10 things about our new budget

[Pinepig]

Explain to me what you think that article proves.

[kronus]

Explain to me what you think that article proves.

[Hallen]

^^^^

/thread

[mrsleeve]

^^^^^^^^^^

Thank you

[E30 Cabrio]

The 2% Illusion

Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.

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President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."
AP


This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.
Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.
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But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.
Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006.
Mr. Obama is of course counting on an economic recovery. And he's also assuming along with the new liberal economic consensus that taxes don't matter to growth or job creation. The truth, though, is that they do. Small- and medium-sized businesses are the nation's primary employers, and lower individual tax rates have induced thousands of them to shift from filing under the corporate tax system to the individual system, often as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. The Tax Foundation calculates that merely restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets would hit 45% to 55% of small-business income, depending on how inclusively "small business" is defined. These owners will find a way to declare less taxable income.
The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well.
On that point, by the way, it's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy. There's a reason that Charlie Rangel's Ways and Means panel, which writes tax law, is holding hearings this week on cap-and-trade regulation.
Mr. Obama is very good at portraying his agenda as nothing more than center-left pragmatism. But pragmatists don't ignore the data. And the reality is that the only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach ever deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.

[mrsleeve]

This country is making my head hurt. I am considering selling all of my stuff and wondering off into the woods for 30 years and seeing if its better by then.

Oh I have not lost my job as we have other clients than the oil/gas industry but thats about 60% of our business (I am off for the winter though), I dont live in a trailer and while I am under the 250k bracket, my bosses are in it, and if they get taxed higher and much of our clients cut projects back due to punitive taxes I will lose my job, as I live the furthest from the office (2400 miles) and thats 21k+ the fed govt wont get every year from me.



please see the 1st quote in my sig line it may put shit into perspective for you.

[E30 Cabrio]

Posting in this thread makes me feel stupid.

E30 Cabrio - did you completely ignore the part where the planned tax increases only affect people with $250K and greater household income?

I read the WSJ article the other day stating that even if people earning 200K per year were taxed at a 100% rate, it still wouldn't cover the spending in this budget.

I'll take the word of the Wall Street Journal when it comes to Economics over MoveOn...

[Ral]

Also, you all assume that raising taxes on that small percentile will not affect their spending/earning habits. They will find ways to invest and save money pre-tax, and thus lower their tax bracket.

Currently, someone making $250,000/year pays 35% of it in income tax, or $87,500. This is before Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid tax. Obama wants to increase that to 39%, which equals $97,500. So, under Obama, those at the bottom end of the upper tax bracket will shell out an additional 10,000/year before Medicare, capital gains, etc. tax goes up as well.

Also.. his "no tax increase" isn't really true. Bush enacted a tax cut, so when those cuts expire and taxes increase, Obama doesn't claim that as a tax increase. Also, don't forget the $1,000,000,000,000 (that's Trillions) he wants to raise for social security, with half coming from you and half coming from your boss. Do you really think your bosses will gladly eat that up, or will it get taken from somewhere else such as payroll, bonuses, etc.?

Pressing on (we're not done yet) Obama wants to increase the capital gains tax from 15% to 20%. So, if I invest wisely right now and stocks go up, I pay 20% of my earnings to Uncle Sam.

HERE'S THE BIG POINT: THE CURRENT TAX STRUCTURE PUNISHES THOSE THAT WORK AND MAKE THEMSELVES SUCCESSFUL, PARTICULARLY THOSE WHO PUT AWAY MONEY AND INVEST FOR THEIR OWN RETIREMENT. INSTEAD, THE GOVERNMENT IS ADVERTISING THE FACT THAT THEY WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU AND YOUR HEALTH WITH MONEY FROM THE COLLECTIVE POT.

THIS FORCES PEOPLE TO RELY ON THE GOVERNMENT, NOT THEMSELVES, TO PLAN FOR THE FUTURE.

(Caps to draw attention to those too ADD to read the entire post.)

[Hallen]

Sleeve
This is far from a Hoover move! what the hell?

1. I have actually found myself a potential victim to the shortcomings of our medical system. Adjustments to what we currently have should fix what myself and wife are experiencing.

High medical bills suck. However, having government run things is NOT the answer. It will be not only an economic disaster, it will also guarantee a slowing in medical technology advancements and a decrease in care levels. I don't have the answers to this, but socialized medicine (or if you prefer "universal coverage") is not going to change things for the better.

2. highly unlikely

The tax reduction is a joke and is really just a way for the Democrats to give a bonus to all those people who don't pay taxes because they voted for Obama. Yep, just like he promised he would. Of course the rest of us will be paying for it. His tax "reduction" is also temporary and useless for promoting any kind of growth. It HAS to be temporary because he has absolutely no way of halving the budget deficit unless he has the government grind to a complete halt without RAISING taxes.

3. agreed about the claim on number of jobs... but look around buddy. ready the headlines. smart grids are not far

Fine, the gov wants to promote clean energy technology. Gee, they did the same thing back in the 70's. It didn't get us anywhere because everything is more expensive than petroleum. It won't get anywhere this time either. This kind of thing takes time and billions invested with the outcome being a viable, usable, mass producible product. This government give-away is nothing more than a political agenda designed to make the GW crowd happy.

4. if you only understood where the origins of strife against the USA comes from, youd think differently. we need to quit pushing our weight around and pissing everyone off.

OMG, grow up. People dislike America for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that we are the world leader. If you ain't the world leader, then you are going to dislike our politics and policies because you can't do squat about it. Besides, it isn't nearly like what the media likes to make it out to be. Now, the Islamists and other like organizations do hate us because of the freedom we represent. They hate us more than other western countries because we are #1 and we do hit back. That hate is driven in large measure because of fear. You can't reach out and hug these people and tell them that you love them and expect it to work. It won't. If you convert to Islam and start beating your wife, then maybe they'll let you live, but not before then.

5. you act like the bush cuts were affecting you. it amuses me to no end that people in trailors give a fuck about tax adjustments that dont concern them or raise their taxes. meaning you would see mccain signs in front of these trailers and hear them talk about how they dont support obama's tax hikes. joke is on you low income americans, mccain was the one raising your taxes. (this wasnt directed solely at you sleeve)

Yes, they do affect me, both directly and indirectly. Lower taxes=more prosperous business=more jobs=higher standard of living for everybody. It is really that simple. But, we, as a nation, tax our businesses at one of the highest rates in the world. We get away with this because corporations are "evil" and only want to rob us of our future. Just stop and think about that for a bit, please. It isn't true and it isn't real.

6. sorry you lost your job. but higher gas prices arent of great concern until they become murder like they were of fall last year. And thats not likely to happen again if we are able to ween ourselves off gas consumption like we are scheduled to.

See above. Of course, who knows if that "loop-hole" actually exists in the first place. Chances are, this is just some way of applying punitive taxes against a hated industry.

7. once again, you have missed the statistics on how expensive education is. and the argument youve made currently is piss poor. here you are talking about losing your job and you want to talk about people can afford college? How about the cost of a worthy health care policy?

Anybody who wants to can go to college. Either with scholarships, grants, student loans or self paid. Anybody. What Obama has done is federalized the student loan program removing thousands of jobs from the private sector (where they contribute to taxes and the economy) to the government where they are nothing but a drain on the economy. The government will supposedly start making money off of this, but that won't happen. It will be so inefficient that it won't make money and we all get to pay for it with higher taxes. Dumb, really dumb.

8. I am a pessimist about this one too... but if you'd read some of the sources, youd see the plan... it actually looks like it could work.

No way. Like I said before, these policies combined with this huge amount of spending will not allow this to happen. His tax intakes will be going down because of the punitive nature of the taxes he imposes and government will be increasing in size. There will be no way for this to work.

9. i have no ammo against your comment here, it just sounds like more rhetoric though.

Yep, government has proven that increasing funding for agencies works. LOL, oops, yeah, works to spend more money. It doesn't fix anything. Incompetence is just that. You can't fix it by just throwing money at it. Now, if the SEC is seriously underfunded and understaffed, maybe this would help. But my bet is that because of the recent changes in regulations such as SOX, they are now understaffed because these things are so complex and untenable, you can really only guess at the answers.

10. How can you laugh when the details have been provided to the public? Its clear what the intentions are!

Yeah, right. (BTW, all bills are public, that's nothing new) He is doing what he said he would do after he won the election. He didn't tell you what he was really going to do before then. Not to mention he is lying to you about all of this stuff. It is all political and paybacks. It has nothing to do with doing what is sound and what is right. As always.

this is what i'm talking about, i had something to say despite your synicism. You'd think we need more years of Bush. Well if you see things truley as they way you have described, how about bringing some sources into play so you can educate me as to what is really going down. Because all i hear is blah blah blah

That's because, son, you want somebody to give you sources so you can dismiss them. What we are telling you is that you have to actually think about these things. Get yourself a firm understanding of economics first. Then critically think about these proposals. If I throw actual facts at you and data, chances are you will either not understand, or you will refute them with a quote from the "messiah" saying the lowering taxes is not the answer.

Listen, I was there when Carter did exactly the same things. It was devastating. He kept telling us we had to pay more taxes so we could reduce the deficit. He never once considered reducing the size of government, unless it was the military, which is the ONE thing that should always be fully funded. This stuff doesn't work and can only be believed by somebody who only pokes at the surface of how things really work.

Oh, and the carbon credit thing is simply a way to apply more taxes. Nobody believes that it will help with "global warming". It establishes a punitive tax to generate more money for the government without calling it a tax. It's as simple as that.

Oh, and the "family planning" thing. Why, may I ask, is the government doing that? It's both a family and a personal responsibility. It has nothing to do with the governemnt. Why I am paying for your condoms?? Buy your own damned condums.

[kronus]

if your bleeding anus is any indication im definitively a top

Well, I kept getting conflicting stories from our favorite freakishly tall person, so I had to ask.

[xLibelle]

this isnt about FDR, as if his inablity is the same as barrack's is my point. FDR didnt do enough nor could he have because the wheels of failure were already in motion. The same is true about our current time frame.

moneyshit, the amount of spending being more than our young nation over a number of years has relevance how?
This is another important factor is that this proposed budget will span over several years. Its outcome will be of top most importance. You cant put a dollar amount to success if that what the money being spent on is the right thing. I suggest you actually READ the budget. Its in plain english.

And about the moveon quoting moveon... have you clicked the links?

[blunttech]

We will talk in a year.

Are you a top or a bottom?

if your bleeding anus is any indication im definitively a top

[kronus]

lets talk in a year. of course you believed "hope and change" too.

We will talk in a year.

Are you a top or a bottom?

[blunttech]

Posting in this thread makes me feel stupid.

E30 Cabrio - did you completely ignore the part where the planned tax increases only affect people with $250K and greater household income?

lets talk in a year. of course you believed "hope and change" too.

if you spent 1 million dollars a day from the day jesus was born until today you still wouldnt come close to what obama just spent in the first 30 days of his admin. i will be dead soon and you idiots who voted him in will be paying for it.

[kronus]

have you down the research to know there aren't enough 250k earners to pay for all this?

In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

secondly, and more importantly, its immoral.

whut?