For those who think the working class isn't paying enough tax: Personal finance reality check (generations, Obama)

[sware2cod]

Lots of working class folks get stuck in a rut. they might live in low rent/cr_appy neighborhoods. But it's cheap to live there so many stay. The nicer neighborhoods are all so much more expensive. Seems so out of reach. Some folks take the leap and leave. But many stay in the low rent area because the higher cost of living in nicer neighborhoods seems unattainable. When stuck in then bad neighborhoods, you don't need to earn much to get by, because it's cheap to live there.

It can become a perpetual loop (cheap to live there, dont strive to earn more because it's cheap to live there and can 'get by' on less, can't afford to move to any other place, no opportunities in the area where it is cheap to live...)

[vicket]

I grew up in a safe neighborhood with a decent school system. I was blessed with parents who showed me how to work. They also loaned me the money for my first beater car so I could go to work and go to college. Not everyone has those advantages.
I am white and middle class. Never had to overcome discrimination to get that first job.
I "fit in" with the workers and bosses at my jobs- so it was much easier to get promoted and raises.

Barring health issues- it is MY fault if I fall into poverty.

That is NOT the case for millions of people in this country. I can hardly blame poor people for not doing what I did when we did not start off in the same place.

[Caleb Longstreet]

Originally Posted by freemkt

I can't afford (money) to get a useful degree. And for several years I worked in a convenience store where there was effectively no upward mobility (manager in place for 10 years with no further advancement likely and 20 years left until retirement) and at any given time there were four to six college graduates working within 20 cents of minimum wage.

Only two of us (out of about 25) had any kids and none of us owned a home.

Were my co-workers also to blame?

But my question was about whether they aren't paying enough taxes.

I would think if you were a convenience store worker you probably aren't paying any taxes? Last time I checked that would net you about 16-17K a year, full time? Even if you did pay taxes, I would suspect you were in that 14-18% bracket?

Isn't that what Romney paid? 14%? However, his 14% which is so reviled totaled 2 MILLION IN TAXES.....until any of us on this thread are paying THAT much I think it wise we bit our lip on this one. It's not all about the percentage.....it's about the total paid? It's worthy of debate. I don't think Mr. Romney has a special fire department or police department. Chances are he pays taxes for public schools AND the tuition for private for his kids when they were of age. Talk about getting clipped?

The man from Boston is right. I made some poor choices and had to live with them. The difference with me being of course is that I don't think the government and YOUR tax dollars should have to pay for MY mistakes. This is a Republican speaking the truth. I've had up years and very, very down years and I have only myself to blame.

Any failures where a failure on my part. Was I marginalized in some circumstances? You bet. Boo hoo. I picked myself up, often worked 2 jobs (wow, that's something you hardly hear the middle class do, realize they might have to work 2 jobs in order to get ahead) and am squarely in the middle class.

When times were rough, I never thought taxing the rich was fair. Why? Total dollars paid, period. Personally, I think there should be a cap of maybe say, 500K tops for any wage earner. And even that is egregious on so many levels. If you look up the definition of fair, you will see I am right. However, there seems to be a penchant for quite a few Ameircans saying that "fair" really means a rich guy or gal should cough up nearly 1/2 their income. How would we pay for everything? Simple, we wouldn't. It's time America went on a bennie diet. Complete with everyone taking in their shorts to some degree. I'm no longer interested in the Snail Darter's demise, the effects of urine in lakes, and the long term effects of eating Tiera Missou in mediocre restaurants. IT DOESN'T MATTER.

Ludicrous. Ludicrous. And their reason as to why tax the rich guy more? "Because the can afford it"....yeah...that's logical...sound.....fair....sure.....they earned it and quite a few want half of it (more if the could get it) in the name of what they think is "fair". Must have missed that definition in grade school.

It's amazing how energized we Americans can become when there are no subsidies past the absolute necessary. We have all the money we need for the infirmed, elderly, mentally diminished, and people of special circumstance and we should be ashamed at how we care for them. However, I get downright pissed off when I see people FULLY capable of taking some job spend their days finding yet more clever ways of taking SSI payments, unemployment, nuissance lawsuits, recreational boozing and smoking, screwing their landlords, skipping out on bills, getting free cell phones, free b'fast for kids, free lunch, free afterschool (Christ, take their kids away...we are doing all the heavy lifting anyway), and basically spending every single ounce of energy robbing a system that has been so good to them and diminishing this same systems ability to help those TRULY in need?

I'm not asking for that much. Just go to work or drop dead for all I care. I'm tired of funding loafers.

Want to be more successful? TAKE A CHANCE. MOVE!!! So many Americans just can't cut that umbilical cord. They stay in cities and towns with NO opportunities because it's "home". I didn't have that luxury and I am glad I didn't. The best thing I ever did was move to where the opportunities were/are.

I call it the Sam Kennison theory. The skit where he tells those starving in the desert to move where the FOOD is!!!! Get it? If you are beating your head against the convenience store wall believing after 10 years it will change, you are a leading example of insanity....doing the same things over and over again expecting different results.

Doesn't work where you live? Move. I did. 30 years ago with $900 to my name, 2 duffel bags of clothes, fresh out of the USMC and I never looked back.

I suggest you pull your bootstrings up private and fall in. Pack up, move out, don't look back. Take a chance. The worst that will happen to you is that you will work in another convenience store. However, if you work hard enough and take a chance or two, you too might be on this blog later on in a few years wondering why you are working so hard to support a large group who have suddenly become allergic to work.

You can't miss them. They drive cars they can't afford and blame the government, homes they DEFINITELY should never have bought and blame the banks, take vacations they can never repay, buy trinkets and trash they don't need. They are everywhere. Usually adjacent to a foreclosed dwelling with more popping up every week....gee, what surprise.

In a word....MOVE.......Where's the downside?

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by jwiley

Investments are different then a job, you have control over a job you choose to take and work at for years, investments are guesses on what you hope a business usually out of your control will do. However you are right, if people do not like the return on their investments, they have the right to move those investments, and there are some investments that pay better then others.

My very simple point is that "get a better job" is worthy of being enshrined as the the winner of the most pithy advice. Take it as a given. In Stalingrad during 1941 I don't think working on the resume is going to make up for the bad business climate of hell on earth. I can control my efforts but the subject matter is who do we create a climate where this is easier to accomplish?

Oh and BTW when the banksters made bad investments, they were bailed out. Welfare for the wealthy.

[gwynedd1]

I don't want to tax the rich either, only the vast amount of money made from economic rents.Certainly don't tax people wealthy from industry. They should have zero tax. Louis the XVI sold taxing rights to the nobles so that they could collect money for the use of land. Even land with fancy buildings on it has most of its exchange value wrapped up in a ground rent. All real estate investors are is the fist estate reborn under the guise of investor. All they did was buy land use rights just like in that failure of a revolutionary French state which is what gave birth to modern economic via Quesnay. Land has no macro economic value, just exchange value for the special monopolistic interest.


Everyone knew in the past the landed gentry did no work. Everyone in the 19th century knew this as well from one of the most famous people in the world then. What happened? When did we forget about landed gentry welfare? FIRE sector paying all the taxes? Is the government that enforces their land rights that gives them their fortune and they don't want t pay? Please.


Wildly famous in the 19th century, oddly forgotten today. It was as obvious then as it is today that the government granted monopoly of land ownership allows people to become absurdly wealthy without working. Buy land and go to sleep. Which one of you wouldn't want to buy land in NYC and go to sleep for 100 years?

Who was Henry George?

During his lifetime, he became the third most famous man in the United States, only surpassed in public acclaim by Thomas Edison and Mark Twain

Donald Trump makes no usable product of any kind. If you were stranded on a small Pacific island with him what will he do to pitch in? Sell you the island? Real Estate investing is toll booth economics.

[freemkt]

Originally Posted by TrapperJohn

Less than $50 a month. Sounds like a bargain. Millions of Mexicans would pay far more for the privilege.

Is it a bargain if that money represents the difference between being able and not able to retire being able and not able to own a home or being insured and being uninsured?

[pollyrobin]

Originally Posted by Caleb Longstreet

You can't miss them. They drive cars they can't afford and blame the government, homes they DEFINITELY should never have bought and blame the banks, take vacations they can never repay, buy trinkets and trash they don't need. They are everywhere. Usually adjacent to a foreclosed dwelling with more popping up every week....gee, what surprise.

You just described the middle class, in some cases the upper middle class, living in the
suburbs, semi rural HOA developments somewhere in America.

It wasn't just the working poor who took advantage of a loose lending spree before the housing crash.

Other than that, great advice in your post

[TrapperJohn]

Originally Posted by freemkt

Is it a bargain if that money represents the difference between being able and not able to retire being able and not able to own a home or being insured and being uninsured?

Compared to the alternative, yes.

[petch751]

Originally Posted by BoomBen

Throw in bailing out failed companies that had **** poor management.
We are paying for the bad decisions billionaire CEOs made over the last decade.

So you want to take the poor management of billionaires on small business owners. That goes to prove it the intelligence level. How about that, I didn't realize that $250K a year are millionaires and billionaires. Obama spins his words to hurt people and you don't even have the intelligence to question a simple fact.

Here is a fact for you. A few people who are struggling to get to the american dream, something you CAN do but now you can't do it. Now a Union leader (a multi-millionaire) is trying to tell you that the fiscal cliff is all trumped up and some of you will believe that too.

What is wrong with people? Maybe part of your problem it's so easy to pull the wool over your eyes.

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by petch751

So you want to take the poor management of billionaires on small business owners. That goes to prove it the intelligence level. How about that, I didn't realize that $250K a year are millionaires and billionaires. Obama spins his words to hurt people and you don't even have the intelligence to question a simple fact.

Here is a fact for you. A few people who are struggling to get to the american dream, something you CAN do but now you can't do it. Now a Union leader (a multi-millionaire) is trying to tell you that the fiscal cliff is all trumped up and some of you will believe that too.

What is wrong with people? Maybe part of your problem it's so easy to pull the wool over your eyes.

That is because it is trumped up Shrink the money supply during flagging demand

There is no "national debt". Governments produce credit. That's all. 20% unemployment is a sigh that the credit supply is broken. The financial sector is gonna cure it?

Move to Europe .They are way ahead of us in destroying their economy with debt deflation being run by creditor plutocrats.

Maybe some of you can't be told and need to view it.


Stephanie Kelton presenting on Fiscal Cliff - C-SPAN Video Library