The US Economy: Obama's fault Or Bush's?

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  • whygohomewhygohome Posts: 2,305
    maybe this is naive, but I personally think, even as a fairly low income earner, that if you make $30G a year or $2 trillion, the percentage of income tax you pay should be the same across the board. saying someone makes too much money so they should have higher taxes is not fair in my opinion.

    I don't believe a teacher making $48,000 a year, or a fireman making $37,000 a year, should pay the same rate as a baseball player making $11,000,000 a year or a hedge fund manager making $17,000,000 a year.

    No way in hell.
  • ZosoZoso Posts: 6,425
    maybe this is naive, but I personally think, even as a fairly low income earner, that if you make $30G a year or $2 trillion, the percentage of income tax you pay should be the same across the board. saying someone makes too much money so they should have higher taxes is not fair in my opinion.

    I understand your opinion...

    My opinion is any tax always effects the lower income earners then the higher earners.. for example if get a paycheck of $1000 and get taxed $300 of that.. that's a significant proportion of their hard earned money but if someone makes annually $250, 000 and gets taxed somewhere between 14% and 20% of that this isn't going to hurt them as much.
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  • whygohomewhygohome Posts: 2,305
    MotoDC wrote:
    whygohome wrote:
    Hmmm...professional athletes making millions of dollars, hedge fund managers, bank CEOS making salaries in the tens of millions, and actors who play soldiers in movies making millions off of 4 months of work......all the while the average salary of a real soldier is about $50K.

    Yeah, we can raise taxes on the uber-rich. What do those fucks have to complain about?
    Obama's plan raises taxes on much more than the "uber-rich". It's also nice to see some honesty (via comments like "those fucks") about where mindsets like yours ("hey they make a lot of money, let's get it!") originate.

    I'm from Long Island. "Those fucks" is the same as "those guys."

    Anyway, the rich who bitch and complain, but who have done very well over the past few years....

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012 ... t_freeland
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezr ... _blog.html

    ...are a bunch of unpatriotic fucks.
  • whygohomewhygohome Posts: 2,305
    MotoDC wrote:
    whygohome wrote:
    Hmmm...professional athletes making millions of dollars, hedge fund managers, bank CEOS making salaries in the tens of millions, and actors who play soldiers in movies making millions off of 4 months of work......all the while the average salary of a real soldier is about $50K.

    Yeah, we can raise taxes on the uber-rich. What do those fucks have to complain about?
    Obama's plan raises taxes on much more than the "uber-rich". It's also nice to see some honesty (via comments like "those fucks") about where mindsets like yours ("hey they make a lot of money, let's get it!") originate.

    Your response has nothing to do with my post.

    I was simply saying that if we continue wars, and if continue sending kids to die in the desert, then we can ask the uber-rich, among them actors, celebrities, professional athletes, banking CEOs, hedge fund managers, etc, to pay a little more in taxes.

    Also, I would love to hear more about my mindset :mrgreen:
  • Drowned OutDrowned Out Posts: 6,056
    It's everyone's fault.
    Setting it up as one or the other is a good way to point fingers and never solve the problem.
    The problem is the circle of apathy ---> greed
    > corruption
    >apathy, and it's effects on government policy.
    Regardless of whether the economic policy we put in place is a left or a right one, it would work if our elected officials were honest and without influence from outside/private interests.

    The fact that they ARE so beholden to outside/private interests, and there are no pitchforks outside their offices, puts the blame right back on the citizenry. We can't expect govt officials to police themselves - assuming everyone is of the finest moral fibre is beyond foolish...and accepting that they are not, but doing nothing about it is worse....but that's what we've been doing for decades. If you want the true root of the problem: political apathy is to blame for the economy, and pretty much every other major issue in the world today. (I'm not innocent).
  • whygohome wrote:
    maybe this is naive, but I personally think, even as a fairly low income earner, that if you make $30G a year or $2 trillion, the percentage of income tax you pay should be the same across the board. saying someone makes too much money so they should have higher taxes is not fair in my opinion.

    I don't believe a teacher making $48,000 a year, or a fireman making $37,000 a year, should pay the same rate as a baseball player making $11,000,000 a year or a hedge fund manager making $17,000,000 a year.

    No way in hell.

    why not? 45% of $17million a year is a fuck of a lot of money, and you think they need to be penalized just because they make more?
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  • RFTCRFTC Posts: 723
    Read "Griftopia" by Matt Taibbi, lays out some of the best points on this thread. This economic spiral started w/reagan, got juiced big time under clinton, then went full on crack addict under gw.

    we bounced from one bubble to the next on cheap money, set up by the biggest douche of all, alan greenspan.
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  • Zoso wrote:
    maybe this is naive, but I personally think, even as a fairly low income earner, that if you make $30G a year or $2 trillion, the percentage of income tax you pay should be the same across the board. saying someone makes too much money so they should have higher taxes is not fair in my opinion.

    I understand your opinion...

    My opinion is any tax always effects the lower income earners then the higher earners.. for example if get a paycheck of $1000 and get taxed $300 of that.. that's a significant proportion of their hard earned money but if someone makes annually $250, 000 and gets taxed somewhere between 14% and 20% of that this isn't going to hurt them as much.

    I understand that, but still, I still don't think it's fair for your tax rate to go higher the higher you earn.
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  • mookeywrenchmookeywrench Posts: 5,934
    Zoso wrote:
    maybe this is naive, but I personally think, even as a fairly low income earner, that if you make $30G a year or $2 trillion, the percentage of income tax you pay should be the same across the board. saying someone makes too much money so they should have higher taxes is not fair in my opinion.

    I understand your opinion...

    My opinion is any tax always effects the lower income earners then the higher earners.. for example if get a paycheck of $1000 and get taxed $300 of that.. that's a significant proportion of their hard earned money but if someone makes annually $250, 000 and gets taxed somewhere between 14% and 20% of that this isn't going to hurt them as much.

    Marginal utility of a dollar.

    But marginal utility of a dollar works when all things are constant. With two people involved; you have two people valuing the marginal utility differently, which brings us back to the original argument of whether it's fair to assume that a millionare values every extra dollar earned less than a middle class earner would?

    Say your 11 million ball player is donating 1,500,000 to charity. Is contributing 4 million on small business ventures. Spends .5 million in expenses on his rental properties or home improvments. Places 4 million into savings through investments/trusts.

    Now he's down to 1 million for the year, but he knows he's in baseball and isn't a superstar, so his career is going to be over in about 5 years (if he doesn't get let go or dropped to minors) and he's going to start earning $25,000 a year working part time as a spokesman for some random company and afterwards want to retire early since his body is now shot to pieces.

    What's the value of his 1 millionth dollar earned in 2012 versus value of the 45th thousand dolalr earned with the steady wage earner of $45,000 who isn't spending his money beyond the cost of living and some modest savings, but is just on the start of his career and over the max life of his career might earn an average of $65,00-85,000 in perpetuity for the next 40 years?
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  • MotoDCMotoDC Posts: 947
    whygohome wrote:
    Your response has nothing to do with my post.

    I was simply saying that if we continue wars, and if continue sending kids to die in the desert, then we can ask the uber-rich, among them actors, celebrities, professional athletes, banking CEOs, hedge fund managers, etc, to pay a little more in taxes.

    Also, I would love to hear more about my mindset :mrgreen:
    I understand exactly what you were saying; it wasn't terribly complex. You consistently characterize Obama's more progressive tax plan as only impacting the "uber-rich", which is false. It's a sales pitch from a campaign ad. It makes for an easy argument -- hey this guy makes millions and millions, let's get more of his money, who's with me??! -- when in fact the tax implications are much broader than that. My post merely highlighted the half-picture you were painting.

    As for "those fucks", if you say so man. I know plenty of people from Long Island -- in the context that you used it, it certainly doesn't seem like "those guys". Seems like you're jumping on some bandwagon where it's cool to hate the rich and successful.
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