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Are you claiming that you gave money to reduce the deficit? How do you plan to make the truly wealthy pay? They are not ignorant enough to be getting much income, so how will you prove they are wealthy? Also, I truly doubt that you no more about supply and demand than I do. Why would you make that assumption?
Yes, I'm claiming that. That's my site. I posted the link for you to do so, as well. Why won't you? Don't you love your country?
I assume I know more about supply and demand than you based on your erroneous posts about it in this thread.
Demand is what you have when people want to buy things, can afford to buy those things, then does so.
When people can no longer afford to buy things, demand for those things necessarily dries up, disappears, goes away, no longer exists.
You can have all the supply you want filling up warehouses, but if demand is not there because people either don't want what you're selling or can't afford to buy what you're selling, you're going to be sitting on a lot of excess inventory.
Supply does not drive demand. Demand drives supply. It is one of the — if not the — most fundamental basic principles in economics.
No one has ever "quit" trying to be rich in this country because taxes were three percent higher. No one has ever "quit" working because of taxes--ever. EVER.
The Great American Dream is to be financially secure. The Great American Lie (told by your conservative cronies) is that everyone can be rich--"the haves and soon to haves."
A flat-out blatant lie that has been discredited a thousand times on these forums.
That chart, by the way, lists the top fifth (80-100%) and the top 1% separately. If you break it down to represent the 80-99% and then the top 1%, it becomes different. Instead of 95%, it's more like 65-70%. The top 1% is drawing in so much income it drags those numbers that high.
A friend of mine (who calls himself conservative) had the novel idea of tying executive income to employee income, I.e., an executive could not be paid more than 30x what his\her lowest paid employee was making. If the executive wanted higher pay, he or she would have to increase the wage of the lowest paid employee.
I was poking his idea full of holes, but it isn't a terrible idea--inequality exploded in part because of the tremendous difference in executive\worker pay--not to mention productivity skyrocketed while wages did not.
That's a great idea.
"Whole Foods makes sure that no employee makes more than 19 times the average salary. That means the typical full-time worker earned about $38,000 last year, and no one earned more than $721,000. (But the cap doesn't factor in stock options or pension benefits.)
The average CEO of publicly traded companies makes about $10 million a year--- average CEO salaries are now 380 times the average U.S. worker's salary. In 1980, that multiple was 42.
Everybody pays a lesser percentage on income derived
from investments, savings and money markets, because they were
already taxed once, when they initially earned it.
A lot of elderly have their money in investments.
You really want the government to take people's savings at the
same rate as earned income when our own government does not know
how to save money itself.
Instead of raising anyone's taxes, just cut spending and get rid of
unneeded programs. They can start with the Dept of Commerce
because they obviously don't know anything about economic
analysis ...save around 14 Billion a year right there.
Asking for more of people's money isn't the answer.
Cutting spending is.
Wealthy people make much more money from earned income than your average worker---in other words they are less likely to work for their money, more likely to make their money work for them. For example, people making more than $1 million a year got 42 per cent of their income from such capital income. Yet they pay less tax.
The proposed tax rate increase on capital gains will be from 15 percent to 23.8 percent for those with incomes over $250,000. Sounds fair to me.
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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Reputation: 2677
Quote:
Originally Posted by bluebirdback
Well in there does lie some of the rub. Because one thing should have
never changed - the appraisal.
The appraisals on these homes should have been questioned.
They were suppose to follow national guidelines. How could any appraiser value
these homes at these ballooned prices in such a short period of time, with no
history model to use as a guide. That seems to indicate fraud, especial if the banks were
aware of it. You would think they had to be; giving out loans for decades,
they knew these prices were not right.
Not saying buyers weren't buying mortgages they could not afford, but they
were not in this alone.
Yes, therein does lie part of the rub.. The appraisal situation, at least IMHO started innocently enough. A squeak of a few hundred dollars here or there.. Next thing you know, people are flipping houses so rapidly and prices would go up so rapidly that one of the three comparables would show up on the next appraisal as having been sold two or three times. Each time it sold... price went up.. so did it's appraisal. It was then used to justify the next and so on and so on. Unfortunately, it is holding true today, only in reverse. Take a look at an appraisal and every comparable is usually a foreclosure or short sale, which drops the appraised value of the subject property. Some to the point that $ amount per square foot is laughable.
This whole real estate discussion does prove the point that education about financial transactions is lacking in this country and that it may be, in part anyway, part of the reason's that some people succeed and some don't.
Why is it when I post actual numbers, the responses I get contain no actual information, but rather cites of certain people's ultra-vague generalist opinions? Why do people not want to learn the truth, but instead force their philosophies by pretending cites prove their points, when they don't?
The above is the response to my post of the actual amount of money that will be gained by government after letting the Bush tax rates expire, and the actual proposed budget for 2013, and the fact that all those extra taxes would STILL leave a deficit of about $700 billion to be added to our $16 trillion national debt. Nothing in the response so much as addresses that.
It would help if you posted numbers that mean something. The fact that there will still be a deficit after raising taxes on the wealthy is completely, utterly, totally, entirely irrelevant to the question of should the wealthy pay higher taxes.
Yes. They should. Whether it pays down the entire debt or not.
Your tactic of throwing numbers around and then claiming superiority because you provided "facts and figures" will not work with me. Your "facts and figures" must have some relevance to the subject at hand or they're nothing more than noise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NHartphotog
The first cite does not say that John Boehner's told them to stop obstructing the president's efforts to solve this problem, as the responder claims -- it says this: "Their party lost, badly, Mr. Boehner said, and while Republicans would still control the House and would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years." REPORT: Boehner Tells GOP House Members To Avoid A Major Showdown - Business Insider
In other words, stop obstructing the president's efforts with the obstruction methods you used during the debt ceiling showdown.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NHartphotog
The second cite is the general opinion of Bill Kristol that Republicans should give in and let Obama have his tax increases, basically to punish wealthy liberals who voted for Obama. Again, no facts or statistics, and no discussion of the fact that lower taxes are needed for economic prosperity--not as a "reward" for political support.
That cite goes to the fact that even Republicans are coming down on the side of raising taxes on the rich. You don't need facts or statistics to grasp that concept.
However, you're going to need a whole lot more facts and statistics to prove that lower taxes for the wealthy beget economic prosperity. Allow me to save you the trouble — it's false.
Has lowering taxes ever stimulated the economy?
The short answer is no. The long answer is that lowering taxes in general puts more money back in your paycheck and more money in the hands of investors. Neither of these things stimulates the economy. They are economically neutral."
"The report says cutting top tax rates don't appear to boost saving, investment or productivity, or the size of the economic pie, but do seem to increase disparities in income."
"During the 27 years from 1955 to 1982, with the top bracket tax rate at 70 percent or higher, the economy’s real growth averaged 3.21 percent per year. From 1983 to 2010, with the top tax rate cut in half to 35 percent, the economic growth rate averaged 2.85 percent. The net effect of making the rich richer was to increase the budget deficit and make the poor poorer."
Quote:
Originally Posted by NHartphotog
The last cite is the most important of all: everyone please click on that last cite and read what it ACTUALLY says. It most certainly does NOT say that if everyone paid maximum taxes, "we could pay down our entire debt in a year." The cite actually claims (with no backup or documentation other than IRS guesstimates) that if there was NO SUCH THING as tax avoidance (legal and illegal), and if corporations paid the same average tax rate now as they did from 1987 to 2008 (22.5%), and if there were no such things as tax havens (which are legal), then "That's enough to pay off a trillion dollar deficit."
Blah blah blah
The error in terminology was already pointed out to me so your tirade is self-serving and irrelevant. The point still stands that the wealthy, using tax avoidance schemes and shelters cost us trillions of dollars, without which we would not be in this fiscal mess at all. If the wealthy would stop trying to get out of doing their part in maintaining this country's strength through its infrastructure, education, and human capital, we would all be doing better and this conversation would be moot. But they have been dishonest and deceitful in their trickery, and decidedly unpatriotic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NHartphotog
Trying to give them MORE than they can spend is pointless, let alone destructive to the economy.
Yes. You cannot believe the number of people who would come in the bank, apply for a conventional mortgage, wouldn't qualify and then turn around a week later, having decided to "buy" a different house under a completely different set of terms. Usually having concocted some kind of special arrangement with the sellers to pay their points, or their closing costs. To actually pay more than they were asking for the house at times! When you would try to explain the simplest mortgage lending terms to them, they didn't care. "This mortgage loan COULD go up 2% per year with a lifetime cap of 8%. Do you understand this?" The typical response, "I don't care." I can guarantee that everyone of those folks probably lost their homes.
Believable and sad. That's an expensive loan especially now. ARM's are the worst to have especially now. I am sure you get people who are in underwater houses that are stuck in ARM's I keep hearing that the government was supposed to help these people but I know 2 people that can't get any help. So much for the government bailing people out.
Unless you were involved directly in some sort of real estate or mortgage capacity the only thing you know is what you read or what you BELIEVE to be true. I worked in lending for over 20 years. Don't tell me that I had an erroneous understanding of what happened. Banks, realtor's, appraisers, investors, our government and *gasp* BORROWERS are all to blame. And until folks quit using the blame someone else for their own failures excuse we're doomed.
Yes, I've been involved in some sort of real estate or mortgage capacity. And until you quit blaming only borrowers and accept the fact that a boatload of your colleagues used trickery and manipulation to put well-meaning and honest people into mortgages they (meaning the lenders themselves) knew the borrowers couldn't afford, while convincing the borrowers that they could, we're doomed to a repeat of the same players doing the same things with the same results, because, let's face it, they're smarter than the average home-buyer and they're greedy SOBs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
As I said, beware of the naysayers. And continue to blame everyone and nothing will change.
And talk about hypocrisy, you hate them buy their products. if you hate them so much why do you buy their product or service?
I don't hate people. That would be the wheelhouse of the Republican Party.
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
So you are playing victim and because you don't have good financial understand you risk becoming victim again. As I said, if people were financially educated and understood what those terms mean they wouldn't have signed the dotted line.
I am a savvy businesswoman who has an above-average grasp on finances. I enjoy a modest level of success due in large part to this understanding. But I do not project my talents onto everyone else. I'm smart enough to recognize and accept that just because I understand finance and mortgage-speak and legalese, that the average home-buyer shouldn't necessarily understand it at the same level I do.
It should be incumbent upon those seeking to gain our business to engender our trust, and that means not misleading people, hiding things in fine print, not even informing them at all, baiting and switching them in the middle of the escrow period, etc. We are not the industry's pawns and will not be played for fools again thanks in large part to President Obama's new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
Actually it was Clinton and "Obama" who wanted to make it easier for people to buy homes so they wrote legislation for the banks to write fancy terms to get people into those homes. The problem is, people could not afford it in the first place. Then everyone thought that housing would go up, up, up. Some people borrowed on the equity of their houses. Now they either lost their house or they are underwater.
Do you always just make stuff up as you go along?
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
If you are in trouble it is YOU who signed the mortgage and agreed to those terms. By not being financially educated you allowed yourself to be taken advance of via the DEMOCRATIC subsidization plan. I understood and walked away from that loan realizing that in about 5 years people would lose their house.
Bully for you! Now go give yourself a cookie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
You are responsible for your own finances, no one else. I suggest that people learn how money works but you encourage blame instead.
I suggest you learn how the financial sector works against the interests of the general population instead of blaming the victims of their get-filthy-rich-the-economy-be-damned schemes.
You realize that liar loans made lenders wealthy while "bankrupting" already penniless sub prime [borrowers] which is none other than counterfeiting. Fake assets is fake money in this system. What that means is people who did not engage in any bad personal behavior were the ones getting ripped off. The bonus receiving lenders got their big bags of money while sub prime "borrowers" got to stay in the Ritz. This bloated all housing prices to fictitious price levels. That was how it was paid for.
The rich manipulate the system and the poor had nothing to lose. Not an original idea.
It is on the middle classes alone that the whole force of the law is exerted; they are equally powerless against the treasures of the rich and the penury of the poor. The first mocks them, the second escapes them. The one breaks the meshes, the other passes through them.
Rousseau
Hear, hear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
The government interceded with housing and you see what happened there
Demotic Policies -> Subsidize -> Bubble -> Crash and Burn
1. Bi-Partisan Policies over decades -> Subsidize -> Bubble -> Crash and Burn
2. Stop playing Apples & Oranges and think you've made some larger point. The government intervening in housing and the government intervening in international tariffs and/or tax policy regarding the manufacturing sector are two entirely different animals, and you cannot use the success or failure of one to impugn the other.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aus10
Yes. You cannot believe the number of people who would come in the bank, apply for a conventional mortgage, wouldn't qualify and then turn around a week later, having decided to "buy" a different house under a completely different set of terms. Usually having concocted some kind of special arrangement with the sellers to pay their points, or their closing costs. To actually pay more than they were asking for the house at times! When you would try to explain the simplest mortgage lending terms to them, they didn't care. "This mortgage loan COULD go up 2% per year with a lifetime cap of 8%. Do you understand this?" The typical response, "I don't care." I can guarantee that everyone of those folks probably lost their homes.
And you cannot believe the number of people who would go into banks, apply for a conventional mortgage, would be otherwise qualified but would be stuck in a non-conforming or sub-prime loan because the bankster could make a bigger profit and bonus on selling that instrument.
For the second time in this thread: anecdote /= data.
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