[POLL] - Liberals, how much is a "fair share?" - Taxes

[PMZ]

We will start paying down your debt when there is a job for everyone, just like Clinton did.

If Clinton balanced the budget, then why did the national debt go up every year he was in office?

You have to give them, Congress and Clinton, props for the effort though Kaz. And depending on whose charts and graphs you look at, the debt clock did almost stop when we were running surplusses for the first time, WAY ahead of schedule by the way than expected--see that montage of Clinton comments on the budget I posted a few posts ago.

But you are correct that to say that those surpluses were real surpluses does require a few smoke and mirror techniques.

The Clinton era surplus numbers look something like this:

1998 - $69.2 billion surplus
1999 - $125.6 billion surplus
2000 - $236.4 billion surplus
2001 - $127.3 billion surplus

Let's take one year to focus on - 2000. The "official" surplus number for that year was $236.4 billion. So the national debt must have declined that year, right?

Wrong.

Let's take a look at the numbers.

The total national debt on October 1st, 1999 was:

$5,540,570,493,226.32

The total national debt on September 30th, 2000 was:

$5,656,270,901,633.43

That's an INCREASE of over $100 billion, despite the fact that the country posted a surplus.

So what gives?

There are two things that happened here:

1) The "on-budget" surplus was actually much smaller than the number that included both the "on-budget" and "off-budget" numbers, which is the number that is widely reported by the media.

2) Any excess revenues from the Social Security trust funds are automatically invested in government-issued debt:

"Federal law requires that all excess funds be invested in interest-bearing securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States."
Why Did The National Debt Go Up During The Clinton Surplus Years?

In 2001, the CBO told Bush, that if he continued Clinton's fiscal policies, the entire debt would be paid off by 2006. In fact it was a concern because so much of the rest of the world invests in US Treasuries, which would no longer exist. In addition, they said that by 2011, we'd have a surplus of over $2,000,000,000,000.

He ignored that advice. That's why his true cost to us is the $17,000,000,000,000 that is from his unpaid bills plus the cost of recovery from his damages plus the $2,000,000,000,000 in surplus that we would have had if he had followed the CBO's advice.

A nearly $20T swing.

 

[PMZ]

Abolish the utterly retarded tax system we have now, 20% national sales tax with no loopholes, boom we're done.

That would be viewed as an additional pet rock tax to the existing taxes on income, properties, imports, exports, and profits by many politicians who want Americans to be vassals to the system they already rule.

If you meant it to be the only tax, the present road to higher taxes was paved with ideas by bright minds were usurped by power-hungry monsters that want to control every aspect of American life by mining every scrap of information they can by any which means they can in order to procure the wealth of those that earned it and paid taxes on it already so they can reap the benefits of the American people without having to wait in line for health care like they have planned for the working class like us.

Thanks for your good idea, though, Mr. Brunswick. But having lived a lifetime watching the dogfight between the administration and the congress over who shall have the most money to spend, a sales tax would be viewed as their silver lining to higher taxes on the rest of America while they exploit loopholes they leave to slip their wealth through before anyone knows what happened.

I only have three words for our present government: drunk on power.

I, personally, vote out those drunk on power, and vote in good public servants.

 

[PMZ]

If Clinton balanced the budget, then why did the national debt go up every year he was in office?

You have to give them, Congress and Clinton, props for the effort though Kaz. And depending on whose charts and graphs you look at, the debt clock did almost stop when we were running surplusses for the first time, WAY ahead of schedule by the way than expected--see that montage of Clinton comments on the budget I posted a few posts ago.

But you are correct that to say that those surpluses were real surpluses does require a few smoke and mirror techniques.

The Clinton era surplus numbers look something like this:

1998 - $69.2 billion surplus
1999 - $125.6 billion surplus
2000 - $236.4 billion surplus
2001 - $127.3 billion surplus

Let's take one year to focus on - 2000. The "official" surplus number for that year was $236.4 billion. So the national debt must have declined that year, right?

Wrong.

Let's take a look at the numbers.

The total national debt on October 1st, 1999 was:

$5,540,570,493,226.32

The total national debt on September 30th, 2000 was:

$5,656,270,901,633.43

That's an INCREASE of over $100 billion, despite the fact that the country posted a surplus.

So what gives?

There are two things that happened here:

1) The "on-budget" surplus was actually much smaller than the number that included both the "on-budget" and "off-budget" numbers, which is the number that is widely reported by the media.

2) Any excess revenues from the Social Security trust funds are automatically invested in government-issued debt:

"Federal law requires that all excess funds be invested in interest-bearing securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States."
Why Did The National Debt Go Up During The Clinton Surplus Years?

In 2001, the CBO told Bush, that if he continued Clinton's fiscal policies, the entire debt would be paid off by 2006. In fact it was a concern because so much of the rest of the world invests in US Treasuries, which would no longer exist. In addition, they said that by 2011, we'd have a surplus of over $2,000,000,000,000.

He ignored that advice. That's why his true cost to us is the $17,000,000,000,000 that is from his unpaid bills plus the cost of recovery from his damages plus the $2,000,000,000,000 in surplus that we would have had if he had followed the CBO's advice.

A nearly $20T swing.

Evidence:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFi...ic_Policy/drivers_federal_debt_since_2001.pdf

 

[Foxfyre]

Pew's analysis left out
1) 9/11
2) Katrina
3) The housing bubble collapse. If it had not collapsed, the trend was to erase all the deficit again by the end of 2008.
. . . .ignoring these critical economic events casts strong suspicions on Pew's analysis wouldn't you think?

Also Pew DOES include Obama's excesses in the equation, something PMZ conveniently overlooked.

 

[RKMBrown]

Pew's analysis left out
1) 9/11
2) Katrina
3) The housing bubble collapse. If it had not collapsed, the trend was to erase all the deficit again by the end of 2008.
. . . .ignoring these critical economic events casts strong suspicions on Pew's analysis wouldn't you think?

Also Pew DOES include Obama's excesses in the equation, something PMZ conveniently overlooked.

He also left out the inconvenient truth that congress is supposed to set the tax rates and spending not the president.

 

[PMZ]

Pew's analysis left out
1) 9/11
2) Katrina
3) The housing bubble collapse. If it had not collapsed, the trend was to erase all the deficit again by the end of 2008.
. . . .ignoring these critical economic events casts strong suspicions on Pew's analysis wouldn't you think?

Also Pew DOES include Obama's excesses in the equation, something PMZ conveniently overlooked.

9/11 didn't cost the government anything. Katrina did, but small in proportion to $20T. The housing bubble collapse was pretty predictable and the government was complicit in it with give away interest rates. And the real issue was the collapse of Wall St due to over feeding on their own product, mortgage backed derivatives.

I think that the low interest rates were a desperate attempt to rev up the economy to pay for the holy wars and wealth distribution tax cuts.

What I keep thinking is where would we be if we had gone with the popular vote and elected Gore/Leibermann who most certainly would have continued Clinton's economic policies. Democracy is hard to beat at making good decisions. The Electoral College is a antique holdover from the days of Plutochracy which has far outlived its usefulness.

 

[boedicca]

9/11 didn't cost the government anything?

What did they use to repair the Pentagon?

 

[PMZ]

Pew's analysis left out
1) 9/11
2) Katrina
3) The housing bubble collapse. If it had not collapsed, the trend was to erase all the deficit again by the end of 2008.
. . . .ignoring these critical economic events casts strong suspicions on Pew's analysis wouldn't you think?

Also Pew DOES include Obama's excesses in the equation, something PMZ conveniently overlooked.

He also left out the inconvenient truth that congress is supposed to set the tax rates and spending not the president.

A Republican Congress and a Republican President don't offer much in terms of checks and balances.

 

[PMZ]

9/11 didn't cost the government anything?

What did they use to repair the Pentagon?

A few million dollars.

 

[boedicca]

That's real money, bub.

The true cost to the government, however, was the reduction in tax receipts as the economy slumped. The cost to the people is the excessive expansion of government reach in to our private lives.

 

[PMZ]

That's real money, bub.

The true cost to the government, however, was the reduction in tax receipts as the economy slumped. The cost to the people is the excessive expansion of government reach in to our private lives.

As I recall, not much of a slump, perhaps surprisingly.

Let me ask you, because I can't get an answer from any others.

Our government is too big........

Are whales too big also? Elephants? Mice? Microbes?

How does one know those answers?

 

[Eric Cartman]

Liberals, how much is a "fair share?"

None of the above.

I would say that the rate should be based on the amount needed to pay for the budget that our representatives pass. Preferably in a progressive bracket structure.

 

[RKMBrown]

I really don't care how they structure it so long as they take politics out of it and make it fair across the board. I don't see a labor tax uniformly applied across the board, treating each and every citizen equally without respect to political leanings or socioeconomic standing as slavery. And, except for fees for services utilized, a flat income tax would be the least regressive of any form of taxation.

Almost any other kind of tax erodes the resources of those who have retired and are living off the fruit of their own labor. They already paid taxes on it once and anything other than an income tax will take more of it. Unless they are grandfathered in on the old system or some such.

The important thing is that we remove the power from those in government and give it back to the people.

I am still mulling the pros and cons of whether the people should vote on the maximum amount of taxes that can be taken by the government. We do that at the state and local level. I'm looking for why we can't do it at the federal level. But whatever the tax it must be uniform. We must get away from this utterly insane and distructive system in which half the people pay little or no taxes but can vote to make sure that the other half pays more and more.

Just because someone is retired, does not excuse them for paying their own way. Pretending they should get everything for free after a certain age? Why?

Who said anything about them not paying their own way? I am retired and I haven't taken a dime from the federal government ever except for those stupid rebates they made everybody get. I paid a HUGE amount of money into social security and medicare and so far have not drawn anywhere near as much as I paid in.

And I paid taxes on every dime of my earnings--more taxes than most because I was self employed for a lot of years--and I paid tax twice on my social security benefits for several years until I fully retired. Most of our retirement is in Roth accounts so we have already paid income taxes on that.

So to have to pay 20% in federal income taxes in order to spend the money that has already been taxed is doubly hard on retirees and simply can't pass the fair play test.

Yeah and I maxed out on my SS deposits at 35. I've been overpaying ever since.

 

[RKMBrown]

FYI... SS taxes have doubled every 15years or so, thus the older the generation the less by % they had to pay by about 4x the current generation.

 

[PMZ]

FYI... SS taxes have doubled every 15years or so, thus the older the generation the less by % they had to pay by about 4x the current generation.

It's called inflation.

You would probably prefer the old Eskimo ice flow trick, right? If someone lives longer than their money, send them packing. I think that Sarah called them death panels.

 

[RKMBrown]

FYI... SS taxes have doubled every 15years or so, thus the older the generation the less by % they had to pay by about 4x the current generation.

It's called inflation.

You would probably prefer the old Eskimo ice flow trick, right? If someone lives longer than their money, send them packing. I think that Sarah called them death panels.

No dufus, it's called pyramid scheme. Inflation went up for salaries as well. The issue is % of our money required to pay for SS that also includes medicare now and did not at the start. Are you really this dumb or do you just act like it?

 

[thereisnospoon]

What????

You heard me.

How do you speak of rights, when you are willing to bring those who prosper to their knees? What good is the right to prosper when you make it difficult to? Why is prosperity in the highest degree such a bad thing? Why is it bad when someone has the upper hand? You want to squeeze altruism from a man, just as you would water from a turnip. The man who owns the store who employs the the employees got there from the same hard work that he accused of not doing. He isn't "nothing more than a landlord" he worked for his living just as you did, and you begrudge him the right to prosper? So what if he prospers more than you? Nobody should be made prosper the same, but at their own pace. This type of economic communalism is disturbing. If you are poor, strive to be rich, if you are rich, strive to help the poor.

You hypocrite.

You are merely repeating conservative media cult dogma. Mouthing the lyrics that took over your mind. Extremism.

The US has practiced both capitalist and socialist economics from the beginning. Both worked fine in their place. We accepted the danger of capitalism by our confidence that it's risks could be regulated, the biggest one being that the fact that there are no free markets anymore would lead to extreme wealth distribution towards the wealthy. We did that because we knew from experience that the product of extreme wealth distribution always will be unstable third world banana republics with the wealthy taking all of the political power as well as all of the wealth.

We are there now. By any measure of wealth inequality. How did we get here? Because the wealthy bought our way here. They paid for your mind and your vote by giving you a cartoon simple black and white picture of a complex world which you published above. They also gave you $17,000,000,000,000 in debt that they generated trying for all of the marbles.

The middle class is our economy both for supply and demand. Every time a CEO gets a $50,000,000 paycheck for the wealth created by workers doing their jobs despite his "leadership" the country gets more broken. That $50,000,000 is money that doesn't buy the groceries and cars and houses and school taxes that it would if it was used to pay middle class wealth creators, it goes to buy power.

Business is broken but the wealthy buy airtime to tell you that government is broken. Why? Because the power of democratic government of, by, and for the people is the one thing standing between the wealthy and all of the marbles.

Our predesessors built a country from the sweat of their brow. It's our responsibility to pass it on to our children. The Great Recession was the first major clue that we are failing them and if things don't continue to turn around we'll have nothing to pass on. At least, 80% of us won't. The other 20% will pass on enough money to buy the wealth created by others for a few generations. Then lights out.

Yes yes yes..As we are all well aware, All liberal thought and speech is mainstream. While all conservative thought and speech are extremism.
Hey genius, the next time you quote someone, have the common decency to post a link.

 

[thereisnospoon]

1017 previous posts and still no number that should be considered a "fair share"...

 

[RKMBrown]

1017 previous posts and still no number that should be considered a "fair share"...

Zero.

 

[ScienceRocks]

A hybrid economic system that has served us well is what we want. We want a pro-business environment that allows innovation, but we also need a system that checks @ balances. The government also funds innovation...

This is what we want.