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April 21, 2012 at 2:19 am #755582
JoBParticipantkootch..
can you explain to me exactly why the business of making money without producing anything is any different than the business of making money by establishing a service organization or sales outlet or manufacturing?
every single one of those enterprises starts with dollars that have already been taxed.
it’s amusing to me that when people talk about capital gains they neglect to mention that they don’t pay a dime on investments.. only on the sale of those investments.
The majority of people who would have you believe that there is something sacred about investment capital are making their money speculating in the stock market.. buying and selling as the market rises and falls…
they pay capital gains when they make money…
it’s just another business.. and one that is not particularly good for encouraging actual capital investment.
April 21, 2012 at 2:21 am #755583
JoBParticipantskeeter..
buying a house bumps us into long form land where are of the other things i already do that could provide deductions kick in.. doubling and perhaps tripling the tax benefit…
April 21, 2012 at 2:29 am #755584
JoBParticipantApril 21, 2012 at 2:35 am #755585
JoBParticipantJV
you may not have noticed..
but businesses have fallen down on the job of providing jobs for Americans
they provide jobs overseas
and take American tax breaks to do so.
that is why half of our population is either poor, working poor or income insecure…
April 21, 2012 at 3:05 am #755586
jamminjMember“but she damn sure didn’t make it into a lifestyle.”
then why do we do the same for big businesses. IF they are making profits, then they don’t need tax breaks or assistance from the public (ie big oil) – their tax subsidies are their lifestyle that you have disdain for an individual, but I assume you agree for a large corporation.
” is that if you work hard and stay out of trouble, poverty doesn’t have to be a trap.”
Not sure what world you live in, but millions of Americans do work hard, and their reward is minimum wage. That is a trap.
Not everyone can, and even have the ability to start their own business, find the next big thing (ie instagram), but millions and millions of Americans wake up, go to work, ride the bus, work long hours… just so they can work for min wage. That is life for many if not most Americans.
For some, its lack of desire, for some, it’s bad luck, for a few its whats they been taught, and for many, its their only choice.
Many of those people are not asking for a handout, but a hand up. Whether its better public transit, some decent health care, or just a chance to pay their bills.
Wages have been stagnant for decades, while large corporations are making big profits.
What I hear some asking is that the family working hard, making min wage, struggling to make ends meet are the ones that should bear the burden of our situation –
while corporations that are geared to pay the lowest wage they legally can, getting govt subsidies while sending jobs overseas, and catering to wall street dividends are the ones that should be the ones getting the breaks.
That is just a recipe of disaster, which we are currently dealing with. It time to start investing in us.
April 21, 2012 at 3:13 am #755587
kootchmanMemberCapitail gains is simply an incentive to keep capital stable. So it was designed. You had to hold your stock investments as an example, for a year. Why should they pay a dime on those investments? It the money left over after it was already taxed. You and I make a wage, pay the taxes.. and for 40 years, you take the 25K left over, and you buy boats, cars, shoes, etc. You pay what? maybe an 8 per cent sales tax? I on the other hand, put it into equities, a little Apple stock, some Nucor, etc… save some for college educations, and maybe some sort of annuity for retirement, If or when I decide to sell and reallocate some of those assets… I pay a capital gains, Consider it a “sales tax” on appreciated assets. It’s the same money we both had after tax income. Who has done the better social good? You made a contribution to consumption, I made a contribution to creating jobs and businesses for a forty year period.,
Now, there is no distinction between short and long term capital gains. That was Mr. Clinton that did that. Your Democratic president, There is no difference between short term and long tern capital gains, Once the short term gains are 15%…. you see the speculation swings in commodities, stock markets etc… investors don’t take a long term view of a company. Buffett was a long term investor.. if quarterly earnings were off in Coca Cola… he didn’t dump the stock…he looked at the next 5, 10 years… now we have trend computer trading. Companies who were growing… like Apple,… Microsoft, had oodles of cash to build themselves. Because investors weren’t screaming for dividend income every quarter. In effect, they had interest free money. Better still… they became overseas powerhouses.. as did Coca Cola. They are the great counterweight to trade deficits. You want to build roads, bridges, etc…. who funds those? Tax preferred bonds… even tax free. The citeis counties, states, get to borrow more cheaply because the investors can live with less return for less tax. If you start taxing those at 30-40 per cent income.. you will have to raise bond yields… that means YOU pay a higher cost for those projects.
I will tell you this… a HELL of a lot more money from conservative givers gets to the end use than running it through three of four levels of government! Where each level of civil servant takes a cut.
You make no sense… why would you pay taxes on investments until you actually sell them and realize a gain? That is like saying I should charge you 30% on your personal assets like your car… every year. No.. you owe the state sales tax when or if you sell them. Just cause you own them doesn’t mean they should be taxed.
Ya wanna repeal the Clinton Commodities Reinvestment Act and return to long term gains and short term gains? Fine with me. The highest rates of capital gains were in the roaring 20’s… and people spent it .. rather than wait for the tax man to come get it….it gave rise to Veblein age of conspicuous consumption…. and.. we all know what happened… the great depression. You cannot tax your way to prosperity.
Will Rogers
“I can remember way back when a liberal was generous with his own money”
There used to be long term and short term capital gains rates. The former was healthy the latter encourages speculation. Grabbing a 1/2 percentage point on a stock held two days is a great annual rate of return. Do it on the exchanges with computers… pushing hundreds of millions of shares make for a good strategy for Goldman Sachs.
April 21, 2012 at 3:25 am #755588
jamminjMember“I made a contribution to creating jobs and businesses for a forty year period.,”
yes you did, overseas. Time to stop focusing on investors who can be anywhere in the world, and start focusing on American workers here in this country. Sure you put money in AAPL, to help them open call centers in Inida, good for you.
April 21, 2012 at 2:37 pm #755589
JoBParticipantkotoch…
a great deal of conservative giving goes
*to or through their church.. and a great deal of that goes overseas
*directly overseas
*or to the arts
When the term charitable giving is used it includes all contributions to religious institutions, regardless of what they are used for..
as well as gifts of money and goods to the arts.
As such, it is a poor measure of the type of charitable work that impacts the lives of poor Americans.
April 21, 2012 at 2:42 pm #755590
JoBParticipantkootch…
i don’t care who eliminated the difference between short and long term capital gains…
I never believed that a year was a long enough investment of capital to make a long term investment anyway…
but it still doesn’t change the fact that most of those who earn long term capital gains earned them by churning the market
which is not good for our economic stability.
if you are in the business of using money to make money..
you should be taxed just like any other business.
i personally believe that there should be only two exceptions..
long term capital gains as measured in decades.. not years..
and the withdrawal of funds upon retirement age
April 21, 2012 at 3:56 pm #755591
JVMemberJoB, so religious charities don’t meet your approval standards?
Maybe we should give to worthy organizations such as Planned Parenthood, American Red Cross, UNICEF, United Way, or ACORN…wait scratch that last one.
Thanks for telling us how we can spend the rest of the money we are left after the gubmint takes its share.
April 21, 2012 at 4:03 pm #755592
redblackParticipantThe dogma of progressive taxation has failed. 16 trillion in deficits proves it.
it only failed when reagan stopped making it progressive and tried to flatten it, thereby taking away government revenue, thereby running up deficits and short-changing the social security trust fund, thereby accruing $4 trillion in debt in less than 8 years.
why do we keep going in circles, kootch? you have admitted before that the government’s share of GDP should be bigger. the only way that number increases is if the government has more revenue.
cutting the budget does nothing to increase the government’s share of GDP.
and still not one of you can tell me specifically what you’re going to cut to not only balance the budget but start paying principal on the debt. like i said, we’re talking a reduction of over 33% of the 2012 federal budget. even then it will take over 30 years to pay it down.
well, i can’t say i’m surprised. i guess i have to do my job and yours, too, huh?
i’d start with giveaways to private military and intelligence contractors in iraq and afghanistan – and wherever else they’re “working.” they can find their own way home. these contracts are matters of national security, so taxpayers can’t know what their total cost is.
i say pull the plug and see what happens.
how about unnecessary military hardware that the pentagon doesn’t ask for, but some lobbyist/bean counter insists that our military needs? so congress signs on to build a new fighter jet that has assembly lines in all 50 states, everyone gets a little kickback, and mcdonnell douglas gets some taxpayer pork.
want to cut the department of education and local school budgets? me, too! let’s start with the standardized testing industry and juicy government contracts. teachers spend time and money getting education degrees and learning subjects that they teach your kids, right? so why can’t they write their own tests? it’s what they were educated to do.
how about health and human services? wow! me, too! let’s cut private contracts handed out to big pharma and GE.
the post office – even though the only time they’re affected by the federal budget is when they run deficits? right on! me, too! let’s get them out of the contract that they have with fedex that fleeces the taxpayer by making fedex carry postal mail on fedex planes at exorbitant rates.
and let’s get postal workers out of that contract that makes them pre-fund their pension plan to 75 years from now.
we could also allow them to raise the rate for postage a little more flexibly and keep them out of deficit.
then there are the tax giveaways to big oil, big banks, and other bigness. and tax avoidance and evasion by – well, what do you know? – the top 1%.
JV said:
On the other hand, I’d trust somebody who built a successful business and became rich, or invented something useful and is now a millionaire.
i wouldn’t. because one of the next things that person is gonna do is get into politics.
just look at joe mallahan.
April 21, 2012 at 4:07 pm #755593
JVMemberRedblack, you seem okay with cuts in the government…when they intersect with business.
And I did answer your question in a previous post remember when I said I’d cut 10% right off the bat? I would let the departments determine where that 10% came from. That differs from your idea of make cuts and see what happens. National security is a little more complicated than that.
April 21, 2012 at 4:23 pm #755594
redblackParticipantso national security is complicated, but health care and education aren’t?
why is giving taxpayer money to business okay, but using that money to keep a poor person fed, clothed, disease-free, and off of the streets isn’t?
April 21, 2012 at 4:25 pm #755595
JVMemberAs far as whom you trust to run the government, we have a clear choice in 2012.
A business man or a community organizer. (this time he has a record to run on, not just speeches)
April 21, 2012 at 4:28 pm #755596
SmittyParticipant“it only failed when reagan stopped making it progressive and tried to flatten it, thereby taking away government revenue”
That is just flat out wrong and I wish people (not just you) would quit stating it as fact. It’s not a revenue problem. Federal receipts have grown considerably – even during the Reagan years. The problem has always been on the expense side.
Now, if you want to argue that it “would have grown more”, fine. But at least state that.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
April 21, 2012 at 4:33 pm #755597
redblackParticipantsmitty: so the reagan tax cuts and an immediate descent into the madness of deficit spending are – what? coincidence?
the federal budget did not suddenly double when reagan started writing budgets. it has always grown at a nearly-flat rate.
revenue was cut: specifically the top marginal income tax rates.
anyway, speaking of debt, maybe some of you fiscal hawks can explain this to me:
The Obama administration’s budget request contained $2.627 trillion in revenues and $3.729 trillion in outlays for 2012, for a deficit of $1.101 trillion.[38] The April 2011 Republican plan contained $2.533 trillion in revenues and $3.529 trillion in outlays.[39] The enacted budget contained $2.469 trillion in receipts and $3.796 trillion in outlays, for a deficit of $1.327 trillion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget
there’s the “compromise” republicans forced: cut revenue and increase spending, with a bigger deficit than obama proposed.
April 21, 2012 at 4:42 pm #755598
JVMemberRedblack, i don’t want to give taxpayer money to businesses. It breeds corruption. (see Solyndra)
Do you think that the government is the most efficient way to “keep a person fed, clothed, and disease free, etc.?”
I don’t.
April 21, 2012 at 4:51 pm #755599
redblackParticipantyou can cite solyndra, of course, but $500 million pales in comparison to the hundreds of billions that go to oil, coal, and natural gas, which are highly profitable and need no assistance from taxpayers.
those industries’ argument is that if those tax breaks disappear, they will charge more for their products instead of cutting into their massive profits.
does that seem right to you?
what about when industries say that if they’re taxed for [x], [y], or [z], they will simply pass that tax to consumers, when the spirit of the tax is to get industry to contribute more to the economy instead of further punishing already-strapped consumers?
secondly, i think the governments – we, the people – are the best way to keep our fellow citizens out of trouble as they claw their way up the economic scale, yes. guaranteed access to health care. guaranteed non-discrimination. guaranteed loans and grants for education. pocket money for impoverished seniors, the disabled, and others who can no longer work. transit systems for those who can’t afford cars.
business doesn’t have solutions for any of that – short of wringing all economic parity from the lower classes.
but if your implication is that i want everyone on the government dole, that is a straw man argument. to the contrary: i want everyone in this country to have the ability to make a living wage, even in a low-paying service economy.
April 21, 2012 at 5:41 pm #755600
JVMemberRed, you are confused on which way money flows in this economy.
Government money went to Solyndra.
Government doesn’t write any checks to Big Oil.
Could they be taxed more, and close loopholes? Sure, but thats a different discussion. Let’s not pretend that it is the government’s money to begin with and, “not taxing” them more on it is equivalent to transferring cash to Solyndra.
April 21, 2012 at 6:33 pm #755601
Spring ChickenMemberJV, it is clearly you who is confused.
The preferential tax treatment given to Big Oil is equivalent to a direct transfer of government cash.
April 21, 2012 at 6:35 pm #755602
SmittyParticipantRedblack, you need to look at the link.
Yes, tax RATES went down, but tax REVENUES went up. It can happen, believe it or not. 1983 was the sole exception.
Deficits were created by higher expenses, not lower tax revenues.
April 21, 2012 at 6:40 pm #755603
kootchmanMemberredblack is fixated on the Reagan tax cuts. His analysis is wrong. Revenues went up expenses went up faster, That’s the problem… the “fairness” group thinks whatever you have.. they are entitled to it… redblack has come up with his number.. anything over $250K…40% of it belongs to him. That’s the way they figure it. There are some limits to price increases… unions of all people should know that. They can pass along price increases only so long as consumers are willing to pay for them. Then they stop buying them… or for you eco 101 warriors, look for substitutive goods. That’s how ya drive folks out of business redblack.. investors don’t invest in companies that are over taxed, and can’t pass along those increases. You raise taxes and expect the producers to just “eat it”? Is that the socially accepted thing to do? If you … as a consumer, .. demand higher taxes…you tax yourselves one way or the other. Of course, if demand goes down cause prices are too high… unit costs go up.. and people lose jobs. Tell ya what… keep government spending around 18-20 per cent of GDP. Or.. you can dither and diddle and wait until the deficit consumes half or more of that 18-20 per cent…. and the effective spending rate will be around 10-12 per cent… see how Greece did it? Or Spain? Italy? …. ain’t no spending on windmills now is there?
April 21, 2012 at 8:28 pm #755604
JoBParticipantJV..
who said anything about approving or not approving religious charities ?
i pointed out that money donated to churches doesn’t all go to religious charities.. not even if you count those in other nations…
but if you had been so kinds as to ask or actually read my posts.. you would find that i am in favor of the work that some religious charities do.
I have even volunteered time for them.. even when I didn’t belong to the church.
i am working in conjunction with several religious organizations right now to provide meals and services at Nickelsville.
Without them we wouldn’t be able to provide weekend meals and meals the last 10 days of the month when the need is greatest.
I heartily approve of religious groups and charities.
BTW…
i also approve of Planned Parenthood, American Red Cross, UNICEF, United Way
and …. ACORN
and don’t understand why you don’t.
April 21, 2012 at 8:37 pm #755605
JoBParticipantJV..
it turns out that handouts to businesses is the only area of government that hasn’t been cut yet..
in fact… wait for it.. it has actually increased over the last decade..
you know. since that out of control spending Democrat Al Gore actually went through govt programs and pared a good deal of the pork that Bush Jr put back…
perhaps it’s way past time those budgets were given a good going over again…
by someone who will cut something more than the safety net programs for the growing population who have been pushed out of the comfortable middle class they spent a lifetime building into poverty.
Or. you could create jobs…
that is if the elected Republican leaders could focus for 10 seconds on the half of the country that would like to go back to work instead of the half they would like to put out of work…
April 21, 2012 at 8:43 pm #755606
JoBParticipantSmitty…
the simple truth is that federal revenue has not grown at the same pace as expenses…
you can’t float an un-budgeted war for a decade without running up a fairly substantial bill…
when you couple that with tax cuts for the wealthy
and a lack of investment in American jobs
you have the recipe for disaster.
JV
why would anyone want to replace someone with job experience with someone with no job experience?
You seem to ignore the fact that Obama got that “record” you talk about through on the job learning .. as President of these United States.
He isn’t just an organizer any more.
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