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I don't really care what you believe about what I make. I mention it because of all this garbage talk about Class Envy and Class Warfare, when in fact rather substantial numbers among people who have money are absolutely thrilled to see the economic and tax policies of this nation turned around. Not all among the wealthy are the greedy, money-grubbing b@st@rds you'll see running around at Republican Party functions...
You have got to be kidding!!! That is one of the most absurd things I've heard in a long time!!!
CRA loans, let us not forget, have 100% loss rates and are functionally equivalent to political campaign contributions.
-- R. Christopher Whalen
Would you like to source this claim for us? Your author didn't bother to. It's a complete fraud. CRA loans performed better than industry averages, and the early success of the portfolio was what led the Clinton administration to recommend GSE expansion of support for the program in the late 1990's.
The author's other two points concerning regulators' misplaced enthusiasm over the potential role of derivatives and their failure to exercise aspects of their regulatory responsibility seriously have some merit. The claims concerning CRA do not.
In your opinion, which may not have anything to do with reality. If you dispute the facts presented in the paper, why don't you contact the author? The author's contact information is clearly included in the link. Every time you spew your protests of the facts that an author has researched and presented, you never go to the source to research the information their conclusions are based on to resolve the dispute - you just spew your opinion.
I wish I had known what you really meant.
I wouldn't have even bothered to reply to a statement like that at all.
of course you wouldnt have, the goverment does very little for the people and steals way too much from the producers of the USA. and all for what, a goverment that is very ineffective in protecting the Constitutional rights that we are supposed to have and instead makes alot of goverment departments that tell us what rights we do have, and how we have to take care of those that dont have the will or backbone to go out and make it for themselves.
it does seem that our goverment has become the goverment for those on the welfare check and not for the free.
In the same sense that the grocery store "steals" all that money from you at the end of the checkout line each week in order to pay their suppliers and employees...
guess what, they provide food that I trade money to them to get food that I eat. without taxes, the goverment would fold overnight, and all I could say for that is good riddance. our current form of goverment has not been a free goverment in quite awhile and truly does not care about the people except in the fact of how long can the politicians stay in power and how much money can they suck/steal from the people.
So, you are "wealthy" and you enjoy paying more taxes? Very interesting perspective!
Not that interesting. Like anyone, I try to keep my taxes to the legal minimum, but not being some self-deceiving, self-centered Republican schmuuck, I can easily see that the economy and society would be better off if that legal minimum were higher. As it used to be. I have everything I need, and I have everything I want, and I still have huge piles of money sitting around that I have to think up stuff to do with. Then along comes Bushie and starts handing me extra thousands upon thousands of dollars every year. I don't need that money. The people that he took it from do. It's past time to be giving it back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Repubocrat
Have you ever thought about moving to Germany? The government there will be happy to take 50% of your income to "help" the less fortunate.
I have been to Germany many times. Fine place. Wonderful people. Modern, yet with a sense of past that we don't have here. But my roots are here, and contrary to what daft right-wingers appear to believe, neither individuals nor corporations allow themselves to be driven all over the world merely by the vicissitudes of local tax rates.
My first job as an engineer I had to take a drug and alcohol test,
I've gone up the ladder some, and today I can walk to my boss' office and grab a beer from his refrigerator and take it to my desk.
You're allowed to drink beer at the office where you work? Oh, my.
Does anyone else find it offensive when people talk about not wanting to raise taxes on the rich (I'll use 1 million+ per year for my definitiion of rich) because it's "taking away their hard earned money"?
The very rich do not earn their money in the same sense that average americans do. You all should know this by now! The very rich need only leverage their capital in the correct ways to increase their wealth, no true work is required.
The average person doesn't get paid if they aren't producing goods or performing services. They are the backbone of the economy, the creators of all the wealth. The rich have nothing without them.
It's offensive to the people who do the real work in this country, the teachers, drywall hangers, doctors, concrete pourers, road maintenance crews, computer programmers, bus drivers, loggers, carpet installers, anything you see on Dirty Jobs, etc. etc. etc. to compare the money they give their all for- to money made by simply leveraging capital, no work required!
It's also offensive to imply that a CEO's time is worth 400 times more than the average worker.
The way to get rich in this country is to start your own business. It's next to impossible to get truly rich through your labor alone. If you're a janitor, cleaning office buildings by yourself will only get you so far, one person can only do so much. The way to get rich is to start getting others to work for you! Pay them a wage and profit off every building they clean. Expand. Eventually, you will get to the point where you have 10 janitors working for you, and you will no longer have to do any cleaning yourself! Manage and grow the business for a few years, and then sell to a competitor for a nice cash out. You are now rich. If you are smart, you are now aggressively investing. Buy an office building to lease out (you don't have to deal with it, just hire a management company to handle the details). Give control of your money to the right people, and it will now grow on it's own. You've reached critical mass. Congratulations, you worked hard and smart and played the game well. and you've earned a nice big house and the car you've always wanted. Enjoy your life of leisure, we might be a little jealous, but we're not mad at ya.
Becoming rich is fine, but once you make it please remember that there are others working much harder than you are, for much less money, and it would only be fair for you to pay your fair share of taxes on the money that is now funneling into your bank account like magic. Especially considering the only reason your CarpetWorld inc. stock has money to pay you dividends is because Jim the carpet installer (making 35k) just finished on a 4 bedroom. You've earned your slice of the pie, but please don't get greedy and try to eat the whole thing, the little guy deserves more than crumbs.
Does anyone not agree that there is a distinction between hard earned money and capital gains?
I do agree with the necessity of tax, etc. But what I don't understand is how throwing money at less wealthy people would be a solution. Maybe I'm idealistic, but perhaps we should ask that janitor in your description if he wanted to be rich, then what can we do to make him rich. The American system has no hard barriers to prevent Mr. Janitor from making a better living. Not to say that there are no barriers. It may be that Mr. Janitor is happy where he is, or is not willing to make the effort or sacrifice that takes him to the next level. Maybe he enjoys paying less tax, getting certain social benefits. I just don't see how giving him extra money makes this country better. Can't help those who don't want help.
I am an example of one that totally and completely disagrees with her...
You say that as if it were a good thing. The quality of your respect for fact and truth is well known here...and often scoffed at. Many among these upper tiers of the income scale have used intelligence as one of the tools that got them here. Intelligence and the sort of right-wing screed that you dish out every day do not at all go hand in hand.
An increase in the individual income tax rate to 36 percent and a 10 percent surcharge for the highest earners, thereby effectively creating a top rate of 39.6 percent.
Repeal of the income cap on Medicare taxes. This provision made the 2.9 percent Medicare payroll tax apply to all wage income. Like the Social Security payroll tax base today, the Medicare tax base was capped at a certain level of wage income prior to 1993.
A 4.3 cent per gallon increase in transportation fuel taxes.
An increase in the taxable portion of Social Security benefits.
A permanent extension of the phase-out of personal exemptions and the phase-down of the deduction for itemized expenses.
Raising the corporate income tax rate to 35 percent.
[/SIZE]Figure 6: CEOs' pay as a multiple of the averageworker's pay
Share of capital income earned by top 1% and bottom 80%, 1979-2003 (From Shapiro & Friedman, 2006.)
Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-1998.
So, the first and most basic axiom about power leads to the first and most basic axiom for those who don't want to be under the thumb of power structures: no matter what the society, and no matter how benign the new system you hope to create appears to be in theory, there have to be rival power centers to keep power from congealing. Big Government or Big Religion or Big Political Party can be as dangerous as Big Capital.
The second basic axiom concerning power is that the powerful always try to create an outside enemy, real or imagined, to bind the followers to the leaders. The human tendency to divide people into "us" and "them," which social psychology experiments suggest is readily triggered, makes this a very easy task to accomplish. It is almost as if, sadly, there is a need for the "other," that is, the person or group to be wary of.
In the real world, due to the early separation of the original human group into hundreds of groups that wandered off here and there across the world, only to bump into each other again much later and under varying circumstances, there are plenty of other ethnicities, religions, and nationalities to see as a dangerous enemy.
The third basic axiom is divide and conquer. If the followers are not faithfully bound to the leader by the dread of the outside enemy, then leaders can stay in power by favoring some followers and punishing others. A large group of followers is usually at a disadvantage to begin with because it is so hard for them to become organized, but the principle of divide and conquer makes if even more difficult.
LOL...You are correct Sir. The "progressives", which are actually "regressive", never will admit that what they are fighting for already exists and has been tried over and over with the same results. Our "progressives" will always believe that THIS time it will turn out different regardless of human nature and human history.
Why is it, I wonder, that those on the right have such a compelling need to define their own new and different versions of all the positions expressed by those on the left? Can it be that you simply have no means of dealing with the versions that are actually expressed by those on the left?
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That is one of the most absurd things I've heard in a long time!!! 
