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GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:11 am
by Tsukiyumi
WASHINGTON - He's not being timid, that's for sure.
President Barack Obama's first federal budget lays out the most far-reaching agenda for American life since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But paying for it by having upper-income earners shoulder much of the cost quickly provoked cries of class warfare in Congress.
The Obama priorities reflected in the $3.6 trillion budget guarantee a fierce political battle ahead over taxes and spending. And despite the administration's agonizing over the depth and global nature of the worst recession in decades, the new president's budget forecasts a rapid U.S. recovery.
The budget outline includes activist initiatives on energy, health care, education and climate change.
It would boost taxes on the wealthy, oil companies and other businesses while cutting Medicare and Medicaid payments to insurance companies and hospitals to make way for a $634 billion down payment on universal health care. It would also limit charitable and other tax deductions for the affluent and trim spending on government subsidies to big farms.
Source
Aww. Poor uber rich people. How dare they try to make people
with more
pay more!?
Attitudes like this make me want to bash people with my Masterlock-In-A-Sock
tm.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 3:10 am
by RK_Striker_JK_5
But then they can't swim through their vaults of money, Tsuki. Must you deny them
every bit of fun?
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 3:25 am
by Tsukiyumi
Isn't swimming in your Money Bin a guaranteed right in the Constitution, or am I confusing reality with cartoons again?
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 3:28 am
by Lazar
This brings back childhood memories of Scrooge McDuck.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 3:30 am
by Captain Picard's Hair
Tsukiyumi wrote:Isn't swimming in your Money Bin a guaranteed right in the Constitution, or am I confusing reality with cartoons again?
I suppose the republicans think the
lower income people should pay
more? Then the high rollers could "produce"... but for whom?
Not for nothing, but simply closing the loopholes that let rich folks get around paying taxes and enforcing those damned laws would do a lot of good too; as is, the Government loses out on a lot of potential tax revenue.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 3:31 am
by RK_Striker_JK_5
Tsukiyumi wrote:Isn't swimming in your Money Bin a guaranteed right in the Constitution, or am I confusing reality with cartoons again?
With the way the world's going,
I'd confuse reality with cartoons, too.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 4:21 am
by Tsukiyumi
Captain Picard's Hair wrote:I suppose the republicans think the lower income people should pay more? Then the high rollers could "produce"... but for whom?
I think the idea (and implied threat) is that if the rich are taxed more, they'll lay off more people from their companies to save their money and preserve their decadent lifestyles.
Basically, they want us to shoulder more of the burden so that they don't have to. Because they're rich. And awesome.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 7:41 am
by Deepcrush
I'd strip the bitches dry if I could. The Gov goes to bail out and then just hitches the money into these rich guys pockets while they suck money from the working class. There needs to be a flat tax rate for everyone. A percent that never changes. No rebates because you paid for a senator's dinner.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 7:58 am
by Tsukiyumi
The problem with a flat tax percentage is simple:
If person A makes $10,000 a year, and the tax is 30%, that leaves them with $7,000 a year to work with.
If person B makes $50,000,000 a year, and the percentage is the same, that leaves them with $35,000,000 a year to work with.
Considering the cost of, well, everything, person A would be disproportionately affected by that percentage.
I say, implement a tax structure that would affect a percentage directly proportional to the actual amounts people make.
Under said system, person A pays 0% taxes, because they don't make enough to pay
any amount fairly.
Person B could pay
75% of their income in taxes, and still make $12,500,000 in total. But I guess that's not good enough.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 8:27 am
by Lazar
Deepcrush wrote:There needs to be a flat tax rate for everyone. A percent that never changes. No rebates because you paid for a senator's dinner.
The problem isn't the existence of tax brackets, it's all the loopholes. I do think some radical simplification of the tax code would be beneficial.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 8:40 am
by Tsukiyumi
Lazar wrote:Deepcrush wrote:There needs to be a flat tax rate for everyone. A percent that never changes. No rebates because you paid for a senator's dinner.
The problem isn't the existence of tax brackets, it's all the loopholes. I do think some radical simplification of the tax code would be beneficial.
That's what I'm suggesting: If you make X amount, you pay a certain percentage in taxes. I would make exceptions for charitable donations, but only if the charities were under some regulated system.
If Deep was referring to a flat
sales tax, that's a different story. Under that system, the poor would have to pay the same additional tax percentage for goods as rich people. Which is
really stupid. Poor people would have to limit their spending, while the rich could keep splurging.
A luxury tax would also be a good idea, IMO: Want a $10,000 Gucci handbag? Now it's $20,000. The fee is because you're stupid enough to buy a $10,000 handbag.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:27 pm
by RK_Striker_JK_5
Luxury tax, yes! Spending a quarter million on an effing handbag deserves some sort of monetary penalty.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 4:24 pm
by Sionnach Glic
The problem with a flat tax percentage is simple:
If person A makes $10,000 a year, and the tax is 30%, that leaves them with $7,000 a year to work with.
If person B makes $50,000,000 a year, and the percentage is the same, that leaves them with $35,000,000 a year to work with.
Considering the cost of, well, everything, person A would be disproportionately affected by that percentage.
I say, implement a tax structure that would affect a percentage directly proportional to the actual amounts people make.
Under said system, person A pays 0% taxes, because they don't make enough to pay any amount fairly.
Person B could pay 75% of their income in taxes, and still make $12,500,000 in total. But I guess that's not good enough.
Do you Americans not have a tax cut-off rate?
Over here, if you earn above a certain amount, you get taxed more.
EG:
Let's say the standard tax rate is 25%, and the higher rate is 40%, and the cut-off rate is €50,000.
If person A only earns 50,000 then he only pays 25% tax on it.
But if person B earns 100,000 then the 50,000 that's below the limit gets taxed at 25%, but the extra 50,000 he earns gets taxed at 40%.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 4:32 pm
by Captain Picard's Hair
Rochey wrote:Do you Americans not have a tax cut-off rate?
Over here, if you earn above a certain amount, you get taxed more.
EG:
Let's say the standard tax rate is 25%, and the higher rate is 40%, and the cut-off rate is €50,000.
If person A only earns 50,000 then he only pays 25% tax on it.
But if person B earns 100,000 then the 50,000 that's below the limit gets taxed at 25%, but the extra 50,000 he earns gets taxed at 40%.
It seems to take a Ph. D in lawyerese (aka bullshit) to even begin to understand the American Tax Code, but anyway, we effectively have no tax for the wealthy, since these guys all pay tax lawyers huge fees to finagle the numbers so as to avoid having to pay a single cent to Uncle Sam.
Re: GOP Decries "Class Warfare"
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 5:29 pm
by Lazar
Rochey wrote:Do you Americans not have a tax cut-off rate?
Over here, if you earn above a certain amount, you get taxed more.
EG:
Let's say the standard tax rate is 25%, and the higher rate is 40%, and the cut-off rate is €50,000.
If person A only earns 50,000 then he only pays 25% tax on it.
But if person B earns 100,000 then the 50,000 that's below the limit gets taxed at 25%, but the extra 50,000 he earns gets taxed at 40%.
Yes, we do have a system just like that, with tax brackets. In fact we have 6 different brackets, ranging from 10% to 35%. I think this is rather low by European standards; the interesting thing is that from the time of Franklin Roosevelt (30s and 40s) to the time of Jack Kennedy (early 60s), we actually had a top-level tax bracket that went over 90%, although in the following years the rates were slashed drastically to the levels we have today. The problem is that our tax code is hideously complex (literally tens of thousands of pages long), with all sorts of loopholes for rich people, as well as the fact that capital gains are taxed at a much lower level than regular income, meaning that there are billionaires (making most of their money from investments) who effectively have lower tax rates than their employees.