champu

Hahaha, sorry I had to laugh at this one.

Well, I suppose if you are ignorant of the concept of evolution this viewpoint makes sense.

Cutting spending by 10% will reduce the imaginary forecasted debt 10 years from now that people continue to pretend is a realistic estimate. Seriously, the "over ten years" thing is a pretty genius construct so that they can talk in numbers (1.6 trillion, 1.2 trillion) that actually sound meaningful compared to the current deficits we've been running and the current debt we hold. I think whenever someone talks about an amount of money spread over 10 years they shouldn't put the talking person's face on the screen they should just show a plot of the projected deficits/revenue/debt that they are talking about changing.

There are a preponderance of pathological bad situations that can arise from giving the government the power to declare undeveloped land to have some enormous potential value and demand taxes be paid accordingly. Especially if you feel there is already cronyism between developers and those in the assessor's office. "Hey, I want that land over there but the owner doesn't want to sell it, could you jack up his taxes for me?"

I'm 30 and I simply can't bear children.

You put out food for thought like a saucer of milk and complain that the cats keep coming round... There's a negative feedback loop in appreciating members of the armed forces such that you think they should have higher pay and giving higher pay to members of the armed forces. I'm not suggesting we pay them minimum wage to make sure they only join for the "right" reasons, but I am saying if they made what professional football players made, people would [rightfully] question why they were doing it. Rather than how much they make relative to football players, I think looking after their physical and mental health and their reintegration into their family and the workforce back home is what demands attention. On top of being in a hellhole and getting shot at, they've delayed relationships, education, and careers during what's supposed to be some of the best years of their life.

What means a man of child bearing age?

skinnay's comment may have rendered any relation to the original post null, but are you comparing a piece that laments the emergence of a litigious society and childhood obesity with someone being bitter over women and minority rights advances? (I doubt you are, but this thread took kind of a wild turn there.) Change can be good, as in some of the examples you list, but there's nothing wrong with critically examining change once in a while. Sometimes paraphrased as, "Keep an open mind, but don't let your brain fall out."

And the merry-go-round does another lap...

So... stupid concept to throw darts at... a separate progressive tax structure for long-term capital gains and qualified dividends... ...what might the brackets look like? Combined with, and the devil is in the details here, a reform of how you're allowed to calculate your basis for long-term capital gains to stop people from pretending their salary was actually a return on an investment.

Right. Though I doubt you would want to argue that since open containers in a vehicle on public roads are banned, so should firearms. Since that would only hamper law abiding citizens wanting to be armed while in their car. You still end up on opposite sides of the same principle. I think I see the point you're trying to make but, as others have pointed out, your use of the open containers to firearms comparison seems to be broken at this point. Driving with an open container is quite arguably a use of alcohol. In some places, the "but the driver isn't drunk, so who cares" argument wins and there's no open container law in those places. Point being, state and local governments place restrictions on certain uses of certain things while you're in public, but they don't directly go after the things themselves. I don't have a problem with that conceptually, and I don't think it is a problem to argue the merits of applications of that concept independently. There remains the use vs. possession argument, but that's a semantic tar pit, and I think the more important distinction is "certain uses / possessing in certain places" vs. "any usage or possession."

What the pentagon spends money on should be based on what it needs to accomplish its national security mission. That may result in seemingly odd spending if, for example, the pentagon determines that it will need widgets to win a future war, and if it would be very difficult to start up a widget industry in a hurry, and if there was one company left in the country that made widgets, it might make sense to buy some amount of widgets to keep pump primed. It could very easily be money well spent... same reason you want to keep leaders around as conflicts wind down so they can bring their experience back to training facilities. But... The pentagon is not there to support a town because inertia demands it. If that's the best argument to continue a particular line item in the defense budget then there is no argument. This is my biggest beef with congress having so much control over the details in the pentagon's budget these days, it's almost impossible to keep it about the country.

The road isn't private though. For the lawyers out there, are you aware of any case law involving someone being drunk and driving a registered vehicle but on private property and getting in trouble for it?

Go away.

I just wanted an excuse to write, "suicide toasters." Why the suicide toasters and not the homicidal ones? Sheesh. Next your going to lecture me on protected classes... ;) Whatever you do, don't put the toaster on an alter. God will fuck your shit up for that.

Shutup!

It is not NEEDS that make the economy hum. Like it or not, the markets for food and energy usually manage to weather economic downturns. What happens when the cost of gasoline spikes? An economic shock, of course. And where does the economic shot hit? Yep. An individual’s discretionary spending. So they don’t spend much for Christmas. They don’t go out to eat. They don’t buy Twinkies. They don’t go to the car wash. They forgo vacation. The money stagnates. Economy slows. Layoffs ensue. They spend their money on the essentials. To deny the probable effect of this is head-in-the-sand. Plenty out there simply want to stick it to the rich, even though increasing those taxes won’t even cause a dent in the deficit. A scratch, maybe. What is the purpose behind raising taxes on the wealthy? Seriously – what is the purpose? All I hear is “fairness” which is entirely debatable. I also hear, “close the deficit” which is won’t do. Provide a cogent and clear reason for raising taxes on the wealthy and I’ll pay heed. But if “fairness” is the reason, look elsewhere. It effects far more than just the wealthy. I'm sorry if my comment wasn't clear. I didn't mean it as an argument to arbitrarily raise taxes on anyone by 10% if that's how it was interpreted. Sometimes when posting here I assume my audience has a conversational knowledge of my stance on a few of the issues I write about most, and that assumption doesn't always work out so well. I intentionally put "poor person" and "rich person" in quotes to indicate they are woefully ill-defined terms.

I had to copy this logic...it is priceless. As I said, some will chose to spin it in that direction. As it happens, someone was spinning it in that direction as I was writing my post.

As I've said before, 'fair' never means what it purports to mean anymore. People often times have a hard time saying what they mean. Sometimes it's because they don't know how to say what they want to say in a way that people that disagree with them will understand it. Sometimes it's because they want to say something else that more people agree with even if it's not what they really mean, because they don't want to defend saying what they really mean. I think this term is somewhat qualitative in nature too, but it's still better than "fair" which, as Kallend points out, doesn't really enter into making your finances work as a country. Unfortunately some people will spin it to mean, "from each according to..." but that's not really honest given the actual marginal rates people are arguing about here. Anyway... If you want to tap money out of the economy, the "equivalent burden" idea is that you do it in a way that affects everyone's life in roughly the same (hopefully small) amount. 10% means a lot more to a "poor person" than to a "rich person" because life's needs and wants are non-linear (one could argue they're affine and if that were the case then a flat tax with a large standard deduction could work.)

And the deductions for mortgage interest payments, I agree that it can create some unfair tax shelters for those who own multiple expensive homes. Or at least that is what I interpreted your comment to be eluding to, my apologies if I misread it. With regards to that, what about a cap on the mortgage deductions? Take the median amount in mortgage interest paid by middle-income families and there is your cap. If you choose to own four or five homes worth $10 million a piece you shouldn't gets millions in deductions, you are obviously doing find without. His point is that "magic numbers" in the tax code (like using a country-wide median mortgage interest as a cap on deductions) screw over (very much not ultra rich) people who live in high cost of living areas like California. It's the overall problem I have with people bringing up Buffet and Romney in the whole "the rich should pay more" discussion because they are paraded out in front of "solutions" that completely miss their target and land on people making low to mid six figures in areas where that doesn't make them rich. Also, you already can't write off millions in interest from four or five homes. You get two homes and up to $1M in interest you can write off. And, iirc, you can't write off the interest on the second home if you're renting it out.

Actually Kallend said, "So the super rich, like Buffett and Romney, really aren't paying their share." which is a nonsensical statement that is, by definition, incorrect. They are literally paying their share. The fact that they pay it is what makes it their share. Well, depends on whether you think treating income earned by running a hedge fund as "capital gain" represents a reasonable definition of a capital gain. Just one example of how the super-rich have bought favorable tax treatment that isn't available to the middle class. As you may be aware I'm in agreement that calling what for all intents and purposes is a salary by the name "qualified dividend" or "capital gain" to enable a lower tax rate is something broken that needs fixing. Usually I bring it up when people propose screwing with the tax rate on investments because they're mad at "rich people" and they don't know why. But, that doesn't change what I said about your statement. They may not be paying the share you think they should be paying, they might not being the share that is paid by Bizzaro-Buffet or Bizzaro-Romney in the alternate universe that people are free to refer to as "fairsboroughshire," but here they are literally paying their share. If you meant "fair share" in your post, fine. If you meant "the share that I think would work best," fine. But then write that and lay off the posts like #21 in this thread.

And I still can't comprehend why the hell income > $110k is exempt from it! I think when talking about oasdi, it either needs to be kept separate, kept a "mandatory" expenditure, and the rules about paying in and paying out can be discussed as a discrete thing OR all the revenue and spending gets dumped into the general fund and we drop the charade that it is something special, or something we shouldn't quit like a bad habit if payments are unaffordable. The reason you don't pay oasdi on income over $110K is because the program has caps on the maximum benefits you can receive. Under the "it's a special retirement program" doctrine this makes sense. It also makes sense to not pay oasdi on investment income because that doesn't correspond to a job you retire from, and investment income doesn't earn you any credits in the program to become eligable to receive benefits. And finally, if it makes anyone feel any better, the program is actually quite progressive when you consider the return people get out of it, and not just look at it as a tax. However, if you want to remove the cap, call it a tax like any other, throw investment income into the fray, or means test it and tell people like myself to go pound sand when I retire then fine, but then treat it like any other receipt or expenditure and let it fend for itself in the budget and continuing resolutions every year.

Actually Kallend said, "So the super rich, like Buffett and Romney, really aren't paying their share." which is a nonsensical statement that is, by definition, incorrect. They are literally paying their share. The fact that they pay it is what makes it their share.

Pretending, for a moment, that this wasn't a flagrant attempt to derail an otherwise refreshingly interesting topic of discussion... What I conclude from the statistic presented is simply something we've known for a while, there's not only an ideological divide between the parties but a geographical one as well. People tend to amalgamate, and that only adds to the challenge of the party in power to make the right decisions such that they don't fall out of a favor in the predictable fashion Bill described.