” And then the Obama team moved in for the kill: “The only problem? That’s not what he said.”

Indeed. What Obama actually said was:

“If you’ve got a business, you, you didn’t build that. [Interjection by fawning supporters: “Yeeaaaaah!”] “Somebody else made that happen.”

Who you gonna believe bitch? Me? or your lying eyes?

The Golden Gate Bridge? As Reason’s Matt Welch pointed out, the Golden Gate cost at the time $35 million — or about $530 million today. So, for the cost of Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill alone, we could have had 1,567 Golden Gate Bridges. Where are they? Where are, say, the first dozen? If you laid 1,567 Golden Gate Bridges end to end, you’d have enough for one Golden Choom Bridge stretching from Obama’s Punahou High School in Honolulu over the Pacific all the way to his Occidental College in Los Angeles, so that his car-chooming chums can commute from one to the other without having to worry about TSA patdowns.

A stimulus bill equivalent to 1,567 Golden Gate bridges. A 2011 federal budget equivalent to 6,788 Golden Gate bridges. And yet we don’t have a single one.

Because that’s not what Big Government does: Money-no-object government spends more and more money for less and less objects. For all the American economy has to show for it, President Bob the Builder took just shy of a trillion dollars in stimulus, stuck it in his wheelbarrow, pushed it halfway across the Golden Gate bridge, and tossed it into the Pacific.

Instead of roads and bridges, Obama-sized government funds stasis and sclerosis: The Hoover Dam of regulatory obstruction, the Golden Gateway to dependency. Last month, 80,000 Americans signed on to new jobs, but 85,000 Americans signed on for Social Security disability checks. Most of these people are not “disabled” as that term is generally understood. Rather, it’s the U.S. economy that’s disabled, and thus Obama incentivizes dependency. What Big Government is doing to those 85,000 “disabled” is profoundly wicked. Let me quote a guy called Mark Steyn, from his last book:

The evil of such a system is not the waste of money but the waste of people. Tony Blair’s ministry discovered it was politically helpful to reclassify a chunk of the unemployed as “disabled”. A fit, able-bodied 40-year old who has been on disability allowance for a decade understands somewhere at the back of his mind that he is living a lie, and that not just the government but his family and his friends are colluding in that lie.

Millions of Americans have looked at the road ahead, and figured it goes nowhere. Best to pull off into the Social Security parking lot. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. As the president would say, you didn’t build the express check-in to the Disability Office. Government built it, and, because they built it, you came. In Obama’s “visions,” he builds roads and bridges. In reality, the president of Dependistan has put nothing but roadblocks in the path to opportunity and growth.

That he can build. That’s all he can build.