Proglodytes upset we lack the political will to take care of them

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Scuba (52,140 posts)

The USA only has one fiscal problem: Lack of political will to tax those who have all the money.

nadinbrzezinski (150,352 posts)

2. Actually add one other issue

An inability to charge folks for externalities. That includes industry.

What? What does that even mean?

Did her vibrator rattle her brain again?

Nye Bevan (23,979 posts)

3. Since President Obama's reelection, the top rate of income tax on the rich has increased by 4.6%.

The top rate of tax on interest income for the rich has increased by 8.4%.

The top rate of tax on capital gains and dividends for the rich has increased by 8.8%.

Were you unaware of this?

tk2kewl (17,642 posts)

8. still not enough if we are forced to cut programs like food stamps.

and how about corporate taxes?

how about those rich folks who have seen their rates creep up stashing their cash so it isn't taxed at all?

and btw... were you unaware that tax increases were simply due to the expiration of absurd tax cuts for the wealthy?

oh, and how about a link regarding the 8.4% increase

The measure of virtue is the number of people forced into dependence.

lumberjack_jeff (32,337 posts)

21. What about the estate tax?

Low taxes on the rich promote concentration of wealth, creates inequality and reduces business investment and charity.

So set capital gains tax to 110% and watch the investments roll-in...

...to foreign countries.

pampango (23,073 posts)

4. Exactly. FDR figured this out. Progressive countries today have not forgotten.

republicans figured that if you demonize the government long enough, you can convince people that it is better to keep money than to send it to the devil. Then you cut programs that serve people rather than the MIC and the 1%. Voila! Now people resent government even more. Rinse. Repeat.

Sounds good.

When can we start?

Kang Colby (1,148 posts)

5. In my view, taxes are too high. n/t

^ Also pro-2A

maxsolomon (13,343 posts)

6. There's more than 1 fiscal problem

I lay it at the feet of Militarism. cut the DoD in half, or even by a third, and problem solved. Then you have an new unemployment problem, though.

Raising the cap on FICA taxes would solve more fiscal issues as well, but that's a facet of your problem.

msongs (39,816 posts)

9. bernie is free to pay way more tax than he does with his low tax rate and all. He could chip in

half or 75% since he is in the top 2-3% of income earners. but he won't of course

Scuba (52,140 posts)

12. Jeezus... straight out of the Republican playbook. You must be very proud.

alarimer (14,030 posts)

22. More and more of them sound like Republicans these days.

And it's only because Bernie has brought up the need to raise some taxes.

If Hillary, acknowledged the need to raise taxes on the rich (including herself- without cheating by creating shell corporations in Delaware), they'd be in favor.

whatthehey (2,301 posts)

11. Well it's a big one sure

I have no idea why policy setters seem entirely ignorant of the marginal propensity to consume. $1000 lower taxes for Bill Gates? doesn't change a damn thing in his consumption pattern. Won't even notice. $1000 lower taxes for me? Probably goes in the IRA and gets banded back and forth among the investor class, driving no additional consumption at all. $1000 lower taxes for a struggling family? Gets spent on unmet needs 100%, almost always on local C sector spending. I don't have a car that needs fixing. I'm not drying clothes by hand because I can't afford a tumble dryer. I'm not desperate for new clothes but limited to Goodwill hand me downs. The opposite is true, even more so. Tax Bill $1000, heck $100,000 more and he never notices. Tax me $1000 more and if I do notice it doesn't change my consumption one iota (the 100k will of course!). Tax those poor underwater folks $1000 more and every penny is reduced consumption, reduced expenditure in local businesses.

But we should also be spending less at the DoD and refining how we deliver social safety nets and healthcare to become more efficient too. I've worked for pharma companies. The US price premium is the other side of unconscionable and accelerating.

jtuck004 (14,438 posts)

14. Nearly. But too many act as if there is no harder work necessary to solve the problem.

The years after FDR and until the modern era pols started dismantling everything after Carter had nearly everyone with their heads down working.

What we lacked, as this country always has, is the political will to pay all those laborers a fair wage.

We can take the money away from those who have taken it, but we will never be able to use law to make sure others can keep it.

Only if we use that money to make sure we are given the opportunity to use it with the barest interference necessary for the good of the nation, do we do them any favors.

Ask FDR or any labor leader of the industrial unions - people want to work, they want purpose. Not just get a check.

Pay us all an income without funding our search for purpose and you are building a program that isn't sustainable, and the people themselves will kill it.

They really want Cuba 3.0

hunter (24,032 posts)

17. Yep.

Time to take back what the kleptocrats took.

Who took what and how you ****ing idiot?

jwirr (38,334 posts)

18. Robert McChesney and John Nichols say in their book "People

Get Ready" that over the years we have allowed this mess to get like it is because we did not fight back. We used to tax the rich but now we know it is wrong - we just do not demand that it has to be done.

In the book they list a number of items we have been silent on when we should have been fighting back: the weakening of the Unions, the cuts in the safety net, eternal wars.

They argue that either we start fighting back or we are going to reach the point where we cannot.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027797395

[Carl]

They would be actual millionaires if they put the effort into a business and work as they do wanting handouts.

What is the saying...wish in one hand and shit in the other,see which one fills up first.

[ChuckJ]

jtuck004 (14,438 posts)

14. Nearly. But too many act as if there is no harder work necessary to solve the problem.

The years after FDR and until the modern era pols started dismantling everything after Carter had nearly everyone with their heads down working.

Keep polishing that turd, but when you're done it is still a turd.

[USA4ME]

Scuba

The USA only has one fiscal problem: Lack of political will to tax those who have all the money.

Daniel wants someone to hold his hand through life. Daniel is a moocher.

.

[Patriot Guard Rider]

Keep polishing that turd, but when you're done it is still a turd.

Yes. And I bought a brand new Honda Accord and got the EXCELLENT interest rate of 22%.  Carter sucked as a president. As an ex-president, he's done ok. I just wish he'd keep his mouth shut on political talk and build houses.

[jukin]

I do believe that the wall street democrat machine  should be taxed at 95% for using Federal Reserve funny money to make billions. Don't know why the republicans are not yelling this to the rest of the country.

Wall, street doesn't produce anything other than graft and phony companies. Hedge funds should be taxed at 90% of all transactions.

I also think there should be a 95% hollywood tax.

Let's all remeber that the only big win for 2010 was making lower tax rates for less than 5% of the country. Also remember that that LT 5% is exclusively democrat voters. ANother reason I quit the republican party.

BUT...

Trump brought me back to the republican party to vote for him in the POC.

[I_B_Perky]

maxsolomon (13,343 posts)

6. There's more than 1 fiscal problem

I lay it at the feet of Militarism. cut the DoD in half, or even by a third, and problem solved. Then you have an new unemployment problem, though.

Raising the cap on FICA taxes would solve more fiscal issues as well, but that's a facet of your problem.

Reality says:

In FY 2016 total US government spending on welfare — federal, state, and local — is “guesstimated” to be $1,066 billion, including $610 billion for Medicaid, and $456 billion in other welfare.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40.html

Us defense spending:

560 billion in 2015:
http://www.defense.gov/News/Special-Reports/FY16-Budget

Get another talking point dummie. That one has been debunked so many times it is not funny.  Besides... defense is one function of the federal government that is actually in the constitution.

Cut handouts to the parasites in half and you get somewhat close to a balanced budget.    Cut the military budget in half and you still run a deficit and you got ruskies, chinks and muzzies kicking our ass.  I'll cut handouts to parasites first.

[franksolich]

Get another talking point dummie. That one has been debunked so many times it is not funny.  Besides... defense is one function of the federal government that is actually in the constitution.

Yeah, there's few things that betray the ages of the primitives more so than their perception of defense spending.  These are old hippies, in their 60s and 70s, all right.

From 1789 until 1970--give or take a year--defense spending in fact was the largest part of the federal budget; as late as Franklin Roosevelt during his first year in office (1933), military pensions were by far the overwhelmingly dominant part of the federal budget.

Yeah, that's right.  Military pensions.

One has to credit the evil Richard Nixon with presiding over this cataclysmic shift in federal spending, from defense to social services.  He was the first one to budget more for social services than for defense, and it's never gone back since.

So when a primitive yaps about the defense budget being "too big," the primitive's memory's obviously from 1970 and before.

I think it's time they got caught up.

[diesel driver]

There's a lot of things I hate Nixon for.

The EPA being number 1.

[Carl]

There's a lot of things I hate Nixon for.

The EPA being number 1.

Nixon would be a democrat today and JFK a Republican.

[GOBUCKS]

Nixon would be a democrat today and JFK a Republican.

Kennedy would be Republican, but not an officeholder.

His pro-America, anti-Communist, pro-defense stance would disqualify him from democrat politics in Massachusetts.

[Karin]

Response to nadinbrzezinski (Reply #2)

Tue May 3, 2016, 03:37 AM

SomeGuyInEagan (1,486 posts)

57. Revoke corporate charters.

And put on trial those who knowingly sink the world economy.

That would be your loser president, idiot.  And George Soros.

Here's lumberjack's solution for what to do with all those out-of-work soldiers and other DOD employees:

Response to 1StrongBlackMan (Reply #10)

Mon May 2, 2016, 04:36 PM

lumberjack_jeff (32,353 posts)

23. Presumably, the money would be spent elsewhere.

Those people could build bridges, roads and telecom infrastructure instead.

The stupid democrats even admitted after the "shovel-ready-jobs" debacle that they made an incorrect assumption...that all labor is fungible.  Any blue collar is any blue collar. 

Response to lumberjack_jeff (Reply #23)

Mon May 2, 2016, 04:46 PM

1StrongBlackMan (29,716 posts)

29. aeronautic engineers ...
 
don't, typically, have the skill set to build bridges or roads or telecom infrastructure.

Response to 1StrongBlackMan (Reply #29)

Mon May 2, 2016, 05:04 PM

lumberjack_jeff (32,353 posts)

35. Then get them the skills they need.
 
This is the advice given to coal miners.

Which is why we see Shrillary in a shitstorm today.  "We're going to put a lot of coal  miners out of business!" 

[Patriot Guard Rider]

Which is why we see Shrillary in a shitstorm today.  "We're going to put a lot of coal  miners out of business!"

She meant that when she said it. It was certainly no misstatement. Now she has to talk out of the other side of her mouth to placate voters. She is anti-coal. I just hope voters in those states see through her bullsh*t.

[landofconfusion80]

She meant that when she said it. It was certainly no misstatement. Now she has to talk out of the other side of her mouth to placate voters. She is anti-coal. I just hope voters in those states see through her bullsh*t.

Oh, we do. Lots of "coal keeps the lights on" license plates along with various conservative bumper stickers

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[I_B_Perky]

She meant that when she said it. It was certainly no misstatement. Now she has to talk out of the other side of her mouth to placate voters. She is anti-coal. I just hope voters in those states see through her bullsh*t.

Obama was credited for turning WV GOP on both a state and national level. After 80 years.  Lots of coal miners and ancillary workers out of work now in WV. Folk are pissed off around these parts.

Now along comes hillary, down to coal country in southern WV no less and proceeds to tell these proud folks that she is going to shovel money at them to retrain.  Needless to say that did not go over so well.  One town/county, Logan I think it was, refused to let her use their county/town property for her political rally.

Then she goes down to Williamson... hop, skip and a jump from Logan and got quite a welcome.

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/20160502/no-warm-welcome-for-clinton-in-williamson*

An excerpt:

Lester said he is a registered Democrat but has stopped voting for Democrats on the national ticket ever since President Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. In the primary, he said he’ll vote for Bernie Sanders, but in the general he’ll go for Trump.

He said he believes that Trump will help bring coal jobs back to West Virginia. He thinks coal jobs are the solution, not stimulus money like Clinton has proposed for the areas hit hard by coal’s decline.

“They keep saying they’re going to bring work to the area,” Lester said, “but they aren’t doing it.”

Lots of union folks down that way.  The communist dems are destroying their alliance with the union miners. And the lib elite called them racists because they do not like the liberal dems policies.  That went over real well.  Same deal in Kentucky.


*The gazette is the local liberal rag. Swallowed up the conservative Daily Mail and now all that is left of the daily mail is the editorial page. The Gazette  runs Len Pitts op-eds from the Miami Herald all the time. Calls us racists.  The dems have pretty much lost WV for a long time.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Or we could conscript the beneficiaries of public assistance into labor battalions to do all that 'Critical infrastructure work,' with the beneficial effect of learning useful job skills.  Sufficient political will could do that too, DUmmies.   

[98ZJUSMC]

hunter (24,032 posts)

17. Yep.

Time to take back what the kleptocrats took.

Who took what and how you ****ing idiot?

Never understand that.  They have been nothing but given things for the last 70 years.  Retards. 

[BlueStateSaint]

Or we could conscript the beneficiaries of public assistance into labor battalions to do all that 'Critical infrastructure work,' with the beneficial effect of learning useful job skills.  Sufficient political will could do that too, DUmmies.

DAT!  How've you been?

[DumbAss Tanker]

DAT!  How've you been?

Busy on farm and vehicle maintenance shit, making a pile of dough, all that kind of stuff.  Missed you guys, but it just got too toxic for me for awhile.  Tip of the hat to my bro Big Dog for checking on me while I was gone, btw.  "Pew, pew, pew!"

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Good to see you again...

you ****ing officer, you.

[Skul]

They would be actual millionaires if they put the effort into a business and work as they do wanting handouts.

What is the saying...wish in one hand and shit in the other,see which one fills up first.

Wish-a-poo? 

[Chris_]

[DumbAss Tanker]

Good to see you again...

you ****ing officer, you.

Did you buff the floor in here with peanut  butter, Soldier?

 

[Rebel]

While Venezuela, a nation that imposed EVERY F'N THING THEY WANT, is literally imploding. They want that shit here.

Let's fight for it, DUmmies. See who comes out on top.

[Karin]

Thanks for the report on the ground, I_B, and great to see DAT again!

Did you see where she tried to spin it as "out of context" and it came out so convoluted and blatantly dishonest, that it was ridiculous?  And she wonders why nobody trusts her. 

And who would trust some nebulous "government program" to make everything right as rain?  Nothing ever works.  And then, just because you have new training, you still need a way to make a buck with it.  Gov't just never understands that.