Nice try at changing the subject. You libs are good at that. This thread was never about whether or not tax cuts were ok. We can argue that all day and your simple mind will still never grasp free market economics. The point originally made was that when taxes are cut, 'the rich' get a bigger raw cut because they pay the lion's share of taxes. You then argued that the rich shouldn't complain because they're rich, and furthermore, that we should stick it to them as much as possible. Subsequently, it was once again explained to you that the rich pay a huge amount of the taxes in this country, and I asked you what would be a better way to allocate wealth, since you seemed to be against anyone being allowed to be rich. You then complained that rich people have enough already and should pay higher taxes because they can afford it. Statements like, "The top 5% make huge amounts of money, control huge percentages of the wealth and can easily afford it, even assuming I believe your figures which I don't. ... At any rate, these people are not being oppressed or abused and are living lavish lifestyles as it is.", continued to insinuate that there was something wrong with rich people being rich, so I again asked how we should do it. I know you want to make this an argument about something on which you think you have a point. In the future, if you want to make a point, please make a point about the subject discussion. I don't think anyone here has the time or the inclination to explain to you the way taxes work, how government spending works, or how the economy works. In order to aid you in staying on topic, your next response should start with, "The way that wealth in this country should be allocated is...", or with, "Having seen JSracing's original post, I still think that the $20 should be evenly divided among the dinnergoers, with the poorest half of them being paid to eat, because..."
I happen to be self employed, commission only. Not complaining, for this is my chosen occupation, but what gets me is I take all the risk, my car, my money spent to develop leads, and believe me, everyone does not buy. I may go 2-3 months without a sale, then close a deal that pays 30-40k. This may sound good to some, but the couple of months with no closes can be demoralizing, this can make it twice as hard to close the next one, because the pressure is on. Sales people that are strictly commission, are unemployed after every sale, until they find their next one. This being said, you will never convince me that the Govt. deserves 40% of what I do generate. Being self-employed, you pay your taxes 1/4ly, try cutting Uncle Sam a check for 10-15k every 3 months. This I know, if taxes were not automaticly taken from employees checks, and everyone had to cut a check 1/4 ly, we would have had a tax revolution a long time ago!!!
Our children and grandchildren are the ones who will pay for Bush's out of control spending. Of course Kerry's no better.
I don't care how much or how little you make, no one should have to pay more than 20% of their income to the federal govt. ever. The super-rich are irrelevant to me; unlike some people, I'm not all eaten up with class warfare and jealousy. What concerns me is that a factory manager making 70K a year has to pay 25% of that in taxes. Is 70K a year in annual before taxes income rich to ya'll? Not to me! For me, the issue is also one of limiting and controlling the federal government's power. The less money the feds have to play with, the fewer power structures and dependency-encouraging entitlements they can set up, the more power gets devolved to lower, more responsive and direct levels of govt. (state, regional, county, city hall, etc.) and the less impact the feds have on all our lives. Want to kill the monster? STOP FEEDING HIM! I'm in favor of a flat tax with a poverty exemption, a marriage bonus, a child tax credit, a luxury penalty, and some itemized deductions. Here's how my system works. The flat rate is 15% for everyone. If you get married, and you file a joint tax return, the happy couple's rate is 13% on both their incomes together. The "marriage bonus," which should encourage less divorce and more stability in family situations (and in my perfect universe, marriage is one man, and one woman, everywhere). If you have kids, more bonuses. For every child you have, up to six children, knock a half a percentage point off your rate. A maximum child credit of up to 3%. If you make over $500,000 a year, congratulations. You are defined by the federal govt. as "super-rich." As such, you will be expected, out of the goodness of your heart and because of being so blessed to live in a country that made your wealth accumulation possible (or so goes the leftist clap-trap) to pay a little bit more than your Average Joe. Your rate goes up to 20%. If you're married and you and your spouse's joint income exceeds $600,000, your rate only goes up to 18%. If you have six kids or more, you still get the child credits, so your rate drops to as much as 15%. If you live in abject poverty, I feel your pain brotha, and so do the feds. Single folks making less than 20K a year and married couples making less than 50K a year pay NO federal income tax. Nada. Zilch. ZERO! Use this opportunity to save up your money and one day get rich enough to where you DO need to pay income tax. Will there be itemized deductions and exemptions? Yes, but not as many as we have now. You want to tithe to your church? Praise the Lord then! The tithe is exempt. You want to give to charity? You can exclude up to 5% of your income from being taxable for purposes of giving to charity. You want to put some of your money towards retirement accounts or the kids' college fund? Again, up to 5% of your income can be put toward retirement accounts, college trust funds, and other future benefits and be exempt from federal taxation. Are you receiving some kind of benefit from state or federal govt. such as disability, welfare, veteran's benefits, or Social Security? That money is completely exempt from federal taxation. If my plan were in effect, we could slash the IRS' budget and kill the entire income tax industry (we'd put H&R Block out of business for dang sure) because your income tax form would come in the form of a postcard and you could calculate your income tax with pencil and paper, literally. It would also, literally, take a 7th grade education to be able to do your own taxes. Of course, we would have to brutally slash the federal govt's. budget and payroll to about 40% it's current size. But that's the beauty of it all. Because as Gerald Ford said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away." Devolved power. Ordinary people being in almost total control of their own finances. Isn't that what America is supposed to be all about? What are we waiting for? Where's my chainsaw?
What jobs did Clinton create??? The unemployment rate is the same today as it was in 96 when Clinton was preparing for his re-election.
The idea that President Clinton was an economic liberal is a joke. His tax plan was better than Bush's, but an economic populist Clinton was not. He did get lucky with the internet boom which created a bunch of tech millionaires who cashed out before the bubble inevitably burst. He didn't stem the tide of jobs leaving the country, if anything he continued the Bush I policy that has been continued by Bush II. I don't understand the venom the Republicans have for Bill Clinton on the economic front. He allowed greed to flourish just like any good Republican would.
I guess you don't remember hillarycare. Or the 'middle class tax cut' that wound up being one of the biggest tax increases in history. Clinton was a HUGE economic liberal until the republican congress came in in 1994. Then he started doing what he had to to to get elected.
Ya'll are both a little bit right and a little bit wrong. M.O.M. is correct in saying that Clinton was not an economic liberal, in the sense that he did not belong to the leftist fringe, McGovern/Mondale wing of the Democrats. He was a DLC "New Democrat" and was determined to govern from the center. That said, at first, he was no Republican. Hillarycare and Clinton's economic stimulus package both landed with a very loud thud, although the economic plan was not the colossal failure that Hillary's health care plan was. The economy was in a deep recession, and it just took a little while to snap out of it. Clinton definitely increased taxes. No Republican president would ever do that unless the govt. was facing imminent collapse. Colonel is right in saying that Clinton moved to the center after the sweeping GOP victories in the 1994 elections. He had to to stay in office. He moderated his tax proposals and co-opted a few items of the GOP's "Contract with America," most noticeably the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. The GOP elite despised Clinton more for who he and his wife were and the circumstances they found themselves in more than anything they did. Clinton was the quintissential right man in the right place at the right time. When the tech-bubble stock market got rolling, he just sat back and let it ride, not doing anything for fear that he might screw it up. He was just smart enough to not do that on economic issues. Hardcore elephants are convinced that, had Ross Perot not screwed things up and had Bush Sr. survived the 1991-93 recession and gotten re-elected, he, not Clinton, would have gotten credit for the late '90s boom, would have managed it better and multiplied it's benefits, and would have gone down in history as one of our greatest presidents, which is an entirely plausible scenario. They also dislike that Clinton was a tremendous politician, one of the best ever, and they could never defeat him, or corner him, or GET him, even though they knew and everyone knew he was total sleaze. Even when caught in the act and impeached, Clinton would always escape and get the last laugh. It drove the GOP, especially the religiously conservative wing of the party, to pretty frantic fits. Of course, they were just playing a big game of "Gotcha!" with the Clintons. Only the worst fire-breathers on the Far Right (further than the GOP) got that worked up about the Clintons. It's nothing like the raw, seething, visceral, pathological, psychotic, conspiracy theory-laced, moon-batty, insane "I hope you burn in Hell for all eternity" hatred that the Left in this country (fringe and moderate) has for President Bush. They hate him with every fiber of their being and there is nothing they wouldn't say or do to get some kind of shot or dig in on him. Most can't seem to decide whether he is a brain-damaged half-human half-chimpanzee idiot, or the most diabolical genius and gravest threat to humanity since Adolf Hitler. And it's not hyperbole with most of these people; they honestly believe in this crap. But let's not get too off-topic here. Please, let's talk more about what our tax code should look like. That's an important subject.
