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Politically, one place you can see "where the wave broke and rolled back" is in Jim deMint's 1/26/09 proposal for Republicans to offer toward the stimulus package (there's a thread on it). It was what we've been swallowing for many years - permanent tax cuts for corporations, a 10% tax cut for rich households and elimination of some deductions for certain ordinary folks. A few months ago taxpayers would have approved this and kept going. Now it sounds like something from 1929.
Quoting Hunter S Thompson? What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?
In history books things seem to happen so quickly such as the "fall of the roman empire". As like in 475 everything was fine and suddenly in 476, the Roman Empire collapsed suddenly in great terror. Actually it was a long decline over 200 years with a shift in power to Constantinople and that in 476 for a lot of people in the western empire from what we can tell the end of that empire with the last emperor was hardly noticed. Peoples lives and surroundings had changed over time and they had adapted. The senate continued to meet into the 600's for instance.
So this panic based hysteria the public gets in is stupid. We are in a pickle because politicians and lobbyists twisted the system to get people loans that could not pay them back under the guise of "fairness". Unfortunately people have to learn the hard way and I believe we still have much to learn just from reading some of the nonsensical posts on this board. But we will get through it. This country has survived surprise attacks, civil war, wars like WW2, economic panics, natural disasters, etc. Just because unemployment may go to 10% is no reason to go hysterical and start shooting your neighbors and locking yourself in the basement.
The best thing we can do is have a positive attitude, accept we may have to change careers or our lives, spend and live a normal life and if people are in need help them.
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the end of that empire with the last emperor was hardly noticed.
It's argueable that the Ottoman Empire that collapsed with the end of WWI was the last gasp of the Eastern Empire. Words like "Kaiser" and "Czar" were corruptions of the word Caesar, perpetuated forward through time by the "Holy Roman Empire" (the one that was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire).
China laid off 20 million people this week. That's 15% of their trained work force. Do you really imagine that we will escape this disaster?
A friend of mine and I were discussing this, and agreed that the truth of the matter is if we go down they go down. So far by 20 million jobs. We should keep a close eye on that since its a very telling sign of just how much we aren't buying and how much we can't afford.
We created this mess together, we'll crash together too.
Corporations only pay taxes on profits - after every conceivable business cost has been deducted and assuming they even profited. And I have trouble believing that a single corporation exposes its profits to its assigned full rate of tax.
"The rich" - first off, how is a 5% increase supposed to break their piggy banks?
Generally speaking the rich do everything they can to avoid paying their full tax rates, too - they whine so hard about their heavy tax burdens, naturally they're going to hunt for every possible way to escape that cruel pain.* "Punitive" taxes - we're not there yet by a long shot. And I dont know that a lot of rich Americans abandoned the country when the top marginal tax rate was 50% under Reagan.
Why on earth do guard dogs for the rich call asking the wealthy to pay their taxes "making it a crime to succeed"? They arent going to be suddenly poor if they pay household taxes, though they'd love for you to think so and spend considerable money embedding this meme in your mind. Why not look at it as giving some back to the country that made it possible for them to succeed in the first place?
"The wealthier invest in business...creates jobs for you" - they dont put their own household money into "business" unless it's their own, in which case they're not wealthy enough to do significant hiring, or unless you mean abstract "business" and they're investing in the market. IOW no, their loose household money doesnt go to create jobs.
Lower end of the tax scale - I think it's something like 40 or even 50% that dont pay fed taxes. Rather than protecting the wealthy who can afford to buy protection you might wonder how odd it is that 40-50% of the country earns <$40K, and that a large percentage of those qualify for food stamps and other government assistance.
Pork payoffs to buddies - what buddies are those?
* - update - piece in Forbes about the top 400 wealthiest only paying 17% taxes, "lowest rate paid by the richest 400 during the 15-year period covered by the IRS statistics" Richest 400 Earn More, Pay Lower Tax Rate - Forbes.com
For starters there is a difference between wealth and income. Some of those wealthy people have a large amount invested in vehicles such as tax free municipal bonds for instance.
Pork Payoffs? I would call billions going to ACORN and more billions going to the greenhouse gas poison crowd in the Porkulus bill payoffs, not to mention countless other things.
You say that corporations or rich people do everything they can to reduce their tax burden. Well of course they do! DON'T YOU AS WELL? You are telling me you don't take your full deductions on your 1040? Part of the problem with our tax system is that it has been twisted by lobbyists and is full of sludge and needs to be simplified.
I think you'll find in fact in IRS statistics they wealthiest americans pay the largest slice of the pie of total $ collected.
Again what you lefties don't get is the more taxes you put on people and business the more they turn to alternatives, cut business or move overseas. What you need to do is take the other approach and encourage earnings and investment.
Also you lefties always couple taxes with government spending. WRONG. Cutting taxes is all about getting the economy moving. As a private contractor I am expected to balance my books and pay my bills with the revenue I receive and the guvment needs to be responsible and do the same. Whether the guvment gets more or less revenue I don't care. We Americans do not exist to provide for the guvment.
For starters there is a difference between wealth and income. Some of those wealthy people have a large amount invested in vehicles such as tax free municipal bonds for instance.
Pork Payoffs? I would call billions going to ACORN and more billions going to the greenhouse gas poison crowd in the Porkulus bill payoffs, not to mention countless other things.
You say that corporations or rich people do everything they can to reduce their tax burden. Well of course they do! DON'T YOU AS WELL? You are telling me you don't take your full deductions on your 1040? Part of the problem with our tax system is that it has been twisted by lobbyists and is full of sludge and needs to be simplified.
I think you'll find in fact in IRS statistics they wealthiest americans pay the largest slice of the pie of total $ collected.
Again what you lefties don't get is the more taxes you put on people and business the more they turn to alternatives, cut business or move overseas. What you need to do is take the other approach and encourage earnings and investment.
Also you lefties always couple taxes with government spending. WRONG. Cutting taxes is all about getting the economy moving. As a private contractor I am expected to balance my books and pay my bills with the revenue I receive and the guvment needs to be responsible and do the same. Whether the guvment gets more or less revenue I don't care. We Americans do not exist to provide for the guvment.
Thank you! Someone finally hit it in the center of the target. Folks seem to expect business to just fork out high wages and good benefits AND take a major tax hit to boot. After all they need to pay their "fair share". Like puting people to work, providing health care benefits, dealing with all the health and safety regs, etc etc etc doesn't count. Yea, they are making money (thats the idea ain't it?) and they take ALL the tax write offs they can to boost the bottom line. I know I do the same, as a REALLY small business if I didn't I'd be buried already rather than having been fairly sucessful for the last six years. The more a company earns , the more people they can afford to employ and provide benefits to, and the more they earn the higher the wages can be and quality of said benefits as well. Now, I do believe that executive salaries and perks should be scrutinized some. Some of the money that gets paid out on top is rather execessive and would be put to better use in expansion and production. Thats a seperate issue but it is something to look at. taxing and spending is NOT a way to stimulate business growth and the government is NOT the entity that should be in charge of private money. As a business owner I'm the one who knows where my earnings need to be spent to expand my company and keep things moving upward. If I don't spend to earn properly..well I fail and the oufits that have the fiscal smarts will prevail. At the end of the day Capitalism is a survival of the fittest game and thats a good thing. Business that survives and thrives is all the stronger for having to be competitive. The government needs to butt out, take all the hobbles off of businesses and let them operate. Strong businesses = more employment= a stong working class= money being spent to strengthen our economy. And if business makes the money and provides their workers with good bennies health care problem solved. No tax funded NHC required. Capitalism WORKS when it is allowed to.
Thank you! Someone finally hit it in the center of the target. Folks seem to expect business to just fork out high wages and good benefits AND take a major tax hit to boot. After all they need to pay their "fair share". Like puting people to work, providing health care benefits, dealing with all the health and safety regs, etc etc etc doesn't count. Yea, they are making money (thats the idea ain't it?) and they take ALL the tax write offs they can to boost the bottom line. I know I do the same, as a REALLY small business if I didn't I'd be buried already rather than having been fairly sucessful for the last six years. The more a company earns , the more people they can afford to employ and provide benefits to, and the more they earn the higher the wages can be and quality of said benefits as well. Now, I do believe that executive salaries and perks should be scrutinized some. Some of the money that gets paid out on top is rather execessive and would be put to better use in expansion and production. Thats a seperate issue but it is something to look at. taxing and spending is NOT a way to stimulate business growth and the government is NOT the entity that should be in charge of private money. As a business owner I'm the one who knows where my earnings need to be spent to expand my company and keep things moving upward. If I don't spend to earn properly..well I fail and the oufits that have the fiscal smarts will prevail. At the end of the day Capitalism is a survival of the fittest game and thats a good thing. Business that survives and thrives is all the stronger for having to be competitive. The government needs to butt out, take all the hobbles off of businesses and let them operate. Strong businesses = more employment= a stong working class= money being spent to strengthen our economy. And if business makes the money and provides their workers with good bennies health care problem solved. No tax funded NHC required. Capitalism WORKS when it is allowed to.
Capitalism does work when it is not meddled with. With things like the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to give loans to people that can't pay them under the guise of "fairness", that is not capitalism. Yet the lefty socialists are using this to say capitalism has failed us. NO, entitlement and socialism has failed us. Real capitalism unfettered by lobbyists and politicians would have never allowed for mortgage loans that could never be paid back
I find in life often people have to experience things for themselves before they understand and as I've often said I think the guvment should get rid of tax withholding from paychecks and make people write out a check each quarter like you and I do for 15% self employment tax and income and state taxes. A lot more people "would get it" when they realize how much the guvment sucks out of their pocket.
It is amusing the lefties complain about companies going overseas yet continue to find ways to regulate them to death and force more taxes and expenses on them. Somehow in that anti business environment companies are going to want to hang around and pay even higher wages and benefits. Clueless people.
I remember in business school one of the courses I had was about the ADA, OSHA, discrimination law, and other federal, state and local bureaucracies. It was absolutely mind boggling. For starters it has to cost companies a fortune to figure all that nonsense out and to stay on top of it. Second I realized that if I ever wanted to open a factory or some other business in the USA to produce something, I WOULD HAVE TO BE OUT OF MY FRIGGEN MIND! I would be insane to torture myself with all that tax, regulation and bureaucracy. Therefore I'd rather go to another country.
Laugh all you want. I've made myself, name and life long liviing investing and studying the economy. We have doomed ourselves this time. While I have no crystal ball to state just how bad, "BAD" will be. I predict something from "The great depression was a cake walk, to Jimmy Carter's 1970s." It will fall some place between there. And, as you know, that is no good place to be. The die is cast folks, there is not silver magic bullet. If you did not plan and prepare for the storm that is coming, you are likely going to find yourself living in a tent city and standing in daily soup lines within the next 12-24 months.
And on another note, the wierd thing about all this? A thing called 2012 and the great Mayan calender, stating we will enter a new awakening. My wife is a 100% practicing Shaman Mayan decent, full blooded. She has always said the date should not be taken literal, but a marker for a new era that will be forced upon the entire world. We are in the mysts of that now.
Fasten your seat belt, it's going to get interesting.
With all due respect, if the Mayan calendar is so accurate, how come they never predicted their own doom's day? I am referring to the day the Mayans encountered the Spaniards. I guess I would bother more on predicting my own civilizations' end than the rest of the world. But that's just me, a civilized man of European descent.
Capitalism does work when it is not meddled with. With things like the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to give loans to people that can't pay them under the guise of "fairness", that is not capitalism. Yet the lefty socialists are using this to say capitalism has failed us. NO, entitlement and socialism has failed us. Real capitalism unfettered by lobbyists and politicians would have never allowed for mortgage loans that could never be paid back
I find in life often people have to experience things for themselves before they understand and as I've often said I think the guvment should get rid of tax withholding from paychecks and make people write out a check each quarter like you and I do for 15% self employment tax and income and state taxes. A lot more people "would get it" when they realize how much the guvment sucks out of their pocket.
It is amusing the lefties complain about companies going overseas yet continue to find ways to regulate them to death and force more taxes and expenses on them. Somehow in that anti business environment companies are going to want to hang around and pay even higher wages and benefits. Clueless people.
I remember in business school one of the courses I had was about the ADA, OSHA, discrimination law, and other federal, state and local bureaucracies. It was absolutely mind boggling. For starters it has to cost companies a fortune to figure all that nonsense out and to stay on top of it. Second I realized that if I ever wanted to open a factory or some other business in the USA to produce something, I WOULD HAVE TO BE OUT OF MY FRIGGEN MIND! I would be insane to torture myself with all that tax, regulation and bureaucracy. Therefore I'd rather go to another country.
Lol, and don't forget the glorious EPA and state equivalents. Gotta keep them evil and polluting factories paying through the nose for scrubbers and other"green" equipment that costs a mint and doesn't even work. And after a company goes through all the environmental hoops and is ready to put people to work they get told that they need MOREstuff because the EPA can write policy as they go with no restraints or guidelines. This after the company trying to open the facility has already spent millions just to get an impact study on the property they bought that was doing nothing but growing weeds until they came along. The government has let to many small but vocal advocacy groups dictate policy for far to long.
Throughout history one thing has always been true. Empires rise and fall, but life goes on. This great dream which is America has been turning sour, and not just in recent years. You can always follow the decline of our nation if you really look back at the signs that showed you all along, change is coming and we might not like it at first. Will America be the same place, most likely not. Will we be a better, stronger nation after we have dealt with our problems. Who knows? All we can hope for is a return to the old values our country was based on. And we can hope that our country's leaders will wake up, pull us out of this global catastrophe and bring us together here at home to start rebuilding OUR country.
Not necessarily. Nations that don't evolve, change or adapt are the ones that failed. If we look at this economic challenge as a great opportunity to make changes, not looking back at the old values and old ways of doing things, but reinventing ourselves with new ideas, then we will come out at the end of the tunnel with shining colors.
Not necessarily. Nations that don't evolve, change or adapt are the ones that failed. If we look at this economic challenge as a great opportunity to make changes, not looking back at the old values and old ways of doing things, but reinventing ourselves with new ideas, then we will come out at the end of the tunnel with shining colors.
I guess it all depends on the situation. Rome for instance, did in fact change with the times and try to adapt only to eventually fall anyway. It just depends on the nature of the problems and the solutions brought before us.
And you are absolutely right, we should look at this crisis as an opportunity for change. But I don't see anything wrong with changing back into the nation we were meant to be. Our Constitution and our Bill of Rights are two of the most important documents ever written, and they set forth values and rules which could in turn create the greatest nation of all. The problem is, those ideas have been twisted and perverted into something our founding fathers wouldn't even recognize. Reinventing ourselves with new ideas is a wonderful idea, but holding onto our liberty and freedom as provided by our Constitution should be our first concern. We can not allow this change to affect our freedom. If that happens, we will only have taken a step backwards.
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. No tax funded NHC required. Capitalism WORKS when it is allowed to.
. This after the company trying to open the facility has already spent millions just to get an impact study on the property they bought that was doing nothing but growing weeds until they came along. The government has let to many small but vocal advocacy groups dictate policy for far to long.
