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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
We have an obligation for all this defense because we do not allow others to cut the slack and ever since FDR (minus the Jimmy Carter admin),seem to think it best to nose in everywhere,which of course requires a lot of firepower.
However we could spend nothing at all on defense at this point and probably still be well ahead of the game.
Fighter, as your our economics guy would you be able to work out how much a Sweden style social safety net system would cost a US government. If we have a number (even if it's a ver rough one) then we can work out where the line would need to be set. Starship thinks we can pay such bills with his system of taxation n
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran@Taoist - I sure did and I cited it as a model I could go along with.
For all these cries of poverty, there a ton of places to pull the money. If politicians grew a pair and closed off the tax loopholes, went after the off-shore money, and actually made US corporations pay their taxes, we'd be able to cut taxes.
It was an honorTo be honest, I'd rather use surplus gains to invest in areas that reduce the cost of living. It is too fucking pricey to live in a lot of the areas of this country, and even where it's cheap there's a lot of poverty. We have more unsold houses than we have homeless people. It's kinda ridiculous.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Why would we close loopholes, only to make their effects essentially law via tax cuts? I'd much rather put the extra money to use on social programs.
Also, just throwing this out there, but one of the few things a panel of economists from all over the political spectrum that NPR put together managed to agree on was eliminating the corporate income tax.
Not you Morg. I'm talking about the guy who paid $100,000 for a multi-family house, and now it's appreciated to about $700,000 grand and now he's charging $2500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.
Or the one's who charge weekly by the individual bedroom. They literally leeching off of everyone else for getting property before everyone else got in. It's like hoarding water and bleeding everyone else dry for it.
It was an honorSo not so much the people who own property as the people who rent out property at horrific levels. Germany has restrictions on how much rent you can charge in some parts of Berlin, so as to prevent middle and working class people being sleazed out. I wish London had something like that, pretty much my entire student loan goes on rent
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranEconomies' recovery slows over the past month.
HMMM I WONDER WHY THIS COULD BE!?
Could it have anything to do with the sequester?
Pffft. That's just crazy liberul lies.
@Maxima: and how is it your money? If you're making a hundred million a year, are you personally shipping every box of whatever good you're selling, or personally working at all the companies you've got stock in? And personally maintaining the roads, trucks, and mail and phone/internet systems by your own hand?
This is the problem I have with "stealing money from the rich" logic. It assumes somehow the guy who sits in a plush office making decisions that affect thousands of his workers without likely any cognizance those workers are just as human as him, is more hardworking and deserving of his money than the janitor.
edited 5th Apr '13 8:59:47 AM by Midgetsnowman
London is the country.
Before London I've lived either in a rural farmhouse my dad rebuilt from scratch or a boarding school in Suffolk. So rent hasn't come up much before.
@Midget - That thinking is flawed on so many levels. I created a product, a service, whatever, that someone purchased. Someone who, of their own volition, decided to pay a certain amount for it. It's not your place to decide to tell me I should only make so much for it.
Like I said, if I wrote Starship and Wildcard Go To Vegas and it sells 30 million copies, the people who bought it gave me their money.
The researchers who worked on it got paid. The printing press got paid. The truckers who shipped the copies got paid and in turn paid the tolls for the bridges and for the gas. The bookstores paid their staffs, etc.
The government took 40% of my money from the books, my Oprah appearances, and from the $15 million deal from Paramount to buy the movie rights.
If the government can't do what it needs to with 40% of [insert income of $tarship Maxima here] then perhaps these guys don't fucking need to be paid to be government officials.
edited 5th Apr '13 9:14:42 AM by TheStarshipMaxima
It was an honorNot always you didn't. With your book you did, but what did you create when you bought out a pre existing line of clothing stores? You haven't created anything new, not even the stores, they were there already you just own something and are making money of it.
edited 5th Apr '13 9:23:20 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
Yes. And maybe you did. But what about the people manning the printing presses for your book? or the fleet of trucks taking your book to stores? or the roads they drive on? or the research and development that goes into making it cheaper and easier to print thousands of copies of books?
Guess what? half of that aint happening without paying into government taxes.
Also?
Bad analogy anyhow. Authors generally dont make fuck-anything from books. ever.
edited 5th Apr '13 9:27:26 AM by Midgetsnowman
I believe starship is convinced that the goverment could run of the 40% rate if it just closed the loopholes and stopped wasting money. I disagree but unless we've got some numbers to back us up we should probably shut up.
Maybe you're just going about it from the wrong angle. Maybe it's not a safety net the country needs, but safety switching the war economy to basic infrastructure improvements? That would employ people and get money into circulation.
And as long as I'm wishing, I'd like a pony.
edited 5th Apr '13 9:33:02 AM by johnnyfog
I'm a skeptical squirrelWell Silasw, it's not hard to guess. There are roughly 300 million people in the country, if you charged each person $10 more in taxes, that's an additional $3 billion a year. And you know we wouldn't charge just that for the higher earners.
All the liberals pitched a fit cause Romney told the truth that 47% of the population don't pay taxes. But what if even half that number did?
Nearly $ three trillion is hidden in offshore accounts
Three. Fucking. Trillion. Dollars.
The City of New York alone blew $600 million on their payroll system.
It's ain't rocket science. I get nobody wants to nut up and do the hard things, the necessary things, but don't come with some Stalinist bullshit and pretend you own my money that I worked for to cover your incompetence.
Last I checked, unless it's a printing press in China, they get paid. Oh, and the printing press pays taxes. The truckers, as I said, get paid, and in turn they pay taxes, and buy gas, and pay tolls. The R & D that went into making high-speed laser printers so we can keep up with demand for my book; yeah, if they patented it, they got paid, if not, they paid for the design and are capitalizing on it.
edited 5th Apr '13 9:39:29 AM by TheStarshipMaxima
It was an honor

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Barack is proposing this stuff because he knows it won't go through, since he's tied it to an oh-so heinous $500 billion revenue increase.
edited 5th Apr '13 7:17:43 AM by Blueeyedrat