How are we going to pay for all this shit?

Just to let you know.. With 8.6% inflation, the restaurant will be Taco Bell, and the napkin will be one of their flimsy chocolate brown offering. Be sure and bring an orange magic marker, and don't press too hard.

And stay close to the rest room. Originally Posted by Chung Tran

LOL ... ouch!

I'm afraid I might have had to take a hard pass on that even way back in my skool daze, when I would eat almost anything!

.

Reply:


First, there was no sleight-of-hand associated with the 1983 "Greenspan Commission" finding that resulted in adjustments made to the Social Security system in order to shore up its long-term outlook. The resultant payroll tax increases were small potatoes compared to the across-the-board income tax cuts, which sharply cut rates across the income distribution. The result was that total federal taxes (income and payroll taxes combined) were reduced substantially for middle-class taxpayers.


exactly what i said here ...

he raised payroll tax for social security, one specific tax for a specific purpose.

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

Second, as I pointed out earlier, and as was explained in the link I posted, the 1986 tax law actually raised taxes on the wealthy!

So, if myriad tax policy changes passed during Reagan's presidency reduced the tax burden on the middle class while shifting a greater portion of it to the wealthy, how is it that you believe they somehow increased income inequality?



(That was directed at Tiny.)

I don't know about Tiny, but if you're up for taking me out to a fine restaurant the next time I'm in Houston, I'm all in! (Especially if you spring for a fine bottle of Cabernet as well.)

Regarding that "explaining things on a napkin" thing though, I'm afraid you're going to need a little luck.

If you think you're going to cogently rebut any of the points I made above, that better be a pretty fucking magical napkin!

. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

magic napkin? he'll need a magic carpet to weave a response!

Hey Tiny, remember when we were musing about being in the same room with all those far-left Biden-Sanders-Warren wokester idiots as they sought to outbid each other in mis-spending more & more of our precious tax dollars?

Oh yeah, here's my post:

I can only shudder when I try to imagine how these bills are drafted. I visualize a bunch of aging, '60s hippie dipshits sitting around a conference table on Capitol Hill vying to insert the most humongous amounts for the most frivolous virtue-signaling spending purposes into each bill.

"I want $10 billion for SOCIAL EQUITY INFRASTRUCTURE!" screams one purple-haired woman from Liz Warren's staff.

"I'll see your $10 billion and raise you another $20 billion!" counters Maxine Watters' BLM advisor.

"Fuck that! Go big or go home! Let's spend $100 billion on 'social equity' - and no GAO tabs on where the money goes! I sure as hell don't want anyone to know when I funnel it back as campaign donations!" yells AOC's boyfriend Riley Roberts.

"Now let's move on to all the cool Greenie stuff masquerading as infrastructure!" Originally Posted by lustylad

It looks like the reality is every bit as bad as we feared!

Exhibit I - The fucking dim-retards actually appropriated a whopping $102 billion in extra money for the EPA this year - $61 billion under the 2021 infrastructure law and $41 billion under the Inflation Reduction Act. Problem is - that total is more than TEN TIMES the EPA’s existing annual budget! Think about that. It’s not like they bumped up the EPA’s budget by a lousy 10-20%... naaahh, they want to give ‘em TEN TIMES what they currently receive!

And how is this massive windfall supposed to be spent? According to the WSJ’s Dan Henninger, it’s earmarked “for every conceivable green goal—from iterations of environmental justice to low-carbon labeling on construction materials to such undefinable murk as corporate greenhouse-gas reporting—all of it distributed through a Swamp tributary system of nonprofits, community groups and local officials.”

Now, $102 billion is such a staggering sum that in the real world (as opposed to the fantasy land inhabited by greenies) there is NO WAY it can be shoveled out without corruption, fraud and waste on a jaw-dropping scale. The WSJ quoted an unhappy community organizer in New Orleans impatient at how long it is taking to tap into this new federal boondoggle... “They passed all this stuff, and they committed funding for all this stuff, but then they didn’t actually write out how it’s going to work.” Duh! What a surprise!

Just like I imagined... AOC screamed “Let’s spend $100 billion on environmental justice!" ... and here we are.

And that’s just one example. You can multiply it by similar horror stories of enormous slush funds set up to be doled out to every conceivable dim-retard constituency... from the teachers unions to AFSCME.

They’re basically picking the pockets of every US taxpayer to buy votes and fund their future campaigns.

How do you spell C-O_R_R_U_P_T_I_O_N?

I spell it D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T-S!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dem...es-11675288301

Whatever!

Just to let you know.. With 8.6% inflation, the restaurant will be Taco Bell, and the napkin will be one of their flimsy chocolate brown offering. Be sure and bring an orange magic marker, and don't press too hard.

And stay close to the rest room. Originally Posted by Chung Tran

I plan on pointing out the inflation numbers in Reagan's first term and the huge budget deficits he started....Biden seems to be taking a play right outta the ole Ronnie playboy. Tiny will love that!

I might invite Chicken Litte too, to try and convince him that everything is gonna be alright.

Oh and I may bring the numbers showing the wealth gap widening for the last 40 years

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-inequality-debate

The picture is much the same when looking at wealth—that is, total net worth rather than yearly income. In 2021, the top 10 percent of Americans held nearly 70 percent of U.S. wealth, up from about 61 percent at the end of 1989. The share held by the next 40 percent fell correspondingly over that period. The bottom 50 percent (roughly sixty-three million families) owned about 2.5 percent of wealth in 2021.

Spot on WTF..I'm afraid the wealth/income inequality in the US will be the downfall of our country. Middle class (who historically has propped us up) is dwindling, rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer. Of course we can always let the poor eat cake...

The way we pay for this shit (pork and govt waste notwithstanding) is to COLLECT taxes from those that can AFFORD to pay...and nowadays that is no longer the blue collar or lower level white collar worker...it is the upper level white collars and entrepreneurs, etc., who have ways to dodge taxes (didn't say illegal ways). That needs to change so that they at least pay a % equivalent to "middle class" regardless of write offs; I'd argue more, but that's a starting point.

It galls me, and should us all that an Ex-President living a lavish lifestyle and purported to be worth Millions paid essentially no personal federal income tax for the past several years....and brags about it. Legal? Maybe. How do you pay for this shit? AsTo paraphrase Willie Sutton, you have to go where the money is. COLLECT from the wealthy whatever that upper percent is and get rid of their tax advantages so they pay their fair share.

Or let it devolve to the point of the French revolution...history does repeat.

Hey Tiny, remember when we were musing about being in the same room with all those far-left Biden-Sanders-Warren wokester idiots as they sought to outbid each other in mis-spending more & more of our precious tax dollars?

Oh yeah, here's my post:




It looks like the reality is every bit as bad as we feared!

Exhibit I - The fucking dim-retards actually appropriated a whopping $102 billion in extra money for the EPA this year - $61 billion under the 2021 infrastructure law and $41 billion under the Inflation Reduction Act. Problem is - that total is more than TEN TIMES the EPA’s existing annual budget! Originally Posted by lustylad

Interesting!

This is fucking insane! Yes, the EPA's annual budget is about $9 billion per year. And they're supposed to spend over $102 billion on climate-related projects over the next 18 months!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/epas-10...article_inline

Agreed, a big part of that's going to be flushed down the toilet.

I see that the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians will be applying for a small part of these funds to use to try to shut down a proposed nickel mining project. See the irony? Lots and lots of nickel will be required for the transition to renewables. And you need a high % of American sourced content to get the subsidies the Democrats are giving out. I wouldn't be surprised to see these yahoos give part of this big pot of money to the nickel mining company AND part to the Indians.

Whatever!

Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

This guy has a point. Yes, right now inflation is outpacing growth in wages. The workingman is losing ground.

And yes, historically high inflation has hurt the poor more than the rich. Back in the day, I used to bang a Argentinian businesswoman who owned an ice cream shop. She had to gather up cash from selling ice cream twice a day and go to the store to buy ingredients (cream, sugar, etc.) or otherwise inflation would wipe out her profits. Meanwhile the better off were converting their pesos to dollars and investing in inflation hedges, options that weren't available to most.

I think he overstates the effect on inflation of the support we're providing Ukraine. The 60 billion or whatever is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else. But yeah, I sure wish we trying harder to stop the war. No one's benefiting from it, except as he says the arms manufacturers.

Spot on WTF..I'm afraid the wealth/income inequality in the US will be the downfall of our country. Middle class (who historically has propped us up) is dwindling, rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer. Of course we can always let the poor eat cake...

The way we pay for this shit (pork and govt waste notwithstanding) is to COLLECT taxes from those that can AFFORD to pay...and nowadays that is no longer the blue collar or lower level white collar worker...it is the upper level white collars and entrepreneurs, etc., who have ways to dodge taxes (didn't say illegal ways). That needs to change so that they at least pay a % equivalent to "middle class" regardless of write offs; I'd argue more, but that's a starting point.

It galls me, and should us all that an Ex-President living a lavish lifestyle and purported to be worth Millions paid essentially no personal federal income tax for the past several years....and brags about it. Legal? Maybe. How do you pay for this shit? AsTo paraphrase Willie Sutton, you have to go where the money is. COLLECT from the wealthy whatever that upper percent is and get rid of their tax advantages so they pay their fair share.

Or let it devolve to the point of the French revolution...history does repeat. Originally Posted by reddog1951

The picture is much the same when looking at wealth—that is, total net worth rather than yearly income. In 2021, the top 10 percent of Americans held nearly 70 percent of U.S. wealth, up from about 61 percent at the end of 1989. The share held by the next 40 percent fell correspondingly over that period. The bottom 50 percent (roughly sixty-three million families) owned about 2.5 percent of wealth in 2021. Originally Posted by WTF

How many times are we going to debate this. I love both of you, in a BROTHERLY AND PLATONIC way, but you're just plain wrong in your thinking on this.

Please recall the graph that Texas Contrarian, fka Captain Midnight, posted from the New York Times,



And I'll refer you again to Peter Whiteford's comments in Greg Mankiw's blog,

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2011/...ssive-tax.html

If you read the article, which I'd encourage you to do, you'll see that the USA has the most progressive tax system in the OECD. At the top end, people are paying at marginal income tax rates of 40.8% to 54.1%, depending on the state. That's pretty comparable to what you see in Western Europe. Taxes on the middle class however are much lower in the USA than Europe. If you want a European style welfare state, you've got to tax the middle class at a lot higher rate, through a VAT or whatever, and then spend the money on social security and services.

That's not the route I'd take if I were dictator, as I believe the most prosperous developed countries of size, being the USA, Switzerland, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong, have smaller government. Rather, I'd shore up the social safety net for the poorest, children in particular. And improve the educational system. And then do something that no one else here would. Jack up employer and employee payroll contributions and create something like Singapore's Central Provident Fund or Australia's superannuation scheme, which would force people to save. The reason you have the big disparity in wealth is because about half of all Americans spend as much as they make, and never save or invest. So you force them to do it.

Reddog, agreed, eliminating tax loopholes is a good idea. Government shouldn't play favorites. You allude to Trump. He was able to generate $900 million in carried forward tax losses in the 1990's, which mostly represented money borrowed from bondholders that he never repayed. That's an example of a loophole that should be eliminated.

Tiny you can try and spin it however you want....but the facts remain that we are 30 plus trillion in debt....so somebody isn't paying enough in taxes to supply our wants.

My contention is that this foolishness started under Reagan and was carried forward by his economic parrots that still schill his Voodoo economics.

Could you explain to me how the wealth gap has grown the last 40 years under such a progressive system?

Spot on WTF..I'm afraid the wealth/income inequality in the US will be the downfall of our country. Middle class (who historically has propped us up) is dwindling, rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer. Of course we can always let the poor eat cake...

. Originally Posted by reddog1951

According to Tiny and his economic guru's , the rich are paying all the taxes and not benefiting at all ....well except for their continued increase in the % of wealth owned by the upper 1%!

I plan on pointing out the inflation numbers in Reagan's first term and the huge budget deficits he started....Biden seems to be taking a play right outta the ole Ronnie playboy (sic). Originally Posted by WTF

Don't bother. We already know the numbers. They demonstrate the opposite of what you think. This is one of the best threads in the PF. You've already hijacked it more than once with your anti-Reagan diatribes. If you try to do it again, I will hit the RTM button, something I almost never do.

Oh and I may bring the numbers showing the wealth gap widening for the last 40 years Originally Posted by WTF

Again, don't do it. Tiny already started a thread on inequality. Go back and post your hateful, inflammatory class-warfare gibberish there. Don't make me report you for veering off topic.

Tiny you can try and spin it however you want....but the facts remain that we are 30 plus trillion in debt....so somebody isn't paying enough in taxes to supply our wants. Originally Posted by WTF

If you studied economics, you might have gleaned a few basics... like the fact that human "wants" are INFINITE, whereas our collective production potential at any given time is FINITE.

You can't endlessly dole out more & more free stuff to everyone far in excess of the economy's current ability to produce it just because someone "wants" it without working & paying for it.

That's the dim-retard formula for destroying a healthy, prosperous, free-market economy!