Originally Posted by JP-pornshooter (Post 18439870)

people are on foodstamps because they cant function properly in society, not because there is a food shortage.
bringing up these kinds of arguments always ruins it. go look at the facts people.
nearly 50% of Americans contribute ZERO in taxes, and these people still get to vote?
thats just insane.. if ya' dont pay your share, no way in hell you should get any say in spending.

Originally Posted by crockett (Post 18440015)

Are you sure you chose the right word there?

gal·va·nizeVerb/ˈgalvəˌnīz/
1. Shock or excite (someone), typically into taking action: "his voice galvanized them into action".

I will admit I'm not 100% happy with Obama's presidency but to think the Republican party wouldn't have put him under siege regardless of what how he preformed is kind of funny.

It's all the Republican party does, when they are not in power. They don't attempt to work with the other party they instead constantly attack and never offer up any solutions. Their solution is "vote for us" then what do they do?

Look at Bill Clinton, regardless of if you like him or not you can not argue that that man did not get stuff done. What did the Republicans do the entire time he was in office? They tried to get him and hounded him with every thing under the sun and spent countless tax dollars on a sex scandal.

How exactly did that help the country?

Now I voted for Obama, not because I expected "change" or for him to fix the economy because I'm smart enough to know that no one is going to fix the mess in Washington with out the country as a whole being galvanized. At this point that hasn't happened so Washington will so what it does regardless of who is in power.

The reason I voted for Obama is because I was tired of Bush's so called war on terror and IMO Obama has done what he said he would in that regard so I'm pretty happy with him there.

He said he would pull troops out of Iraq.. He did

He said he would focus the war on terror to Afgan where is should have always been. He did.

He said he would get Bin Ladden. Although, I really didn't expect this but he did it.

We are at war even though many choose to forget it and as such I voted for a president whom I thought would put us back on track in that war. So far Obama has done more than I expected in that regard.

As for economy & healthcare I really didn't expect much out of him for that because that takes congress, the senate, big business & the tax payers to work together and I know that will never happen.

Originally Posted by Minte (Post 18440064)

What Obama hasn't done is keep his eye on what's important to the majority. The economy.

Originally Posted by gleem (Post 18440046)

and the other problem is we have a president trying to follow financial advisors like Buffett who owes over $1billion in back taxes at the same time he's saying he's not taxed enough (just write a check for $1billion warren if that's the case) and then his " Chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness" Jeffrey Immelt of GE paid zero corp taxes last year, and is in the process of moving GE operations oversees piece by piece.

The emperor truly has no clothes, Bush was a disaster, Obama is simply throwing some more nails in the coffin.

Originally Posted by mynameisjim (Post 18440094)

I do agree that Obama clearly doesn't have all the answers and he's definitely making mistakes.

We have to realize that there are short term issues and long term issues, and we have to address them separately. Any ideas to create jobs short term get attacked because they don't fix the long term problem, and any idea to fix things long term are attacked because they don't create jobs right now.

One of the short term fixes is raising taxes on the rich. They have enjoyed historically low taxes for over a decade, even during the longest two wars in American history which is TOTALLY unprecedented for a country to lower taxes several times during war. So asking for an extra 1% or 2% is not all that much. Take that money and use it for infrastructure projects.

Taxes are raised and lowered based on needs all the time, so this is not that crazy of an idea. When we had a budget surplus, we lowered taxes, so taxes will come down when the country gets back on it's feet.

But that's the problem, when people bring up the tax debate, it opens up all this debate about food stamps and currency rigging and all sorts of things. We have to take it one thing at a time. Some short term, and some long term.

So my short term solution would be to raise taxes 2% on those making over 1$ million dollars and use that money for immediate infrastructure projects to get people back to work. Construction projects are great because they employ such a wide range of people, from unskilled laborers all the way up to engineers and scientists.

Originally Posted by mynameisjim (Post 18440094)

So my short term solution would be to raise taxes 2% on those making over 1$ million dollars and use that money for immediate infrastructure projects to get people back to work. Construction projects are great because they employ such a wide range of people, from unskilled laborers all the way up to engineers and scientists.

Originally Posted by mynameisjim (Post 18440094)

So my short term solution would be to raise taxes 2% on those making over 1$ million dollars and use that money for immediate infrastructure projects to get people back to work. Construction projects are great because they employ such a wide range of people, from unskilled laborers all the way up to engineers and scientists.

Originally Posted by woj (Post 18440116)

The only reason you are for it, cause this tax wouldn't apply to you... if he instead proposed 2% tax increase on everyone you wouldn't be so supportive of it anymore, eh? :2 cents:

Originally Posted by Sly (Post 18439208)

Some interesting information.

-

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama makes it sound as if there are millionaires all over America paying taxes at lower rates than their secretaries.

"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said Monday. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."

The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That, however, was less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

In his White House address Monday, Obama called on Congress to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion as part of a 10-year deficit reduction package totaling more than $3 trillion. He proposed that Congress overhaul the tax code and impose what he called the "Buffett rule," named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

The rule says, "People making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay."

"Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it," Obama said. "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million."

Buffett wrote in a recent piece for The New York Times that the tax rate he paid last year was lower than that paid by any of the other 20 people in his office.

http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-ric...070642868.html

Originally Posted by gleem (Post 18439920)

So what are you gonna do about it all... vote teabaggers in, no spending, no tax increases but there will be an all out war against porn, back to Reagan-esque porn shop shutdowns and prosecutions, Christians running wild.

Originally Posted by 12clicks (Post 18440153)

yeah, just like under Bush. :1orglaugh

Originally Posted by Relentless (Post 18439656)

Actually it works out to substantially more money if implemented correctly because there are many people collecting substantial incomes at little or no tax rate but making much less than the 8M per year. The so called 'idle rich' who have inherited very large sums of money and earn income on it at extremely low or no tax rate. 100M inherited and invested at a 2% rate of return on tax free municipal bonds is 2M per year income, but taxed very differently from 2M earned by someone who worked for it as payroll in the same year.

Originally Posted by Relentless (Post 18440158)

Oh yes, Bush the fiscal conservative.
What a joke.

Originally Posted by Minte (Post 18439805)

Relentless... I agree with you. You are preaching to the choir.

Originally Posted by 12clicks (Post 18440163)

Minte is right.

Originally Posted by gleem (Post 18440046)

and the other problem is we have a president trying to follow financial advisors like Buffett who owes over $1billion in back taxes at the same time he's saying he's not taxed enough (just write a check for $1billion warren if that's the case) and then his " Chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness" Jeffrey Immelt of GE paid zero corp taxes last year, and is in the process of moving GE operations oversees piece by piece.

The emperor truly has no clothes, Bush was a disaster, Obama is simply throwing some more nails in the coffin.

Originally Posted by Relentless (Post 18440174)

It seems we are finally all in agreement. :thumbsup

Originally Posted by 12clicks (Post 18440153)

yeah, just like under Bush. :1orglaugh

Originally Posted by Minte (Post 18440064)

Galvanize is precisely the word I had in mind. Look at what happened last November. People are tired of this economy and the democrats lost the house. If there would've been more senate seats up last term,they would've more than likely lost that too.

What Obama hasn't done is keep his eye on what's important to the majority. The economy. I saw yesterday that his approval ratings have dropped to 43%. That was on NBC nightly news with Brian Williams.

There are still thousands of troops in Iraq and there will be for decades. What does surprise me is the lack of anger and demonstrations with this generation. I served during Vietnam and the campuses were filled with rage against Nixon for escalating Vietnam. We have been in Afghanistan longer now and not even a whimper on campus.

I will give him credit for Bin Laden. He had the balls to say GO. And that was a good thing.

Originally Posted by mynameisjim (Post 18439960)

People are missing the larger point. When Obama and others ask that the wealthy "pay their fair share" it's not just about a simple numbers calculation.

Over the past decade, the average American has seen their standard of living stagnate or decrease while the wealthy have seen their lifestyles increase at an accelerated rate. The wealthy have made those gains AT THE EXPENSE of the average American. By outsourcing jobs in order to lower costs, investing in emerging markets instead of investing in America, and gambling on risky financial products which caused a collapse in both the housing and stock markets which wiped out the Average American's 401k plan and any equity they had in their homes.

So this isn't about simple math and graphs. It's about the wealthy making money at the expense of the average American.

Originally Posted by mynameisjim (Post 18440094)

I do agree that Obama clearly doesn't have all the answers and he's definitely making mistakes.

We have to realize that there are short term issues and long term issues, and we have to address them separately. Any ideas to create jobs short term get attacked because they don't fix the long term problem, and any idea to fix things long term are attacked because they don't create jobs right now.

One of the short term fixes is raising taxes on the rich. They have enjoyed historically low taxes for over a decade, even during the longest two wars in American history which is TOTALLY unprecedented for a country to lower taxes several times during war. So asking for an extra 1% or 2% is not all that much. Take that money and use it for infrastructure projects.

Taxes are raised and lowered based on needs all the time, so this is not that crazy of an idea. When we had a budget surplus, we lowered taxes, so taxes will come down when the country gets back on it's feet.

But that's the problem, when people bring up the tax debate, it opens up all this debate about food stamps and currency rigging and all sorts of things. We have to take it one thing at a time. Some short term, and some long term.

So my short term solution would be to raise taxes 2% on those making over 1$ million dollars and use that money for immediate infrastructure projects to get people back to work. Construction projects are great because they employ such a wide range of people, from unskilled laborers all the way up to engineers and scientists.

Originally Posted by mynameisjim (Post 18440144)

I won't say how much money I have made in my lifetime. But I would gladly pay an extra 2% this year if it was going towards infrastructure projects.

I've been a businessman for nearly two decades. I'm smart enough to know that when the average American's lifestyle goes up 1%, my lifestyle goes up 5% because I'm a little higher up on the food chain. So anything that will get Americans back to work, I'm all for it.

If I sacrifice 2% extra in taxes and it gets unemployment to start going down, I'll make that money back several times over as Americans have more spending money to buy the products I sell.

That's why the super wealthy don't want to raise taxes because they don't make money like I do or anyone on this board does. They make money by investing in emerging markets or investing in crazy derivative schemes so they could care less about unemployment.

Originally Posted by crockett (Post 18440240)

People were pissed off with GB & Republicans so it all went to Democrats now they are pissed at Obama so it's swinging Republican. They will then be pissed at Republicans and it will go back Democratic.

That to me is just a sign that people are mad at the govt as a whole and they are just blaming whom ever happens to be in power at the time. .

Originally Posted by gleem (Post 18440261)

No that's a sign of the problems with our 2 party system.. need 3 or more electable parties with power sharing deals like other modern democracies.

Originally Posted by Relentless (Post 18440332)

If you have 2 or 5 or 10 parties, you'd still have the exact same 'people' putting money in their pockets.

Originally Posted by crockett (Post 18440015)

Are you sure you chose the right word there?

gal·va·nizeVerb/ˈgalvəˌnīz/
1. Shock or excite (someone), typically into taking action: "his voice galvanized them into action".

I will admit I'm not 100% happy with Obama's presidency but to think the Republican party wouldn't have put him under siege regardless of what how he preformed is kind of funny. However to say he shocked or excited people into action is a good thing I'd assume..unless you mean the whole tea party thing but over all I see them much the same as the Religious Right morons as I pretty much think they are interchangeable with one another just banded under a new name but the same hate.

It's all the Republican party does, when they are not in power. They don't attempt to work with the other party they instead constantly attack and never offer up any solutions. Their solution is "vote for us" then what do they do?

Look at Bill Clinton, regardless of if you like him or not you can not argue that that man did not get stuff done. What did the Republicans do the entire time he was in office? They tried to get him and hounded him with every thing under the sun and spent countless tax dollars on a sex scandal. Not to mention did everything possible to fight anything he tried to do.

How exactly did that help the country?

Now I voted for Obama, not because I expected "change" or for him to fix the economy because I'm smart enough to know that no one is going to fix the mess in Washington with out the country as a whole being galvanized. At this point that hasn't happened so Washington will do what it does, regardless of who is in power.

The reason I voted for Obama is because I was tired of Bush's so called war on terror and IMO Obama has done what he said he would in that regard so I'm pretty happy with him there.

He said he would pull troops out of Iraq.. He did

He said he would focus the war on terror to Afgan where it should have always been. He did.

He said he would get Bin Ladden. Although, I really didn't expect this but he did it.

We are at war even though many choose to forget it and as such I voted for a president whom I thought would put us back on track in that war. So far Obama has done more than I expected in that regard.

As for economy & healthcare I really didn't expect much out of him for that because that takes congress, the senate, big business & the tax payers to work together and I know that will never happen.

Originally Posted by Relentless (Post 18440332)

Actually that would fix nothing in its present format. If you have 2 or 5 or 10 parties, you'd still have the exact same 'people' putting money in their pockets. Keep in mind, thanks to the Citizens United verdict 'people' for the purpose of donating money to political campaigns now includes Corporations. If you had 6 people running for President, do you really think GE or Exxon would have a hard time coming up with enough bribe, errr Political Action Committee money for all of them?

The start of fixing the system is real rational limits on campaign financing, including a reversal of the Citizens United ruling by a legislative act of Congress. The next step would be a complete overhaul of the FCC so it does what it was originally intended to do (protect the public airways) from media consolidation and blatant misrepresentation of factual events by pseudo-news. A real, vigorous, impartial media and serious campaign finance reform would give us a much more productive political system.

It would make both existing parties behave better, make the creation of new political parties possible, and make blatantly lying to the citizenry much less frequent. Unfortunately, that would require the people already being bribed to vote themselves out of office.... which won't happen. :2 cents:

Originally Posted by crockett (Post 18439758)

They pay a higher tax rate as a group but they get more deductions bringing that tax rate down lower than what the average middle class person pays. Oh and they make it sound odd that someone whom makes a million dollars a year pays a larger share than someone making 50k year.

Originally Posted by 12clicks (Post 18440575)

The facts are just the opposite. The more you make, the less deductions you are allowed to take.

It's the masses of unsuccessful unintelligent who clamor for fairness. What they fail to understand is that they pay NOTHING compared to their successful neighbors.
Having ZERO experience on the subject, they rely on lies they've been told to gain their vote.

Originally Posted by gleem (Post 18440021)

The other side of your argument is that there was no incentive to keep jobs here in the US, as doing business overseas is cheaper both because they don't have to deal with unions and pensions, and mountains of red tape. The average american wouldn't accept a lower wage and would rather be on the dole, so they took the job to those that are willing to do it.

What are the incentives to keep jobs here? All I'm hearing is tax the snot out of the companies and rich people who run companies and then give more money to those with no jobs.

This is the other side of the philosophy that is at the crux of the problem.

How about 25% import taxes on raw materials that are easily available in this country, giving companies a zero tax on money they bring in from offshore accounts if they use the money to directly pay someone's salary. How about the US govt' matching $ for $ aany American company making anything here in the US by Americans for another "Buy American" media campaign. Us gov't has no money to spend on this? Redirect money from the bullshit wars we are in, or simply fix the fraud in all the entitlement programs to pay for it.

These are things to help americans. The real problem is there's no true patriotism anymore, even the saying of a pledge of allegiance to the US is being banned in schools.

Originally Posted by Robbie (Post 18440593)

I agree...it's hard to understand why I have to hand over big checks to the govt. that I could definitely use. And meanwhile, people who pay nothing at all scream about "fairness"

Life isn't fair.
I've had times in my life where I didn't have a damn dime to my name and had to struggle to make it. I've had other times where I had so much money I couldn't spend it fast enough.

But the one constant thing was: I MADE those decisions that put me in the position I was in.

When I was dumb enough to fuck around and be poor...it didn't have much to do with "fairness". I didn't expect or WANT any help from anybody, I just wanted enough to get by and have a good time.

And when I made great money...it was because I decided I had had enough of just partying and not WANTING anything. I decided I wanted to have a nice house and a bunch of nice cars, etc.

So without any help from the govt., and not caring one little bit about "fairness", I got in the porn business in the mid 1990's in my mid 30's and proceeded to make more money than all the guys I went to school had in all their lives.

Was that "fair"? No. I was smarter than they were. I made better grades than they did in school, and I was able to do what I wanted all my life. And when what I wanted was to have money...that's what I did.

It's NOT fair that the majority of people can't do that.

And it's not fair that a lion eats an antelope either.

Life ain't fair. And I'll never be happy about having to take care of and pay for people who are not in my family. I don't want to work for other people.

That's why communism always fails. You take away a person's incentive to get rich...and they become unproductive.

What's the point of busting your ass if the govt. is just going to take it from you and distribute it among people who don't have your abilites?

Originally Posted by tony286 (Post 18440613)

Actually they dont tax the snot out of companies, google paid like 4% in taxes with all the loopholes . You make great points but its not unions and pensions. Its the chinese willing to work for 30 cents an hour and the chinese government manipulation of the currency so its even cheaper to manufacture in china. Also in 1980 the avg CEO was paid 42 times the avg worker,now it's 531 times the avg worker. That money has to come from somewhere.
You would have to make it too expensive to build things out of the country. You would have to do monster tariffs and that's not going to happen. Rich people dont create jobs demand creates jobs, middle class spending is a big part of the economy. I dont think its coming back, 9 percent unemployment is going to be the new normal .This was a long time coming.
One more thing to think about they said all the same exact talking pointd when Clinton raised the rate 3 percent. Job killer,etc ,etc and there was great prosperity. The 50's things boomed and the highest tax bracket was 90 percent.

Originally Posted by TheDoc (Post 18440598)

What a load of bullshit... Investments are deductions

Originally Posted by TheDoc (Post 18440618)

Don't get me wrong me I don't think we should be taxed to death, at all... but pretending that the truly rich can't do more, is a load of shit. I lived in Canada, more taxes DO NOT kill you, they make you smarter!