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OMB forecasted that the economy, as measured by annual GDP growth, will increase at about 3% per year from 2007-2012. This is only slightly more optimistic than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) (2.8%), or the Blue Chip Consensus (broken link) (2.9%).
CBO or BCC?
I'm not saying it's the end all. We need to cut spending also. That should be obvious when we will be borrowing from SS..
I'm not saying it's the end all. We need to cut spending also. That should be obvious when we will be borrowing from SS..
We've been borrowing from SS ever since 1983. Or to put it more accurately, SS has been investing its Trust Fund surpluses in US Treasury securities since 1983...
Same old, same old. The rich pay a lot of taxes. And they laugh about it all the way to the bank.
And when they are taxed more, it ends up hurting the government (because the wealthy put more of their money in tax-exempt investments and the government ends up receiving less tax revenue) and the middle-class (because the wealthy are less likely to hire more employees when their tax rate goes up).
The nearby chart shows that the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he's going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that's also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support the other half.
Your grasping at straws.
Aha, we are told: The rich paid more taxes because they made a greater share of the money. That is true. The top 1% earned 22% of all reported income. But they also paid a share of taxes not far from double their share of income. In other words, the tax code is already steeply progressive.
Great point. As has been discussed here before, the wealthy are actually paying slightly more in taxes now than before the two Bush tax cuts. Same thing during the Reagan era... the wealthy were paying more in taxes in 1989 than in 1981, contradicting what some claim ("the rich were getting richer": could be but they were also paying more in taxes.
Oh, I know, there are those who think God may have used evolution in the creation process.
But, this is a totally unbiblical notion in that according to scripture, God spoke and created the heavens and the earth and all of creation. In otherwords, instantaneous, by His powerful word.
So you are a Biblical literalist? Does that mean you believe in a literal Adam and Eve? That all black people are descended from the children of Ham? And so on?
No, we aren't. Similarites or not.
Yes we are apes. We have so many traits that ONLY found in higher primates. There are certain metabolic features that are only found in chimpanzees and humans. Why? Because we share a common ancestor.
Now Frank, really! That's just plain silly. Do you really believe that? Chemical reaciton? Oh, boy.
And open ended chemical reaction. Something extremely basic. Did you even look up why a prion is? A prion is a protein that self-replicates much like virus, but has a number of structural differences and is not alive in the conventional sense of the word. The most famous kind of prion are the one that causes Mad Cow Disease.
A lot of scientists think that something similar to prions were the precursors to life. Basic self-replicating proteins that got more complicated as time went on.
You may say the odds of that happening are probably one in the billions and you'd probably be right. In fact it could explain the absence of life on every non-earth planet we have ever discovered. Life might only exist on a few planets in the entire universe.
The fact that we are a few of planets (or possibly the only planet) with life doesn't mean anything. After all, if it weren't for that particular sperm hitting that specific egg and those exact mutations occurring, you'd never exist. The odds of you, me, or anyone being born were literally in the billions, its just when one in a billion things happen trillions of trillions of times, it happens quite often despite the odds.
If evolution were true, should we not see it occuring today? We don't, do we. Why not?
We do see it going on today. We see it quite often. We see new viruses and bacteria appearing all the time. We see mutations that take place in EVERY SINGLE birth in every species.
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy Not the same thing, as I have explained in previous posts. The death penalty is punishment for the crime of murder (the shedding of innocent blood). It is not itself murder. It was prescribed by God Himself as punishment for murder. Since Man was made in God's image, murder is a crime against God.
Abortion is the taking of innocent life (murder).
There is no contradiction here at all.
The confusion comes from this misunderstanding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigJon3475
But criminals and babies are the same....
Huh???? Criminals, and in this case we are refering specifically to those who have committed murder, are not innocent. Babies are.
What part of that did you not understand? I thought it was pretty clear.
And when they are taxed more, it ends up hurting the government (because the wealthy put more of their money in tax-exempt investments and the government ends up receiving less tax revenue) and the middle-class (because the wealthy are less likely to hire more employees when their tax rate goes up).
Obviously, financial planning is another topic on which you are seriously misinformed. Tax-exempt instruments offer a lower yield. They make sense only when tax savings offset that lower yield. Tax rates meanwhile affect only earned income. A significantly lower portion of the incomes of the rich is derived from earned income. It makes no sense to shelter income that isn't subject to taxation to start out with. Or do you have all your IRA balances tied up in tax-exempt muni's? Tax-exempts can be a valuable tool, but mostly for the well-to-do and near-rich. Once wealth reaches the level of $5 million or so, their value fades rapidly. As the result, most wealthy people are actually less likely to invest in tax-exempts than most downscale taxpayers.
As for employment effects, aside from maids, gardeners, butlers, and better tax advisors than you, the rich don't hire very many people. Companies and businesses that they may own or run do. But those decisions are made based on the books and prospects of the company, not on the basis of what some CEO or investor's 1040 might look like.
Same old, same old. The rich pay a lot of taxes. And they laugh about it all the way to the bank.
I doubt anyone is laughing about the taxes they have to pay.
Quote:
Originally Posted by saganista
Not nearly as steeply as it was before Bushie's massive tax giveaways to the rich. Here's $300 for you and $15,300 for me...
People like you amaze me.
Tax cuts to the people paying the most in taxes (Let me guess: You don't pay any, right?) is not giving away anything! It's their money!!!
You have been completely brainwashed by the Democrat Party into thinking that they don't deserve to keep what they earn.
Why shouldn't the people paying the most in taxes get the biggest reduction?
Even after the Bush tax cuts (which certainly ought to be made permanent), they are still paying more of their income in taxes than those who earn less.
You people on the left who are always talking about "fairness" aren't really about fairness at all. This is plain class envy. You just can't stand someone who has more than you do.
Well get off your butt, and get out there and earn your money like the rest of us do.
The giveaway, is the refund you got when you didn't pay anything in the first place! You didn't deserve it. You didn't earn it. It was somebody else's money.
Talk about greed! You want what doesn't belong to you!
We've been borrowing from SS ever since 1983. Or to put it more accurately, SS has been investing its Trust Fund surpluses in US Treasury securities since 1983...
I hate to clue you, but SS has been nothing but a slush fund since inception. There is no trust fund. Never has been. It's a myth. Wise up.
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