How do you want your taxes to be raised?

[quietmike]

The golden age of broad upward economic mobility was in the period when the US began embracing far more communitarian social policies between about 1930 and the mid 1960s.

Are you claiming there are fewer social programs now than in the 1960's?

[skyhorse]

You don't know anything about me.

LMAO,oh cont-rare.I think we all know you.

[Morrow]

So you think that racial slurs and stereotyping are a joke? Ok, you're on ignore, too.

POE me for having to come in to this thread for this silliness. Try putting me on ignore. I didn't realize being POE put you in a certain racial category. If you really believed these to be racist comments, why didn't you report them? You are well aware of how the reporting system works. It appears you're just trying to derail this thread by throwing out accusations of racism. There is a term used to describe this type of behavior.

[jdm61]

Actually, the "golden age of upward social mobility" was from say 1787 until maybe 1920. What you are talking about is the age when the government tricked the proletariat into believing that they were actually petite bourgeoisie.

Are you claiming there are fewer social programs now than in the 1960's?

[jdm61]

POE me for having to come in to this thread for this silliness. Try putting me on ignore. I didn't realize being POE put you in a certain racial category. If you really believed these to be racist comments, why didn't you report them? You are well aware of how the reporting system works. It appears you're just trying to derail this thread by throwing out accusations of racism. There is a term used to describe this type of behavior.

He CAN"T put you on ignore, silly moderator. Muah, ha, ha, ha, ha!!!

[Trent Rock]

I'm very well-off (richer than most here, I would guess)

That crushes your theory. It may make you feel good, but it's myth.

Oh, by the way, I worked for what I have.

At what income level does a person who makes more than you lose their soul?
Give me a number
100K?
250k?
1 million a year?

I factually don't want or need any further "something."

Good for you
Not me
I always want more
More is better is a motto I strive to live for
Does that mean I have no soul??

sucked wealth off their labor and built huge fortunes.

Do you think Chuck Buck worked for what he got?
Did he suck wealth of their labor?
Does he possess a soul?
No flip flopping , now!!!!

Couldn't one make the argument that you did not work for what you got and got wealthy on MY DIME?
You were in the AF, right?

[skyhorse]

The tax revenue imho isn't the problem.It's the wasteful spending that needs to be reined in.

[Esav Benyamin]

1. Anyone putting a significant number of respondents on ignore hasn't got skin in the game. if you can't participate fully, leave.

2. Anyone wasting time on peripheral or derived topics like discussions of racism or discussions of other members will also be invited to leave.

3. The topic, to remind you, is the toxic interplay of "three difficult and hopelessly interlinked factors: spending, taxes and the deficits." Go for it!

[OliverH]

Actually, the "golden age of upward social mobility" was from say 1787 until maybe 1920. What you are talking about is the age when the government tricked the proletariat into believing that they were actually petite bourgeoisie.

Neither of these assertions is true, and I'm pretty sure you know it. Or then again, maybe your grasp of history is not as good as you have shown prior to now.

[Esav Benyamin]

Neither of these assertions is true, and I'm pretty sure you know it. Or then again, maybe your grasp of history is not as good as you have shown prior to now.

Or perhaps his understanding of history simply differs from yours. :-)

It is possible for men of good will to disagree, on facts, on analysis, on human motivations and abilities. Denigrating another respondent's intellect or presentation is not nearly so convincing as actually refuting it with your own analysis.

Play nice. This is not the place for a political attack ad.

[OliverH]

Or perhaps his understanding of history simply differs from yours. :-)

It is possible for men of good will to disagree, on facts, on analysis, on human motivations and abilities. Denigrating another respondent's intellect or presentation is not nearly so convincing as actually refuting it with your own analysis.

Play nice. This is not the place for a political attack ad.

Fair enough, I'll try to do better. But in this thread, at least, I think I am by no means the chief among sinners. Note that the glib and unsupported one-liner about the government tricking the proletariat (whether you see that as a "political attack ad" or otherwise) was in response to a post laying out a position and supporting it with facts. Not irrefutable or Krugmanlike in its brilliance, I grant, but content-wise it beat the daylights out of the responses.

[Esav Benyamin]

Please note post # 88 where I did try to remind people (herding cats) to get back to basics.

[jdm61]

Really? After WW2, the government told a huge number of returning veterans that regardless of what they were before the war, they were now, in fact, middle class and they provided them with the indicia of the petite bourgeoisie in the form of funding for college and access to mortgages. How do you think that we avoided the Marxist rambling that you saw before the war and still see in countries in Europe? The American "working man" is only "working class" when he is pissed off at someone else or listening to old country songs and drinking beer. Otherwise, he will claim that he is middle class. That is why there is such a HUGE middle class to "destroy" whenever some new tax cut proposal or, for that matter, new Republican Presidnet comes along. LOL. As for my statement about the pre 1920 world, think about this. One of the KEY's to upward socio-economic mobility in the US prior to that time was the ability to pick up and move to change your situation. Prior to 1920-21, that meant pick up and move from ANYWHERE in the world. The other key to upward mobility in the US has always been the ability to strike out on your own economically. That is not as easy as it was in the past. If you work for "the Man" you are arguably a serf, even if to a tiny degree and at his mercy no matter how much you make.

Neither of these assertions is true, and I'm pretty sure you know it. Or then again, maybe your grasp of history is not as good as you have shown prior to now.

[BG42EDGE]

Romney is not concerned about the poor.......he himself says, without shame, apparently.

Republicans need to learn who the poor are, why they are poor, and how that problem can be addressed.

American poor number about 17 percent of the general population, according to this article......not five percent as Romney stated.

Only Mexico, Chile and Israel are worse than we are.......We come in 31st out of 34 nations.

Yes, the only way things will get better is if the wealthy pay their fair share (or close to it) of taxes......but your taxes don't need to go up.

By Romney's calculations, if 95% of Americans fall in the middle class, then there must be less than 5% of Americans who qualify as poor.

Well, no.

The number from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the association of the world's developed economies, is actually 17.3%.

And how do we compare with other rich countries?

We rank 31st of the 34 countries that make up the OECD in terms of the percentage of our population that qualifies as poor. Of the 34 member states, only Mexico, Chile and Israel are worse off than we are. The UK (at 11%), Germany (8.9%) and France (7.2%) are all much lower. The OECD average is 11%.

In case you're wondering how the OECD defines poverty, it calculates the number as the percentage of people who earn less than half of the country's median wage. It's an easy way to compare data across countries.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn....iref=allsearch

[Esav Benyamin]

Only Mexico, Chile and Israel are worse than we are.......We come in 31st out of 34 nations.

Yes, the only way things will get better is if the wealthy pay their fair share (or close to it) of taxes......but your taxes don't need to go up.

Why can't you discuss technical questions without throwing in political slogans and partisan insults? You come off like a two-dimensional thinker, no complexity, no true analysis, only the political hit man.

Israel is an incredibly wealthy nation. Why so high a percentage of economic distress? One obvious reason is the military threat and the expense of countering it.

But there is a more specific cause. Two major population groups do not participate in the booming sectors of the economy -- the Arabs and the Ultra-Orthodox. And with the high birthrates in these communities, childhood poverty is disproportionately represented compared to other OECD countries.

How would raising taxes address a structural defect like this? It would not. The jobs these people need are available, but they go to guest workers by default since Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox won't work.

[BG42EDGE]

Why change the subject to the problems of the Israelis?

That's odd.

[Esav Benyamin]

Because I don't know the details of Chile and Mexico, but Israel contradicts your comment that moving tax money from rich to poor will necessarily change the balance and relieve the poverty. It depends on the specific conditions that generate economic poverty.

[Triton]

I disagree and believe you have a basic ignorance of economic history.

One of us certainly does. By all means prove me wrong. Tell me who the wealthy are and how they got that way.

[BG42EDGE]

Because I don't know the details of Chile and Mexico, but Israel contradicts your comment that moving tax money from rich to poor will necessarily change the balance and relieve the poverty. It depends on the specific conditions that generate economic poverty.

Well, we're talking about America and what I know about America is that too many of my tax dollars go to help those "incredibly wealthy" Israelis survive.

They could help our problems by forgoing our charity.

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/glob...23507&fid=1725

[bulgron]

Yes, the only way things will get better is if the wealthy pay their fair share (or close to it) of taxes

No, the only way things will get better is if the poor get a clue, and stop working for peanuts at jobs that can't support them. Or, better yet, actually start working for a living instead of living off of food stamps and the crack trade, all depending on exactly why they're poor.

The only thing taxing the rich does is make some Democrats feel a certain of satisfaction as they "stick it to the man." This is because income redistribution via the government really just means taking money from the private sector and pumping it into the corrupt pockets of the politically well-connected. But even if that wasn't the case, you can't make people be "not poor" by just handing them money. What really makes people be "not poor" is a work ethic, and the understanding that working hard as a janitor, or flipping burgers, or even teaching Women's Studies at the local community college, is a career for chumps. You might want to do it while you're working your way through school, but that's as far as you should take it.

No, if you want to be "not poor" in America, you have to make certain moves; i.e. get a high school diploma, then go to college or a trade school to study something that has a financially viable subject, then be willing to switch jobs multiple times until you're making the salary that you desire, and then once you've reach financial stability get married, start a family, buy a house. Along the way, stay off drugs, don't drink too much, stay out of the jail, you know, all that stuff.

These moves are well-understood by the vast majority of the population. The problem seems to be that some people find those moves unappealing. They might even call them "a drag." We have a name for people like that. Now what was it ... Oh yeah, 'occupiers'.

(Betcha thought I was going to say Democrats, didn't you?)

And if you are the kind of a chump who either can't, or won't, make all the right moves, then I have no sympathy for you. In America today, all but the very young, the very old, and the most severely disabled can making a living that is sufficient to keep a roof over their head and food on the table and maybe even pay for cable TeeVee. Yes, doing that might mean making some compromises that you'd really rather not make, but nobody ever promised that making a living would be easy.

So to all the poor: stop whining, stop sticking your hand out looking for someone else to take care of you, figure out what you actually want, and then get to work working on that.