Trickle-Up Recession: The 1% Getting Real About the Permanent Fix for the Economy

[Andylusion]

What? Wasn't 1993 total Federal spending $1.9 Trillion? Today it's $4 Trillion.

Oh boy..alright here we go:

A dollar in 1993 is not a dollar in 2016. So basic rules of economic discussion are that you at very least adjust for inflation (real$).

$1.9T in 1993 is about $3.16T in 2016 dollars (CPI Inflation Calculator)

This is 2015 spending

Note that half of the spending is SS and healthcare - which happen to be effected by our aging demographics.

To say we can "simply go back to 90s spending" is to not understand this - we aren't spending on same population.


But of course if you want to have really good manners you would also adjust for size of economy (%GDP):

Which again, shows only modest increase.

Why would you assume I was using non-inflation adjusted dollars?

In non-inflation adjusted dollars, the 1993 budget was only $1.4 Trillion.

In fact, in 1999 the total budget was only $1.7 Trillion.

Your $3.6 Trillion number, is taking an inflation adjusted number, and adjusting it again.

Stop being crazy. lol

Ok how much is 1.4T 1993 adjusted for inflation? it is not 1.9T, niether was the last year budget 4T

And you skipped entirely addressing the standard %ofGDP measure and the fact of aging population.

The 2016 projected budget is $3.999 Trillion. Unless you think rounding up $1 Billion is too much an exaggeration, the point stands.

Beyond that, inflation adjusted numbers fluctuate a ton unfortunately. You can get different numbers all over the place. It also depends on which metric you use, and what reliable numbers of government spending you have. If you go by what the government officially claims to have spent, then I have found $1.7 Trillion, to $2.4 Trillion. I would guess it's between the two estimates.

Regardless, in broad generalities, we're spending about double what we were in 1993. Especially when you consider that we are actually spending less on interest payments today, than we did in the 1990s, when you account for inflation.

Now as for aging population, and measuring it as a % of GDP.

So what? That has nothing to do with his comment.

But if you want to talk about it, ok. It doesn't matter in my opinion. Yes, there are dozens of so-called experts, who can't even balance their own check books, and come up with hundreds of ways to claim that based on this measurement and that measurement, and this statistical crap, then such and such debt is perfectly fine and acceptable.

All of those measurements are based on one flawed assumption... that GDP will always go up. But we know that it doesn't always go up.

Greece in 2005 to 2006 had a debt to GDP ratio of 100% to 106%. We're at 104% as of last year. And while all the excuse making left-winger economists have dismissed the Greek example after the crash, before the crash, the same left-wingers were claiming that over a 100% debt to GDP is nothing, and completely unimportant. See what happened, wasn't that Greece borrowed nearly 100% of their total GDP in 1 year. What happened was that the recession was massive, and the GDP of the country shrank, causing the debt to GDP ratio to go to 175%. Then the left-wingers say "We never said 175% of GDP was ok!, it's not our fault!"

Well tell that to Greece now. Tell that to Argentina. And Zimbabwe and Ecuador, and Venezuela, and the list goes on of countries that had a fraction of the debt to GDP we do, and still had catastrophic failures.

Tell that to the UK which had a bond failure. Or even Italy right now, is in some troubles.

The point though, is that you don't know when another recession will hit. You borrow trillions today, and say "oh well it's still only 100% of GDP".... until the GDP shrinks by 20%, and then you have a ton of debt you can't pay back.

And fool yourself with this idiocy about how interest rates have fallen, so it's cheaper to borrow. Yeah, that's true. And if anything, that should be a warning. The interest rates on nearly all government debt typically falls before the whole system crashes, and interest rates go crazy.

In 2006 to July 2008, interest rates on Greek 2-year bonds were 4.5% to 4.9%. By Dec 2009, they fell to 4%. By July 2009 they fell to 1.7%, and by 2010, were only 3%. Interest rates fell before the crash. This is to be expected if you think about it logically.

When the economy goes bad, what do the vast majority of investors do? They take their money out of stocks, and other assets, and buy "safe securities", which generally means government bonds. As more people buy bonds, the interest rates drop.

But then when they see the booming government debt, and the drop in tax revenue to pay that debt.... a switch is flipped where government bonds are no longer considered safe, then interest rates go crazy.

So at the onset of the economic trouble, borrowing interest rates will fall. Then when people realize their safe investment, isn't as safe as they thought, interest rates went from 12% to 127% in 12 months.

At this point, the United States has followed the exact same path, to the letter.

Now that we have boasted our debt levels to that of Greece, all we need is a massive recession, and just one failure in the bond market, and we can have this country is a Greek crisis. It won't be Social Security sending out reduced checks, it will be lucky if you have a check.

As much as the pseudo economists run around complaining how the banks are all interconnected, and we can have this domino chain of failures.... in reality it's the government that has this problem.

Many of the Federal bonds are owned by other Federal agencies. Some the Federal reserve banks, and other Federal programs and agencies.

Others are owned by Trust funds and endowments. Still another large portion are owned by state governments, and even city governments.

On top of this, hundreds of programs are joint funded. This includes even the cheapest of mass transit, such as city bus service, is funded in part by Federal programs. For example FEMA. FEMA owns almost nothing. They coordinate with States that fund disaster relief. Without states paying for FEMA supplies, there would be no FEMA. Similarly, most States rely on Federal funding for Food Stamps, Welfare, and many other programs.

Point being, because all the government rely so heavily on each others, and all of them rely on borrowing, it's simply a matter of time before there is a critical failure. One failure would lead to another, as the debts of one, failed to pay off, the debts of another would fail. The entire system of inter-connected dominos could, spill across the country.

 

[Andylusion]

Note that half of the spending is SS and healthcare - which happen to be effected by our aging demographics....To say we can "simply go back to 90s spending" is to not understand this - we aren't spending on same population.


But of course if you want to have really good manners you would also adjust for size of economy (%GDP):
Which again, shows only modest increase.

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill! Unless you want to ration care. Ok, sure, we can cut expenses if we just.... have people wait 16-hours in the ER, and have them wait 5 years for a simple hip surgery. Ok. We can do that. And our 5-year survival rates will drop dramatically, and more people will die, but it's all good because it's cheaper.

But if you want today's qualify of care, then someone has to pay the bill. Are you ready to pay double in taxes? Yeah, we can institute 20% sales tax. That $25,000 Toyota Camry, most popular car, is now $30,000... not including state and local tax. Love that $2.50 per gallon of gas? Now it's $3. That $1,000 laptop computer, is now $1,200, and your internet is another $15 a month at least.

And do we need to go into what a 20% sales tax would do to housing prices, and rental prices?

Who exactly are these prices going to hurt? The poor. Of course. And you think that is going to bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of health care? No. Not even close. No amount of sin-tax is going to offset it either.

You are going to need an additional 300% increase in the health care tax. Right now, Medicare tax is only 3%. In the UK it's 11%. In France it's 7%, but then you are taxed on your retirement too, and then tax on investments too. You are essentially taxed on the same money multiple times.

All this is on top of the income tax. Which now, a large portion of your income taxes are paying for your health care too. When they first created it, 97% of funding came from the "contributions". Today only 63% is paid for by the contributions that are 3 to 5 times larger than US "contributions". The rest is made up by income taxes.

Their system is failing. Why do you want to adopt it here? It doesn't work over there. Why do you think it would work here?

They already pay triple the taxes we do, and yet are still going broke. But you magically think if we try the same thing, it will have a different result here? Why? Because we are arrogant Americans and believe the 'economics fairies' will spread pixie dust on our tax system and magic will cause it to produce money to pay for health care, where it never has anywhere else in the world?

And while you claim "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."... you look at a France where they don't have to worry about healthcare premiums......


Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights?

France has lost ONE MILLION jobs because of repressive tax regime as 60,000 of the country's rich now live abroad, report claims

Why hasn't it helped France? Why do you think it will help here, when it doesn't there?

 

[Indeependent]

Note that half of the spending is SS and healthcare - which happen to be effected by our aging demographics....To say we can "simply go back to 90s spending" is to not understand this - we aren't spending on same population.


But of course if you want to have really good manners you would also adjust for size of economy (%GDP):
Which again, shows only modest increase.

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill! Unless you want to ration care. Ok, sure, we can cut expenses if we just.... have people wait 16-hours in the ER, and have them wait 5 years for a simple hip surgery. Ok. We can do that. And our 5-year survival rates will drop dramatically, and more people will die, but it's all good because it's cheaper.

But if you want today's qualify of care, then someone has to pay the bill. Are you ready to pay double in taxes? Yeah, we can institute 20% sales tax. That $25,000 Toyota Camry, most popular car, is now $30,000... not including state and local tax. Love that $2.50 per gallon of gas? Now it's $3. That $1,000 laptop computer, is now $1,200, and your internet is another $15 a month at least.

And do we need to go into what a 20% sales tax would do to housing prices, and rental prices?

Who exactly are these prices going to hurt? The poor. Of course. And you think that is going to bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of health care? No. Not even close. No amount of sin-tax is going to offset it either.

You are going to need an additional 300% increase in the health care tax. Right now, Medicare tax is only 3%. In the UK it's 11%. In France it's 7%, but then you are taxed on your retirement too, and then tax on investments too. You are essentially taxed on the same money multiple times.

All this is on top of the income tax. Which now, a large portion of your income taxes are paying for your health care too. When they first created it, 97% of funding came from the "contributions". Today only 63% is paid for by the contributions that are 3 to 5 times larger than US "contributions". The rest is made up by income taxes.

Their system is failing. Why do you want to adopt it here? It doesn't work over there. Why do you think it would work here?

They already pay triple the taxes we do, and yet are still going broke. But you magically think if we try the same thing, it will have a different result here? Why? Because we are arrogant Americans and believe the 'economics fairies' will spread pixie dust on our tax system and magic will cause it to produce money to pay for health care, where it never has anywhere else in the world?

And while you claim "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."... you look at a France where they don't have to worry about healthcare premiums......


Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights?

France has lost ONE MILLION jobs because of repressive tax regime as 60,000 of the country's rich now live abroad, report claims

Why hasn't it helped France? Why do you think it will help here, when it doesn't there?

How about the alternative?
Once the First World Nations which are quickly becoming Second Worlk shitholes, catch on to the bunk of Neo-Conservatism, we will find out that many people became very wealthy PRIOR to the Post-Reagan Neo-Con façade.
I know CEOs and Directors will have to sell a few houses and helicopters, but in the end the selfish sociopaths will survive.

 

[Andylusion]

Note that half of the spending is SS and healthcare - which happen to be effected by our aging demographics....To say we can "simply go back to 90s spending" is to not understand this - we aren't spending on same population.


But of course if you want to have really good manners you would also adjust for size of economy (%GDP):
Which again, shows only modest increase.

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill! Unless you want to ration care. Ok, sure, we can cut expenses if we just.... have people wait 16-hours in the ER, and have them wait 5 years for a simple hip surgery. Ok. We can do that. And our 5-year survival rates will drop dramatically, and more people will die, but it's all good because it's cheaper.

But if you want today's qualify of care, then someone has to pay the bill. Are you ready to pay double in taxes? Yeah, we can institute 20% sales tax. That $25,000 Toyota Camry, most popular car, is now $30,000... not including state and local tax. Love that $2.50 per gallon of gas? Now it's $3. That $1,000 laptop computer, is now $1,200, and your internet is another $15 a month at least.

And do we need to go into what a 20% sales tax would do to housing prices, and rental prices?

Who exactly are these prices going to hurt? The poor. Of course. And you think that is going to bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of health care? No. Not even close. No amount of sin-tax is going to offset it either.

You are going to need an additional 300% increase in the health care tax. Right now, Medicare tax is only 3%. In the UK it's 11%. In France it's 7%, but then you are taxed on your retirement too, and then tax on investments too. You are essentially taxed on the same money multiple times.

All this is on top of the income tax. Which now, a large portion of your income taxes are paying for your health care too. When they first created it, 97% of funding came from the "contributions". Today only 63% is paid for by the contributions that are 3 to 5 times larger than US "contributions". The rest is made up by income taxes.

Their system is failing. Why do you want to adopt it here? It doesn't work over there. Why do you think it would work here?

They already pay triple the taxes we do, and yet are still going broke. But you magically think if we try the same thing, it will have a different result here? Why? Because we are arrogant Americans and believe the 'economics fairies' will spread pixie dust on our tax system and magic will cause it to produce money to pay for health care, where it never has anywhere else in the world?

And while you claim "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."... you look at a France where they don't have to worry about healthcare premiums......


Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights?

France has lost ONE MILLION jobs because of repressive tax regime as 60,000 of the country's rich now live abroad, report claims

Why hasn't it helped France? Why do you think it will help here, when it doesn't there?

How about the alternative?
Once the First World Nations which are quickly becoming Second Worlk shitholes, catch on to the bunk of Neo-Conservatism, we will find out that many people became very wealthy PRIOR to the Post-Reagan Neo-Con façade.
I know CEOs and Directors will have to sell a few houses and helicopters, but in the end the selfish sociopaths will survive.

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. What does that mean?

Do you really think that the rich are *EVER* going to sell their stuff to pay for your social programs?

No, of course not. You wouldn't either. You are lying if you say otherwise. No one does this. No one says "Yes I'm going to sell my house, and all the things I worked so hard for, so that other people can take my money".

That never happens. What the rich do, is the same thing anyone would do. They leave, and go somewhere else, where they can keep their stuff.

There is no country on the Earth, that is any different. The rich in France, packed up their stuff and left, taking their jobs, their companies, and their money, with them.

Same is true in Russia. Same is true in Venezuela. Same is true *EVERYWHERE*.

You can complain all you want about it... that's fine... and you can scream about greed, and how it shouldn't happen, and they should be patriots, and how blaw blaw blaw blaw blaw.....

That doesn't change anything! France tried this! They SCREAMED about how these people were traitors, and how they should stay in France, and how they should blaw blaw blaw blaw.

Did it change anything? No. France is in an economic crisis.

And if you really believe that it's the Rich that are driving us into third world status.... then why has getting rid of the rich, not improved anything for France, Venezuela, or even Cuba and Russia?

After all, they got rid of all the leaches, why didn't the economy boom into a Utopia?

Here's the bottom line..... if you enact policies to try and take money from the rich, to pay for your social programs, the results are devastating. The 3rd world status you fear, is the result of the tax and spend policies you want. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will.

You realize how many companies have left the US, to avoid taxes? It's already happening here, on a smaller scale. Burger King, isn't even an American company anymore. They are in Canada now. Budweiser is Belgium. Seagate Technology, is in Ireland.

 

[Indeependent]

Note that half of the spending is SS and healthcare - which happen to be effected by our aging demographics....To say we can "simply go back to 90s spending" is to not understand this - we aren't spending on same population.


But of course if you want to have really good manners you would also adjust for size of economy (%GDP):
Which again, shows only modest increase.

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill! Unless you want to ration care. Ok, sure, we can cut expenses if we just.... have people wait 16-hours in the ER, and have them wait 5 years for a simple hip surgery. Ok. We can do that. And our 5-year survival rates will drop dramatically, and more people will die, but it's all good because it's cheaper.

But if you want today's qualify of care, then someone has to pay the bill. Are you ready to pay double in taxes? Yeah, we can institute 20% sales tax. That $25,000 Toyota Camry, most popular car, is now $30,000... not including state and local tax. Love that $2.50 per gallon of gas? Now it's $3. That $1,000 laptop computer, is now $1,200, and your internet is another $15 a month at least.

And do we need to go into what a 20% sales tax would do to housing prices, and rental prices?

Who exactly are these prices going to hurt? The poor. Of course. And you think that is going to bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of health care? No. Not even close. No amount of sin-tax is going to offset it either.

You are going to need an additional 300% increase in the health care tax. Right now, Medicare tax is only 3%. In the UK it's 11%. In France it's 7%, but then you are taxed on your retirement too, and then tax on investments too. You are essentially taxed on the same money multiple times.

All this is on top of the income tax. Which now, a large portion of your income taxes are paying for your health care too. When they first created it, 97% of funding came from the "contributions". Today only 63% is paid for by the contributions that are 3 to 5 times larger than US "contributions". The rest is made up by income taxes.

Their system is failing. Why do you want to adopt it here? It doesn't work over there. Why do you think it would work here?

They already pay triple the taxes we do, and yet are still going broke. But you magically think if we try the same thing, it will have a different result here? Why? Because we are arrogant Americans and believe the 'economics fairies' will spread pixie dust on our tax system and magic will cause it to produce money to pay for health care, where it never has anywhere else in the world?

And while you claim "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."... you look at a France where they don't have to worry about healthcare premiums......


Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights?

France has lost ONE MILLION jobs because of repressive tax regime as 60,000 of the country's rich now live abroad, report claims

Why hasn't it helped France? Why do you think it will help here, when it doesn't there?

How about the alternative?
Once the First World Nations which are quickly becoming Second Worlk shitholes, catch on to the bunk of Neo-Conservatism, we will find out that many people became very wealthy PRIOR to the Post-Reagan Neo-Con façade.
I know CEOs and Directors will have to sell a few houses and helicopters, but in the end the selfish sociopaths will survive.

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. What does that mean?

Do you really think that the rich are *EVER* going to sell their stuff to pay for your social programs?

No, of course not. You wouldn't either. You are lying if you say otherwise. No one does this. No one says "Yes I'm going to sell my house, and all the things I worked so hard for, so that other people can take my money".

That never happens. What the rich do, is the same thing anyone would do. They leave, and go somewhere else, where they can keep their stuff.

There is no country on the Earth, that is any different. The rich in France, packed up their stuff and left, taking their jobs, their companies, and their money, with them.

Same is true in Russia. Same is true in Venezuela. Same is true *EVERYWHERE*.

You can complain all you want about it... that's fine... and you can scream about greed, and how it shouldn't happen, and they should be patriots, and how blaw blaw blaw blaw blaw.....

That doesn't change anything! France tried this! They SCREAMED about how these people were traitors, and how they should stay in France, and how they should blaw blaw blaw blaw.

Did it change anything? No. France is in an economic crisis.

And if you really believe that it's the Rich that are driving us into third world status.... then why has getting rid of the rich, not improved anything for France, Venezuela, or even Cuba and Russia?

After all, they got rid of all the leaches, why didn't the economy boom into a Utopia?

Here's the bottom line..... if you enact policies to try and take money from the rich, to pay for your social programs, the results are devastating. The 3rd world status you fear, is the result of the tax and spend policies you want. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will.

The rich will sell their stuff when the Legislation they buy no longer allows them to rape America while reaping the countless benefits they get without paying taxes.

 

[Andylusion]

Note that half of the spending is SS and healthcare - which happen to be effected by our aging demographics....To say we can "simply go back to 90s spending" is to not understand this - we aren't spending on same population.


But of course if you want to have really good manners you would also adjust for size of economy (%GDP):
Which again, shows only modest increase.

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill! Unless you want to ration care. Ok, sure, we can cut expenses if we just.... have people wait 16-hours in the ER, and have them wait 5 years for a simple hip surgery. Ok. We can do that. And our 5-year survival rates will drop dramatically, and more people will die, but it's all good because it's cheaper.

But if you want today's qualify of care, then someone has to pay the bill. Are you ready to pay double in taxes? Yeah, we can institute 20% sales tax. That $25,000 Toyota Camry, most popular car, is now $30,000... not including state and local tax. Love that $2.50 per gallon of gas? Now it's $3. That $1,000 laptop computer, is now $1,200, and your internet is another $15 a month at least.

And do we need to go into what a 20% sales tax would do to housing prices, and rental prices?

Who exactly are these prices going to hurt? The poor. Of course. And you think that is going to bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of health care? No. Not even close. No amount of sin-tax is going to offset it either.

You are going to need an additional 300% increase in the health care tax. Right now, Medicare tax is only 3%. In the UK it's 11%. In France it's 7%, but then you are taxed on your retirement too, and then tax on investments too. You are essentially taxed on the same money multiple times.

All this is on top of the income tax. Which now, a large portion of your income taxes are paying for your health care too. When they first created it, 97% of funding came from the "contributions". Today only 63% is paid for by the contributions that are 3 to 5 times larger than US "contributions". The rest is made up by income taxes.

Their system is failing. Why do you want to adopt it here? It doesn't work over there. Why do you think it would work here?

They already pay triple the taxes we do, and yet are still going broke. But you magically think if we try the same thing, it will have a different result here? Why? Because we are arrogant Americans and believe the 'economics fairies' will spread pixie dust on our tax system and magic will cause it to produce money to pay for health care, where it never has anywhere else in the world?

And while you claim "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."... you look at a France where they don't have to worry about healthcare premiums......


Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights?

France has lost ONE MILLION jobs because of repressive tax regime as 60,000 of the country's rich now live abroad, report claims

Why hasn't it helped France? Why do you think it will help here, when it doesn't there?

How about the alternative?
Once the First World Nations which are quickly becoming Second Worlk shitholes, catch on to the bunk of Neo-Conservatism, we will find out that many people became very wealthy PRIOR to the Post-Reagan Neo-Con façade.
I know CEOs and Directors will have to sell a few houses and helicopters, but in the end the selfish sociopaths will survive.

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. What does that mean?

Do you really think that the rich are *EVER* going to sell their stuff to pay for your social programs?

No, of course not. You wouldn't either. You are lying if you say otherwise. No one does this. No one says "Yes I'm going to sell my house, and all the things I worked so hard for, so that other people can take my money".

That never happens. What the rich do, is the same thing anyone would do. They leave, and go somewhere else, where they can keep their stuff.

There is no country on the Earth, that is any different. The rich in France, packed up their stuff and left, taking their jobs, their companies, and their money, with them.

Same is true in Russia. Same is true in Venezuela. Same is true *EVERYWHERE*.

You can complain all you want about it... that's fine... and you can scream about greed, and how it shouldn't happen, and they should be patriots, and how blaw blaw blaw blaw blaw.....

That doesn't change anything! France tried this! They SCREAMED about how these people were traitors, and how they should stay in France, and how they should blaw blaw blaw blaw.

Did it change anything? No. France is in an economic crisis.

And if you really believe that it's the Rich that are driving us into third world status.... then why has getting rid of the rich, not improved anything for France, Venezuela, or even Cuba and Russia?

After all, they got rid of all the leaches, why didn't the economy boom into a Utopia?

Here's the bottom line..... if you enact policies to try and take money from the rich, to pay for your social programs, the results are devastating. The 3rd world status you fear, is the result of the tax and spend policies you want. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will.

The rich will sell their stuff when the Legislation they buy no longer allows them to rape America while reaping the countless benefits they get without paying taxes.

Yeah.....

Now you are just making up stuff. Can you prove ANY of that? Absolutely prove that the rich don't pay tax, and how are they "raping america" or whatever myth you want to believe?

Even then, they still won't sell their stuff. They'll just move elsewhere.

 

[Indeependent]

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill! Unless you want to ration care. Ok, sure, we can cut expenses if we just.... have people wait 16-hours in the ER, and have them wait 5 years for a simple hip surgery. Ok. We can do that. And our 5-year survival rates will drop dramatically, and more people will die, but it's all good because it's cheaper.

But if you want today's qualify of care, then someone has to pay the bill. Are you ready to pay double in taxes? Yeah, we can institute 20% sales tax. That $25,000 Toyota Camry, most popular car, is now $30,000... not including state and local tax. Love that $2.50 per gallon of gas? Now it's $3. That $1,000 laptop computer, is now $1,200, and your internet is another $15 a month at least.

And do we need to go into what a 20% sales tax would do to housing prices, and rental prices?

Who exactly are these prices going to hurt? The poor. Of course. And you think that is going to bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of health care? No. Not even close. No amount of sin-tax is going to offset it either.

You are going to need an additional 300% increase in the health care tax. Right now, Medicare tax is only 3%. In the UK it's 11%. In France it's 7%, but then you are taxed on your retirement too, and then tax on investments too. You are essentially taxed on the same money multiple times.

All this is on top of the income tax. Which now, a large portion of your income taxes are paying for your health care too. When they first created it, 97% of funding came from the "contributions". Today only 63% is paid for by the contributions that are 3 to 5 times larger than US "contributions". The rest is made up by income taxes.

Their system is failing. Why do you want to adopt it here? It doesn't work over there. Why do you think it would work here?

They already pay triple the taxes we do, and yet are still going broke. But you magically think if we try the same thing, it will have a different result here? Why? Because we are arrogant Americans and believe the 'economics fairies' will spread pixie dust on our tax system and magic will cause it to produce money to pay for health care, where it never has anywhere else in the world?

And while you claim "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."... you look at a France where they don't have to worry about healthcare premiums......


Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights?

France has lost ONE MILLION jobs because of repressive tax regime as 60,000 of the country's rich now live abroad, report claims

Why hasn't it helped France? Why do you think it will help here, when it doesn't there?

How about the alternative?
Once the First World Nations which are quickly becoming Second Worlk shitholes, catch on to the bunk of Neo-Conservatism, we will find out that many people became very wealthy PRIOR to the Post-Reagan Neo-Con façade.
I know CEOs and Directors will have to sell a few houses and helicopters, but in the end the selfish sociopaths will survive.

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. What does that mean?

Do you really think that the rich are *EVER* going to sell their stuff to pay for your social programs?

No, of course not. You wouldn't either. You are lying if you say otherwise. No one does this. No one says "Yes I'm going to sell my house, and all the things I worked so hard for, so that other people can take my money".

That never happens. What the rich do, is the same thing anyone would do. They leave, and go somewhere else, where they can keep their stuff.

There is no country on the Earth, that is any different. The rich in France, packed up their stuff and left, taking their jobs, their companies, and their money, with them.

Same is true in Russia. Same is true in Venezuela. Same is true *EVERYWHERE*.

You can complain all you want about it... that's fine... and you can scream about greed, and how it shouldn't happen, and they should be patriots, and how blaw blaw blaw blaw blaw.....

That doesn't change anything! France tried this! They SCREAMED about how these people were traitors, and how they should stay in France, and how they should blaw blaw blaw blaw.

Did it change anything? No. France is in an economic crisis.

And if you really believe that it's the Rich that are driving us into third world status.... then why has getting rid of the rich, not improved anything for France, Venezuela, or even Cuba and Russia?

After all, they got rid of all the leaches, why didn't the economy boom into a Utopia?

Here's the bottom line..... if you enact policies to try and take money from the rich, to pay for your social programs, the results are devastating. The 3rd world status you fear, is the result of the tax and spend policies you want. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will.

The rich will sell their stuff when the Legislation they buy no longer allows them to rape America while reaping the countless benefits they get without paying taxes.

Yeah.....

Now you are just making up stuff. Can you prove ANY of that? Absolutely prove that the rich don't pay tax, and how are they "raping america" or whatever myth you want to believe?

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

 

[Andylusion]

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill! Unless you want to ration care. Ok, sure, we can cut expenses if we just.... have people wait 16-hours in the ER, and have them wait 5 years for a simple hip surgery. Ok. We can do that. And our 5-year survival rates will drop dramatically, and more people will die, but it's all good because it's cheaper.

But if you want today's qualify of care, then someone has to pay the bill. Are you ready to pay double in taxes? Yeah, we can institute 20% sales tax. That $25,000 Toyota Camry, most popular car, is now $30,000... not including state and local tax. Love that $2.50 per gallon of gas? Now it's $3. That $1,000 laptop computer, is now $1,200, and your internet is another $15 a month at least.

And do we need to go into what a 20% sales tax would do to housing prices, and rental prices?

Who exactly are these prices going to hurt? The poor. Of course. And you think that is going to bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of health care? No. Not even close. No amount of sin-tax is going to offset it either.

You are going to need an additional 300% increase in the health care tax. Right now, Medicare tax is only 3%. In the UK it's 11%. In France it's 7%, but then you are taxed on your retirement too, and then tax on investments too. You are essentially taxed on the same money multiple times.

All this is on top of the income tax. Which now, a large portion of your income taxes are paying for your health care too. When they first created it, 97% of funding came from the "contributions". Today only 63% is paid for by the contributions that are 3 to 5 times larger than US "contributions". The rest is made up by income taxes.

Their system is failing. Why do you want to adopt it here? It doesn't work over there. Why do you think it would work here?

They already pay triple the taxes we do, and yet are still going broke. But you magically think if we try the same thing, it will have a different result here? Why? Because we are arrogant Americans and believe the 'economics fairies' will spread pixie dust on our tax system and magic will cause it to produce money to pay for health care, where it never has anywhere else in the world?

And while you claim "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."... you look at a France where they don't have to worry about healthcare premiums......


Can The Last Taxpayer Leaving France Please Turn Out The Lights?

France has lost ONE MILLION jobs because of repressive tax regime as 60,000 of the country's rich now live abroad, report claims

Why hasn't it helped France? Why do you think it will help here, when it doesn't there?

How about the alternative?
Once the First World Nations which are quickly becoming Second Worlk shitholes, catch on to the bunk of Neo-Conservatism, we will find out that many people became very wealthy PRIOR to the Post-Reagan Neo-Con façade.
I know CEOs and Directors will have to sell a few houses and helicopters, but in the end the selfish sociopaths will survive.

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. What does that mean?

Do you really think that the rich are *EVER* going to sell their stuff to pay for your social programs?

No, of course not. You wouldn't either. You are lying if you say otherwise. No one does this. No one says "Yes I'm going to sell my house, and all the things I worked so hard for, so that other people can take my money".

That never happens. What the rich do, is the same thing anyone would do. They leave, and go somewhere else, where they can keep their stuff.

There is no country on the Earth, that is any different. The rich in France, packed up their stuff and left, taking their jobs, their companies, and their money, with them.

Same is true in Russia. Same is true in Venezuela. Same is true *EVERYWHERE*.

You can complain all you want about it... that's fine... and you can scream about greed, and how it shouldn't happen, and they should be patriots, and how blaw blaw blaw blaw blaw.....

That doesn't change anything! France tried this! They SCREAMED about how these people were traitors, and how they should stay in France, and how they should blaw blaw blaw blaw.

Did it change anything? No. France is in an economic crisis.

And if you really believe that it's the Rich that are driving us into third world status.... then why has getting rid of the rich, not improved anything for France, Venezuela, or even Cuba and Russia?

After all, they got rid of all the leaches, why didn't the economy boom into a Utopia?

Here's the bottom line..... if you enact policies to try and take money from the rich, to pay for your social programs, the results are devastating. The 3rd world status you fear, is the result of the tax and spend policies you want. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will.

The rich will sell their stuff when the Legislation they buy no longer allows them to rape America while reaping the countless benefits they get without paying taxes.

Yeah.....

Now you are just making up stuff. Can you prove ANY of that? Absolutely prove that the rich don't pay tax, and how are they "raping america" or whatever myth you want to believe?

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

 

[Indeependent]

How about the alternative?
Once the First World Nations which are quickly becoming Second Worlk shitholes, catch on to the bunk of Neo-Conservatism, we will find out that many people became very wealthy PRIOR to the Post-Reagan Neo-Con façade.
I know CEOs and Directors will have to sell a few houses and helicopters, but in the end the selfish sociopaths will survive.

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. What does that mean?

Do you really think that the rich are *EVER* going to sell their stuff to pay for your social programs?

No, of course not. You wouldn't either. You are lying if you say otherwise. No one does this. No one says "Yes I'm going to sell my house, and all the things I worked so hard for, so that other people can take my money".

That never happens. What the rich do, is the same thing anyone would do. They leave, and go somewhere else, where they can keep their stuff.

There is no country on the Earth, that is any different. The rich in France, packed up their stuff and left, taking their jobs, their companies, and their money, with them.

Same is true in Russia. Same is true in Venezuela. Same is true *EVERYWHERE*.

You can complain all you want about it... that's fine... and you can scream about greed, and how it shouldn't happen, and they should be patriots, and how blaw blaw blaw blaw blaw.....

That doesn't change anything! France tried this! They SCREAMED about how these people were traitors, and how they should stay in France, and how they should blaw blaw blaw blaw.

Did it change anything? No. France is in an economic crisis.

And if you really believe that it's the Rich that are driving us into third world status.... then why has getting rid of the rich, not improved anything for France, Venezuela, or even Cuba and Russia?

After all, they got rid of all the leaches, why didn't the economy boom into a Utopia?

Here's the bottom line..... if you enact policies to try and take money from the rich, to pay for your social programs, the results are devastating. The 3rd world status you fear, is the result of the tax and spend policies you want. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will.

The rich will sell their stuff when the Legislation they buy no longer allows them to rape America while reaping the countless benefits they get without paying taxes.

Yeah.....

Now you are just making up stuff. Can you prove ANY of that? Absolutely prove that the rich don't pay tax, and how are they "raping america" or whatever myth you want to believe?

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

 

[Andylusion]

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. What does that mean?

Do you really think that the rich are *EVER* going to sell their stuff to pay for your social programs?

No, of course not. You wouldn't either. You are lying if you say otherwise. No one does this. No one says "Yes I'm going to sell my house, and all the things I worked so hard for, so that other people can take my money".

That never happens. What the rich do, is the same thing anyone would do. They leave, and go somewhere else, where they can keep their stuff.

There is no country on the Earth, that is any different. The rich in France, packed up their stuff and left, taking their jobs, their companies, and their money, with them.

Same is true in Russia. Same is true in Venezuela. Same is true *EVERYWHERE*.

You can complain all you want about it... that's fine... and you can scream about greed, and how it shouldn't happen, and they should be patriots, and how blaw blaw blaw blaw blaw.....

That doesn't change anything! France tried this! They SCREAMED about how these people were traitors, and how they should stay in France, and how they should blaw blaw blaw blaw.

Did it change anything? No. France is in an economic crisis.

And if you really believe that it's the Rich that are driving us into third world status.... then why has getting rid of the rich, not improved anything for France, Venezuela, or even Cuba and Russia?

After all, they got rid of all the leaches, why didn't the economy boom into a Utopia?

Here's the bottom line..... if you enact policies to try and take money from the rich, to pay for your social programs, the results are devastating. The 3rd world status you fear, is the result of the tax and spend policies you want. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will.

The rich will sell their stuff when the Legislation they buy no longer allows them to rape America while reaping the countless benefits they get without paying taxes.

Yeah.....

Now you are just making up stuff. Can you prove ANY of that? Absolutely prove that the rich don't pay tax, and how are they "raping america" or whatever myth you want to believe?

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

I don't know what you are talking about, except that you are taking very small examples, and trying to apply it to everyone.

Very few CEOs of the dot.com bubble made millions while providing nothing. Very few. Similarly, investors were largely wiped out. Of course there were a few shady guys who created fake dot.companies, sold stock to investors, who knew it was a fake, let the price go up, and bailed out.

But there are always scams, and are always tiny isolated examples. And these people don't have anything left today anyway. They were scam artists. The few stories I've read about that, they are hiding in Latin America, and will never come back unless they are extradited.

Most of the bubble, was just a bubble. CEOs who invested heavily into companies that didn't make it, didn't walk out millionaires, unless perhaps they had other assets not tied to the company. Which means they earned it. Nor did investors who bought into it. Some had millions and ended up with thousands... again unless they had other investments that were successful.

The only people who are still wealthy from the dot.com bubble, are the companies which made it. Amazon, Google, and others. And they did earn what they have. You are wrong about that.

Oh please. We most certainly can afford infrastructure spending. It's not even that big of a deal. The problem isn't that we can't afford it. The problem is, we want to spend on other things.

It's just like most Americans could (before obamacare) easily afford health insurance. The average American spent twice as much on eating out, smart phones, TVs and cable, cars, and other entertainment (movies, football games, and so on). Similarly most Americans can easily afford to save for retirement. They would just rather have a beer, watch ESPN, and order a pizza, instead of save the money for retirement.

We can easily.... EASILY... afford all the infrastructure you could ever possibly want. Infrastructure spending today, is higher per-capita, than it was in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 1940s. We spend more, per person, on infrastructure, than the European Union or the UK. Only Japan and Australia spend more.

But we would rather spend the money on special interest groups, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Green-Energy, Unions, Welfare, Food Stamps, and a million other programs.

The entire Department of Transportation budget was only $11 Billion. Let's take some of that $23 Billion in farm subsidies, and fix the pot holes. Can't do that, gotta subsidize farms, right? Or the education $38 Billion in education programs. Nope, can't cut that. Gotta have money for the education union.

See, you people want everything. Just give me everything. I want free this, and free that, and subsidized schools, and so on. Then you complain..."oh there's no money to fix the pot holes!". Whose fault is that? Yours. We could cut taxes by 50%, and still fund the military, and have enough money left over, to build every bridge you people could dream up AND pay off the national debt.

We just can't do it, and fund every program you want, and every Obama Phone, and every SNAP card, and every subsidy, and every government grant... . and then you want to blame the rich??? No no, the problem is in your mirror.

People are not making less and less. That's just another myth. Not true. You are factually incorrect.

The minimum wage people of today, live a life of almost luxury, compared to the minimum wage people of yesterday.

The average minimum wage worker, lives in dwelling of Air Conditioning and high speed internet, and nation wide communication, and owns two automobiles. Things that 30, 40 and 50 years ago, only the richest of the rich could afford.

It's simply a myth. Two minimum wage workers, are the top 1% of wager earners on the face of the Earth. You are complaining about a life that most people on this Earth consider to be legend and for royalty.

In fact, the average welfare check places you in the top 20% of wage earners in the world.... without earning a wage.
The Average US Welfare Payment Puts You In The Top 20% Of All Income Earners

You missed it. If you work at nearly all companies, you get company stock. You should care, because the person you are harming, by taxing the company.... IS YOU.

Now if you refuse to join the 401k, and the profit sharing plan.... THEN THE PROBLEM IS STILL YOU.

Either way... you are harming YOU by demanding companies pay higher tax.

We've been over this. Yes some companies are hiring immigrants. Some are hiring Indians or whatever. Again, you seem to take a few select examples, and try and apply it to everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of companies. There are not all, or even the majority, hiring only foreign workers.

Regardless, what does this have to do with anything? If you force companies to pay higher corporate taxes.... explain how that is magically going to get them to not hire foreigners? If anything higher taxes would force the company to look for ways to cut costs. One of which is to replace Americans with cheaper labor.

Beyond that even, you can't pay people more than the labor is worth. If the customer isn't willing to pay me $100 to mow their lawn, I can't hire an employee and pay them $100 to mow the lawn. I would go out of business.

If the value of the work you do, isn't worth $100,000 a year to the customer, then the company can't pay you $100,000 a year for that work. No tax policy you make up, is going to change that. It can only make that problem worse.

The wealthy have more influence. Yes. Of course they do. They have since the dawn of human existence. They have throughout all civilization. And they will continue to have, until the end of the Earth.

Even if you go to an isolated tribal people in the middle of the Congo... the person with the best hut, the most wives, and the most children, has the most influence over the tribal leadership.

If you are trying to tell me, that you can't be happy, or you think the country will end, unless we eliminate the influence of the wealthy on government.... then first the country should have imploded 200 years ago, second you should bend over, and kiss your own butt goodbye.

You are destined to be a miserable sad bitter person until you die. Because I can't guarantee much, but I would stake my entire life, and everything I have on this. You will never.... at any point... in this country, or any other... have a system where the wealthy do not have more influence than the rest of society.

No amount of laws. No amount of regulations. No policies you could ever dream up. Nothing will ever change this fact.

People do not tend to vote for impoverished beggars. Haven't seen a homeless bum yet, who ran for public office and won.

Middle class plumbers, don't have time, or the money, to run for public office. And middle class business owners, are busy..... running their business.

Only the successful and wealthy, run for office. And naturally wealthy and successful people, don't hang out with bums and homeless people. So your friends, and your network, is going to be wealthy people like you, when you get into office.

This is how it has always been, throughout all the world, and throughout all human history. It will never change. If this is the fight you want to fight, and the hill you are willing to die on... then get ready to die on a hill. You are not going to change this.

 

[Silhouette]

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill!

I bolded the parts for you that you seemed to have skimmed over. Go back and read it again. The bills have to be paid to preserve human life with police, fire and military funding, so I'm not really sure why you object to another vital service to preserve human life. Maybe in order to fund healthcare we can also cut back on grant programs for art students and other such superfluous programs that aren't immediately serving the preservation of life.

Universal healthcare is unique in its ability to strengthen the economy in that most bankruptcies and foreclosures come from a family health issue. Bankrupt people don't strengthen the economy very much do they? I think the statistic I saw was something like 60% or more of all bankruptcies and foreclosures are from a family member getting sick or injured. God Bless America.

Now it's no longer a moral mandate. Now it's a mathematical one. If we continue to let the private health racket get fat while our country spirals into Russia's hands (I like to boil things down to their inevitable end), we have nobody but ourselves to blame. Even people on the right of the aisle are now quietly conceding to each other (because the recession has actually finally trickled up to their portfolios) that Universal Healthcare is a must to save the economy. (Don't ask me how I know; I have my sources)

I also get the feeling, along that line of thought, that the GOP is actually secretly rooting for Hillary in a weird way. I think they're going to help her enact Universal Healthcare after putting up a mock fight in Congress. And I think they're going to do this because they've actually seen the "turn-your-hair-white" numbers on our economic situation and they KNOW something radical and powerful (and quick) has to be done even to save their own gilded skins. But you know, they can't sign onto a socialist program after decades of bashing it to pieces verbally. So, yeah, Hillary, mock fight, UH to save America.

The concession that HillBilly might be giving them is 'yeah, I'll nominate whoever you guys want to sit on the US Supreme Court". That would be a most excellent compromise and the nation would love both parties for it.

 

[Indeependent]

The rich will sell their stuff when the Legislation they buy no longer allows them to rape America while reaping the countless benefits they get without paying taxes.

Yeah.....

Now you are just making up stuff. Can you prove ANY of that? Absolutely prove that the rich don't pay tax, and how are they "raping america" or whatever myth you want to believe?

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

I don't know what you are talking about, except that you are taking very small examples, and trying to apply it to everyone.

Very few CEOs of the dot.com bubble made millions while providing nothing. Very few. Similarly, investors were largely wiped out. Of course there were a few shady guys who created fake dot.companies, sold stock to investors, who knew it was a fake, let the price go up, and bailed out.

But there are always scams, and are always tiny isolated examples. And these people don't have anything left today anyway. They were scam artists. The few stories I've read about that, they are hiding in Latin America, and will never come back unless they are extradited.

Most of the bubble, was just a bubble. CEOs who invested heavily into companies that didn't make it, didn't walk out millionaires, unless perhaps they had other assets not tied to the company. Which means they earned it. Nor did investors who bought into it. Some had millions and ended up with thousands... again unless they had other investments that were successful.

The only people who are still wealthy from the dot.com bubble, are the companies which made it. Amazon, Google, and others. And they did earn what they have. You are wrong about that.

Oh please. We most certainly can afford infrastructure spending. It's not even that big of a deal. The problem isn't that we can't afford it. The problem is, we want to spend on other things.

It's just like most Americans could (before obamacare) easily afford health insurance. The average American spent twice as much on eating out, smart phones, TVs and cable, cars, and other entertainment (movies, football games, and so on). Similarly most Americans can easily afford to save for retirement. They would just rather have a beer, watch ESPN, and order a pizza, instead of save the money for retirement.

We can easily.... EASILY... afford all the infrastructure you could ever possibly want. Infrastructure spending today, is higher per-capita, than it was in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 1940s. We spend more, per person, on infrastructure, than the European Union or the UK. Only Japan and Australia spend more.

But we would rather spend the money on special interest groups, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Green-Energy, Unions, Welfare, Food Stamps, and a million other programs.

The entire Department of Transportation budget was only $11 Billion. Let's take some of that $23 Billion in farm subsidies, and fix the pot holes. Can't do that, gotta subsidize farms, right? Or the education $38 Billion in education programs. Nope, can't cut that. Gotta have money for the education union.

See, you people want everything. Just give me everything. I want free this, and free that, and subsidized schools, and so on. Then you complain..."oh there's no money to fix the pot holes!". Whose fault is that? Yours. We could cut taxes by 50%, and still fund the military, and have enough money left over, to build every bridge you people could dream up AND pay off the national debt.

We just can't do it, and fund every program you want, and every Obama Phone, and every SNAP card, and every subsidy, and every government grant... . and then you want to blame the rich??? No no, the problem is in your mirror.

People are not making less and less. That's just another myth. Not true. You are factually incorrect.

The minimum wage people of today, live a life of almost luxury, compared to the minimum wage people of yesterday.

The average minimum wage worker, lives in dwelling of Air Conditioning and high speed internet, and nation wide communication, and owns two automobiles. Things that 30, 40 and 50 years ago, only the richest of the rich could afford.

It's simply a myth. Two minimum wage workers, are the top 1% of wager earners on the face of the Earth. You are complaining about a life that most people on this Earth consider to be legend and for royalty.

In fact, the average welfare check places you in the top 20% of wage earners in the world.... without earning a wage.
The Average US Welfare Payment Puts You In The Top 20% Of All Income Earners

You missed it. If you work at nearly all companies, you get company stock. You should care, because the person you are harming, by taxing the company.... IS YOU.

Now if you refuse to join the 401k, and the profit sharing plan.... THEN THE PROBLEM IS STILL YOU.

Either way... you are harming YOU by demanding companies pay higher tax.

We've been over this. Yes some companies are hiring immigrants. Some are hiring Indians or whatever. Again, you seem to take a few select examples, and try and apply it to everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of companies. There are not all, or even the majority, hiring only foreign workers.

Regardless, what does this have to do with anything? If you force companies to pay higher corporate taxes.... explain how that is magically going to get them to not hire foreigners? If anything higher taxes would force the company to look for ways to cut costs. One of which is to replace Americans with cheaper labor.

Beyond that even, you can't pay people more than the labor is worth. If the customer isn't willing to pay me $100 to mow their lawn, I can't hire an employee and pay them $100 to mow the lawn. I would go out of business.

If the value of the work you do, isn't worth $100,000 a year to the customer, then the company can't pay you $100,000 a year for that work. No tax policy you make up, is going to change that. It can only make that problem worse.

The wealthy have more influence. Yes. Of course they do. They have since the dawn of human existence. They have throughout all civilization. And they will continue to have, until the end of the Earth.

Even if you go to an isolated tribal people in the middle of the Congo... the person with the best hut, the most wives, and the most children, has the most influence over the tribal leadership.

If you are trying to tell me, that you can't be happy, or you think the country will end, unless we eliminate the influence of the wealthy on government.... then first the country should have imploded 200 years ago, second you should bend over, and kiss your own butt goodbye.

You are destined to be a miserable sad bitter person until you die. Because I can't guarantee much, but I would stake my entire life, and everything I have on this. You will never.... at any point... in this country, or any other... have a system where the wealthy do not have more influence than the rest of society.

No amount of laws. No amount of regulations. No policies you could ever dream up. Nothing will ever change this fact.

People do not tend to vote for impoverished beggars. Haven't seen a homeless bum yet, who ran for public office and won.

Middle class plumbers, don't have time, or the money, to run for public office. And middle class business owners, are busy..... running their business.

Only the successful and wealthy, run for office. And naturally wealthy and successful people, don't hang out with bums and homeless people. So your friends, and your network, is going to be wealthy people like you, when you get into office.

This is how it has always been, throughout all the world, and throughout all human history. It will never change. If this is the fight you want to fight, and the hill you are willing to die on... then get ready to die on a hill. You are not going to change this.

You are correct..
We CAN afford infrastructure.
As soon as we do what Ben Stein suggests...
Severely raise Income Tax on the uber-wealthy and Corporate Taxes.
Why does Ben Stein say this?
Because the Corporations, Directors and CEOs of MNCs are FLUSH with cash they'll never be able to spend in their lifetimes.

Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, Robert Reich was one of the paid shills telling us how destroying America would make it great.
Of course Reich never say "destroy", he simply said America would gain 5 indigenous careers for every H1-B; he DIDN'T say these careers would be janitors. He also didn't say that the H1-Bs who were fired after they received their Green Cards would replace the non-Indian H1-B janitors.
He told us Off-Shoring would stimulate more factories in the US...WRONG.
NOW Mr. Reich is not saying he was paid to LIE, he's saying his Economic Model was WRONG!

The other famous argument is that American corporations were moving overseas to pay lower taxes.
We find out NOW that these corporations are, for the most part, trying to get away with paying ZERO taxes.

No, my Neo-Con tool, NONE of your cherry picked arguments from Neo-Con sites can fool someone like myself who has been, thanks to my son, reading the same bullshit in Financial Publications that YOU have been reading.

 

[Silhouette]

^^ And also just knowing basic math. If you send jobs overseas and leave millions of people on the dole at home, you're going to bankrupt the economy. That is such a simple equation that it's laughable. No sophistication needed at all to fully predict the outcome and understand the problem at its core.

 

[Andylusion]

Yeah.....

Now you are just making up stuff. Can you prove ANY of that? Absolutely prove that the rich don't pay tax, and how are they "raping america" or whatever myth you want to believe?

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

I don't know what you are talking about, except that you are taking very small examples, and trying to apply it to everyone.

Very few CEOs of the dot.com bubble made millions while providing nothing. Very few. Similarly, investors were largely wiped out. Of course there were a few shady guys who created fake dot.companies, sold stock to investors, who knew it was a fake, let the price go up, and bailed out.

But there are always scams, and are always tiny isolated examples. And these people don't have anything left today anyway. They were scam artists. The few stories I've read about that, they are hiding in Latin America, and will never come back unless they are extradited.

Most of the bubble, was just a bubble. CEOs who invested heavily into companies that didn't make it, didn't walk out millionaires, unless perhaps they had other assets not tied to the company. Which means they earned it. Nor did investors who bought into it. Some had millions and ended up with thousands... again unless they had other investments that were successful.

The only people who are still wealthy from the dot.com bubble, are the companies which made it. Amazon, Google, and others. And they did earn what they have. You are wrong about that.

Oh please. We most certainly can afford infrastructure spending. It's not even that big of a deal. The problem isn't that we can't afford it. The problem is, we want to spend on other things.

It's just like most Americans could (before obamacare) easily afford health insurance. The average American spent twice as much on eating out, smart phones, TVs and cable, cars, and other entertainment (movies, football games, and so on). Similarly most Americans can easily afford to save for retirement. They would just rather have a beer, watch ESPN, and order a pizza, instead of save the money for retirement.

We can easily.... EASILY... afford all the infrastructure you could ever possibly want. Infrastructure spending today, is higher per-capita, than it was in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 1940s. We spend more, per person, on infrastructure, than the European Union or the UK. Only Japan and Australia spend more.

But we would rather spend the money on special interest groups, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Green-Energy, Unions, Welfare, Food Stamps, and a million other programs.

The entire Department of Transportation budget was only $11 Billion. Let's take some of that $23 Billion in farm subsidies, and fix the pot holes. Can't do that, gotta subsidize farms, right? Or the education $38 Billion in education programs. Nope, can't cut that. Gotta have money for the education union.

See, you people want everything. Just give me everything. I want free this, and free that, and subsidized schools, and so on. Then you complain..."oh there's no money to fix the pot holes!". Whose fault is that? Yours. We could cut taxes by 50%, and still fund the military, and have enough money left over, to build every bridge you people could dream up AND pay off the national debt.

We just can't do it, and fund every program you want, and every Obama Phone, and every SNAP card, and every subsidy, and every government grant... . and then you want to blame the rich??? No no, the problem is in your mirror.

People are not making less and less. That's just another myth. Not true. You are factually incorrect.

The minimum wage people of today, live a life of almost luxury, compared to the minimum wage people of yesterday.

The average minimum wage worker, lives in dwelling of Air Conditioning and high speed internet, and nation wide communication, and owns two automobiles. Things that 30, 40 and 50 years ago, only the richest of the rich could afford.

It's simply a myth. Two minimum wage workers, are the top 1% of wager earners on the face of the Earth. You are complaining about a life that most people on this Earth consider to be legend and for royalty.

In fact, the average welfare check places you in the top 20% of wage earners in the world.... without earning a wage.
The Average US Welfare Payment Puts You In The Top 20% Of All Income Earners

You missed it. If you work at nearly all companies, you get company stock. You should care, because the person you are harming, by taxing the company.... IS YOU.

Now if you refuse to join the 401k, and the profit sharing plan.... THEN THE PROBLEM IS STILL YOU.

Either way... you are harming YOU by demanding companies pay higher tax.

We've been over this. Yes some companies are hiring immigrants. Some are hiring Indians or whatever. Again, you seem to take a few select examples, and try and apply it to everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of companies. There are not all, or even the majority, hiring only foreign workers.

Regardless, what does this have to do with anything? If you force companies to pay higher corporate taxes.... explain how that is magically going to get them to not hire foreigners? If anything higher taxes would force the company to look for ways to cut costs. One of which is to replace Americans with cheaper labor.

Beyond that even, you can't pay people more than the labor is worth. If the customer isn't willing to pay me $100 to mow their lawn, I can't hire an employee and pay them $100 to mow the lawn. I would go out of business.

If the value of the work you do, isn't worth $100,000 a year to the customer, then the company can't pay you $100,000 a year for that work. No tax policy you make up, is going to change that. It can only make that problem worse.

The wealthy have more influence. Yes. Of course they do. They have since the dawn of human existence. They have throughout all civilization. And they will continue to have, until the end of the Earth.

Even if you go to an isolated tribal people in the middle of the Congo... the person with the best hut, the most wives, and the most children, has the most influence over the tribal leadership.

If you are trying to tell me, that you can't be happy, or you think the country will end, unless we eliminate the influence of the wealthy on government.... then first the country should have imploded 200 years ago, second you should bend over, and kiss your own butt goodbye.

You are destined to be a miserable sad bitter person until you die. Because I can't guarantee much, but I would stake my entire life, and everything I have on this. You will never.... at any point... in this country, or any other... have a system where the wealthy do not have more influence than the rest of society.

No amount of laws. No amount of regulations. No policies you could ever dream up. Nothing will ever change this fact.

People do not tend to vote for impoverished beggars. Haven't seen a homeless bum yet, who ran for public office and won.

Middle class plumbers, don't have time, or the money, to run for public office. And middle class business owners, are busy..... running their business.

Only the successful and wealthy, run for office. And naturally wealthy and successful people, don't hang out with bums and homeless people. So your friends, and your network, is going to be wealthy people like you, when you get into office.

This is how it has always been, throughout all the world, and throughout all human history. It will never change. If this is the fight you want to fight, and the hill you are willing to die on... then get ready to die on a hill. You are not going to change this.

You are correct..
We CAN afford infrastructure.
As soon as we do what Ben Stein suggests...
Severely raise Income Tax on the uber-wealthy and Corporate Taxes.
Why does Ben Stein say this?
Because the Corporations, Directors and CEOs of MNCs are FLUSH with cash they'll never be able to spend in their lifetimes.

Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, Robert Reich was one of the paid shills telling us how destroying America would make it great.
Of course Reich never say "destroy", he simply said America would gain 5 indigenous careers for every H1-B; he DIDN'T say these careers would be janitors. He also didn't say that the H1-Bs who were fired after that received their Green Cards would replace the non-Indian H1-B janitors.
He told us Off-Shoring would stimulate more factories in the US...WRONG.
NOW Mr. Reich is not saying he was paid to LIE, he's saying his Economic Model was WRONG!

The other famous argument is that American corporations were moving overseas to pay lower taxes.
We find out NOW that these corporations are, for the most part, trying to get away with paying ZERO taxes.

No, my Neo-Con tool, NONE of your cherry picked arguments from Neo-Con sites can fool someone like myself who has been, thanks to my son, reading the same bullshit in Financial Publications that YOU have been reading.

Wrong again. We've already covered this. None of them, regardless of how much you think they are flush with cash, are going to pay the taxes you want.

How many times are you going to need to be shown this, before you figure it out? How many time do you need to have the examples posted to you over and over, before you stop claiming it will work?

Wealthy avoid taxes by moving assets to no-tax states

The wealthy are going to avoid your taxes. The higher you push up those taxes, the more they will avoid them.

I've posted hundreds of examples, from around the world, and now examples from within the United States.

They are not paying zero tax. You and your side, have been spewing that unsupportable, unprovable, allegation for a decade now.

Yeah, I'd like a list of names of people whose jobs were replaced by H1-B visas, and are now emptying garbage cans. Do show the exact numbers of this.

Sorry, but my cherry picked examples are dead on. Can compared to your ZERO examples, and endless proven false arguments, are far more compelling.

 

[Indeependent]

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

I don't know what you are talking about, except that you are taking very small examples, and trying to apply it to everyone.

Very few CEOs of the dot.com bubble made millions while providing nothing. Very few. Similarly, investors were largely wiped out. Of course there were a few shady guys who created fake dot.companies, sold stock to investors, who knew it was a fake, let the price go up, and bailed out.

But there are always scams, and are always tiny isolated examples. And these people don't have anything left today anyway. They were scam artists. The few stories I've read about that, they are hiding in Latin America, and will never come back unless they are extradited.

Most of the bubble, was just a bubble. CEOs who invested heavily into companies that didn't make it, didn't walk out millionaires, unless perhaps they had other assets not tied to the company. Which means they earned it. Nor did investors who bought into it. Some had millions and ended up with thousands... again unless they had other investments that were successful.

The only people who are still wealthy from the dot.com bubble, are the companies which made it. Amazon, Google, and others. And they did earn what they have. You are wrong about that.

Oh please. We most certainly can afford infrastructure spending. It's not even that big of a deal. The problem isn't that we can't afford it. The problem is, we want to spend on other things.

It's just like most Americans could (before obamacare) easily afford health insurance. The average American spent twice as much on eating out, smart phones, TVs and cable, cars, and other entertainment (movies, football games, and so on). Similarly most Americans can easily afford to save for retirement. They would just rather have a beer, watch ESPN, and order a pizza, instead of save the money for retirement.

We can easily.... EASILY... afford all the infrastructure you could ever possibly want. Infrastructure spending today, is higher per-capita, than it was in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 1940s. We spend more, per person, on infrastructure, than the European Union or the UK. Only Japan and Australia spend more.

But we would rather spend the money on special interest groups, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Green-Energy, Unions, Welfare, Food Stamps, and a million other programs.

The entire Department of Transportation budget was only $11 Billion. Let's take some of that $23 Billion in farm subsidies, and fix the pot holes. Can't do that, gotta subsidize farms, right? Or the education $38 Billion in education programs. Nope, can't cut that. Gotta have money for the education union.

See, you people want everything. Just give me everything. I want free this, and free that, and subsidized schools, and so on. Then you complain..."oh there's no money to fix the pot holes!". Whose fault is that? Yours. We could cut taxes by 50%, and still fund the military, and have enough money left over, to build every bridge you people could dream up AND pay off the national debt.

We just can't do it, and fund every program you want, and every Obama Phone, and every SNAP card, and every subsidy, and every government grant... . and then you want to blame the rich??? No no, the problem is in your mirror.

People are not making less and less. That's just another myth. Not true. You are factually incorrect.

The minimum wage people of today, live a life of almost luxury, compared to the minimum wage people of yesterday.

The average minimum wage worker, lives in dwelling of Air Conditioning and high speed internet, and nation wide communication, and owns two automobiles. Things that 30, 40 and 50 years ago, only the richest of the rich could afford.

It's simply a myth. Two minimum wage workers, are the top 1% of wager earners on the face of the Earth. You are complaining about a life that most people on this Earth consider to be legend and for royalty.

In fact, the average welfare check places you in the top 20% of wage earners in the world.... without earning a wage.
The Average US Welfare Payment Puts You In The Top 20% Of All Income Earners

You missed it. If you work at nearly all companies, you get company stock. You should care, because the person you are harming, by taxing the company.... IS YOU.

Now if you refuse to join the 401k, and the profit sharing plan.... THEN THE PROBLEM IS STILL YOU.

Either way... you are harming YOU by demanding companies pay higher tax.

We've been over this. Yes some companies are hiring immigrants. Some are hiring Indians or whatever. Again, you seem to take a few select examples, and try and apply it to everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of companies. There are not all, or even the majority, hiring only foreign workers.

Regardless, what does this have to do with anything? If you force companies to pay higher corporate taxes.... explain how that is magically going to get them to not hire foreigners? If anything higher taxes would force the company to look for ways to cut costs. One of which is to replace Americans with cheaper labor.

Beyond that even, you can't pay people more than the labor is worth. If the customer isn't willing to pay me $100 to mow their lawn, I can't hire an employee and pay them $100 to mow the lawn. I would go out of business.

If the value of the work you do, isn't worth $100,000 a year to the customer, then the company can't pay you $100,000 a year for that work. No tax policy you make up, is going to change that. It can only make that problem worse.

The wealthy have more influence. Yes. Of course they do. They have since the dawn of human existence. They have throughout all civilization. And they will continue to have, until the end of the Earth.

Even if you go to an isolated tribal people in the middle of the Congo... the person with the best hut, the most wives, and the most children, has the most influence over the tribal leadership.

If you are trying to tell me, that you can't be happy, or you think the country will end, unless we eliminate the influence of the wealthy on government.... then first the country should have imploded 200 years ago, second you should bend over, and kiss your own butt goodbye.

You are destined to be a miserable sad bitter person until you die. Because I can't guarantee much, but I would stake my entire life, and everything I have on this. You will never.... at any point... in this country, or any other... have a system where the wealthy do not have more influence than the rest of society.

No amount of laws. No amount of regulations. No policies you could ever dream up. Nothing will ever change this fact.

People do not tend to vote for impoverished beggars. Haven't seen a homeless bum yet, who ran for public office and won.

Middle class plumbers, don't have time, or the money, to run for public office. And middle class business owners, are busy..... running their business.

Only the successful and wealthy, run for office. And naturally wealthy and successful people, don't hang out with bums and homeless people. So your friends, and your network, is going to be wealthy people like you, when you get into office.

This is how it has always been, throughout all the world, and throughout all human history. It will never change. If this is the fight you want to fight, and the hill you are willing to die on... then get ready to die on a hill. You are not going to change this.

You are correct..
We CAN afford infrastructure.
As soon as we do what Ben Stein suggests...
Severely raise Income Tax on the uber-wealthy and Corporate Taxes.
Why does Ben Stein say this?
Because the Corporations, Directors and CEOs of MNCs are FLUSH with cash they'll never be able to spend in their lifetimes.

Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, Robert Reich was one of the paid shills telling us how destroying America would make it great.
Of course Reich never say "destroy", he simply said America would gain 5 indigenous careers for every H1-B; he DIDN'T say these careers would be janitors. He also didn't say that the H1-Bs who were fired after that received their Green Cards would replace the non-Indian H1-B janitors.
He told us Off-Shoring would stimulate more factories in the US...WRONG.
NOW Mr. Reich is not saying he was paid to LIE, he's saying his Economic Model was WRONG!

The other famous argument is that American corporations were moving overseas to pay lower taxes.
We find out NOW that these corporations are, for the most part, trying to get away with paying ZERO taxes.

No, my Neo-Con tool, NONE of your cherry picked arguments from Neo-Con sites can fool someone like myself who has been, thanks to my son, reading the same bullshit in Financial Publications that YOU have been reading.

Wrong again. We've already covered this. None of them, regardless of how much you think they are flush with cash, are going to pay the taxes you want.

How many times are you going to need to be shown this, before you figure it out? How many time do you need to have the examples posted to you over and over, before you stop claiming it will work?

Wealthy avoid taxes by moving assets to no-tax states

The wealthy are going to avoid your taxes. The higher you push up those taxes, the more they will avoid them.

I've posted hundreds of examples, from around the world, and now examples from within the United States.

They are not paying zero tax. You and your side, have been spewing that unsupportable, unprovable, allegation for a decade now.

Yeah, I'd like a list of names of people whose jobs were replaced by H1-B visas, and are now emptying garbage cans. Do show the exact numbers of this.

Sorry, but my cherry picked examples are dead on. Can compared to your ZERO examples, and endless proven false arguments, are far more compelling.

You have shown THEORIES, not concrete examples.
The laws the wealthy bribed into legislation must be reversed.
In terms of H1-Bs, where the hell do you live? In a cave?
Has YOUR city been an H1-B hotbed?
NYC and LI sure are.
Please don't tell me you live in Wyoming or Idaho and think you know what's going on in H1-B hotbeds.
I suggest you start reading the WSJ starting in 1998 and realize how many lies you believe.

 

[Indeependent]

If you don't know the benefits reaped by ex-US MNCs then you have lost all validity as anything but a Neo-Con copy/paste troll.
Go do some research on the benefits ex-US MNCs and then come back.
A shame since others have enumerated on these benefits a number of times.

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

I don't know what you are talking about, except that you are taking very small examples, and trying to apply it to everyone.

Very few CEOs of the dot.com bubble made millions while providing nothing. Very few. Similarly, investors were largely wiped out. Of course there were a few shady guys who created fake dot.companies, sold stock to investors, who knew it was a fake, let the price go up, and bailed out.

But there are always scams, and are always tiny isolated examples. And these people don't have anything left today anyway. They were scam artists. The few stories I've read about that, they are hiding in Latin America, and will never come back unless they are extradited.

Most of the bubble, was just a bubble. CEOs who invested heavily into companies that didn't make it, didn't walk out millionaires, unless perhaps they had other assets not tied to the company. Which means they earned it. Nor did investors who bought into it. Some had millions and ended up with thousands... again unless they had other investments that were successful.

The only people who are still wealthy from the dot.com bubble, are the companies which made it. Amazon, Google, and others. And they did earn what they have. You are wrong about that.

Oh please. We most certainly can afford infrastructure spending. It's not even that big of a deal. The problem isn't that we can't afford it. The problem is, we want to spend on other things.

It's just like most Americans could (before obamacare) easily afford health insurance. The average American spent twice as much on eating out, smart phones, TVs and cable, cars, and other entertainment (movies, football games, and so on). Similarly most Americans can easily afford to save for retirement. They would just rather have a beer, watch ESPN, and order a pizza, instead of save the money for retirement.

We can easily.... EASILY... afford all the infrastructure you could ever possibly want. Infrastructure spending today, is higher per-capita, than it was in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 1940s. We spend more, per person, on infrastructure, than the European Union or the UK. Only Japan and Australia spend more.

But we would rather spend the money on special interest groups, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Green-Energy, Unions, Welfare, Food Stamps, and a million other programs.

The entire Department of Transportation budget was only $11 Billion. Let's take some of that $23 Billion in farm subsidies, and fix the pot holes. Can't do that, gotta subsidize farms, right? Or the education $38 Billion in education programs. Nope, can't cut that. Gotta have money for the education union.

See, you people want everything. Just give me everything. I want free this, and free that, and subsidized schools, and so on. Then you complain..."oh there's no money to fix the pot holes!". Whose fault is that? Yours. We could cut taxes by 50%, and still fund the military, and have enough money left over, to build every bridge you people could dream up AND pay off the national debt.

We just can't do it, and fund every program you want, and every Obama Phone, and every SNAP card, and every subsidy, and every government grant... . and then you want to blame the rich??? No no, the problem is in your mirror.

People are not making less and less. That's just another myth. Not true. You are factually incorrect.

The minimum wage people of today, live a life of almost luxury, compared to the minimum wage people of yesterday.

The average minimum wage worker, lives in dwelling of Air Conditioning and high speed internet, and nation wide communication, and owns two automobiles. Things that 30, 40 and 50 years ago, only the richest of the rich could afford.

It's simply a myth. Two minimum wage workers, are the top 1% of wager earners on the face of the Earth. You are complaining about a life that most people on this Earth consider to be legend and for royalty.

In fact, the average welfare check places you in the top 20% of wage earners in the world.... without earning a wage.
The Average US Welfare Payment Puts You In The Top 20% Of All Income Earners

You missed it. If you work at nearly all companies, you get company stock. You should care, because the person you are harming, by taxing the company.... IS YOU.

Now if you refuse to join the 401k, and the profit sharing plan.... THEN THE PROBLEM IS STILL YOU.

Either way... you are harming YOU by demanding companies pay higher tax.

We've been over this. Yes some companies are hiring immigrants. Some are hiring Indians or whatever. Again, you seem to take a few select examples, and try and apply it to everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of companies. There are not all, or even the majority, hiring only foreign workers.

Regardless, what does this have to do with anything? If you force companies to pay higher corporate taxes.... explain how that is magically going to get them to not hire foreigners? If anything higher taxes would force the company to look for ways to cut costs. One of which is to replace Americans with cheaper labor.

Beyond that even, you can't pay people more than the labor is worth. If the customer isn't willing to pay me $100 to mow their lawn, I can't hire an employee and pay them $100 to mow the lawn. I would go out of business.

If the value of the work you do, isn't worth $100,000 a year to the customer, then the company can't pay you $100,000 a year for that work. No tax policy you make up, is going to change that. It can only make that problem worse.

The wealthy have more influence. Yes. Of course they do. They have since the dawn of human existence. They have throughout all civilization. And they will continue to have, until the end of the Earth.

Even if you go to an isolated tribal people in the middle of the Congo... the person with the best hut, the most wives, and the most children, has the most influence over the tribal leadership.

If you are trying to tell me, that you can't be happy, or you think the country will end, unless we eliminate the influence of the wealthy on government.... then first the country should have imploded 200 years ago, second you should bend over, and kiss your own butt goodbye.

You are destined to be a miserable sad bitter person until you die. Because I can't guarantee much, but I would stake my entire life, and everything I have on this. You will never.... at any point... in this country, or any other... have a system where the wealthy do not have more influence than the rest of society.

No amount of laws. No amount of regulations. No policies you could ever dream up. Nothing will ever change this fact.

People do not tend to vote for impoverished beggars. Haven't seen a homeless bum yet, who ran for public office and won.

Middle class plumbers, don't have time, or the money, to run for public office. And middle class business owners, are busy..... running their business.

Only the successful and wealthy, run for office. And naturally wealthy and successful people, don't hang out with bums and homeless people. So your friends, and your network, is going to be wealthy people like you, when you get into office.

This is how it has always been, throughout all the world, and throughout all human history. It will never change. If this is the fight you want to fight, and the hill you are willing to die on... then get ready to die on a hill. You are not going to change this.

You are correct..
We CAN afford infrastructure.
As soon as we do what Ben Stein suggests...
Severely raise Income Tax on the uber-wealthy and Corporate Taxes.
Why does Ben Stein say this?
Because the Corporations, Directors and CEOs of MNCs are FLUSH with cash they'll never be able to spend in their lifetimes.

Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, Robert Reich was one of the paid shills telling us how destroying America would make it great.
Of course Reich never say "destroy", he simply said America would gain 5 indigenous careers for every H1-B; he DIDN'T say these careers would be janitors. He also didn't say that the H1-Bs who were fired after that received their Green Cards would replace the non-Indian H1-B janitors.
He told us Off-Shoring would stimulate more factories in the US...WRONG.
NOW Mr. Reich is not saying he was paid to LIE, he's saying his Economic Model was WRONG!

The other famous argument is that American corporations were moving overseas to pay lower taxes.
We find out NOW that these corporations are, for the most part, trying to get away with paying ZERO taxes.

No, my Neo-Con tool, NONE of your cherry picked arguments from Neo-Con sites can fool someone like myself who has been, thanks to my son, reading the same bullshit in Financial Publications that YOU have been reading.

Wrong again. We've already covered this. None of them, regardless of how much you think they are flush with cash, are going to pay the taxes you want.

How many times are you going to need to be shown this, before you figure it out? How many time do you need to have the examples posted to you over and over, before you stop claiming it will work?

Wealthy avoid taxes by moving assets to no-tax states

The wealthy are going to avoid your taxes. The higher you push up those taxes, the more they will avoid them.

I've posted hundreds of examples, from around the world, and now examples from within the United States.

They are not paying zero tax. You and your side, have been spewing that unsupportable, unprovable, allegation for a decade now.

Yeah, I'd like a list of names of people whose jobs were replaced by H1-B visas, and are now emptying garbage cans. Do show the exact numbers of this.

Sorry, but my cherry picked examples are dead on. Can compared to your ZERO examples, and endless proven false arguments, are far more compelling.

MNCs are NOT paying ZERO taxes in Australia and Ireland?
Shit man, pull out your damn smartphone and read a story once in a while.

 

[Andylusion]

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill!

I bolded the parts for you that you seemed to have skimmed over. Go back and read it again. The bills have to be paid to preserve human life with police, fire and military funding, so I'm not really sure why you object to another vital service to preserve human life. Maybe in order to fund healthcare we can also cut back on grant programs for art students and other such superfluous programs that aren't immediately serving the preservation of life.

Universal healthcare is unique in its ability to strengthen the economy in that most bankruptcies and foreclosures come from a family health issue. Bankrupt people don't strengthen the economy very much do they? I think the statistic I saw was something like 60% or more of all bankruptcies and foreclosures are from a family member getting sick or injured. God Bless America.

Now it's no longer a moral mandate. Now it's a mathematical one. If we continue to let the private health racket get fat while our country spirals into Russia's hands (I like to boil things down to their inevitable end), we have nobody but ourselves to blame. Even people on the right of the aisle are now quietly conceding to each other (because the recession has actually finally trickled up to their portfolios) that Universal Healthcare is a must to save the economy. (Don't ask me how I know; I have my sources)

I also get the feeling, along that line of thought, that the GOP is actually secretly rooting for Hillary in a weird way. I think they're going to help her enact Universal Healthcare after putting up a mock fight in Congress. And I think they're going to do this because they've actually seen the "turn-your-hair-white" numbers on our economic situation and they KNOW something radical and powerful (and quick) has to be done even to save their own gilded skins. But you know, they can't sign onto a socialist program after decades of bashing it to pieces verbally. So, yeah, Hillary, mock fight, UH to save America.

The concession that HillBilly might be giving them is 'yeah, I'll nominate whoever you guys want to sit on the US Supreme Court". That would be a most excellent compromise and the nation would love both parties for it.

No, they were not skimmed over... they were idiotic. As I already said in the prior post, which you skimmed over... those things won't provide a tiny fraction of the cost of universal health care. Additionally, whatever additional money some people might have for a lack of a premium payment, will be lost in drastically higher taxes. There will be no boast to the economy, and more likely a recession.

Moreover, the bankruptcy claim is a myth. I've read the data, and it's absolutely moronic in it's claims. The researchers called every bankruptcy with more than $5,000 in medical bills, a "medical bankruptcy". But no one files bankruptcy over $5,000. The cost of filing the bankruptcy, could be more than how much medical bills they had, and this idiotic report would call it a "medical bankruptcy".

Also, they added in bankruptcies where the individuals got sick and couldn't work. So even if they had perfect insurance, that covered 100% of the costs, and didn't have a single dollar of medical debt... if they filed bankruptcy because they missed work and were sick.... then it was a medical bankruptcy.

But they would have file bankruptcy even if 100% of their medical bills were covered. So how would Universal health care fix any of that? It wouldn't. It's a lie.

Again, if any of your grand claims about how beneficial universal health care is, were in fact true... then why don't we see this play out around the world? Why is France in such problematic situations? Why is the UK seeing doctors walk off the job? Why is Greece a nightmare?

There is no example that supports your claim.

 

[Indeependent]

And all that would change if Universal Healthcare was funded by sales taxes on sugar crap, tobacco and booze, with nominal co-pays to discourage overuse of the system. For the first 5-10 years, it would be an adjustment. But we're going to have to make hard adjustments either way to save our economy. With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums for employees, they'll hire more; which stimulates the economy. With people not having to pay the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage each month in healthcare premiums and deductible costs, they'll be spending that money in the marketplace; which stimulates even more jobs and the economy. As more and more people start up new businesses with the glee and freedom of fear of going under from healthcare issues, our GDP will rise and our debt will decrease.

But of course this would mean a tax on sugars, tobacco and booze. So ? Would it be worth it?

Here's the problem with your logic.... "With employers and prospective entrepreneurs no longer saddled with worry or expense of providing healthcare premiums..."

Someone has to pay the bill. Someone has to pay the bill!

I bolded the parts for you that you seemed to have skimmed over. Go back and read it again. The bills have to be paid to preserve human life with police, fire and military funding, so I'm not really sure why you object to another vital service to preserve human life. Maybe in order to fund healthcare we can also cut back on grant programs for art students and other such superfluous programs that aren't immediately serving the preservation of life.

Universal healthcare is unique in its ability to strengthen the economy in that most bankruptcies and foreclosures come from a family health issue. Bankrupt people don't strengthen the economy very much do they? I think the statistic I saw was something like 60% or more of all bankruptcies and foreclosures are from a family member getting sick or injured. God Bless America.

Now it's no longer a moral mandate. Now it's a mathematical one. If we continue to let the private health racket get fat while our country spirals into Russia's hands (I like to boil things down to their inevitable end), we have nobody but ourselves to blame. Even people on the right of the aisle are now quietly conceding to each other (because the recession has actually finally trickled up to their portfolios) that Universal Healthcare is a must to save the economy. (Don't ask me how I know; I have my sources)

I also get the feeling, along that line of thought, that the GOP is actually secretly rooting for Hillary in a weird way. I think they're going to help her enact Universal Healthcare after putting up a mock fight in Congress. And I think they're going to do this because they've actually seen the "turn-your-hair-white" numbers on our economic situation and they KNOW something radical and powerful (and quick) has to be done even to save their own gilded skins. But you know, they can't sign onto a socialist program after decades of bashing it to pieces verbally. So, yeah, Hillary, mock fight, UH to save America.

The concession that HillBilly might be giving them is 'yeah, I'll nominate whoever you guys want to sit on the US Supreme Court". That would be a most excellent compromise and the nation would love both parties for it.

No, they were not skimmed over... they were idiotic. As I already said in the prior post, which you skimmed over... those things won't provide a tiny fraction of the cost of universal health care. Additionally, whatever additional money some people might have for a lack of a premium payment, will be lost in drastically higher taxes. There will be no boast to the economy, and more likely a recession.

Moreover, the bankruptcy claim is a myth. I've read the data, and it's absolutely moronic in it's claims. The researchers called every bankruptcy with more than $5,000 in medical bills, a "medical bankruptcy". But no one files bankruptcy over $5,000. The cost of filing the bankruptcy, could be more than how much medical bills they had, and this idiotic report would call it a "medical bankruptcy".

Also, they added in bankruptcies where the individuals got sick and couldn't work. So even if they had perfect insurance, that covered 100% of the costs, and didn't have a single dollar of medical debt... if they filed bankruptcy because they missed work and were sick.... then it was a medical bankruptcy.

But they would have file bankruptcy even if 100% of their medical bills were covered. So how would Universal health care fix any of that? It wouldn't. It's a lie.

Again, if any of your grand claims about how beneficial universal health care is, were in fact true... then why don't we see this play out around the world? Why is France in such problematic situations? Why is the UK seeing doctors walk off the job? Why is Greece a nightmare?

There is no example that supports your claim.

I disagree with Silhouette in regards to the source of income to support UHC.
When the corporations comeback under President Trump they will offer Health Care as they have been doing since 50s or 60s.

 

[Andylusion]

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

I don't know what you are talking about, except that you are taking very small examples, and trying to apply it to everyone.

Very few CEOs of the dot.com bubble made millions while providing nothing. Very few. Similarly, investors were largely wiped out. Of course there were a few shady guys who created fake dot.companies, sold stock to investors, who knew it was a fake, let the price go up, and bailed out.

But there are always scams, and are always tiny isolated examples. And these people don't have anything left today anyway. They were scam artists. The few stories I've read about that, they are hiding in Latin America, and will never come back unless they are extradited.

Most of the bubble, was just a bubble. CEOs who invested heavily into companies that didn't make it, didn't walk out millionaires, unless perhaps they had other assets not tied to the company. Which means they earned it. Nor did investors who bought into it. Some had millions and ended up with thousands... again unless they had other investments that were successful.

The only people who are still wealthy from the dot.com bubble, are the companies which made it. Amazon, Google, and others. And they did earn what they have. You are wrong about that.

Oh please. We most certainly can afford infrastructure spending. It's not even that big of a deal. The problem isn't that we can't afford it. The problem is, we want to spend on other things.

It's just like most Americans could (before obamacare) easily afford health insurance. The average American spent twice as much on eating out, smart phones, TVs and cable, cars, and other entertainment (movies, football games, and so on). Similarly most Americans can easily afford to save for retirement. They would just rather have a beer, watch ESPN, and order a pizza, instead of save the money for retirement.

We can easily.... EASILY... afford all the infrastructure you could ever possibly want. Infrastructure spending today, is higher per-capita, than it was in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 1940s. We spend more, per person, on infrastructure, than the European Union or the UK. Only Japan and Australia spend more.

But we would rather spend the money on special interest groups, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Green-Energy, Unions, Welfare, Food Stamps, and a million other programs.

The entire Department of Transportation budget was only $11 Billion. Let's take some of that $23 Billion in farm subsidies, and fix the pot holes. Can't do that, gotta subsidize farms, right? Or the education $38 Billion in education programs. Nope, can't cut that. Gotta have money for the education union.

See, you people want everything. Just give me everything. I want free this, and free that, and subsidized schools, and so on. Then you complain..."oh there's no money to fix the pot holes!". Whose fault is that? Yours. We could cut taxes by 50%, and still fund the military, and have enough money left over, to build every bridge you people could dream up AND pay off the national debt.

We just can't do it, and fund every program you want, and every Obama Phone, and every SNAP card, and every subsidy, and every government grant... . and then you want to blame the rich??? No no, the problem is in your mirror.

People are not making less and less. That's just another myth. Not true. You are factually incorrect.

The minimum wage people of today, live a life of almost luxury, compared to the minimum wage people of yesterday.

The average minimum wage worker, lives in dwelling of Air Conditioning and high speed internet, and nation wide communication, and owns two automobiles. Things that 30, 40 and 50 years ago, only the richest of the rich could afford.

It's simply a myth. Two minimum wage workers, are the top 1% of wager earners on the face of the Earth. You are complaining about a life that most people on this Earth consider to be legend and for royalty.

In fact, the average welfare check places you in the top 20% of wage earners in the world.... without earning a wage.
The Average US Welfare Payment Puts You In The Top 20% Of All Income Earners

You missed it. If you work at nearly all companies, you get company stock. You should care, because the person you are harming, by taxing the company.... IS YOU.

Now if you refuse to join the 401k, and the profit sharing plan.... THEN THE PROBLEM IS STILL YOU.

Either way... you are harming YOU by demanding companies pay higher tax.

We've been over this. Yes some companies are hiring immigrants. Some are hiring Indians or whatever. Again, you seem to take a few select examples, and try and apply it to everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of companies. There are not all, or even the majority, hiring only foreign workers.

Regardless, what does this have to do with anything? If you force companies to pay higher corporate taxes.... explain how that is magically going to get them to not hire foreigners? If anything higher taxes would force the company to look for ways to cut costs. One of which is to replace Americans with cheaper labor.

Beyond that even, you can't pay people more than the labor is worth. If the customer isn't willing to pay me $100 to mow their lawn, I can't hire an employee and pay them $100 to mow the lawn. I would go out of business.

If the value of the work you do, isn't worth $100,000 a year to the customer, then the company can't pay you $100,000 a year for that work. No tax policy you make up, is going to change that. It can only make that problem worse.

The wealthy have more influence. Yes. Of course they do. They have since the dawn of human existence. They have throughout all civilization. And they will continue to have, until the end of the Earth.

Even if you go to an isolated tribal people in the middle of the Congo... the person with the best hut, the most wives, and the most children, has the most influence over the tribal leadership.

If you are trying to tell me, that you can't be happy, or you think the country will end, unless we eliminate the influence of the wealthy on government.... then first the country should have imploded 200 years ago, second you should bend over, and kiss your own butt goodbye.

You are destined to be a miserable sad bitter person until you die. Because I can't guarantee much, but I would stake my entire life, and everything I have on this. You will never.... at any point... in this country, or any other... have a system where the wealthy do not have more influence than the rest of society.

No amount of laws. No amount of regulations. No policies you could ever dream up. Nothing will ever change this fact.

People do not tend to vote for impoverished beggars. Haven't seen a homeless bum yet, who ran for public office and won.

Middle class plumbers, don't have time, or the money, to run for public office. And middle class business owners, are busy..... running their business.

Only the successful and wealthy, run for office. And naturally wealthy and successful people, don't hang out with bums and homeless people. So your friends, and your network, is going to be wealthy people like you, when you get into office.

This is how it has always been, throughout all the world, and throughout all human history. It will never change. If this is the fight you want to fight, and the hill you are willing to die on... then get ready to die on a hill. You are not going to change this.

You are correct..
We CAN afford infrastructure.
As soon as we do what Ben Stein suggests...
Severely raise Income Tax on the uber-wealthy and Corporate Taxes.
Why does Ben Stein say this?
Because the Corporations, Directors and CEOs of MNCs are FLUSH with cash they'll never be able to spend in their lifetimes.

Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, Robert Reich was one of the paid shills telling us how destroying America would make it great.
Of course Reich never say "destroy", he simply said America would gain 5 indigenous careers for every H1-B; he DIDN'T say these careers would be janitors. He also didn't say that the H1-Bs who were fired after that received their Green Cards would replace the non-Indian H1-B janitors.
He told us Off-Shoring would stimulate more factories in the US...WRONG.
NOW Mr. Reich is not saying he was paid to LIE, he's saying his Economic Model was WRONG!

The other famous argument is that American corporations were moving overseas to pay lower taxes.
We find out NOW that these corporations are, for the most part, trying to get away with paying ZERO taxes.

No, my Neo-Con tool, NONE of your cherry picked arguments from Neo-Con sites can fool someone like myself who has been, thanks to my son, reading the same bullshit in Financial Publications that YOU have been reading.

Wrong again. We've already covered this. None of them, regardless of how much you think they are flush with cash, are going to pay the taxes you want.

How many times are you going to need to be shown this, before you figure it out? How many time do you need to have the examples posted to you over and over, before you stop claiming it will work?

Wealthy avoid taxes by moving assets to no-tax states

The wealthy are going to avoid your taxes. The higher you push up those taxes, the more they will avoid them.

I've posted hundreds of examples, from around the world, and now examples from within the United States.

They are not paying zero tax. You and your side, have been spewing that unsupportable, unprovable, allegation for a decade now.

Yeah, I'd like a list of names of people whose jobs were replaced by H1-B visas, and are now emptying garbage cans. Do show the exact numbers of this.

Sorry, but my cherry picked examples are dead on. Can compared to your ZERO examples, and endless proven false arguments, are far more compelling.

You have shown THEORIES, not concrete examples.
The laws the wealthy bribed into legislation must be reversed.
In terms of H1-Bs, where the hell do you live? In a cave?
Has YOUR city been an H1-B hotbed?
NYC and LI sure are.
Please don't tell me you live in Wyoming or Idaho and think you know what's going on in H1-B hotbeds.
I suggest you start reading the WSJ starting in 1998 and realize how many lies you believe.

We have tons of H1-Bs here in Columbus Ohio. Tons. And I have yet to meet one single person, in all the companies I have worked for, over the past 20 years, that is now emptying trash cans, because they were replaced. The only people I know that have been replaced at all, were replaced for their incompetence. And even then, they haven't gone to emptying trash cans. They generally find a position that they can handle in the same field.

That wasn't a theory. That was an established, documented fact. As have all the examples I have given. I'm sorry, but when I post a link, to documented evidence, and you scream "that's not fact, that's opinion", all you do is discredit yourself.

 

[Andylusion]

In other words, you heard someone, and so you parrot the BS. Got it. Another myth making poster, using 'copy&paste' as a substitute for substance and purpose.

Look, you want to be insulting, that's fine. But I'm not going to go hunting all over the internet, looking for some mythical undefined 'benefit', that thus far not you, nor anyone else on this entire forum, through the thousands on thousands of posts that I have read, and the years I've been here, has ever provided proof.

It's true, that US companies do get a tax deferment for foreign income. I get that. But if that's all you got, then you got almost nothing.

Foreign income deferment only works on foriegn income. Not domestic income. No retail chain, for example, can make $20 Billion in profit here in the US, and not pay any tax. $20 Billion in profit made in China, or Japan, or Ireland, does not 'magically in left-wing myth land' make them avoid paying taxes on the $20 Billion they made here in the US. There is no way to avoid that.

And on top of that, you don't seem to grasp that none of that matters to the point we were talking about.

You said "The rich will..." blaw blaw blaw. Not "companies will..." Let's even buy your ignorance based myth, that X Corp pays zero tax. Let's even name it. Let's say McDonalds finds a way to pay $0 Corporate Tax. That doesn't make any difference to the rich. Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDs, if he earns $7 Million... he pays taxes on that $7 Million. Doesn't matter if the company has to pay corporate tax or not. All the executives still pay full tax on full wages.

And here's the kicker.... Let's say you find a way to force McDonald's to pay the corporate tax. Let's say they have to pay $8 Billion in tax.

Where do you think McDonalds is going to get that money? You really think the Executives are going to vote a cut to their own wages? LOL!

I wouldn't. Would you? No. You wouldn't. Don't even attempt to lie. Here is how you pay that $8 Billion. You cut subsidies to new stores. Thus people who build new McDonald's Franchises have to pay a higher price. Where do they get the money to cover that? Lower wages.

The poor get poorer, and the rich.... well they stay rich.

Good job sparky! Hurt the lower class while thinking you are attacking the rich. Well done.

Or maybe they will just do without as much profits as a company. That's a great idea.

Do you even know what companies do with their profits? They create jobs and growth and wealth. Which of those would you cut? Take McDonalds again. McDonalds spends it's profits on Marketing. Should we cut marketing? And then hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, because fewer and fewer people go to McDs? Let's make more unemployed poor people?

Another thing they spend on, is renovating old stores. Let's cut that, shall we? Just have all those stores close, and again thousands on thousands of unemployed poor people. There's a win for society.

Oh, and building new stores. Let's just cut growth. No more jobs. We don't need jobs anyway.

And lastly, the smallest amount, dividends to shareholders. Let's cut that. Those people don't need money, right? Of course the shareholders are..... the employees! McDonalds has a profit sharing program, where employees get stock in McDonalds. So let's cut dividends, and screw over those employees. And retired people! Most Pensions and 401K have stock in companies, including McDonalds. Screw those old people. Cut that money, to pay for your corporate taxes. Right? Destroy old people retirement, so they are impoverished and homeless... then you can give them Medicare! Great plan.

And by the way, McDonald did pay several billion in taxes last year. I just looked it up on their investor relations page. Like I said, you people just make it up. More myths.

Prior to Reagan, firms were NOT hurt by giving benefits.
The fact of the matter is that the DOT COM Bubble gave Directors, CEOs and many Investors exorbitant rewards that they really didn't work for.
But no one wants to give up the INCREDIBLE excess they bought into during that period.
If I were a Director with a surgically enhanced wife and lovers in 20 countries plus God knows how much property, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
But the Middle Class can no longer fund America's infrastructure.

Pensioners? 401K holders?
Their investments are way overvalued and why should the working stiffs of today give a damn about the retirees who don't give a damn about people who are working and making less and less?

McDonalds? Why are you conflating a TOTALLY automated franchise with Financial, Software and Appliance Firms that are replacing Americans with Indians?
Every McDonalds, is by it's very nature, is a low wage job.
They also pay their White Collar people shit money but the fact is that their operations are 99% automated and don't really required White Collar expertise.

The uber-wealthy have 1 vote but immeasurable greater INFLUENCE over our legislation than the average worker.
Every single one of your talking points is absolute nonsense as the wealth has been legislatively manipulated into the hands of the few.
America is gone within 10 years at the pace we are going.

I don't know what you are talking about, except that you are taking very small examples, and trying to apply it to everyone.

Very few CEOs of the dot.com bubble made millions while providing nothing. Very few. Similarly, investors were largely wiped out. Of course there were a few shady guys who created fake dot.companies, sold stock to investors, who knew it was a fake, let the price go up, and bailed out.

But there are always scams, and are always tiny isolated examples. And these people don't have anything left today anyway. They were scam artists. The few stories I've read about that, they are hiding in Latin America, and will never come back unless they are extradited.

Most of the bubble, was just a bubble. CEOs who invested heavily into companies that didn't make it, didn't walk out millionaires, unless perhaps they had other assets not tied to the company. Which means they earned it. Nor did investors who bought into it. Some had millions and ended up with thousands... again unless they had other investments that were successful.

The only people who are still wealthy from the dot.com bubble, are the companies which made it. Amazon, Google, and others. And they did earn what they have. You are wrong about that.

Oh please. We most certainly can afford infrastructure spending. It's not even that big of a deal. The problem isn't that we can't afford it. The problem is, we want to spend on other things.

It's just like most Americans could (before obamacare) easily afford health insurance. The average American spent twice as much on eating out, smart phones, TVs and cable, cars, and other entertainment (movies, football games, and so on). Similarly most Americans can easily afford to save for retirement. They would just rather have a beer, watch ESPN, and order a pizza, instead of save the money for retirement.

We can easily.... EASILY... afford all the infrastructure you could ever possibly want. Infrastructure spending today, is higher per-capita, than it was in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 1940s. We spend more, per person, on infrastructure, than the European Union or the UK. Only Japan and Australia spend more.

But we would rather spend the money on special interest groups, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Green-Energy, Unions, Welfare, Food Stamps, and a million other programs.

The entire Department of Transportation budget was only $11 Billion. Let's take some of that $23 Billion in farm subsidies, and fix the pot holes. Can't do that, gotta subsidize farms, right? Or the education $38 Billion in education programs. Nope, can't cut that. Gotta have money for the education union.

See, you people want everything. Just give me everything. I want free this, and free that, and subsidized schools, and so on. Then you complain..."oh there's no money to fix the pot holes!". Whose fault is that? Yours. We could cut taxes by 50%, and still fund the military, and have enough money left over, to build every bridge you people could dream up AND pay off the national debt.

We just can't do it, and fund every program you want, and every Obama Phone, and every SNAP card, and every subsidy, and every government grant... . and then you want to blame the rich??? No no, the problem is in your mirror.

People are not making less and less. That's just another myth. Not true. You are factually incorrect.

The minimum wage people of today, live a life of almost luxury, compared to the minimum wage people of yesterday.

The average minimum wage worker, lives in dwelling of Air Conditioning and high speed internet, and nation wide communication, and owns two automobiles. Things that 30, 40 and 50 years ago, only the richest of the rich could afford.

It's simply a myth. Two minimum wage workers, are the top 1% of wager earners on the face of the Earth. You are complaining about a life that most people on this Earth consider to be legend and for royalty.

In fact, the average welfare check places you in the top 20% of wage earners in the world.... without earning a wage.
The Average US Welfare Payment Puts You In The Top 20% Of All Income Earners

You missed it. If you work at nearly all companies, you get company stock. You should care, because the person you are harming, by taxing the company.... IS YOU.

Now if you refuse to join the 401k, and the profit sharing plan.... THEN THE PROBLEM IS STILL YOU.

Either way... you are harming YOU by demanding companies pay higher tax.

We've been over this. Yes some companies are hiring immigrants. Some are hiring Indians or whatever. Again, you seem to take a few select examples, and try and apply it to everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of companies. There are not all, or even the majority, hiring only foreign workers.

Regardless, what does this have to do with anything? If you force companies to pay higher corporate taxes.... explain how that is magically going to get them to not hire foreigners? If anything higher taxes would force the company to look for ways to cut costs. One of which is to replace Americans with cheaper labor.

Beyond that even, you can't pay people more than the labor is worth. If the customer isn't willing to pay me $100 to mow their lawn, I can't hire an employee and pay them $100 to mow the lawn. I would go out of business.

If the value of the work you do, isn't worth $100,000 a year to the customer, then the company can't pay you $100,000 a year for that work. No tax policy you make up, is going to change that. It can only make that problem worse.

The wealthy have more influence. Yes. Of course they do. They have since the dawn of human existence. They have throughout all civilization. And they will continue to have, until the end of the Earth.

Even if you go to an isolated tribal people in the middle of the Congo... the person with the best hut, the most wives, and the most children, has the most influence over the tribal leadership.

If you are trying to tell me, that you can't be happy, or you think the country will end, unless we eliminate the influence of the wealthy on government.... then first the country should have imploded 200 years ago, second you should bend over, and kiss your own butt goodbye.

You are destined to be a miserable sad bitter person until you die. Because I can't guarantee much, but I would stake my entire life, and everything I have on this. You will never.... at any point... in this country, or any other... have a system where the wealthy do not have more influence than the rest of society.

No amount of laws. No amount of regulations. No policies you could ever dream up. Nothing will ever change this fact.

People do not tend to vote for impoverished beggars. Haven't seen a homeless bum yet, who ran for public office and won.

Middle class plumbers, don't have time, or the money, to run for public office. And middle class business owners, are busy..... running their business.

Only the successful and wealthy, run for office. And naturally wealthy and successful people, don't hang out with bums and homeless people. So your friends, and your network, is going to be wealthy people like you, when you get into office.

This is how it has always been, throughout all the world, and throughout all human history. It will never change. If this is the fight you want to fight, and the hill you are willing to die on... then get ready to die on a hill. You are not going to change this.

You are correct..
We CAN afford infrastructure.
As soon as we do what Ben Stein suggests...
Severely raise Income Tax on the uber-wealthy and Corporate Taxes.
Why does Ben Stein say this?
Because the Corporations, Directors and CEOs of MNCs are FLUSH with cash they'll never be able to spend in their lifetimes.

Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, Robert Reich was one of the paid shills telling us how destroying America would make it great.
Of course Reich never say "destroy", he simply said America would gain 5 indigenous careers for every H1-B; he DIDN'T say these careers would be janitors. He also didn't say that the H1-Bs who were fired after that received their Green Cards would replace the non-Indian H1-B janitors.
He told us Off-Shoring would stimulate more factories in the US...WRONG.
NOW Mr. Reich is not saying he was paid to LIE, he's saying his Economic Model was WRONG!

The other famous argument is that American corporations were moving overseas to pay lower taxes.
We find out NOW that these corporations are, for the most part, trying to get away with paying ZERO taxes.

No, my Neo-Con tool, NONE of your cherry picked arguments from Neo-Con sites can fool someone like myself who has been, thanks to my son, reading the same bullshit in Financial Publications that YOU have been reading.

Wrong again. We've already covered this. None of them, regardless of how much you think they are flush with cash, are going to pay the taxes you want.

How many times are you going to need to be shown this, before you figure it out? How many time do you need to have the examples posted to you over and over, before you stop claiming it will work?

Wealthy avoid taxes by moving assets to no-tax states

The wealthy are going to avoid your taxes. The higher you push up those taxes, the more they will avoid them.

I've posted hundreds of examples, from around the world, and now examples from within the United States.

They are not paying zero tax. You and your side, have been spewing that unsupportable, unprovable, allegation for a decade now.

Yeah, I'd like a list of names of people whose jobs were replaced by H1-B visas, and are now emptying garbage cans. Do show the exact numbers of this.

Sorry, but my cherry picked examples are dead on. Can compared to your ZERO examples, and endless proven false arguments, are far more compelling.

MNCs are NOT paying ZERO taxes in Australia and Ireland?
Shit man, pull out your damn smartphone and read a story once in a while.

So now it's not "Corporations are paying ZERO taxes!"... now it's "They are paying zero taxes in Australia and Ireland"?

And by the way, THEY ARE PAYING TAXES IN IRELAND. Flat out false. Pull your head out of your own ideology, so you can see the real world again.