Wellfare anyone?

[The AD]

Originally posted by 1080Rider
One thing I will say is that the "man of leisure" had to get there the same way you or I do. Unless he's born to wealth, then someone in his family got and paid they're fair share.

Well, their scenario is that he's living off his trust fund. Yes, they're obviously going for the shock value, here. The guy who sits around and collects money for doing nothing. But the fact remains, the person who is working for their money has to pay 3x the amount of total federal tax that the person collecting dividends and capital gains is paying. That doesn't seem fair to me.

[CaddyDaddy77]

True, in the 35% tax bracket.

[Clack]

Where's Fredrick Esq. III when we need him?


Problem: Welfare crack whores with 9 kids
Solution: Pay $10K single pop to crackwhore to get her tubes tied. No more kids, high likelyhood of OD. Two problems solved, kids are better off. (less likely to cost us like their jerry springer watching mother)

Problem: Worker's compensation fraud.
Solution: Bounty on abusers. $10K to people who find an abuser. Abuser publicly humiliated on the rack. He will still be fed for free, I'll put a pie in his face.

Problem: Pinko liberals on your favorite message board.
Solution: Buy a beer, play pool, go to stip club.


Walt, Greydon - Heading into the city tonight. You guys around?

[1080Rider]

I liked the judge a while back that was making guys stand outside a store w/ a sign that said something like "I stole from this store." Pretty good idea I think.

[mr_gyptian]

Originally posted by up an down
wasn't it mr gyptian that started that thread, based on the online gossip ( since refuted as a lie) of the republican mouthpiece matt drudge?

up and down, it's called a search function. try it some time. gonzo started that thread.

[mr_gyptian]

120K. or a shade over 30%

[up an down]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
up and down, it's called a search function. try it some time. gonzo started that thread.

doh! my apologies, i was lazy idiot to post that without searching

[1080Rider]

I'll say true. By my calcs at 35% it'd be $140K. I'm sure there is a catch though. The guy had a tax shelter that saved him cash, he sunk some in an IRA, he wrote off the $57K he lost in stocks last year so he ended up paying only $20K. That's still more that all the people in the thread added together.

[lemon boy]

Well Walter we all knew that Mr_G was a cut above most of the punters Of course you're a dirty dog for misleadin the sheep

1080 rider, your credibility on all things tax and budget related isn't looking too good right now.

[The AD]

Originally posted by 1080Rider
so he ended up paying only $20K. That's still more that all the people in the thread added together.

Oh how wrong you are.

[lemon boy]

One other thing that I'd like to point out with respect to flat taxes (a REALLY bad idea IMVHO anyway) is that
a) there has never been a serious flat tax proposal that was truely flat (they're all progressive)
b) they are really supposed to be simplifications (IMVHO a true impossibility)
c) for anyone who cares to spend a couple of mins actually thinking critically about the tax we have a pretty darn "flat" rate structure already
d) we already have a "flat tax" it is call the Alternative Minimum Tax

You may have liked the rhetoric around something but liking the rhetoric and liking the reality of a proposal are two very different things. If all you like is rhetoric I've got a bunch you can have :shrug:

Leavin for the weekend here shortly but when I get back I can blast holes in anybody's new tax proposals all damn day. 99% of them are just pure shit, so poorly thought out that it is almost laughable except people are serious about em.

[mr_gyptian]

This was the genius of Reagan's Tax Reform in 1986. It closed tons of loopholes while lowering tax rates. This leveled the playing field to a degree. not that i care about level playing fields. I prefer mine to be narrow and about 45 to 50 degrees.

[lemon boy]

I might remember on monday but if not, and if you're interested Mr_G (or anyone for that matter), remind me I have a pretty revolutionary (read: farfetched but practical) tax "reform" idea. Get ready to write yer congress critter with it.

[1080Rider]

Yeah, you got me, I forgot that different %s applied to diff. levels of the same income. I don't deal w/ that shit, that's what CPA's are for. Sorry, I deal w/ a little different area of the law on a daily basis.

[mr_gyptian]

Originally posted by lemon boy
I might remember on monday but if not, and if you're interested Mr_G (or anyone for that matter), remind me I have a pretty revolutionary (read: farfetched but practical) tax "reform" idea. Get ready to write yer congress critter with it.

Moving to Monte Carlo?

[Laght]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
This was the genius of Reagan's Tax Reform in 1986.

HAHAHAHAHAHA NEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHH!

For your info even Stockman has admitted that the whole Reagan Tax Dealio was a complete scam.

Genius and Reagan in the same sentence, ha ha ha ha

By the way, I'm not picking on you mr_gyptian, you just seem to be wildly misinformed about that which constitutes reality

[mr_gyptian]

ummmmh. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 didn't close up a ton of loopholes and lower tax rates?

[Ted Stryker]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
ummmmh. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 didn't close up a ton of loopholes and lower tax rates?

yea right on!!! just like he ran the fukin' interest rates through the roof and fuked resort economies everywhere!!!
right on, no new lifts anywhere!! super fukkin coolio!


just like shrub's doin' now, all for his kind bros.
time to crush our resort industry one more time.


and, oh yea.....that $20.00 tax break was sooo cool. dude, like now were in debt but at least i'm drunk!!

[mr_gyptian]

you should drink more. Reagan's appointee to the Fed drove inflation down from 16% to around 3%. It had more than a little to do with the success of the late 80s and 90s. So no matter what was done with interest rates, the dollar you paid to pay down debt was worth a ton more at the end of his term than the beginning.

[Laght]

The Bush referred to in the first article is Poppy and in the second it's junior.

Voodoo Economics

This is a new way of doing business. It started with Reagan and is now being continued by Bush. David Stockman tried to call attention to the sham in the tax system. He even wrote a book about it. The conventional wisdom was not with him. Wall street and economists preferred to entertain the notion of supply-side economics which held that somehow, by some magic, by not paying our obligations we would suddenly have more money than we knew what to do with. To increase tax revenues, the tax rate was cut 30%. To further stimulate the production of tax revenues, the Federal spending rate was jump started to much higher levels, resulting in the trillion dollar defense build up. The taxes never showed up. They haven't showed up for a decade yet. President Bush says not to worry, read my lips, they're coming.

Social Security trust funds were transferred to the regular budget so that the surplus from those funds instead of being sequestered for the time when the baby boomers would have heavy demands on them are being squandered on the operating expenses of the government—mostly defense spending, since social spending is being cut. When Senator Moynihan of New York proposed to cut the social security payroll tax because it was being misappropriated and the trust to the American people was being violated, the Administration went into overdrive to keep the social security trust funds so they could be used for the regular expenses of the government and so they could mask the magnitude of the real debt. Why is our government so interested in increasing rather than lowering the debt?



The Pursuit of Inequality and Insolvency


Bush's lack of life experience translates into economic policies that are even worse than Reagan's. And Reagan's policies made the rich richer, working Americans insecure and the government broke.

We were warned. In an interview with The Washington Post's William Greider early in the administration, Budget Director David Stockman said Reagan's economic theories were really "a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate." He explained, "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle-down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really trickle-down."


Around the same time, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned the Reagan policies were a Trojan horse in more ways than one. The secret strategy, Moynihan maintained, was to create a huge federal budget deficit in order to achieve the conservative goal of crippling government's capacity to regulate corporate America and conduct domestic social programs. In private, Stockman agreed, reportedly using the phrase "starving the beast" to describe the strategy of using deficits to shrink government.

Stockman and Moynihan were right: By 1989, the distribution of wealth and income had become more unequal than at any time since the 1920's. Meanwhile, the federal deficit increased from $73 billion to $155 billion during the Reagan years, and the national debt ballooned from $711 billion to $2 trillion. This ocean of red ink had the desired effect of drowning the prospects for new social spending. In fact, "domestic discretionary spending"—social programs other than entitlements—declined from 4.5 percent of the economy in 1981 to 3.2 percent in 1988.

While the Reaganites claim credit for the boom of the late 1990's, Clinton's successful economic policies reversed Reaganomics by increasing taxes on the wealthy and cutting taxes on the working poor. Contrary to supply-side theory, the result was an even stronger economy than during the late '80s, with the added benefits that the federal budget started showing a surplus and inequality declined.

[Ted Stryker]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
. So no matter what was done with interest rates, the dollar you paid to pay down debt was worth a ton more at the end of his term than the beginning.

so you agree with my point about the negative effect such policies had on ski area and resort economies in the '80s.
that's nice.



and what again was the national debt when reagan and shrub 1 were in office? oh yea......i forgot, the highest ever. how sweet was that

and how long did it take shrub 2 to fuk it up again?
oh yea, its all about being an american, i forgot.

so what did you spend your tax break on, mr. gyptian?
did it go to stimulating the economy? oh yea, thats right.

next thing you'll be saying is how the constitution is all about God and how we should be more like the islamic nation-states, except that we should own all the oil and not the frogs.
how right on can we git?