More taxes coming........

[Dr. Keith]

So returning to pre-Bush tax levels will be devastating to the economy? How come the economy wasn't devastated during the Clinton administration?

Yes, I do think it's a good thing.

Agreed. And let's not forget the tax rates under Saint Ronald.

 

[wastepanel]

Yes, but that's unrealistic, frankly. Not even households abide by that standard, or you'd never be able to get a car or a mortgage. When people talk about deficit spending, they're generally talking about the government selling bonds to raise money now that they don't have in the current tax revenues. That's more-or-less exactly how my mortgage works; I can afford to live in a house that costs well more than my annual salary for some tiny fraction of my take home pay. The difference is that I will be buying one house but paying for it for thirty years.

And, frankly, deficit spending is good for the economy; on the macroeconomic level, it expands the money supply and encourages investment. In times of financial trouble (like the current times) deficit spending can even be a necessity. (This is true for households as well; if you don't have a dime in the bank, but your car needs $1000 worth of repairs, put it on the VISA card. That's a better option than losing your job because you can't get to work.)

And conversely, if the government did run a surplus,.... where would it put it? The government running a surplus would actually take money out of the economy and produce deflation,... which is bad. (It wouldn't be as bad right now, because the government could plough the current surplus into the accumulated long-term debt, but what happens when the debt is paid off and the surplus continues?)

Of course, you can have too much of a good thing, and deficit spending is one of those things you can have too much of. But that's true of water, too, as the Pakistanis are finding out.

So deficit spending is like a check cashing business on the corner? "I get paid on Friday, but I have expenses now!"

So what happens next month when the $1000 credit card bill is due? Do you cut spending to pay this bill, or borrow more to not skip a beat? If deficit spending is the only answer, your debt will continue to rise.

 

[Loss Leader]

Is there anybody here who thinks this is a good thing???????

I don't think that it's a good thing for Bush to have passed a bunch of tax cuts by lying about their overall impact. Sunset clauses were built into them so that budget estimates would show them as having only a limited impact on future defecits. However, the people who passed them never intended for the taxes to sunset and assumed that they would be renewed by a later administration.

Why did they make this assumption? Because otherwise, the later administration could be accused of raising taxes, a false claim that certainly would look true.

So now, Obama has to either let these tax breaks expire as per their own terms and look like he's raising taxes. Or, he has to resubmit the tax cuts even though it would be further devastating to our bottom line at a time when the government needs the money.

 

[drkitten]

When it comes to government spending, everything is now an emergency. It's like me saying "I can't cut back on groceries! We need to eat!" when I spent $100 the night before drinking and $300 the day before on clothes for my kids. You have to look at all the expenses and put them into perspective.

There is a lot of waste in the government. If spending is cut and taxes raised, it will create a surplus. That surplus can be used to pay for things like speeding glaciers, paying down debt, and boat attacks. It just depends on what priority you set to this.

Paying down debt is very important, but you shouldn't leave yourself cash strapped for emergencies. A rainy day amount should be set aside (although politically bad) for extraordinary items. With this fund established, there won't be as much of a need for credit when emergencies arise.

Er, no.

First of all, while it's a very common meme that "there's a lot of waste in government," no one has actually been able to find it. It turns out simply to be a Republican talking point, but the fact is that the government is in fact a very good steward of our money, precisely because there are so many tax activists who will go through every line of every agency's budget looking for something they can ridicule. Even the much vaunted "earmarks" total only about $15 billion. Out of a three and a half trillion dollar budget, that's works out to be something like one-half of one percent.

What "waste in goverment" usually ends up meaning is "programs that I personally don't like, despite the fact that they're very popular among a group to which I don't happen to belong.

Where do you expect to find enough "waste" to make a significant dent in a $500 billion dollar annual deficit or a $13 trillion total debt?

Second, no, it's not the case that everything in government is an emergency; by far the largest categories of Federal spending are three stable and predictable expenses -- Social Security, Medicare, and defense. The problem is that there are serious political risks involved in cutting expenditures in any of these areas, so people end up arguing about "bridges to nowhere" that cost millions.

And third,... a "rainy day fund," if enacted at a national level, would be likely to destroy the economy. Building a rainy day fund would be taking money out of circulation, which decreases the money supply, which produces deflation, which reduces investment and industrial productivity, which is about the worst thing you could do to the economy.

 

[brantc]

My primary fear is that if we make a concerted effort we may have a real economy in place for the Republicans to screw up in another 6 years.

Thats funny. You think your neighbor the Republican has his hands on the same knobs that congress does. LOL

I case you have not been paying attention.
Its not about liberal vs conservative, or Repugs vs Dumbocrats.

Its about Americans vs the ruling class.....

 

[drkitten]

So what happens next month when the $1000 credit card bill is due? Do you cut spending to pay this bill, or borrow more to not skip a beat? If deficit spending is the only answer, your debt will continue to rise.

... which isn't a problem if I have reasonable expectations that my income will eventually rise as well.

I can roll a credit card debt over for months or years if necessary as long as I feel confident that I've got a job at the end of the tunnel that will let me pay it off. Hell, I have done that, as a graduate student, knowing that I will have an income of about $800/month during the school year and then be able to consult for $800/day during the summers. I've done the same thing in the "real world"; dodging the landlord for three months and then paying him off when I sell something and collect the $50,000 the contract was worth.

The United States can easily do the same thing; there are twenty million people out of work who could be producing goods and services to support the economy and bring in money from exports if the employers felt confident enough to hire them. Employers aren't hiring because they don't see demand for the products. The public isn't buying products because they don't have money. They don't have money because they don't have jobs. They don't have jobs because employers aren't hiring. It's a vicious cycle. Break the cycle in one spot and the whole thing collapses and we can return to full employment.

The obvious spot to break the cycle is to put money into the public's hands. Via deficit spending. Basically, pay the repair bill to fix the broken economy on credit, and then use the new money from the economic growth to pay it off.

 

[brantc]

And, frankly, deficit spending is good for the economy; on the macroeconomic level, it expands the money supply and encourages investment. In times of financial trouble (like the current times) deficit spending can even be a necessity. (This is true for households as well; if you don't have a dime in the bank, but your car needs $1000 worth of repairs, put it on the VISA card. That's a better option than losing your job because you can't get to work.)

Money is created out of debt, fractional banking. We pay interest on the money we are loaned by the FED reserve, which we shouldnt have to if we were to print our own money.
If we didnt pay interest on this money created with a ledger entry doesnt that mean that we wouldnt have a national debt to the bankers that loaned us the money?

Why cant we have a10% flat sale tax???

Most of the taxes we pay do nothing for our "services" anyways.

The Grace Commission Report.

PRESIDENT'S PRIVATE SECTOR SURVEY ON COST CONTROL

[The first twelve, m/l, pages]

A REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT

VOLUME I


APPROVED BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AT

ITS MEETING ON JANUARY 15, 1984


January 12, 1984

The Honorable Ronald Reagan
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C.

<snip>

Resistance to additional income taxes would be even more widespread if people were aware that:

* One-third of all their taxes is consumed by waste and inefficiency in the Federal Government as we identified in our survey.
* Another one-third of all their taxes escapes collection from others as the underground economy blossoms in direct proportion to tax increases and places even more pressure on law abiding taxpayers, promoting still more underground economy-a vicious cycle that must be broken.
* With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government.
http://www.uhuh.com/taxstuff/gracecom.htm

No more taxes. We dont need them. Anybody(liberal or conservative) that thinks we do does not understand the money system and how its a transfer of wealth..

 

[drkitten]

Money is created out of debt.

Ah, yes. Brantc reveals himself to be not just a clueless Faux News groupie but also a goldbug anti-Fed conspiracy nut.

Nothing to see here, move along.

 

[brantc]

The obvious spot to break the cycle is to put money into the public's hands. Via deficit spending. Basically, pay the repair bill to fix the broken economy on credit, and then use the new money from the economic growth to pay it off.

How about putting the money in peoples hands by not taking it away in the first place???

 

[drkitten]

How about putting the money in peoples hands by not taking it away in the first place???

Quiet, grownups are talking.

 

[brantc]

Ah, yes. Brantc reveals himself to be not just a clueless Faux News groupie but also a goldbug anti-Fed conspiracy nut.

Nothing to see here, move along.

So you are saying fractional reserve banking doesnt exist??

So you have 20 dollars in your bank. You loan out 19 and you still have 20(fractional reserve in case).

See, new money is created with the stroke of a pen. Now there are 39 dollars in existence.

Money created out of debt(loan).

If money was tied to the existence of some tangible you would not be able to do that. And you would not be able to run the banks.
That amount of money would be tied to the amount of tangible even though the tangible may be stored.

So this is the shell game that the FED plays with us. Being a private institution they charge(prime rate) us every time they "loan" us(the central banks) money into circulation.
Thats where our national debt comes from.

Money is only a representation of real goods and services so there should never be more money than real goods or services

 

[ksbluesfan]

By the time all of the exemptions are taken out, I paid 6% of my net income to the IRS last year. I would consider myself to be middle- to upper-middle class for the Kansas City area. I have a feeling most people pay far less than they believe to the federal government. Once the economy recovers, I'm willing to pay higher taxes.

 

[brantc]

By the time all of the exemptions are taken out, I paid 6% of my net income to the IRS last year. I would consider myself to be middle- to upper-middle class for the Kansas City area. I have a feeling most people pay far less than they believe to the federal government. Once the economy recovers, I'm willing to pay higher taxes.

How much of your gross income did you pay? I pay ~660 a month in taxes.

500 a month of my money goes to paying the interest on the national debt(the money the private FED prints for us use). It pays for no services, no nothing.
That interest does nothing except make the bankers rich. Is that what you want???

DO you know how to stop that wasteage???? Instantly???

Dont let the private FED print our money.

Make the FED public and dont charge us interest for the money we the people print(loan into circulation).

This is the fastest way to recover the United States of America.

 

[sthomson]

How much of your gross income did you pay? I pay ~660 a month in taxes.

500 a month of my money goes to paying the interest on the national debt.

Cite or go home.

Edited to add: In even stronger terms, no f'in way. I pay around $300 bi-weekly and half of that goes to SS and Medicare.

 

[Chucky]

In the 1950's we had as high as a 90% federal tax rate. JFK was elected in part because he was willing to bring the upper rate down into the low 70 percentile. How can anyone claim that the possible upcoming taxes are the largest hike in history? These don't come close.

Furthermore I have heard the rates will still be lower those after the tax hikes Reagan signed into law by the end of the 80's, which stand to this day as the highest peace time tax hikes in US history.

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

How much of your gross income did you pay? I pay ~660 a month in taxes.

500 a month of my money goes to paying the interest on the national debt(the money the private FED prints for us use). It pays for no services, no nothing.
That interest does nothing except make the bankers rich. Is that what you want???

DO you know how to stop that wasteage???? Instantly???

Dont let the private FED print our money.

Make the FED public and dont charge us interest for the money we the people print(loan into circulation).

This is the fastest way to recover the United States of America.

That interest also drives our economic engine. So, yeah, uh.. net.kook detected.

 

[brantc]

Cite or go home.

Edited to add: In even stronger terms, no f'in way. I pay around $300 bi-weekly and half of that goes to SS and Medicare.

Fed taxes. 250 per pay period. State 81.00. Plus there is another column on my check that says CASDI, medicare etc..

From the Grace Commission report posted previously.
With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government.

Some people say that is not correct, that it is only 6%. But what they dont take in to account is that every dollar in circulation has been loaned into circulation with an associated cost(national debt).
You can cook the books however you want, the bottom line is that we pay the banks to use our own money.

 

[sthomson]

Fed taxes. 250 per pay period. State 81.00. Plus there is another column on my check that says CASDI, medicare etc..

From the Grace Commission report posted previously...

A politically-biased report from over 20 years ago is insufficient evidence for your current assertion that 5/6th of your tax withholding is used to pay for interest on national debt. To be clear (which you were not before), you are only talking about your federal withholding and not Medicare or SS taxes. Medicare and SS, of course, making up the largest portion of our federal budget every year.

 

[brantc]

That interest also drives our economic engine. So, yeah, uh.. net.kook detected.

What happened to goods and services??? Exported to China and Mexico.

The only thing that gets driven by interest is the bankers pockets.

You dont get any of that interest do you???

You dont need interest to drive an economy. Interest is charged on money loaned(created from thin air).
If you could make money by an entry in your ledger, wouldnt you?
The banks do it. And from their track record they are definitely not honest. As a matter of fact didnt we just bail those buttwipes out??? Why? Its the ruling class.
That has nothing to do with driving an economy.
Money is just a tool to facilitate trade. It aint worth crap by itself. Thats what people dont get.
It is not something to make money off of(interest.) People have forgotten about what economics really means.

If you have enough money do you need a loan?
Why dont you have enough money??
Because you get taxed....

 

[brantc]

A politically-biased report from over 20 years ago is insufficient evidence for your current assertion that 5/6th of your tax withholding is used to pay for interest on national debt. To be clear (which you were not before), you are only talking about your federal withholding and not Medicare or SS taxes. Medicare and SS, of course, making up the largest portion of our federal budget every year.

Yeah, but Federal withholding is the largest portion that they take out of my check!!!!