Paul Ryan's Budget Plan

[telcoman]

More Big Tax Cuts for the Rich

Of course! Isn't that the republican way!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/201 ... -the-rich/

“TPC looked only at the tax reductions in Ryan’s plan, which also included offsetting–but unidentified–cuts in tax credits, exclusions, and deductions. TPC found that in 2015, relative to today’s tax system, those making $1 million or more would enjoy an average tax cut of $265,000 and see their after-tax income increase by 12.5 percent. By contrast, half of those making between $20,000 and $30,000 would get no tax cut at all. On average, people in that income group would get a tax reduction of $129. Ryan would raise their after-tax income by 0.5 percent.”

“Earlier this week, TPC projected the tax cuts in Ryan’s budget would add $4.6 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, even after extending the 2001/2003 tax cuts, which would add another $5.4 trillion to the deficit.”

What a con job they are trying to sell to the American people

Telcoman

[Marenta]

The last 30 years have proven that trickle down doesn't work. SMH.

[stebo0728]

From the article's first paragraph

No surprise here, but the tax cuts in Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget plan would result in huge benefits for high-income people and very modest—or no— benefits for low income working households, according to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center.

First off, take a look at the first 3 words. Biased much? Secondly, this article is misworded, and intellectual dishonest, to spin a negative assessment of the plan.

....tax cuts.....BENEFIT (key word) ..... high income people.......modest or no BENEFIT.......low income......

We've already established that only the wealthy actually pay taxes anyway, that the bottom 48% pay ZERO in taxes. Of course there's no surprise that a tax cut would only BENEFIT those who actually pay. Thats about the same as me getting upset because I wont benefit from tampon prices dropping.

Now, onto why BENEFIT is a keyword. The leftmost of the left, the socialistic borderline communistic fringe has succeeded in creating a mentality, not only in government, but now apparently the media has caught on, but a mentality that considers all wealth to be publicly owned, a resource for society to manipulate by the machinations of its government. Why the hell is someone keeping more of their own money a benefit? I've pressed this before, bedwetters dont like to admit they think this way, but its required to make their mental calculations work. I've said before, labeling take home pay a "tax expenditure" was proof enough of this, now here's more. Its about as subtle as the "b" in the word subtle, but its becoming less subtle of a theme.

So Telco, I ask you for a flat answer to one question. Give me a figure, a percentage, a TOP END MAX percentage that any one person should have to pay in taxes from their OWN wealth?

[telcoman]

So Telco, I ask you for a flat answer to one question. Give me a figure, a percentage, a TOP END MAX percentage that any one person should have to pay in taxes from their OWN wealth?

I'll provide you with this written by someone much more qualified than anyone on this forum.

The debt debate we need to have
By Erskine Bowles
Special to The Washington Post
Posted: Sunday, Aug. 12, 2012

Ever since President Obama named my pal Alan Simpson co-chairman of the bipartisan fiscal commission, Al has said, “Erskine does the numbers, and I do the color.” We would not have gotten a majority of our commission members to support our panel’s recommendations without both the color and the numbers. It is as a numbers guy that I hope we see, this fall, a numbers-based debate on the debt.

As a lifelong Democrat who proudly voted for Obama in 2008, I applauded the president’s insistence on a balanced plan to stabilize the debt. I have urged him to go further and embrace more of the recommendations of the national commission he appointed. As a businessman with real respect and appreciation for Mitt Romney’s business career, I plead, from one numbers guy to another: You must have a balanced plan that reforms the tax code in a progressive, pro-growth manner and produces additional revenue if you are serious about reducing the deficit by at least $4 trillion without disrupting the country’s fragile economic recovery and hurting the disadvantaged.The plan must produce enough capital to invest in education, infrastructure and high-value-added research so that the United States can compete effectively in the knowledge-based global economy.

Obama and Romney recognize that debt reduction starts with reducing long-term spending. As our commission recommended, both candidates have – to an extent – supported policies to limit some tax expenditures, slow the growth of health-care costs and reduce government spending in other areas. Since our report was published in late 2010, the president and Congress have enacted a down payment of more than $1 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade – and established that defense spending, not just domestic programs, must be cut. Romney has also backed the plan of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to limit entitlement spending.

But real deficit reduction – cutting the deficit by at least $4 trillion over the next decade to stabilize the debt and get it on a downward path as a percentage of gross domestic product – won’t happen without sweeping tax reform. This year, our broken tax code will give away more in loopholes – $1.3 trillion – than it collects in income taxes. That’s nuts. This month, Romney said that his tax reform proposal is “very similar to the Simpson-Bowles plan.” How I wish it were. I will be the first to cheer if Romney decides to embrace our plan. Unfortunately, the numbers say otherwise: His reform plan leaves too many tax breaks in place and, as a result, does nothing to reduce the debt.

The “zero plan” our commission recommended offered both parties an appealing bargain: lower tax rates for everyone in return for sweeping reduction in tax loopholes of every stripe. Taxpayers and the economy would benefit from a vastly simpler tax code.

The most important lesson Al and I learned on the commission is that to fix the debt, everything must be on the table. Americans everywhere have told us that as long as the sacrifice is shared, they are ready to do their part. The surest way to doom deficit reduction is to play favorites by taking things off the table.

So although I give Romney credit for pledging to reform the tax code to reduce loopholes, his current proposal will not take us to the promised land. Our commission’s tax plan broadens the base, reduces tax expenditures and generates $1 trillion for deficit reduction while making the tax code more progressive. The Romney plan, by sticking to revenue-neutrality and leaving in place tax breaks, would raise taxes on the middle class and do nothing to shrink the deficit.

Obama hasn’t gone as far in cutting spending, particularly in health care, as is necessary to stabilize the debt at a reasonable level and keep it on a downward path as a percentage of the gross domestic product. But in contrast to Romney, the president – like other like-minded members of both parties – has embraced the central principle of Simpson-Bowles: that America will turn the corner on its debt only if Republicans and Democrats come together to support a balanced deficit-reduction plan.

Over the next four years, the United States will need to do much more to address its long-term debt than either party has been willing to do. This fall, the American people deserve a serious national debate about our debt, not easy promises. To avoid the most predictable economic crisis in history, we must let the numbers do the talking.
Erskine Bowles was co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/0 ... rylink=cpy

Telcoman

[IBCoupe]

Now, onto why BENEFIT is a keyword. The leftmost of the left, the socialistic borderline communistic fringe has succeeded in creating a mentality, not only in government, but now apparently the media has caught on, but a mentality that considers all wealth to be publicly owned, a resource for society to manipulate by the machinations of its government. Why the hell is someone keeping more of their own money a benefit? I've pressed this before, bedwetters dont like to admit they think this way, but its required to make their mental calculations work. I've said before, labeling take home pay a "tax expenditure" was proof enough of this, now here's more. Its about as subtle as the "b" in the word subtle, but its becoming less subtle of a theme.

No, the mentality they've succeeded in establishing is this: you pay for the society you get. When you get a discount on the car you're buying, that's a benefit. When you pay half-price for milk, that's a benefit. And when you pay for less society than you receive, that's a benefit, too.

Labeling it a "tax expenditure" is a way of recognize what you're actually doing to your budget: a tax credit that means the government collects $50,000 less annually is the same, from a budgeting perspective, as NOT having a credit and adding two $25,000 cars to an agency's fleet each year.

A budget is about balance, and you'll get nowhere by pretending that you can ever balance only one thing. Revenues and expenditures: they're both on the book, and you'll have to deal with each of them.

[telcoman]

Ryan is a Trojan Horse

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48643235/ns ... Cil0aBytEM

“I’m as pro-life as a person gets,” Mr. Ryan said then. “You’re not going to have a truce. Judges are going to come up. Issues come up, they’re unavoidable, and I’m never going to not vote pro-life.”
In nearly 14 years as a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, Mr. Ryan has not only voted for legislation that would cut off federal money for Planned Parenthood and the Title X family planning program, but also backed bills to establish criminal penalties for certain doctors who perform the procedure known as partial-birth abortion.”

The right talks a lot about jobs jobs jobs but their action in congress is not about jobs but abortion, womens rights, and contraception.

[stebo0728]

No, the mentality they've succeeded in establishing is this: you pay for the society you get. When you get a discount on the car you're buying, that's a benefit. When you pay half-price for milk, that's a benefit. And when you pay for less society than you receive, that's a benefit, too.

Labeling it a "tax expenditure" is a way of recognize what you're actually doing to your budget: a tax credit that means the government collects $50,000 less annually is the same, from a budgeting perspective, as NOT having a credit and adding two $25,000 cars to an agency's fleet each year.

A budget is about balance, and you'll get nowhere by pretending that you can ever balance only one thing. Revenues and expenditures: they're both on the book, and you'll have to deal with each of them.

I understand the twist you're trying to make there, and it sounds nice, but what grand society are the evil rich getting "cheaper"? This society in increasingly built to benefit the lazy and depraved of our society, and to punish the successful. Sorry but Im not liking the taste of your fruit punch you're serving.

An "expenditure" label can only be placed on a budget item that comes from a source that you consider to own. In other words, say you have a budget amount of $1000 after all revenue, all positive numbers, are considered. Then you start to consider "expenditures". The light bulbs in all the federal buildings, that's an expenditure. However, you can't seriously consider the amount of an individual's income that they manage to KEEP an expenditure. For one, that presumes ownership of that income. I mean the electric company may as well consider the income of everyone in their customer base that ISNT being spent on electricity to be an expenditure. General Motors should go through their loan papers and figure out the difference between people's report gross incomes, and what they are collecting, and consider the difference to be an expenditure right? I mean a company should figure, if someone isn't spending their money with me, but the damn well could but, we must consider that a budget expenditure right? Oh wait, we only reserve that right for government. Oh thats right, government gets special rights in the market place, they get to hold an mold everyone's wealth to suit the masses, they get to do business at a loss for decades on end while the competition goes bankrupt, they get to hold a gun to your head to collect debt, or at the very least, threaten you with jailtime, where-as everyone else has to write off bad debt, with a possible chance of repo'ing used worthless junk from deadbeats that trash the goods once they know its repo time.

But I've chased a rabbit.......back to "expenditures". Whether some shady socialistic moneygrabbing mentality has overtaking DC or not, thats one of the ugly step children that comes with marrying an income tax. Income based taxation is NOT the right way to tax a free people. It was a stop gap tax that an increasingly lazy Congress and complacent public were too starry eyed to deal with and let die. It was not intended, originally, to be permanent. The fears of its original opponents were realized in spades. Thats where the distrust of our government started. Where to you think dissent for new "temporary measures" comes from? The failure to end the income tax, and implement a more digestable permanent plan. But wait, I called Congress lazy didnt I? Is that completely accurate? I should recant that word, and replace it with "empowered". The income tax was realized to be a silly putty, a play-doh of sorts, that could be molded, behind the scenes, to accomplish goals of one class, at the expense of another. It set the stage for rampant, nation wide plunder, plunder that would be quickly moralized and condoned by the masses. The nasty head of democracy began to show. Now we have a constant employ of fear tactics, built around manipulations, or misrepresented manipulations of the terrible system of plunder, the income tax. Both sides do it, make no mistake, I dont intend to make the GOP smell rosy, they aren't. But by far, the left use this system with far more surgical and intended precision. Lines such as "gut medicare", or "pushing old people off the cliff", or "republicans will take away you're social security". Silly crap like that is only possible when we leave these tools of fear in the hands of the ones who abuse them.

I realize there are supporters here of a more flattened income tax, and that would certainly be a step in the right direction. But I still implore you to consider, A - we've done this before. B - this would still leave the greatest tool of social engineering in the hands of the government, this is still a mistake, IMHO.

[stebo0728]

Ryan is a Trojan Horse

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48643235/ns ... Cil0aBytEM

“I’m as pro-life as a person gets,” Mr. Ryan said then. “You’re not going to have a truce. Judges are going to come up. Issues come up, they’re unavoidable, and I’m never going to not vote pro-life.”
In nearly 14 years as a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, Mr. Ryan has not only voted for legislation that would cut off federal money for Planned Parenthood and the Title X family planning program, but also backed bills to establish criminal penalties for certain doctors who perform the procedure known as partial-birth abortion.”

The right talks a lot about jobs jobs jobs but their action in congress is not about jobs but abortion, womens rights, and contraception.

Can we please keep this election centered on the economy, where it belongs? We aren't going to see any nudging either way in policy regarding SCOTUS settled issues, and just even mentioning them is pointless. And why bother with who Ryan would appoint anyway, unless you're worried about Romney croaking? I tend to believe Romney would appoint more centered judges than Ryan would. True, if Romney dies or is otherwise incapacitated and Ryan presumes the helm, then thats at least a remotely understandable concern, still, what are the odds? Is it really something you want to waste brain cells on when the economy is basically sitting in a make or break hold pattern?

[telcoman]

Report Card
VP Candidate,Paul Ryan :

Subject Grade

Helps the middle class F

Smarter than Sarah Palin A+

[stebo0728]

Funny.......Obummer gets about the same grades. Plus, lets not forget, he clearly stated that if his performance sucked after 3 years, he'd willingly step aside.....

[stebo0728]

Oh, and Telco, Im not letting you off the hook with that non responsive article. Again, name me a FLAT MAX % ANNUAL GROSS INCOME that you consider fair for any one person to pay in taxes.

[telcoman]

Oh, and Telco, Im not letting you off the hook with that non responsive article. Again, name me a FLAT MAX % ANNUAL GROSS INCOME that you consider fair for any one person to pay in taxes.

For starters the tax rates should revert back to what they were when Clinton left office

Our economic downfall began with the Bush tax cuts, two unpaid for wars and an unfunded Medicare Part D all under a previous republican administration. The budget surplus quickly turned into huge debt with tax cuts for the wealthy to be made up on the backs of those less fortunate.

My tax rate should not be higher than Romney's tax rate which is why the American people deserve to see his tax returns that will show how he abusing the present tax codes so they can be corrected.

The present FICA wage cap at $110k should be removed with no cap.

Trickle down did not work then and it will not work if Romney/Ryan are elected.

Telcoman

[stebo0728]

Again you respond with generic leftist blather. Answer my question would you? Give me a number.

[telcoman]

Again you respond with generic leftist blather. Answer my question would you? Give me a number.

On what level of income?

[stebo0728]

Again you respond with generic leftist blather. Answer my question would you? Give me a number.

On what level of income?

No that was not the question. I'll repeat it again, Id say slower but the effect is lost on typing. Try to read it a bit slower, K?

So what MAXIMUM PERCENTAGE OF ANNUAL GROSS INCOME would you consider to be a maximum fair amount, regardless of income amount?

[telcoman]

40%

[Marenta]

Telco, you have to shoot lower than that.. 40% of EVERY income in the country would be such a large sum, the government would go bonkers trying to spend it all.

That includes tax payers, banks, investments, business transactions, corporations, any size business.. you name it, 40%. That's an egregious amount of money that the government DOESN'T need. Be fair.

Edit: Now, on the other hand if we had this mythical 40% tax rate on everything, it would only take us.. maybe 2 years to pay off everything we owed and then pay some forward. That wouldn't be too bad of a situation, except that tax rate would kill off every single person trying to run a business and it would lead to massive amounts of people losing jobs. It's the quick and painful approach versus the slow and less painful. It's been scientifically proven that slow and less painful, is really LESS PAINFUL.
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/asap/sa1.htm

[stebo0728]

Well, to be fair, I dont think Telco is wanting a 40% rate across the board. His plan would still be progressive, with 40% being the max amount that the evil rich would pay.

So, lets go back to the numbers shall we? Using 2008 numbers, the latest I'm aware of that are completely published, show the following:

Top 1% Pays 42% of all taxes. Seems about right eh? Maybe a bit high?
Top 5% Pays 67% of all taxes. Woah......
Top 50% Pays 95.5% of all taxes. Sheesh.......

That leaves the bottom 50% paying only 4.5% of all taxes. Seems a bit low even for a progressive system, wouldn't you say? If there is a problem with taxes, my friend, its on the bottom end, not the top end.

Now, looking at individual numbers, at the top end, the average effective tax rate is still well below your 40% figure, most average around 21-25% it seems. Still, with the information given above, its clear that even at lower effective tax rates, the wealthy are still paying well over their fair share of the taxes. Thats not even considering what hiking those effective rates would do to revenues. 40% would be well over into the downhill side of the laffer curve. If the goal is to maximize revenues, your figures don't make a whole lot of sense. However, if the goal is to achieve you're idea of some sort of "fairness", a term that isn't readily definable, in fact defining it is counterintuitive to your goals. But I'm probably speaking a language you might be unfamiliar with. After all, when considering tax policy, we aren't supposed to consider real world reactions right?

[telcoman]

Well, to be fair, I dont think Telco is wanting a 40% rate across the board. His plan would still be progressive, with 40% being the max amount that the evil rich would pay.

Yes I meant progressive with a 40% max rate on income over 1 million

There are people much smarter than I or anyone else on this forum that study this stuff

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/opini ... .html?_r=1


"IN May of 2000, when George W. Bush was running for president on a platform of extravagant tax cuts for all, his campaign did something that would be considered remarkable today: it submitted his tax plan to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, to see how much all those tax cuts would cost the Treasury.

The bipartisan committee ran through the details provided by the campaign and predicted that the tax plan would cost about $1.3 trillion over nine years, an underestimate but a clear sign of its high price tag. With the budget in surplus at the time, Mr. Bush didn’t dispute that cost, and never tried to pretend that the cuts would be free. Within a decade, in fact, they would turn out to be the biggest factor in the huge deficit he created.
Twelve years later, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, claims his far deeper tax cuts would have a price tag of exactly zero dollars. He has no intention of submitting his tax plan to the committee or anywhere else that might conduct a serious analysis, since he seems intent on running a campaign far more opaque than any candidate has in years.
He has made his economic plan the fundamental basis of his candidacy, and yet with the Republican convention just two weeks away, we know next to nothing of the plan’s details. The extreme cuts proposed by his new running mate, Paul Ryan, are far more hard-edged, making Mr. Romney’s mathematically impossible promises look vague and shopworn by comparison.
For example, Mr. Romney wants to keep all the Bush tax cuts, then cut taxes much further, particularly for the rich, but he says the plan won’t grow the deficit by a dime. He won’t say how he will accomplish this — there are no real numbers in his plan beyond a vague pledge to eliminate some loopholes. The Joint Committee would take one look at his substance-free plan and say, we can’t work with this.
Mr. Romney’s tax proposal is no different from any other aspect of his economic plan. He promises to cut nondefense spending by 5 percent, but won’t tell voters what programs that will affect. He wants to repeal all of President Obama’s regulations that burden the economy, but won’t say which ones. And he pledges to eliminate health care reform, but won’t discuss how or even whether he would replace it.
Earlier this month, a nonpartisan group of tax experts took matters into their own hands and tried to analyze the tax plan. What would happen, they asked, if you actually made all the cuts he has proposed? That would mean extending the Bush cuts, reducing income-tax rates by an additional 20 percent, and ending capital gains taxes for the middle class, the estate tax, the alternative minimum tax and the various taxes in health care reform, including the Medicare tax increase on high incomes. The experts at the Tax Policy Center estimated that this would cost $456 billion a year, starting in 2015.
But Mr. Romney said the cuts would be “revenue neutral” and cost nothing because they would be paid for by ending tax breaks and loopholes. He never identified those tax breaks, and now we know why — the experts concluded that there aren’t enough loopholes in the tax code to balance out the cuts. Following Mr. Romney’s plan would mean ending popular deductions for mortgage interest and charitable contributions, which would wind up raising taxes on the middle class, while the rich would still enjoy the benefits of an income-tax cut larger than the deductions they would lose.
Had Mr. Romney been the least bit serious about assembling a real tax plan, he would have known this. Instead, he hurriedly threw together his 20 percent tax-cut plan a week before the Arizona and Michigan primaries in February, at a time when Rick Santorum was proposing a similar idea. He said he wouldn’t touch middle-class tax breaks, and would “work with Congress“ to find offsets to the cuts.
“Work with Congress.” Would that be the same body that almost caused a government default last year? Given how dysfunctional Congress has become, the real question is what policies a president will demand of Congress, and how forcefully he will fight for them. Telling voters that Congress will decide which tax breaks to eliminate is saying that you don’t have the courage to make a choice.
On issue after issue, the dominant theme of Mr. Romney’s plan is a refusal to make real choices. He talks endlessly about his 59-point plan “to get America back to work,” but you can scrutinize all 160 pages of his economic booklet without finding any evidence of decision-making. A few examples:
He says he wants to cut nondefense spending by 5 percent, and cap federal spending at 20 percent of the economy, down from about 24 percent. But what would that actually mean in terms of programs cut and services reduced? The plan is silent. The programs he mentions cutting are the comically minuscule national endowments for the arts and the humanities, foreign aid, family planning, Amtrak and a few others — all tattered Republican punching bags.
The plans Mr. Ryan submitted as House budget chairman — which are now Mr. Romney’s too — were never models of clarity, but they at least made his priorities quite stark: more than three-fifths of his cuts would come from low-income programs like job training, Pell grants and food stamps. That’s not something Mr. Romney ever talked about on the stump, raising the question of whether the vice-presidential choice will end up defining the man at the top of the ticket better than Mr. Romney has himself.
Mr. Romney wants to offload federal responsibility for Medicaid and move it entirely to the states by turning it into a much cheaper block-grant program. He claims this approach would save $200 billion a year, but never mentions that this would force states to drop coverage for at least 14 million people when states are unable to keep up with rising medical costs, which would raise emergency costs at local hospitals. He says he supports Mr. Ryan’s plan to provide the elderly with a fixed amount to buy either traditional Medicare or private plans, but has also said he would issue his own Medicare plan this fall, far too late.
Beyond his standard line about undoing financial reform and Mr. Obama’s “anti-carbon” agenda, Mr. Romney has also vowed to repeal any Obama regulation that might burden the economy, without telling us which ones. Could he mean the power-plant rule that keeps mercury out of children’s lungs, perhaps? Or the one requiring better brakes on big trucks? Or the one expanding disability protections to people with AIDS or autism? Don’t expect an answer.
The Romney campaign decided long ago that it didn’t need a real economic plan of its own when it could just bash the president’s. “As long as I continue to speak about the economy, I’m going to win,” he said last month. Voters, he is saying, need not inquire further. "
By David Firestone, a member of the New York Times editorial board.

Telcoman

[IBCoupe]

I understand the twist you're trying to make there, and it sounds nice, but what grand society are the evil rich getting "cheaper"? This society in increasingly built to benefit the lazy and depraved of our society, and to punish the successful. Sorry but Im not liking the taste of your fruit punch you're serving.

First, it's not a twist. The sooner you stop thinking of taxes as theft and start thinking of it as how government can do any of the things its citizenry demand of it, the better off you'll be. You want to cut taxes? Propose enough cuts to spending to more than eliminate the budget deficit. Until then, all I can tell you is

BUDGETING: YOURE DOING IT WRONG.

As to the "evil rich," I guarandamntee you that Mitt Romney gets a greater benefit from the police than I do. When you have more, you hav more to lose, and so the more you benefit fom civilization, the more of it you're responsible or financing.

An "expenditure" label can only be placed on a budget item that comes from a source that you consider to own.

Budgeting: you're doing it wrong.

Taxes are not theft. Government is not evil. You do not live in Galt's Gulch.

[stebo0728]

I understand the twist you're trying to make there, and it sounds nice, but what grand society are the evil rich getting "cheaper"? This society in increasingly built to benefit the lazy and depraved of our society, and to punish the successful. Sorry but Im not liking the taste of your fruit punch you're serving.

First, it's not a twist. The sooner you stop thinking of taxes as theft and start thinking of it as how government can do any of the things its citizenry demand of it, the better off you'll be. You want to cut taxes? Propose enough cuts to spending to more than eliminate the budget deficit. Until then, all I can tell you is

BUDGETING: YOURE DOING IT WRONG.

As to the "evil rich," I guarandamntee you that Mitt Romney gets a greater benefit from the police than I do. When you have more, you hav more to lose, and so the more you benefit fom civilization, the more of it you're responsible or financing.

An "expenditure" label can only be placed on a budget item that comes from a source that you consider to own.

Budgeting: you're doing it wrong.

Taxes are not theft. Government is not evil. You do not live in Galt's Gulch.

I don't think of taxation as theft. I've never advocated such a notion, and in fact I have argued against such notions, if not here, on other forums. But what we've set up in this society is an all or nothing system. Everyone gets taxed, quite disproportionately, and services and programs have been set up that EVERYONE has to pay for, whether they avail themselves of it or not.

I'd guarandamntee you that most wealthy people don't trust the police to protect them, in fact, SCOTUS has already ruled that the police are NOT required to protect anything. Their only required duty is to straighten out the mess and bring any perps to justice. Wealthy people, those with more to lose, generally take responsibility for their own security, by hiring capable private sector agencies, ones that are actually duty bound to protect. You seem to think that only the government can provide societal services, and that everyone must and DO subscribe to public sector services, whereas in reality, except for "roads and bridges", only the poor "disadvantaged" make great avail of public sector services.

EDIT - On budgeting, I'm not doing it wrong, the government is doing it wrong. Anyone else has to function under normal economic rules, we give the government a pass. In my own budget, I am awarded a piddly amount of child support from my ex wife. On the income side, I write down $x. She makes $y a month from he job. I dont go over to my expense side and include $y - x right? Of course not. You can't consider a portion of someone else's property to be you're own, and then label the fact that they keep it an "expenditure". That's flawed logic at best, and downright dirty thinking in reality. Its one step away from requiring all companies to pay our salaries into the treasury, and having the treasury cut us all our "allowance" each month. Such mentality sets the stage for just that. That doesn't mean I consider legitimate taxation to be theft, but it means that I have a real problem with a government that assumes ownership of all the rest of my wealth.

[IBCoupe]

I'd guarandamntee you that most wealthy people don't trust the police to protect them, in fact, SCOTUS has already ruled that the police are NOT required to protect anything. Their only required duty is to straighten out the mess and bring any perps to justice. Wealthy people, those with more to lose, generally take responsibility for their own security, by hiring capable private sector agencies, ones that are actually duty bound to protect. You seem to think that only the government can provide societal services, and that everyone must and DO subscribe to public sector services, whereas in reality, except for "roads and bridges", only the poor "disadvantaged" make great avail of public sector services.

You appear to have a very myopic view of cause and effect.

[stebo0728]

You appear to have a very myopic view of cause and effect.

With a twinge of astigmatism to boot

[stebo0728]

You do not live in Galt's Gulch.

A fella can dream can't he?

[telcoman]

A fella can dream can't he?

I'm dreaming that they are going to lose

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/08/ ... tax-debate

Unless the House of Representatives takes action before January 1, 2013, taxes will go up on 114 million middle-class families. Nearly everyone in Washington agrees that’s a bad idea. That’s why President Obama is calling for -- and the Senate has already passed -- legislation that will keep the middle class from paying thousands of extra dollars next year.
Republicans in the House of Representatives, however, are refusing to extend middle-class tax cuts without also giving massive tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. In fact, House Republicans have proposed their own tax plan that would actually raise taxes on 25 million families making less than $250,000, while giving families making more than $1 million an average tax cut of $160,000 next year.
Here are 11 facts about the two plans and what's at stake for middle-class families.

Telcoman

[IBCoupe]

EDIT - On budgeting, I'm not doing it wrong, the government is doing it wrong. Anyone else has to function under normal economic rules, we give the government a pass. In my own budget, I am awarded a piddly amount of child support from my ex wife. On the income side, I write down $x. She makes $y a month from he job. I dont go over to my expense side and include $y - x right? Of course not. You can't consider a portion of someone else's property to be you're own, and then label the fact that they keep it an "expenditure". That's flawed logic at best, and downright dirty thinking in reality. Its one step away from requiring all companies to pay our salaries into the treasury, and having the treasury cut us all our "allowance" each month. Such mentality sets the stage for just that. That doesn't mean I consider legitimate taxation to be theft, but it means that I have a real problem with a government that assumes ownership of all the rest of my wealth.

You are not a national economy, so let's nip that one in the bud.

Whatever sci-fi dystopia you think the phrase "tax expenditure" conjures, a tax credit is not leaving you alone to your natural state. A tax credit is the government saying, "For you, we're gonna change the rules." That changing of the rules costs government money, and if they don't account for it in the budget, they're doing it wrong.

[stebo0728]

You are not a national economy, so let's nip that one in the bud.

Whatever sci-fi dystopia you think the phrase "tax expenditure" conjures, a tax credit is not leaving you alone to your natural state. A tax credit is the government saying, "For you, we're gonna change the rules." That changing of the rules costs government money, and if they don't account for it in the budget, they're doing it wrong.

What exactly is it that you think you're nipping in the bud? Of course I'm not a national economy, so? We've formed a habit of allowing our government to function on a special level that individual and businesses can't sustain. Guess what, our government can't sustain it either, it may be able to hold out longer, but not indefinitely.

I think we're disconnected a bit here. I understand what you mean if you're considering a change, and you want to know what impact that change will have, and so you consider the cost of the change as an expenditure. Thats not what I mean, I'm talking about when ALL take home income is considered an expense of the government. But even cost of changes don't equate to expenditures. Again back to my child support example. Say I'm getting $200 a month, I add that to my monthly income on my budget. If situations change, and the court decided she now only owes me $150 a month, I dont go over to my expenditure column and record a $50 a month expense. I simply reduce my income by $50. That lost income is not an expenditure, I've not increased my spending, I've reduced my income.

This is part of the problem involving income tax. The system is so convoluted, it NEEDS FIXING.

[IBCoupe]

What exactly is it that you think you're nipping in the bud? Of course I'm not a national economy, so? We've formed a habit of allowing our government to function on a special level that individual and businesses can't sustain. Guess what, our government can't sustain it either, it may be able to hold out longer, but not indefinitely.

Because individuals and businesses aren't a national economy, either. An individual or a business can't just will itself more income. An individual or business doesn't promulgate its own currency on the basis of faith that it's worth something. An individual or business does not affect the world's economy by holding a press conference.

Thats not what I mean, I'm talking about when ALL take home income is considered an expense of the government.

I don't know of anyone who means that when they use the term "tax expenditure." That's just not what it's generally used to mean, and to the extent that you've been letting that definition guide your interpretation of the conversation around the federal budget, I think that explains your position.

But even cost of changes don't equate to expenditures. Again back to my child support example. Say I'm getting $200 a month, I add that to my monthly income on my budget. If situations change, and the court decided she now only owes me $150 a month, I dont go over to my expenditure column and record a $50 a month expense. I simply reduce my income by $50. That lost income is not an expenditure, I've not increased my spending, I've reduced my income.

Nobody in the United States treats the tax code that way. A "tax expenditure" would be if you called your ex wife and said, "Go ahead and only pay me $150 each month."

[stebo0728]

Ok, so to prove I am not closed minded, I took your last rebutal to heart, and retraced my thought pattern regarding "tax expenditures". I'm going to quote here what I based my assertions on, an assertion I've held to for about 5 or so years.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
NOT AN ENCOURAGING EXPERIENCE

More photos
What an experience ... and not an encouraging one at that.
Yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of testifying before the (take a deep breath) Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. I testified at the invitation of committee chairman Tom Coburn (R-OK) who, by the way, is a Senate sponsor of The FairTax Act. [read text of my testimony]
The purpose of this hearing --- and no, I have no idea what it had to do with homeland security --- was to hear testimony on ways to close the "tax gap" and simplify our tax code.
Tax gap? What's that, you ask? Well, it's the difference between what people owe and what people actually pay. The capital gains tax gap, for instance, is the difference between what taxpayers owe in taxes on their capital gains, and what they actually pay.
Now since the subject at hand was how to get people to pay more of the taxes they owe, you might expect that there would have been much said about how to gather the information necessary to better enforce our tax laws. Well, you would be right.
I made some quick notes while I was waiting to testify. Here are some of the nifty ideas that were being tossed around as to how to get more people to pay the taxes they owe:
Credit card gross receipts reporting. Now, details weren't available to fill in the blanks for an outsider like me, but I suspect that the idea here is to get credit card companies to report to the IRS the amount of gross receipts a particular business might rack up from customers using credit cards.

Enhanced third party reporting. I would imagine that this means the government should go to greater lengths to get third parties in financial transactions to make a report to the feds as to the details of that transaction. Just guessing, but would this mean that if you write a check to your landscaper the bank where you have your checking account would report that transaction to the IRS?

Change the currency every five years. Yup, no kidding. One of the witnesses (if memory serves me he worked for the IRS) suggested that we change our currency every five years or so. This would keep people from hoarding large amounts of cash, or sending that cash overseas to work. Every five years that cash would have to be traded in for the new updated cash. If you come walking in to your bank with a huge wad of cash, questions would be asked and reports made.

Withholding on independent contractors. It seems these IRS types who were testifying yesterday are more than a little upset because so many independent contractors .... people who do not have taxes withheld by those who employ them ... are not reporting all of their earnings. so, why not just withhold those taxes before the independent contractor is paid?

Promote the use of debit and credit cards. Well, we've seen this one coming for some time. The government would just love for us to move toward a cashless society. Whenever you use a credit card or a debit card there is a paper trail of your transaction ... a trail that the government can access to determine whether or not you are paying your "fair share." So the proposal was made yesterday that the government should encourage the use of credit and debit cards. I suppose that means discouraging the use of cash.
These were just some of the ideas being tossed around. But let's get to one of those phrases that these tax-types seem to love so much: Tax expenditures.
Do you know what a "tax expenditure" is? You can get a detailed definition at this website, but simply stated a tax expenditure is the money that you are allowed to keep when you take advantage of certain tax breaks like the home mortgage interest deduction. Senator Coburn pretty much nailed it when he opined that the phrase seems to give the impression that the government is establish its claim to everything you earn, and anything that you are allowed to keep is a tax expenditure. In other words, the government owns all wealth, but the government will expend some of its resources so that you can receive some of the benefits of your hard work.
Then my turn to testify arrived. I have no allusions of grandeur here. I was the last person to testify on the last witness panel for the day. I was the little man with the bucket and shovel following the show horses in the parade. By the time they got to me .. by the time I had heard all of this testimony about third party reporting, expanding withholding and tax expenditures, I had thrown away much of my prepared script. I never did work all that well from prepared scripts in the first place.
I told the committee that I didn't speak governmentese very well ... but I could tell them with certainty that if their goal truly was to simplify our tax system and to make it so transparent that virtually any marginally education person could understand it, they weren't going to get there using phrases like "tax expenditures." I told them that under our current tax code not only didn't people understand concepts like tax gaps and third-party reporting, most people didn't even have an idea of how much they made in their jobs ("I take home .......") or how much they paid in taxes ("I didn't have to pay any! I'm getting some back!").
If tax simplification is the goal; if tax transparency is the desired outcome, then there is no better way to arrive there then the FairTax. You spend $100 on an item. You get a sales receipt that says the retailer keeps $77 and $23 goes to the federal government. Who can't understand that? There are no tax expenditures. There is no need for withholding from independent contractors. You don't have to change the currency every five years. You don't have to chase U.S. dollars abroad. You don't need to follow credit card gross receipts. You spend, you're taxed. You don't, you aren't. It's a system anyone can understand.
If you would like to read the actual prepared statement I submitted to the committee ... here's your link!

I bolded the appropriate section. Now, admittedly, the above does attribute the definition of a tax expenditure more along the lines of how you presented it. That not ALL take home pay is necessarily labeled a "tax expenditure", only the take home pay that results from your availing yourself of a tax credit program thats labeled a "tax expenditure".

But this does create a bit of a grey area, in that if a certain portion of MY OWN wealth is labeled as a "tax expenditure", its not too much of a stretch to imagine that, at least some politicians or fiscal experts, may operate under a preconceived notion that all wealth is of public domain. I've not found any particular quotes to support this however, so until I do, I will refrain from pursuing this particular line of reasoning.

[AZhitman]

I wish Howie's mother had been as pro-abortion as he is.

Until he hands his beloved 401k (which he didn't earn, some capitalist did) over to a poor crack whore with 6 babies, he's a hypocrite.

Talk is cheap, Howie - write the check!