The Pandemic Didn't Hurt Everyone

[LittleM]

2 hours ago, Haskell_Hunter said:

3 hours ago, archer36 said:

Why did you have to quote him? Now I saw the A-holes post. He's on my ignore list. 

Didn’t you say something about name calling earlier?

 

11 hours ago, archer36 said:

. Some people want to take threads like this into a negative political slant. That's what they thrive on. Can only see information as an attack on their beliefs. A lot of responses to this thread were thought provoking. That's the intention of the thread. Not to start name calling and accusations. 

Expand  

Well, so much for that. 

Just in case you are on his ignore list.....

[birdshotnj]

4 hours ago, Lunatic said:

The liberal logic tells them if some entrepreneur did not make his $100 million that money would go to poor or middle class. How? Does the guy selling hot dogs gets a portion of the sum someone did not make? The rich guy most likely created many jobs while making his millions and for sure he is paying more in taxes than most make.  Why would someone have a problem with success?   
What liberals are really after is for the guy to make his millions and then share it with the rest of us who did not work for it and did not take and risks to get it. Its the liberal way, distribution of wealth - something for nothing

You are 100% spot on... democrats want to play Robin hood

[OldMenRule]

9 hours ago, birdshotnj said:

You are 100% spot on... democrats want to play Robin hood

Robin Hood was a good guy. Not so much so with democrats.

[birdshotnj]

3 hours ago, OldMenRule said:

Robin Hood was a good guy. Not so much so with democrats.

Those on the receiving end would argue that the democrats are the good guys 

[Slayer1962]

Since when is ok to take from someone who has worked their entire life and give to someone that refuses to work? NEVER IN MY BOOK 

[Lunatic]

4 minutes ago, Slayer1962 said:

Since when is ok to take from someone who has worked their entire life and give to someone that refuses to work? NEVER IN MY BOOK 

You ask since when? I say it started long time ago and now its a norm. This is the liberal world we live in. You are paying for your kids education while also paying for education of illegals. It is the same with healthcare, housing. welfare and on and on and on. We are slaves 

[JFC1]

On 4/9/2021 at 4:57 PM, deadonshot2 said:

I am all for a flat tax rate across the board. No loopholes/tax write offs to be had. We all pay the same sales tax percent in each state, why not have everyone pay same percent in federal taxes. Only deductions are those standard deductions that are set the same per person/dependent. This would give a bigger revenue (as I agree with you that it would increase if everyone paid same percent), would also give a better estimate on tax revenue so we know how much we actually have to spend as a country, and put an end to the broken tax laws and those using loopholes to pay far less  than what they would under a flat tax. Imagine if you only paid $750 in federal taxs and zero in some years. How many years would you be able to retire early? I know I would have been able to be retired right now instead of waiting another 4 1/2 years. Great that people make a ton of money-- just expect they pay same percentage as the middle class. If you really look at it the right way-- we are paying taxes for that 1%. 

I'm also all for cutting out loopholes and for making most of us pay the same tax rate. But there's a point at which basic needs like food, transportation and housing are unaffordable to working people. We all know that there's a threshold below which you can't make ends meet, and that's not necessarily because you're lazy or stupid.  Today in many parts of NJ and NY if you have elderly or minor dependents and work hard at $14/hr and don't have other household earners to help you out, you don't have money to pay the tax man, the landlord, and the supermarket.  Forget clothes. A true flat tax means that even the people who are earning less than is necessary to survive are forced to pony up the same as someone who's deciding between a BMW and an Audi.

So it seems like a good idea to have a well put-together, loophole-free, graduated tax system, or a government policy that avoids taking money from truly working people who can't afford to take care of their kids. After all, it's what we had during the mid-20thC. US boom in living standards and world power. Why not (Get rid of loopholes) make up the difference by asking those who survive nicely to chip in a little more? If King George had curbed his waste and greed and then asked his richest Boston merchants to kick in a little more income tax to offset the flat tax on tea that enraged his colonials, history might have been different.  If you get rid of their loopholes, flat taxes still favor the rich since, like with sales taxes, the rich who have no trouble putting food on the table pay the same bite off the top of purchases that everyone else does. A minimum wage-earning mother buying school clothes for her kids shouldn't have to take money out of their mouths by paying the same rate a comfortably middle class person pays on an expensive pair of waders. I love to fish, but poor kids whose parents do work hard need to eat more than I need to fish. Sales taxes as flat taxes favor wealthier people and force the poor to lay out money they don't have, for necessities. 

Sometimes lining up percentages and making them equal in a mathematical sense makes the world fairer. As many people on this forum point out when it comes to racial allotments, at other times it doesn't.  Seems like it'd be a lot easier to reduce food stamps and welfare if we had a truly graduated, and thus more equal, tax system without loopholes or a capital gains section that allows people who sit on their butts watching their portfolios grow to pay lower taxes than those paid on the hourly wages of a divorced parent racing to pick up their kid after a shift at Walmart. For the free marketers out there, think about how that would reinforce the value of work instead of having corporations cut their wages and then having governments subsidize those companies' profits with food, healthcare and the new idea of a "basic income guarantee" for the masses. While it's unfortunate that some of us have to pay taxes, why not let people whose salaries don't even pay for food and shelter keep a greater percentage of their hard-earned dollars, rather than handing them food with your tax dollars? At minimum, it cuts out the accountants and the government redistribution whirlwind. 

 

[archer36]

It wasn't my intention to start a discussion on Taxes but while we are here I will chime in. The Flat Tax was a popular talking point with a lot of Politicians in the past. Have not heard much in the last 10 years or so. It sounds like a great idea. Even if it was instituted, it would eventually get watered down. There is always a reason to give people in all walks of life additional incentives for one thing or another. It would go full circle and end up where we are now. What's more interesting to me is the concept of a "Universal International Corporate Tax Rate". If there were fewer safe havens for businesses to avoid taxes, they wouldn't move as much. But even still, there are 21 major corporations that paid NO Federal tax. Amazon being one and it's not the first year that it's been done. Some companies have avoided taxes for many years while being very profitable. It's done legally so we can't get too upset about it. This I think is something that should be addressed. If they pay nothing, the rest of us pay more. 

I have no problem with companies/people earning millions/billions but the average guy pays "something" and they should too. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by archer36

[Haskell_Hunter]

44 minutes ago, JFC1 said:

I'm also all for cutting out loopholes and for making most of us pay the same tax rate. But there's a point at which basic needs like food, transportation and housing are unaffordable to working people. We all know that there's a threshold below which you can't make ends meet, and that's not necessarily because you're lazy or stupid.  Today in many parts of NJ and NY if you have elderly or minor dependents and work hard at $14/hr and don't have other household earners to help you out, you don't have money to pay the tax man, the landlord, and the supermarket.  Forget clothes. A true flat tax means that even the people who are earning less than is necessary to survive are forced to pony up the same as someone who's deciding between a BMW and an Audi.

So it seems like a good idea to have a well put-together, loophole-free, graduated tax system, or a government policy that avoids taking money from truly working people who can't afford to take care of their kids. After all, it's what we had during the mid-20thC. US boom in living standards and world power. Why not (Get rid of loopholes) make up the difference by asking those who survive nicely to chip in a little more? If King George had curbed his waste and greed and then asked his richest Boston merchants to kick in a little more income tax to offset the flat tax on tea that enraged his colonials, history might have been different.  If you get rid of their loopholes, flat taxes still favor the rich since, like with sales taxes, the rich who have no trouble putting food on the table pay the same bite off the top of purchases that everyone else does. A minimum wage-earning mother buying school clothes for her kids shouldn't have to take money out of their mouths by paying the same rate a comfortably middle class person pays on an expensive pair of waders. I love to fish, but poor kids whose parents do work hard need to eat more than I need to fish. Sales taxes as flat taxes favor wealthier people and force the poor to lay out money they don't have, for necessities. 

Sometimes lining up percentages and making them equal in a mathematical sense makes the world fairer. As many people on this forum point out when it comes to racial allotments, at other times it doesn't.  Seems like it'd be a lot easier to reduce food stamps and welfare if we had a truly graduated, and thus more equal, tax system without loopholes or a capital gains section that allows people who sit on their butts watching their portfolios grow to pay lower taxes than those paid on the hourly wages of a divorced parent racing to pick up their kid after a shift at Walmart. For the free marketers out there, think about how that would reinforce the value of work instead of having corporations cut their wages and then having governments subsidize those companies' profits with food, healthcare and the new idea of a "basic income guarantee" for the masses. While it's unfortunate that some of us have to pay taxes, why not let people whose salaries don't even pay for food and shelter keep a greater percentage of their hard-earned dollars, rather than handing them food with your tax dollars? At minimum, it cuts out the accountants and the government redistribution whirlwind. 

 

The concept of “fair” is nebulous at best.  Which “fair” are you talking about?  Are you saying that income generated by all peoples should be rebalanced so that the gap between the lowest earners and the highest earners becomes smaller?  Is your version of fair the ability for all consumers in a market to have similar or nearly the same buying power?

My version of “fair” is that all people engaging in the marketplaces of consumption and labor have the same opportunities as every other entrant into those marketplaces.  It is incumbent on the individual to exploit their own capabilities and use that as leverage in the marketplace to establish differentiation and thereby demonstrate why they are a higher value producer or consumer of goods and services.  It is the core fundamental of capitalism and competition.  It’s not a perfect system, but it is a “fair” system.  You will only get out of that system what you put in.  You will only get a return on the investments you make in yourself and exploit in those markets.

When the government decides to influence markets through regulations and other heavy-handed methods, the market will skew in several directions.  The government mostly, but not always, genuinely tries to influence markets to make them “fair”, but by doing so they also create adverse impacts to the marketplaces.  Government intentionally creates imbalances in the market, and that in turn has other, unintended balances that are created.  Historically speaking, there has never been a time when adding more government to the markets solved problems, it’s only made it worse.

The balance that is created in free market capitalism is that you have winners and losers.  And the dynamic between winners and losers is always changing.  All entrants into the marketplace have the same chances of winning and losing.  The buyers in the marketplace will spend their money in the place where they see the greatest value—both from a product and human capital perspective.  The market decides who the winners and losers are, not the government and its heavy fist of unintended consequences.

I could go on for hours on this, but the concept of “fair” is nebulous and will always be a moving target.  When I hear it in government, to me it means “unfair”.  When the government enters a market to make it “fair”, it means that it will be “unfair” to consumers and producers in that market.

[electric10162]

Maybe if big business pays their fair share and consumer costs go up, Mom and Pop can compete again. The Amazons and Walmarts of the world have brought lots of small business to their knees.

[vdep217]

To ad to what was already said.  Take the minimum wage increase as an example.  Once it's forced to 15 an hour do you think those will be any better off,   no they will still be in the same boat,  but it will impact say those making 20 before the increase as they won't get one but the cost of living will increase. 

There's a movie called time.  Although not money it shows what happens when things are forced.

  Time is their life and money 2 steel time to divide it to the people but costs go up give it a look

[dlist777]

25 minutes ago, archer36 said:

It wasn't my intention to start a discussion on Taxes but while we are here I will chime in. The Flat Tax was a popular talking point with a lot of Politicians in the past. Have not heard much in the last 10 years or so. It sounds like a great idea. Even if it was instituted, it would eventually get watered down. There is always a reason to give people in all walks of life additional incentives for one thing or another. It would go full circle and end up where we are now. What's more interesting to me is the concept of a "Universal International Corporate Tax Rate". If there were fewer safe havens for businesses to avoid taxes, they wouldn't move as much. But even still, there are 21 major corporations that paid NO Federal tax. Amazon being one and it's not the first year that it's been done. Some companies have avoided taxes for many years while being very profitable. It's done legally so we can't get too upset about it. This I think is something that should be addressed. If they pay nothing, the rest of us pay more. 

I have no problem with companies/people earning millions/billions but the average guy pays "something" and they should too. 

Regarding the corporate tax you point out some real issues.  I sign my companies corporate tax returns.  We basically pay the federal rate (21%).  But, the big boys have arms of accountants and lawyers and they can move income between countries to avoid taxes or pay very little.  So, like raising the corporate rate to 25% or 28% (like Biden suggests) won't really make them pay much more if any.  They have very little income in the US they are paying taxes on.  It will hurt the little company.  

I'm really not against tax increases to cut our deficits.  We really need our deficit down, inflation is about to go crazy.  But, I hate when they increase taxes and then just blow it all new wasteful spending.  

 

[nickmarch]

Amazon paid almost $ 300 million in State taxes and about $2.5 billion worth of payroll taxes.  

Their billion in federal taxes are deferred meaning they will be paid at a later date.

 

[vdep217]

1 minute ago, dlist777 said:

I'm really not against tax increases to cut our deficits.  We really need our deficit down, inflation is about to go crazy.  But, I hate when they increase taxes and then just blow it all new wasteful spending. 

Raising taxes without cutting spending will not decrease tge deficit.  Taxes have been raised numerous times yet deficits get bigger because they spend more.   Cut the fat from spending and you will make progress

[dlist777]

8 minutes ago, vdep217 said:

Raising taxes without cutting spending will not decrease tge deficit.  Taxes have been raised numerous times yet deficits get bigger because they spend more.   Cut the fat from spending and you will make progress

We're way past cutting the fat and I've never seen our government actually cut spending in any meaningful way.  

  Our deficit is so crazy.  Our national debt is higher than it's ever been even as a % of the economy..higher than it was after WW2.  The only reason we can sustain this is interest rates are so low.  But, the only reason they are low is that the fed keeps printing money.  The fed increased the money supply by 38% last year and pretends inflation isn't an issue.  They will soon be forced to either let inflation explode or raise interest rates.  If interest rates go up, the federal budget on interest payments will explode which will make the whole situation worse.  It's gonna get really bad soon.  

The fed says there's no inflation yet but CPI is rigged.  Look at lumber costs, grocery prices, housing prices.  Inflation is a stealth tax that just makes you poorer as prices of everything goes up.  Our leaders are pu$$ies unwilling to lead and make the hard choices.  We need large spending cuts and probably some tax increases too.  But, these a$$holes will keep spending us into poverty.  

Democrats:  Tax and Spend

Republicans:  Don't Tax and Spend