>> ^bobknight33:

Germany is the most financially secure country and that's because of their thrift.

So this would be the same Germany that has the world's oldest universal health care system, a top tax rate of 45%, some of the most liberal laws in europe for homosexuals and has a socialist party as one of the two main parties?

Sounds like a republican heaven!

From Wikipedia:

In June 2012, Carr's involvement in an alleged K2 tax avoidance scheme came to light after an investigation by The Times newspaper. The scheme is understood to involve UK earners "quitting" their job and signing new employment contracts with offshore shell companies based in the tax haven of Jersey.

Earlier in 2012 Carr had lampooned people who avoid tax during the second series of Channel 4's satirical news programme 10 O'Clock Live. A sketch from the show, in which he poked fun at the 1 per cent tax rate of Barclays Bank has now "come back to haunt him".

>> ^TheFreak:

If the day ever comes when I pay the top US tax rate I'm throwing a huge party for the check signing. Everyone's invited.
No one succeeds based on their own personal effort. Every individual success requires the combined efforts of a healthy, educated, functioning community. Those who benefit the most owe the most to their community.


Sounds nice, except for the corporate overlords raping the coffers and spending your top tax rate on generally evil things while escaping their own liability.

If the day ever comes when I pay the top US tax rate I'm throwing a huge party for the check signing. Everyone's invited.

No one succeeds based on their own personal effort. Every individual success requires the combined efforts of a healthy, educated, functioning community. Those who benefit the most owe the most to their community.

I think he makes some really good points. Not so sure about the God complex, but what he says about the middle class resonates. And the relative tax rates stuff.

@Mikus_Aurelius

I think the purpose of tax write-offs for donating to charities is simply to encourage more people to give to charity. People who don't normally contribute to charity might do so if it's going to drop them a tax bracket. I don't think that takes anything away from anybody--everybody wins when people contribute to the public good and government doesn't have to get involved in the process.

In my opinion, spending hundreds of billions of dollars killing brown people on the other side of the world while giving corporations a free ride (effective tax rates of zero in many cases), on the other hand, is what's taking money from the food/shelter/college budget of middle class families.

Dude, seriously?

>> ^quantumushroom:

Despicable as this was, the left is more eager to bury JFK's views on taxation.
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference
More JFK tax quotes here.

My point is in the end, it doesn't matter what the gov't spends borrowed money on in the slightest. I get what you're saying, but the wars, corporate subsidies, etc. happened regardless if you borrow money specifically for that, or don't borrow money and raid the Social Security trust fund. Assuming said wars and corp subsidies happen regardless, which is better, borrow sooner by not raiding the Social Security trust fund which is heading for insolvency anyway and pay more interest, or borrow later by raiding the Social Security trust fund. It doesn't matter once you're headed for a path of unsustainability. Even if Social Security lasted another several decades, it was headed for insolvency. And once the federal government headed for unsustainability, does it matter which folds first - social security or the rest of essential gov't programs? No.

If you raid the trust fund as a tactical mechanism in conjunction with other policies to make the federal gov't and Social Security solvent, it's a smart move because you'll save some interest by not borrowing as much money, or paying down already existent higher interest debt. That's sorta my point - the gov't reversed course under the Bush administration and didn't do that. That's the real problem here, not raiding the Social Security trust fund. Even making some allowances for needing a deficit during the recession, and revamping for intelligence and military apparatus to fight the war on terror, it didn't stop there with keeping the Bush tax cuts, the prescription drug benefit, and opening an unnecessary war with Iraq. But we can agree to disagree.

But honestly, the question about if it was right to raid the Social Security trust fund is moot in the context of this discussion because even without borrowing against the fund, the Clinton administration still ran surpluses during his second term. Republicans, desperate to prove Democrats are fiscally irresponsible, try like heck to say he didn't, but he did.

"But even if we remove Social Security from the equation, there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000. So any way you count it, the federal budget was balanced and the deficit was erased, if only for a while...

Other readers have noted a USA Today story stating that, under an alternative type of accounting, the final four years of the Clinton administration taken together would have shown a deficit. This is based on an annual document called the "Financial Report of the U.S. Government," which reports what the governments books would look like if kept on an accrual basis like those of most corporations, rather than the cash basis that the government has always used. The principal difference is that under accrual accounting the government would book immediately the costs of promises made to pay future benefits to government workers and Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. But even under accrual accounting, the annual reports showed surpluses of $69.2 billion in fiscal 1998, $76.9 billion in fiscal 1999, and $46 billion for fiscal year 2000. So even if the government had been using that form of accounting the deficit would have been erased for those three years."

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/

The Clinton Administration ran a surplus, period.

>> ^bmacs27:

@heropsycho
I couldn't disagree more. First of all, interest was still being paid on that same debt. The mechanism of using the social security surplus to finance the general fund was to purchase interest bearing treasury securities with the payroll tax. Now, people like you talk about those securities as though they aren't bonds at all and that interest isn't owed on that debt. That's the problem. The working class bought into a higher tax rate under the auspices that it was a retirement savings plan. Now public perception is robbing them of their interest because of Clinton's biff. If the payroll tax contributes interest-free to costly wars, corporatist subsidies, and theocratic pandering, then fold it into the progressive income tax and we can have a real conversation about paying our fair share.
You can probably smell that I'm a progressive, and thus would be inclined to support the Clintons. I just think this was one move where Reagan's scheming scored one for his team.

@heropsycho

I couldn't disagree more. First of all, interest was still being paid on that same debt. The mechanism of using the social security surplus to finance the general fund was to purchase interest bearing treasury securities with the payroll tax. Now, people like you talk about those securities as though they aren't bonds at all and that interest isn't owed on that debt. That's the problem. The working class bought into a higher tax rate under the auspices that it was a retirement savings plan. Now public perception is robbing them of their interest because of Clinton's biff. If the payroll tax contributes interest-free to costly wars, corporatist subsidies, and theocratic pandering, then fold it into the progressive income tax and we can have a real conversation about paying our fair share.

You can probably smell that I'm a progressive, and thus would be inclined to support the Clintons. I just think this was one move where Reagan's scheming scored one for his team.

I like your answer.

It's interesting that the average tax rate paid by the companies in your study was almost exactly the 30% corporate tax rate in Australia.

The U.S. tax system would be progressive in a world where everybody draws a salary, which is their only income stream, and where anyone earning more than the national average refuses to take their allowable tax deductions. As this is not the situation people generally describe, I'll assume your system isn't quite as progressive as your answer, talking only about federal income tax, tried to imply.

Your point about the lower 50% of wage earners paying 5% of Income taxes also fails to prove that the system is progressive, due to wage disparity. Assume a regressive system where you pay 50% tax until your income reaches $100,000, then a rate of 5% applies. If you have a population of 100 people, 99 of whom earn 5 dollars per annum and one earns $1,000,000 per annum: $2.5 x 99 = $247.50, $50,000 x 1 = $50,000, the total tax is $50,247.50 and the bottom 50% in a regressive system have paid 0.25% of the total taxes.

Most western democracies have laws trying to prevent the corporate cronyism you point out as the real problem, with varying degrees of success. Super-pac's for instance would be illegal in most parts of the world.
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

[...]

That's not what progressive means, in this context. A progressive tax system is one where you pay a (progressively) higher rate when you have more income.

The US Income Tax is a Progressive tax, exactly as you described and exactly what I said. Since our current tax code has the bottom 50% of wage-earners paying only 5% of the Income taxes, than that's a Progressive system. I nailed exactly what it meant. Whatever you're saying here sounds like a distinction without a difference.

I know that quite a few of your companies weasel their way out of paying any tax at all, but I don't know how many overall manage this.

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/accounting/papers/Hanlon.pdf

Yup. It happens. This particular study suggests that once a company becomes 'big', they find ways to jigger the system to the point where they are paying around 20%. Obama just dropped the corporate tax from a staggering 35% to a more realistic 28%. Hopefully that will make it so companies are compliant, rather than gaming the system to get around the "too high" rate that previously existed.

However, the real problem is in companies that are getting massive political payola. Every administration has companies like this. For Obama, it is sleaze-mongers like Immelt and GE who are pushing the bologna that is "Green Energy", which Obama likes - so he gives them so many tax breaks and subsidies that they paid ZERO taxes in 2011. Not to mention they also got massive subsidy payments on top of it. It is that kind of bogusity that ticks people off.

A reasonable corporate tax rate is fine. Set it at a decent level - say 22% - and get rid of the loopholes, subsidies, foreign incorporation, and all the other gimmicks. I dont' have a beef with "taxes" in general. I have a beef with taxes that are too high, and tax codes that encourage modern patronage.

That's not what progressive means, in this context. A progressive tax system is one where you pay a (progressively) higher rate when you have more income. What you have is a regressive tax system.

Do you happen to know what percentage of U.S. companies actually pay tax at the stated high rate? How does that compare to other countries? I know that quite a few of your companies weasel their way out of paying any tax at all, but I don't know how many overall manage this.

The ancient Roman empire also had social welfare, of a sort, increased after 122 B.C. See http://www.roman-empire.net/society/society.html for an overview. Then, as now, it was expensive to run.

The comparison is actually quite fair, except that in ancient Rome it was expected that wealthy citizens would give back to society and the idea of unbounded avarice as a virtue would have been quite foreign to them... so in a sense it's back to front.
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Not quite sure how comparing that to the US economy makes any sense. The US has the highest corporate tax rate on Planet Earth now. We have very high capital gains taxes (compared to global averages). Our income tax is so "Progressive" right now that the bottom 50% of taxpayers only pay 5% of the taxes. Over 75% of the Federal Government's 1.6 trillion dollar budget is dedicated to social programs for the poor.
Only way comparing it to the vid makes sense if if you contextualize it by stating that it is the GOVERNMENT that is deciding the screw the poor by the process of its own incredible incompetence, malfeasence, and mismanagement. Since only about 20 cents on the dollar comes 'out' of government versus what goes in, then yes - the U.S. Federal Government is entirely oriented around screwing the poor.
But of course, that's not what Prog-Lib-Dytes mean. To a leftist, the video means "tax breaks for the rich" ... (insert liberal talking point) et al.

Not quite sure how comparing that to the US economy makes any sense. The US has the highest corporate tax rate on Planet Earth now. We have very high capital gains taxes (compared to global averages). Our income tax is so "Progressive" right now that the bottom 50% of taxpayers only pay 5% of the taxes. Over 75% of the Federal Government's 1.6 trillion dollar budget is dedicated to social programs for the poor.

Only way comparing it to the vid makes sense if if you contextualize it by stating that it is the GOVERNMENT that is deciding the screw the poor by the process of its own incredible incompetence, malfeasence, and mismanagement. Since only about 20 cents on the dollar comes 'out' of government versus what goes in, then yes - the U.S. Federal Government is entirely oriented around screwing the poor.

But of course, that's not what Prog-Lib-Dytes mean. To a leftist, the video means "tax breaks for the rich" ... (insert liberal talking point) et al.

Did you not read what I wrote? I'm pretty sure I said the national debt is a problem. My issue with you is your rationale for the national debt is overly simplistic and utterly ridiculous. OH NOEZ! The average taxpayer owes 137K if the national debt is broken down per taxpayer, and the overwhelming majority of Americans don't have 137K lying around to pay that. Say, do most Americans have 50K laying around? No. So if the debt were cut in third roughly, surely it wouldn't be a problem. See? The rationale doesn't hold up. Most Americans don't have 10K laying around either, but if that were the debt per taxpayer, the national debt wouldn't be a problem. Not to mention the fact that wealth is concentrated in this country, too. Granted, most people don't have 137K laying around, but you know who has millions upon millions laying around? Guys like Warren Buffett, Mitt Romney, etc. etc. The stat you threw out doesn't mean a damn thing. It just sounds bad.

That's the kind of crap that makes discussing something like this with you utterly impossible. You don't care if the national debt is truly a problem. You WANT it to be a big problem that must be dealt with immediately, and THE ONLY WAY to deal with it is... survey says... reduce spending. NO TAX INCREASES!!! EVER!!!

It's a pointless discussion. You've already made up your mind the national debt is a problem that must be dealt with like a crisis, with only one way to deal with it. Any rational person would look at this issue and conclude that even if it is huge problem, (which by the way, since you can't apparently read, I DO think it's a problem, but does not need to be dealt with in extreme measures, or unilaterally with spending cuts only) cutting spending isn't the only solution. I also know that we've run up historical deficits in our past and came out the other end a stronger nation. I also know that the vast majority of the current deficit has been caused by the Iraqi and Afghan wars, by the Bush tax cuts (which actually caused more debt than those wars did, and a collapsing economy.

Comparison between POLICIES of Bush vs Obama as contributors to the national debt:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2/24editorial_graph2-popup.gif

Sorry, but that's the truth. The reality is we spent ourselves out in two wars and cutting taxes to ridiculous proportions.

As a side note, I just did my taxes. I'm married with no kids, my wife doesn't work due to medical reasons. I make $122,000/yr in a lower than average cost of living area. You know what my effective federal tax rate was? 10%! How in the hell can the federal gov't do what it needs to do when I'm paying 10% effective federal tax rate?! It's absurd. And it's not like I was hell bound to escape paying taxes. My deductions? $5000 in wife's traditional IRA contribution, state income taxes, mortgage interest, and some charitable donations. I benefited also from 401k contributions and a Flexible Spending Account program.

Unless you're willing to go on record and say GDP cannot be raised significantly from where it is today in the next 5 years, which would increase tax revenues to make up for much of the deficits we're running today, you don't have a leg to stand on. I'm not in favor of cutting any gov't spending that would jeopardize significantly economic growth in the short run. Therefore, I don't think we can cut a whole lot of spending right now, and we'll unfortunately have to run very large deficits in the short run. However, once the economy grows significantly, we will need to cut spending at that point, and run substantial surpluses for awhile to get the debt more manageable again.

That is what we've done in the past, and it worked when facing very severe economic downturns. Call me crazy, but I look at history and see what worked, and follow that path.

>> ^bobknight33:

From you example of going into debt for war sake is a nice comparison. In today's terms we spent 1 trillion on the Bush war and and a fair amount on Obama continuation of the wars. If we were only in 1 - 2 trillion of debt that's one thing but we are hitting 16 Trillion dollars of debt. That is a whole different kind of debt.
Like I said earlier our government has currently cause each of us to incur a bill of 50K per man woman and child or 137K per taxpayer. Who of us can pay that debt back? Not Me and surly not you.

You basically don't see this as a problem so I ask you when does it become a problem?

It's never a all of nothing...

Do I agree that, in the best or worlds, education should be free. Absolutely.

Do I think that, in the financial situation this province is in, it's realistic to protest against a tuition hike that still will make it (one of) the lowest tuition in North America? Absolutely not.

We have a bunch of problems to solve - including waste government spending etc...and I'd love nothing better than to have a free education system...but as it is, we have the highest income tax rate in Canada (probably North America), we have debt issue, health system issues, etc. It just is not realistic at this point.

Have a little protest to make your point, and move on. Get some concession to have a bit better bursaries to help those students that need it, sure. Have a 200k protest where you jam up everybody during rush hour, close bridges, etc...I'm sorry, that justs feels like first world problems to me.

Do I have any evidence or polling about who agrees with the protesters...no. That's just based on what you hear on the street/news - which isn't scientific, of course...but I'd bet that there's a greater likelihood that it's the correct situation than not.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Tokoki:
Students protesting about tuition hikes...when they have the cheapest tuition in all of North America!
Typically, when a group is protesting about something, you find a decent part of the general population that agrees with them. In this particular case...pretty much everyone here agrees that they're out in left field on this - including most of the other students who were actually trying to go to school.

Ummm why would you think this? Just because it's cheaper there than it is in America doesn't make it right. Higher education like community colleges should be free. Mexico has free state schools that are comparable to American ones across the border...yet they're free in a poor country and in a rich country they'r not. Does that seem right?
Also why not present some evidence or polling about who does and doesn't agree with these protesters.