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Ah so that's why I didn't realize that I would not get the personal exemption while others did until 2012. Meaning that the middle class doesn't pay taxes on $4000.00 for each person in the household while high income earners pays taxes on the $4000 income others get tax free. Then pay AMT and higher percentage at the top.
I have to go, but try reading my preceding post all over again. You've completely misunderstood it and various other posts to this point.
Coming from a poor background, struggling through the middle class and now high income. Here is what I understand... I didn't bust my ass to pay for those who won't put in effort, who whine but won't do anything change their circumstances. I believe we need to pay taxes but this is ridiculous. So I say FU and now make less effort instead of continuing to bust my butt equalling loss of future employees. Why should anyone bust ass only to have government take so much. With the understanding that Obama and Dems want more, my reaction was while I am able and before they come for a higher percentage I opted to hoard my money instead of spending it. When Dems and Obama come for more I'll be out of the game.
I also understand that once I climbed out of being poor, up into the levels of middle class Obama and Democrats claimed I am rich when in fact I am middle class with little time to build my wealth (real rich). So with the current "tax the so called rich" mentality instead of spending I hoarded, invested and focused on building wealth with what I was allowed to keep. This may be you one day.
Another false belief many people have is once someone makes x amount they will always make that amount. People move in and out of high income. One year the business is thriving, the next year it's not. People should understand this, one day they have a job, the next day they don't. It's up to you to build your wealth while you can.
Just trying to take care of my family, including my elderly mother who worked and contributed to government coffers and is ill but just barely above the poverty line and can't get a damn dime of help from the government for medicaid or home care (even though they can come for recovery of the money from her home once she passes) but believe me, those who didn't contribute get lots of help. I don't need a fancy car or a fancy house it's about being able to take care of self and family. Don't be fooled, government doesn't help, they take. People in poverty don't contribute but they take that which they did not earn.
Punish? I would like the 1% to pay into Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us. NO CAP!!!!!!!! Are you kidding me??? They get to pay less as a percentage than people earning $20K, $80K, $100K and more? It is disgusting!
If you eliminated the cap on their contributions(mind you it's well below the 1%ers at 118,500) are you also going to uncap the benefits? There currently is a maximum benefit
Another false notion people believe is once someone makes x amount they will always make that amount. People move in and out of high income. People should understand this, one day they have a job, the next day they don't. It's up to you to build your wealth while you can.
You are fabricating that "notion" to help create an argument. It's silly too because as you move in and out of different brackets your tax liability adjust which is exactly what it's supposed to do
I suspect he was joking. Recycling is seen as a component of environmentalism, which is typically seen as the province of leftist hippies. In fact, though, recycling is certainly consistent with the "conserve" part of conservatism. I'm pretty far to the right, and I've been recycling for a good 25 years at least; long before the convenience of single-stream curbside recycling reared its lovely head.
As far as the topic of this thread, I have no desire to "punish" those who earn more than I do, as I believe that a redistributionist mindset is borne of envy; and envy is an unattractive character trait that I try to avoid.
Indeed I was. Apparently some are better at reading the "tone" of type better than others. I've been recycling my entire adult life and during my childhood, also back when we had to separate cans/bottles from paper and the rest. I also compost for a small garden. The kitchen trashcan uses a very small 4 gal. bag and lasts a week. If it weren't for rodents and small mammals I'd get a smaller trashcan for the roadside.
The argument I take with your second paragraph is you take the assumption that everyone who's wealthy has earned that wealth and has earned it honestly. This is not to say that I'm against inheritance or passing functioning businesses down to one's children, both are more or less honest and a means of providing for your offspring. Businesses will fail if the kids do not know how to run it and inheritances can dwindle quickly when bequeathed to a spendthrift, party animal, or druggie (perhaps a combination of the above), or simply to one who does not know how to conserve and manage wealth.
What I do have issue with are those who do not earn income from honest means, which is to say those people who do not produce value for others in the private sector by means of hard work, initiative, ingenuity etc. (or a combination thereof). I'm against the "welfare state" AND against the "warfare state", and I'm against the way our monetary system has been run through the "federal" "reserve". I'm against lobbyists of all kind who merely advocate for more big-industry and big-banking against the best interests of the vast majority of Americans.
Are there some legitimate functions of government? Yes. We need some small police force, fire protection, some medical services, we need some judges and a few clerks to run the show, but government is best served at the local level where it is most accountable to the people and can be run efficiently. I'm wholly against the one-size-fits-all approach that big-federal advocates like to take.
If you eliminated the cap on their contributions(mind you it's well below the 1%ers at 118,500) are you also going to uncap the benefits?
SS never made any "sense". It was a scheme for giving welfare money to old people while calling it something else. SS benefits are paid by those currently working and paying SS. It isn't a savings plan. Until very recently the benefit was greater than the present value of what was paid in, on average. People who collected a few decades back made out like crazy. They got full benefits but paid in little. When the program started, people collected who had never paid in. We've finally caught up and those retiring now will collect about what they paid in. Young people now will collect *less* than they paid in. But not a lot less. From now on the benefits should be expected to roughly match payments during your life on average.
If I had my way, we'd phase it out and go to a UBI for everyone.
The trick is to increase the taxes the wealthy pay without prompting them to move or decide to work less and reduce their income. When you look at historical rates in the USA and around the world, we don't have such a bad deal if you are high income. So I'm okay with increasing rates carefully and not drastically.
One pet peeve I do have is the long reach of the IRS. We have to pay US taxes no matter where we earn it. I work internationally and when I work at some locations in the Middle East, the Brits, Aussies, S. Africans, etc. pay no income taxes but we still must. But I still say we have it pretty good.
Last edited by Tall Traveler; 05-09-2015 at 10:57 AM..
Reason: spelling
SS never made any "sense". It was a scheme for giving welfare money to old people while calling it something else. SS benefits are paid by those currently working and paying SS. It isn't a savings plan. Until very recently the benefit was greater than the present value of what was paid in, on average. People who collected a few decades back made out like crazy. They got full benefits but paid in little. When the program started, people collected who had never paid in. We've finally caught up and those retiring now will collect about what they paid in. Young people now will collect *less* than they paid in. But not a lot less. From now on the benefits should be expected to roughly match payments during your life on average.
If I had my way, we'd phase it out and go to a UBI for everyone.
What party started Social Security and Medicaid?
The Democratic Party under President Franklin D Roosevelt (for Social Security, 1935), and the Democratic party under Lyndon Johnson for Medicare (1965).
Now you get to pay for those Democratic policies lol
We hear endless complaining from all the "progressives" and Left-leaners here that some "one per cent" -- sommewhere - is getting a disproportionaate share of the "nation's" wealth, and that it should e "redistributed".
I would love to hear some to these delusionists tell us all exactly how you would accomplish this.
To begin with, the Constitution doesn't permit seizure of the lawful property of an honest citizen without "due process of law". "Rule bythe peple" can't be allowed to degenerate into rule by the mob.
So we'll just tax those high incomes -- right?
Except that those who are self-employed, or have a share in a growing buisness (partnership, S-corp, etc) often can formulate strategies to drive the incomes of those enterprises down when taxes go up.
On the other hand, the guys anfd gals with mortgages and growing families usually have no choice but to give it everything they've got -- which puts them in a higher tax bracket where they have no choice but to pay a disproportionate share of the freight.
But what about Bill Gates, or Sergei Brin, or Jeff Bezos .... or so many of those "villains" on the Forbwes 400?
The wealth of a lot of these individuals is usually represented by the high value of common stock in an enterprise they created.Until they sell and actually realize any gain (and the value of that stock would drop considerably if the Lefties rattle thir sabers too loudly).
I fully understand that the American econmy is stagnant; that is mostly due to the fact that our real heavy industry can't compete in many global markets -- and that is due to the burden of too much regulatiory, environmental, and egalitarian dreams. We can afford the basics everyone agress upon, but there are limits.
so go ahead, you guys and gals over there on the left side of the aisle; tellus how you woulld "right" what you perceive to be a "wrong" without a field day for the shiftless and irresponsible who take advantage of what was intnded tfor the truly disadvantaged
Because what we've got right now clearly is not working.
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