I don't want to repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy

[Atman]

I want to repeal them, then increase them dramatically.

Call it the "You Fucked Up America" tax. Make the goddam leeches on our treasury pay for some of the hell their God's fiscal policies have wrought on our country.

Bush is calling for more MASSIVE spending on LA/MS/AL. From where? He is also proposing MORE TAX CUTS on his business buddies. WTF? Who is paying for all of this? We (you, me, us, real people) have nothing left. The country is totally tapped out. IT IS TIME FOR THE ONLY PEOPLE TO HAVE ENJOYED THE BUSH YEARS TO PAY FOR THEM and give the bread and butter of America, her working citizens, a chance to breathe for a bit. It's time for some serious, serious change, America!

[fasttense]

1. But, but, what about the trickle down theory? Wasn't Bill Gates going to

rebuild the levees and flood walls to withstand a class 4 hurricane? Weren't the Waltons going to provide for busses and drivers to evacuate the sick, elderly and poor? Oh wait, that was FEMA's job.

[Justyce]

3. You misunderstood... they

meant the "trickled ON" theory... and I am personally tired of getting trickled on. :(

[JHB]

5. You have to remind people: The top is a sponge...

...it only "trickles down" when squeezed.

One of the advantages of the Estate Tax is that -- in order to retain some control of the money and not just send it to the governemnt -- the wealthy endow "charitable" foundations.

In a similar manner, when sufficiently progressive tax rates are high enough at the top end, one of the ways they will "dodge" the tax and maximize their control over what it does is by paying people who work for them. Providing "carrots" is financially more worthwhile than using "sticks" on the regular work force, within certain parameters.

[Atman]

6. What the hell are you, some sort of smarty-pants?

That kind of common sense and understanding of economics WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!

(oh, and btw..."The top is a sponge..." quote is beautiful! Is it yours?)

[JHB]

16. Guilty as charged.

On both counts.

I actually first used the "sponge" line back when the guy in the oval office merely co-starred with chimps, but none of my quotes ever seem to gain wider currency.

[zbdent]

7. Trickle down theory - ask the farmers watching their crops die while

upstream, some asshole decides to make a private swimming hole from the "surplus water" heading his way . . .

[etherealtruth]

2. Sadly I am expecting the chimp ...

... to claim that "we" need more tax cuts (esp. for that upper 3-5%) in order to .

[acmejack]

4. Well the rich don't use many services

The burden needs to placed where it belongs-on the backs of the working class. They just need to take 40% of your minimum wage (oh, wait davis-bacon has been suspended) and in 300 years the national debt will be paid down.

Can't burden the rich with taxes or it will be bad for the "little" people. You just need to understand republiCon economics.

[Justyce]

13. Actually, since the poor

use more of the services than the working people, following repub thinking, then they should carry the tax burden... sheesh, great plan

[OneBlueSky]

8. we also need to get corporations to start paying their fair share . . .

doing business in this country is not a right, it's a privilege . . . companies that take their operations offshore to avoid taxes should be severely penalized, as should companies that move American jobs overseas to increase their bottom line . . . they expect us to be customers, but have no place for us as employees? . . . bullshit . . .

[greekspeak]

9. I agree...these leeches need a nice fat tax to give America back its $$$

The rich just keep paying less and less tax, the poor have to make up for it. I think we need some way to get rid of this Magic Cayman/Swiss Bank Account crap too.

[cry baby]

10. It's either repeal the tax cuts or borrow some more $ from China

and China already pretty much owns us. I like the YOU F*CKED UP AMERICA TAX better.

[Sgent]

11. Although I

support a much more progressive system then we have now, I would first want to see a major restructuring of how business are taxed in this country.

Small business, especially LLC's and Subchapter-S corps, are very, very sensitive to individual tax rates. Since they have pass through taxation (the tax is assessed on the owners, not the business), it can create a situation where small business are paying 50% taxes, and large ones almost nothing.

In addition, since small businesses don't have access to capital like large business, it restricts their ability to expand. For instance, say a manufactorer wants to buy a $500,000 machine. If he buys it using profits, he will have to pay taxes on that amount immediately, but only get the deduction for depreciation over 15 years or so. Effectively, that machine costs him 750k vs. big corps 500k. He could lease the machine, but lease rates are typically 20% plus in today's very low interest rate environments -- making them of limited usefulness.

[JHB]

17. Very True. The big boys have had decades to refine their dodges...

...so crude, blanket increases would fall (even moreso) on the small businesses that can't dodge them.

What's needed is a wholesale revamping of the corporate tax structure based on the amount of business done in this country (regardless of nominal headquartering nation, though I'm jingo enough to slightly favor our own).

[TahitiNut]

12. Let's model the income tax after the Eisenhower years.

:evilgrin: What the hell ... the Nixon years are good enough.

[Atman]

14. The lie about high tax rates

What the republicans never seem to address is the fact that their daddies and granddaddies built their giant mansions and their huge successful businesses under a "crushing" tax burden. For christ's sake, if it was such a crushing burden, how the hell were they able to afford four mansions in each corner of the country AND a new factory? They couldn't have been TOO crushing, because they're all still pretty fucking wealthy today. I was in Newport, RI a month or so ago...I didn't see any of the Vanderbilts out there having tag sales on the lawn. No one seemed to be hurtin' too bad, living in those family estates erected during years of 80-90% tax rates.

Cry me a fucking river of greenbacks.

[JHB]

19. Actually, Newport's heyday was the Robber Baron Era...

...back in the late 1800's, before Federal income taxes.

[Atman]

20. Quibble if you must. Do you have any comment about the larger point?

Jesus, this wasn't about Newport. Redact it and fill in your own millionaire's playground. I mentioned Newport only because I happened to be there not too long ago. How about Sedona, another place I visited in the last month? It is also home to nothing but millionaire's, but it was built almost entirely in the past decade. Obviously, millionaire's aren't feeling too crushed.

[JHB]

22. I agree with the larger point. I "quibbled" on Newport because...

...it's an old debating-team lesson: don't let a minor error make you look like you're sloppy and uninformed, and thereby undercut your entire argument. Details matter.

[Atman]

15. kicking this, dammit!

I was hoping for more feedback, honestly. Yesterday we had several threads telling the dems to give up on our treasured values in order to be more GOP-like, and I am just soooooooo fed up with that line of thinking! We need to offer CHANGE, radical change, from what is going on in Washington. Ironically, that radical change is nothing more than a shift back to what we once had...revenue coming into the treasury from the people with the most revenue. Now, they pay nothing. And soon, they'll be able to pass it all along to the generation of silver-spoon douchebags, tax-free. We don't want anything for free, dammit, we just don't think that the uber rich should be getting EVERYTHING for free while America drowns.

Whatcha think? Willing to talk it up? Write your congressman?

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. I was raging about this very subject before my feet ever hit the floor

this morning! I was watching some mind numbing celebrity 'news' show wherein it was reported that P Diddy/Puff Daddy/Diddy :eyes: spends $200/$300 thousand on drinks while out partying. :wtf: Sent me off on a tirade BIG TIME! These useless GREED PIGS DO NOT NEED ANOTHER TAX CUT! They take and take and take and give very little in return! :grr:

[JHB]

21. Practical Economic Measure: The BMI Index...

...BMI standing for Better than Median Income.

Basically, it's measuring prices in units of $50,000 (which is -- wait for it -- better than the median annual income for American households. Think of it as "For that amount of money, you could provide X families with a middle-class income for a year (or one family for X years)". It puts the waste of mindless extravagance in perspective

Cheezy Puff Doodles'(or whatever he calls himself) bar tab, mentioned above, has a BMI of 4 to 6. And believe me, he's a piker compared to the Kenny-Boys of the world.