1) i'd like to know what unskilled labor jobs the government pays 100k/yr

I'm happy to expand your mind.

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/overpaid-federal-workers

Keep in mind that the bulk of these jobs are make-work jobs and bureaucrats who serve no function except to warm a chair and internacinely war for budget share of the federal pie. There's tons more. Teacher union administrators, the construction worker supervisor who stands around 90% of the day, and on and on and on. Even a cursory google search will bag you thousands on thousands of federal and state employees that are unskilled, overpaid leeches on the economy.

2) the solvency of pensions/health care is quite well documented

Supply the data proving that. The Postal Service is due to collapse in November because it can't pay its operating costs AND keep up the retirement benefits of its retirees. Social Security isn't solvent. Medicare isn't solvent. Medicaid isn't solvent. The benefit programs of federal employees is banked entirely on debt spending. "Solvency" is when the program is in the black.

i know you've been led to believe that only private business could figure out a way to make it work, but who instituted these services in the first place?

Private companies. Long before 'government' ever came along, private individuals performed these tasks for money or goods. Government apes private companies - not the other way around. And 99 times out of 100, government does a lousy job at them because they don't operate logically. Case in point...

the education thing just BLOWS my mind

Yes - I have no difficulty believing that a person steeped in leftist theory would have a hard time understanding the concept that education can take place quite easily and well without government subsidies. The best colleges are private, and people who go to private shools (or are homeschooled) do just as well (or better) than students in public schools. And our public schools do such a good job, don't they? Regardless, I don't have a problem with government providing a "School". I have a problem with government meddling in cirriculum, and the associated teacher's union. Have the government provide the 'school', and then get out of the way.

its CLASS WARFARE when the victim speaks up and demands justice

First - there's no victim here. Second, it is class warfare when pinheads like Obama and his supporters talk out both sides of their mouths, lie, and deceive on this issue. Buffet didn't pay 'less than his secretary' on his income - he paid MORE - but he and Obama are lying and equating capital gains as income as a means to raise taxes NOT on "millionaires", but on the middle class. THAT is class warfare.

"Bailing out the rich". Pht - what a crock. Obumma is only wanting to bail out government, which has overspent and overpromised and he wants to sock it to the middle class. If he was serious then he's freeze all government spending today to 2011 levels and keep them there until the system was in the black. Then he'd pass a balanced budget ammendment and everyone would praise him as the greatest president ever. But no - he's a leftist idiot and all he wants is to raise taxes in a recession - which even he said was a stupid thing to do. Stupid is as stupid does - and the stupid people that agree with it.

Nice thumbnail pic. Seems somebody has an obsession.. it just gets under your skin he's not a fraud like your political heroes, huh?

You do realize that being a millionaire and having yearly income of $1 Mil are two different things right?

Wasn't Buffet's argument that he pays less taxes than his secretary because he doesn't have "income"? He only pays a capital gains tax of 15%? lolz So who's the clueless jackass that came up with the name "Buffet Rule" for a tax on high income earners?

And why the arbitrary number $1 Million? Why not $500k, or $50k? Does it really matter anyway? The Income tax was passed using wealth envy propaganda (pay their "fair share"). It originally started out only taxing the top 1% of income earners. But it quickly expanded once the government had their foot in the door (or hands in our wallets). There wouldn't be a need for income tax if we didn't still have to pay interest on money we borrowed that was created from nothing almost a century ago. Of course we can't pay off that false debt, because it's physically impossible.

What's even more fucked up about this whole thing is the ultra rich are always going to be given exceptions, rebates, loopholes, tax shelters, etc. Taxing "millionaires" is taxing small business owners that file their business gross income on their personal income returns. It completely ignores the criminals that have already made millions on Wall street through fraud and collusion. And it gives a pass to the crooks that are doing that now.

What if we actually did something constructive like list the millionaire politicians who REFUSE to prosecute Wall Street fraud. Isn't that the real reason we are here? Is taxing "millionaires" going to fix the problem?

The government has made it official policy not to prosecute fraud, and instead to do everything necessary to cover up for Wall Street.


William K. Black: This is the greatest financial crime in the history of the world and no one senior, at any of the major places that drove the crisis, has gone to jail?
...
Unless something dramatic or radical changes, this is going to be the greatest case of elite fraud with impunity in the history of the world. And it is only going to change if we express our outrage as the people and demand that it is changed.

Top 1% pays 22.7% of Federal taxes and have 17% of the income. The bottom 90% pay 47.8% with 59.8% of all income. Those numbers are based on verifiable fact

So? Rejigger and you can say, "The bottom 75% pay 32% of the taxes with 45.7% of all income. Any way you slice it, the 'wealthy' are paying the lion's share of the taxes, with a smaller percentage of the nation's total wealth. The rich are paying their fair share and then some.

It has always been that way and I defy you to find a time and place in history when things worked differently

First things first. Your entire premise is wrong. The Bush tax cuts were not "Tax cuts for the rich". They were tax cust for EVERYONE. It is only the neoliberal spin echo-chamber, zombie brains of leftists that calls them 'tax cuts for the rich'. Any sensible, fair analysis proves conclusively that the 'rich' ended up paying an even HIGHER percentage of the tax burden after the Bush cuts. THe only way any person can possibly believe they were 'for the rich' is if they turn their brains off, become absolute simpletons, and look ONLY at the total dollars rather than at the whole picture of what happened.

You guys on the left are going to have to face some reality at some point. Any tax 'cut' is going to overwhelmingly favor 'the rich' because they are the ones paying the taxes. The poor and middle class are either paying zero taxes, or get a tax refund every year.

You neolibs aren't targeting the 'rich'. You are targeting the upper-middle class. Yeah - REAL "progessive" of you jerks to go along with Obama's marxist rhetoric and try to kneecap folks that earn a piddly 200,000 a year. Oooo - yeah - those are "rich guys" who "aren't paying their fair share". You guys are a bunch of jackhats, you know that? Those 200K a year guys are small business owners who live paycheck to paycheck just as much as the poor do.

And Obama and Buffet are total @$$es for lying to the entire country and trying to pass off capital gains as if it was the same thing as income. Really, just goes to show how much neolibs have to warp reality in order to try to sucker the stupid and the intellectually weak. It is to Videosift's complete and utter shame that it has such high percentage of dupes who are so easily manipulated by lies and class warfare rhetoric.

Agreed that this is how it FEELS, primarily because everyone is familiar with the 'marginal tax rate' in which more income moves you up to a higher bracket.

This is also a very easy story to tell, and wealthier people are effectively 'louder' than poorer people.

In reality, the U.S. government incentivizes investment with lower taxation... Netrunner mentioned this as lower taxes on capital gains, meaning money you make from simply investing is not taxed as much as money you make from actually working; wealthy people take full advantage of this, to-be-sure, and this incentive does drive investment.

One-thing-to-add; although the non-wealthy are individually less able to invest, the capital gains tax is also tiered into brackets, just like the income tax, so that if you are in the lowest income bracket you pay 0% of any "long-term" investment income in capital gains taxes (in 2011). Obviously though its hard for people scraping by to feel confident enough in their financial position to take advantage of this.




>> ^quantumushroom:

The 'factory owner' paid for all those tax-paid services (military, police, fire protection, roads) at a higher rate than the average taxpayer.
Attention liberals: do not tie the basics of society to unAmerican socialist claptrap and confiscatory taxation.

Youre missing it entirely....the percentage those top 10% pay, is like 15%...where everyone else is paying 45%.

Capital gains tax as the only form of income tax paid is obscene...income is income, shouldn't matter where it comes from.

Drachen, it sounds like your beef with the rich is that they "hoard" money rather than pump it back into the economy. Your solution, then, it to increase the capital gains tax rate (what Obama is promoting in this video)? As a hypothetical rich person, I have two options as far as what to do with my money. I can put it into a safe but low-interest bank account or I can invest in capital (stock market, real estate, etc), where on average I stand to earn a greater interest rate but where I also put my money at much greater risk. If you disincentivize the latter with an increased capital gains tax rate, you are going to divert funds from being invested into the economy toward Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool.

And in case there is any confusion, rich people are not taxed at a lower net rate than poor people on INCOME. Rich people in the U.S. pay 39.6 cents on every dollar they make in income over $250,000 after deductions, while those who make less $39,600 after deductions are taxed at 15 cents to the dollar. However, traditionally, capital gains (as opposed to income) have been taxed at 15% flat. Why should capital gains be taxed at a lower rate than income? Arguments include:

1. Investment in capital is an investment in the economy. It is encouraged with a lower capital gains tax rate.
2. Money must first be earned as income before it can be invested. Therefore it has already been taxed. Capital gains tax in essence is a taxation on already taxed money.
3. Investment is risky, bringing in a salary is not. Risk averse spenders will not take risks unless they are incentivized to do so. But it is essential to the growth of our economy that this risk be taken. Refer to point 1.

>> ^quantumushroom:

The 'factory owner' paid for all those tax-paid services (military, police, fire protection, roads) at a higher rate than the average taxpayer.

No, he didn't. Capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes.

For average taxpayers, payroll tax is the biggest share of their tax burden, followed by sales tax, followed by income tax.

For the wealthy, their tax burden is mostly split between income tax and capital gains, and since capital gains is significantly lower than income tax, they do their best to rearrange their income so it comes in as capital gains.

That's how Warren Buffet's secretary winds up paying a higher effective rate than Warren Buffet.

It is really easy to fall into the trap of believe the philosophy of trickle down economics, but as Warren says the facts have never born this out.

Every time taxes are cut, it results in an increase in tax revenues because it increases personal wealth, which creates more tax payers, and establishes an environment that gives the private sector confidence. Carter’s 70% top marginal tax rates and leftist liberal policies brought the nation to fiscal collapse. Buffett has it 100% backwards. Taxes cut. Tax revenues up. It works every time. That’s why even OBAMA didn’t want to end the Bush tax cuts – because he himself admitted it would hurt the economy in December 2010. Neolibs like to ignore that particular bit of Obama rhetoric - but I do not forget such things...

Buffet believes that there should be two or three more levels to the tax code and that capital gains taxes should be graduated to appropriately tax the super rich who make money with money.

The problem is not that there isn’t a bigger tax category at the top. We’ve had a rate as high as 94% back in 1944. It was 70% under Carter. The problem is a labyrinthine tax code that people can game by moving money & assets around. We just need to simplify the code to eliminate the exemptions for businesses and the ‘money’ rich. There’s no need for a new, higher top marginal tax rate. The ‘rich’ already pay the bulk of our taxes.

Like him or not, Clinton's economic policies navigated our country to tremendous economic prosperity.

No. Clinton was nothing a serviceable – but barnacle-covered – rudder. He didn’t screw up what was already going well. That isn’t great praise, but it still makes him a better CiC than Bush2 or Obama. Bush1 was the guy that raised the taxes. Clinton merely coasted along on the dot-com bubble. Oh, and also the Republican “Contact with America” was forced down Clinton’s throat. And he had a few impeachable offenses that prevented him from pushing more spending. The GOP cut spending, which created an environment friendly for the business community to create prosperity. You can thank fiscal conservatives for the 90s and early 00s – not Clinton.

Sometimes doing the right thing means doing something unpleasant.

Yes – cutting big-government social spending in favor of small-government freedom-oriented systems is seen as unpleasant, but it is the right thing to do.

Dude, nobody in this thread is advocating a tax rate of 80% … Why is a moderate increase on tax rates paramount to pure socialism and gov't control on the economy?

I wryly notice that the actual QUESTION I posed remains stubbornly ignored. What would happen IF (!IF!) the tax rate at the top went to 70% ala Carter? Or 94% ala Roosevelt? Would the problems be solved? I think even the most dyed-in-the-wool neolib knows deep down in their reluctant-to-admit souls that high top marginal tax rates do not solve anything. Even a 100% tax rate does not come within 16.9 trillion (heh) miles of the real problem. Every thin dime of the new taxes would just vanish into a black hole, and the debt/deficit would not be touched except in name. We have precedence for this conclusion.

Tax hikes take place immediately, but the spending cuts are always pushed 10 years into the future where they disappear. Our tax rates are already high enough. Our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. The issue is the huge amount of SPENDING taking place.

I hope this simple explanation helps all the neolibs out… Our current debt is 16.9 trillion dollars.

1. A simple federal budget freeze on spending to current 2011 levels would cut our debt by 10 trillion in 10 years.
2. Increasing the top marginal tax rate to 100% would cut the debt by 2 trillion in 10 years

Simple freeze? 10 trillion. A ridiculous 100% tax rate? Only 2 trillion. Where does that tell you the real problem lies? Fussing with tax rates at the top is nothing but rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The iceberg is spending.

Warren Buffet is saying that people who make more than a $1000K a year need to pay more than 15%. He advocates returning to the Clinton tax rates. And he thinks that job creation occurs when the rich are taxed and the middle class is supported by a lower tax rate.

You should read his NY Times article. It is really easy to fall into the trap of believe the philosophy of trickle down economics, but as Warren says the facts have never born this out. The truth is the economy grows more when the middle class (incomes less than $500K) are taxed at a lower rate than the upper class (greater than $500K). Buffet believes that there should be two or three more levels to the tax code and that capital gains taxes should be graduated to appropriately tax the super rich who make money with money.

Like him or not, Clinton's economic policies navigated our country to tremendous economic prosperity. We need to tax the rich. It is our only hope along with leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. Two wars were never economically sustainable. Sometimes doing the right thing means doing something unpleasant.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Why is it morally justified to impose a higher tax rate on the more highly paid? I'm already paying twenty people's worth.. Why should it be more?

I think his beef is really with the capital gains tax and other loopholes for the superdupermegarich.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:


Socialism doesn’t work. European governments across the spectrum are being forced to increase privatization and cut social benefits in order to stave of fiscal collapse. When BM glowing describes all the great stuff European countries have (health care etc…) he totally ignores report after report after report of these so-called ‘services’ being abject, utter, complete failures. The UK health care system is being forced to ration SURGERIES (IE death panels) or collapse. Spain, Greece, Italy, France, UK, Germany, Portugal… The list of European socialist nations tottering on the edge of failure and having to pass ‘austerity measures’ to survive is myriad.

Ouch. That's pretty damning. Shame it's not true.

The problem with the NHS in the UK is lack of funding, caused by (surprise, surprise) Thatcher. Most people in the UK, while critical of some of the ways the NHS is run are broadly supportive of the concept, and almost every country with socialised medicine views the US system as backward at best and barbaric at worst.

As for Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Ireland, they were poor countries to begin with and their problems have much less to do with socialism than they do with rampant borrowing (i.e. capitalism). In fact, Ireland is one of the worst off economies and it has nothing close to a socialist government. All it's problems are down to banks loaning property developers ludicrous sums of money in the hope of short term capital gain. Hmmm, that doesn't sound like a socialist issue to me. Meanwhile France and Germany are still strong economies, and the Scandinavian socialist countries continue to rate high in every metric we have for measuring society. The main problems that Germany is facing are due to having to pay for the idiocies of other countries in the EU.


>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Maher calling Palin a retard is like a severed head calling Cain Velasquez a cripple.


No, anyone calling Palin a retard is like any sane person calling a retard a retard.

In the end, I generally agree with you, but I don't think it's accurate that the debt crisis is resolved by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Tax increase would obviously help, but it won't solve it alone.

The debt crisis was born of a few factors:

-Stimulus package (temp, self-correcting since it's ending)
-Massive increase in federal spending in the 2000's bread by two wars, homeland security, senior drug benefit, medicare, medicaid
-Tax revenue declines due to Bush tax cuts
-Sudden sharp declines in income and capital gains tax revenues due to economic collapse

We can't solve the whole thing by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. In fact, I would argue the first step in resolving it is get the economy back on track to increase income tax revenues naturally as the unemployment rate would fall, and pay would increase. I would also argue that we're gonna have to massively cut defense spending at some point. This could be done many different ways, such as pulling out of Iraq and/or Afghanistan, etc. But it's gonna have to be done at some point, although it maybe difficult to do in the short run. That leaves us with what is currently being debated by Congress and the President. I'm actually pretty perplexed that they're prioritizing the debt issue without first remedying the economy. I think the debt is a very important issue, but I also don't believe it will be resolved until unemployment returns to more normal rates, unless we're refusing to acknowledge what leaders may already know - it ain't gonna get better for a long long time regardless of what the gov't does, so we might as well stop adding to the debt.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
What we really need is a law that says no member of congress shall be allowed to receive any money from any lobbying firm, business or individual who is a high-level employee (board member type guys) of any large company worth over "x" amount of dollars. Loopholes need to be closed, but social programs also need to be cut or seriously re-vamped. What REALLY needs to happen is to close behemoth and redundant federal offices that are better left to states or that sates already have.

Well, I'd definitely love to see some sort of reform aimed at the outright bribery we see going on in government. I'm not sure how we get that to happen, though.
As far as the debt goes, my opinion is that all the Congress can do in 2011 is set the budget for 2011 and 2012. Come 2013, it'll be a new Congress, and possibly a new President. There will be another new Congress in 2015, and another in 2017, plus a definite non-Obama President in the White House.
A little mentioned fact about this debt "crisis" is that all we need to do to balance the budget is for Congress to do nothing. No more Doc fixes, no more AMT patches, no more extension of the Bush tax cuts, etc. If we just let current law play out as it was written, the budget problem will no longer be an issue.
Even if congress doesn't do that, fixing our health care system has always been the real problem with the long-term budget. If we could get our medical costs down to just the level of the second-most expensive country in the world (Germany), then we'd be seeing big budget surpluses year after year. Maybe the HCR bill passed will do that once it's all in effect (in 2017!), but it's way too early to be putting those into the budget estimates. Maybe by 2020 we'll find out that we've actually put ourselves on track to be cheaper than Germany, and our budget picture will look really awesome.
I say we just focus on getting people back to work right now, and worry about the long-term debt in the long-term, especially since it might not actually be a problem in the long-term.

[Interviewer]: So, what do you think? Good versus evil. We’re playing out the debt struggle and the debt ceiling issue. And if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we’ll be in the apocalypse. What do you make of it all?

HUDSON: I think it’s evil working with evil.... If you have to choose between paying Social Security and Wall Street, pay our clients, Wall Street.

***

What’s inefficient? Paying for people on Medicaid. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Medicare. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Paying Social Security. What is efficient? Giving $13 trillion to Wall Street for a bailout. Now, how on earth can the administration say, in the last three years we have given $13 trillion to Wall Street, but then, in between 2040 and 2075, we may lose $1 trillion, no money for the people?
***

It’s not about the debt ceiling. It’s about making an agreement now under an emergency conditions. You remember what Obama’s staff aide Rahm Emanuel said. He said a crisis is too important to waste. They’re using this crisis as a chance to ram through a financial policy, an anti-Medicare, anti-Medicaid, anti—selling out Social Security that they could never do under the normal course of things.

***

They’re not going to cut back the war in Libya.

***

They’re going to have to decide what to cut back. So they’re going to cut back the bone and they’re going to keep the fat, basically. They’re going to say–they’re going to try to panic the population into acquiescing in a Democratic Party sellout by cutting back payments to the people–Social Security, Medicare–while making sure that they pay the Pentagon, they pay the foreign aid, they pay Wall Street.

[Interviewer]: Yeah. But what–I hear you. But what I’m–I’m saying, what could be an alternative policy? For example, don’t raise the debt ceiling. Number two, raise taxes on the wealthy. Number three, cut back military spending. I mean, there are ways to do this without having to borrow more money, aren’t there?

HUDSON: Of course.
***

Of course they could cut back the fat. Of course what they should do is change the tax system. Of course they should get rid of the Bush tax cuts. And the one good thing in President Obama’s speech two days ago was he used the term spending on tax cuts. So that’s not the same thing as raising taxes. He said just cut spending by cutting spending on tax cuts for the financial sector, for the speculators who count all of their income that they get, billions of income, as capital gains, taxed at 15 percent instead of normal income at 35 percent. Let’s get rid of the tax loopholes that favor Wall Street.

***

Mr. Obama has always known who has been contributing primarily to his political campaigns. We know where his loyalties lie now. And, basically, he promised change because that’s what people would vote for, and he delivered the change constituency to the campaign contributors...

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

Look at the top three. Are the rich (aka the top 1%) universally callous a-holes? No.

Are a statistically significant number of them hoarding a disproportionate helping of the gains achieved through productivity increases over a the last few decades? Yes.

Is that trend happening very, very quickly right now? Yes.

Oh, and about the above back and forth about tax rates, actual tax revenue as a share of GDP is lower than ever right now, personal income tax rates are lower than they've been since the 1920's, capital gains tax rate is lower than it's been since the 1920's, and the effective corporate tax rate (i.e. once you account for exemptions) is about 25%, which is well below the OECD average.

So yes, taxes are lower than ever here in the US.
>> ^quantumushroom:

Part of your writing is about what happened and the rest is about what you believe. Are the rich universally callous a-holes who care nothing about their employees? Some are like that, others ain't. Capitalism is like a military tank; it's better to be riding in the turret than getting caught under the treads.

This is an edited excerpt of something I wrote elsewhere --

A tax example:

Married filing joint. Dividend income from US corporations of $80,000. You know how much tax this couple pays?

$200. I swear to God.

If that same couple had wage income? Then they would pay $8,400 in income taxes, plus an additional $6,100 in payroll taxes, for a total of $14,500.

I did a return for a married couple who had TAXABLE income of $70,000, after standard deduction and exemptions of $16,000, who paid $3,000 in tax. In other words, income of $89,000 paying $3,000 in tax. Had a $50,000 capital gain, all of which was taxed at ZERO TAX RATE. Zero. ZERO.

Say thanks for the deficit, George W Bush.