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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.
That is because you assume a balanced budget to be a good thing. While private debt is considered bad, the public debt is the bases of the money supply. A balanced budget means you want to reduce the money supply like in the 1930s or expect people to take on more private debt. Does a depression or more middle class debt sound good to you?
The reason to tax the wealthy is that they are just adding buying pressure against the middle class. The middle class is getting pummeled while the wealthy are buying up distressed property to rent out the same housed the middle class lost. Rent seeking. Very important concept.
Quote:
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
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.
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."
Remember, in 2012 the deficit was $1.1 trillion (Federal Deficit for 2012 Fiscal Year Falls to $1.1 Trillion - NYTimes.com). So what this cite actually says is that if every business on the planet decided to maximize their tax payments (which obviously is the opposite of what happens in real life), IT STILL WOULD NOT balance the budget for a single year--let alone touch the $16 trillion in debt.
And here let me state a prediction (which, if I backed up with analysis, would make an even longer post): since our politicians are used to spending over a trillion dollars more than they take in taxes every year, no matter how much they take, they will STILL spend much more and put it on the credit card. Trying to give them MORE than they can spend is pointless, let alone destructive to the economy.
This is best explained with this post. Pay attention to:
"The total money supply is government debt + bank credit. ". All money is created as debt.
Private debt between parties nets to 0. If I hold a corporate bond the corporate debt is my asset. The entire financial wealth of the private sector must exist as government obligations. Thus paying down the debt will reduce private assets which is the source of all financial liquidity.
In other words treating government debt like personal debt is somewhere between total economic ignorance and insanity. Its ignorance when you don't know, and insanity when you know.
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.
No, but the wealthy, who earn over $250,000/year from investments can pay at least the same rate that a hard working middle class pays on income taxes!
Didn't your spin masters tell you that there is more than one choice here?
I said I gave you a simple, brief answer. If you really want to talk about economics, DM me. I am not going to argue with you about it, or allow you to try to prove your intelligence at the expense of mine. This is your MO, and I have gotten into arguments with you in the past. I refuse to do it again.
You made the unsupported boast that you understood it. Most people really don't understand it well so I expect them to defend it. I run into the supply/demand broad brush all the time. My MO is backing up what I say with authority like a famous economist or a logical argument with supporting facts. Some people do have a problem with that I understand.
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.
People would have been able to afford those homes had irresponsible and greedy mortgage lenders not practiced deceptive lending practices that did things like cause the new home-owners' payments to double, triple, or quadruple, or not allow them to pay down any principle with interest only loans, and so forth.
Which also continues to miss the point of this thread: The Wealthy in this country have systematically stolen middle class wealth, pushed the vast center into the need to live on borrowed money so the banksters could profit to the tune of trillions of dollars, and forced tens of millions of hard-working Americans onto government programs because they aren't earning enough to survive, let alone thrive. This imbalance and outright theft needs to be righted and repaid. Higher taxes on those who have absconded with our nation's wealth is a moral imperative.
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.
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.
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.
You are responsible for your own finances, no one else. I suggest that people learn how money works but you encourage blame instead.
You realize that liar loans made lenders wealthy while "bankrupting" already penniless sub prime which is non 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.
We need government to intercede to prevent corporations from outsourcing our entire manufacturing sector. They are not compelled to do so without either incentive or penalty.
The government interceded with housing and you see what happened there
Demotic Policies -> Subsidize -> Bubble -> Crash and Burn
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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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.
Actually it was Clinton and "Obama" who wanted to make it easier for people to buy homes so they encouraged 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.
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.
You are responsible for your own finances, no one else. I suggest that people learn how money works but you encourage blame instead.
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.
You realize that liar loans made lenders wealthy while "bankrupting" already penniless sub prime which is non 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
Liar loans?
penniless sub prime?
counterfeiting?
Fake assets?
Where did you learn your economics? You and Obama must have gone to the same school because its all blame, blame, victim, victim and blame.
Sub prime borrowers (meaning people who couldn't afford the homes in the first place) were taken to the ritz because they didn't understand what they were signing (lack of financial understanding). But they just wanted the house and since they failed blame it on everyone else but the actual people who are responsible.
Quote:
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.
so the middle class was powerless, and the force of the law caused them to sign the mortgage loan?
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
3,997 posts, read 4,145,823 times
Reputation: 2677
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
so the middle class was powerless, and the force of the law caused them to sign the mortgage loan?
And what's even sadder is they signed not only the mortgage, but the note, the right of rescission (possibly), the Good-Faith-Estimate, and on and on... Never once knowing or even taking the time to read it, let alone understand it.
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