Taxes!

[circmand]

I'm always a little suspicous of someone who tells me to "do some research" while providing no references, links, or numbers that weren't pulled out of their butt, heh. So:

http://www.photius.com/rankings/tax_...anks_2009.html
Demonstarting USA is ranked 48 out of 65 assessed countries in overall tax burden (not limited to just income tax!) Nearly all other OECD, especially the first worlders, have a greater tax burden, and few of them are attempting to, how can I put this neutrally, do what we do with our military.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...veloped-world/
Tax revnue as a percentage of GDP

http://www.forbes.com/global/2006/0522/032a.html
Another tax burden assessment, but this one using 2004 data, which is not too far off since Bush II tax cuts came into effect in 2001 and 2003.

So yeah, I think our revenue stream compared to the rest of the developed world is lighter. So how about that tax burden compared to other decades? I have mostly 2010 data, so we shall see how 2011 and the sloooooww recovery impacts them, but for now the numbers are pretty convincing regarding our low tax burden:

US tax burden lowest in 60 years as a percentage of GDP, coming from Bruce Bartlett, Reagan and Bush I economist:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...s-high-or-low/

Again, US tax burden lowest point in 60 years, including National, State, and Local taxes:
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/201...4091273594893/

Tax burden as share of national income lowest since 1966:
http://innovationandgrowth.wordpress...t-40-year-low/
That link has the added advantage of showing a table further down that illustrates how much higher the true tax burden would need to be to pay for the deficit. Looks like around 12% to me.

Another lowest in decades:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/...10-taxes_N.htm


So yeah, circ, I took your advice, and did some research.

I did error I should have written Government spending not taxes. Because we all know that overspending is just taxes that need to be collected to pay the debt.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/...ury_chart.html

[Marlin]

I think this boils down to some simple concepts. We have more government programs and government oversight than ever before. Our solution to fix the problems is to add more government programs and more oversight. We have more taxes than anywhere in the world. As the original post insinuates, we have a tax on everything. If there isn't a bonafide tax, there is a fee instead.
Get rid of all the stupid programs. Let people make their own bed. Life was never designed to be fair. If you don't like where you are, do something about it. If we are saying that its the children of the poor that are the issue, thats an easy fix, stop giving the poor incentive to have kids. Instead offer them money to not have kids, it would save a fortune.

When I used to play paintball, I know for a fact that I tried much harder when I played in t-shirt and shorts than when I played with pads and pants. It hurt like a SOB to get hit with just a tshirt on. I paid a lot more attention to my hiding spots and thought out what I was going to do next. When I was in pads, it was "he who lays down the most paint wins" balls to the wall firefight. No strategy, no worries. There were no repercussions when I wore pads, if I got hit, I just had to sit out for a few mintues until the next round began. At this point with all the social "safety nets", we have removed any repercussions of failure to plan. Do we need food stamps and welfare, sure, but it should be for 12 weeks or some finite period of time. In order to receiv benefits, you have a mando drug test, while you are receiving benefits, you go to work. Roadside cleanup in the AM, job search in the PM. Mow public lawns and the like. There is always something you can do. After your 12 weeks, you hit the road.
My father owns a factory in Ohio. He actually has a few employees that he pays minimum wage to not come to work. In a factory, when one guy is 20 minutes late, its like all 40 of them are late 20 minutes. Ohio is a right to work state, meaning he can't fire them for being late. They have all kinds of rules before you can fire an employee. They can be late up to 20 minutes with no excuse and no repercussions. If he fires them, he has to pay their unemployment insurance, which costs more than minimum wage. He is screwed.
Those minumum wage deadbeats that he is paying are probably collecting foodstamps as well. I have to wonder how many scams like that are played out across the country?

[Osteomata]

I only want to address two points, because the military compensation issue is a rabbit whole upon which we will never agree. So, two points:

[COLOR="red"]So regardless of the facts, you are going to ignore them and live life as ignorance is bliss? The issue has nothing to do with color, but 100% to do with culutre. You can give them all the money and special programs you want, but until you address their personal culture, which as a society we so enthusiastically embrace, it will keep happening. I have ants in my garage, they were getting into my dog's food. I took away the dog food, the ants went away.

This is particularly instructive and points to exactly what I am saying about not viewing with total disgust those less fortunate. If your comparison is with animals and bugs, that says a lot about your entering attitude with regard to the poor. My point as to race and ethnic breakdown is that the problems and challenges of the bottom income brackets, particularly the poverty stricken, transcend those particular categories, and worrying excessively about what percentage happen to be latino is less then helpful. Grinding poverty may indeed by accerabted by culture failures and norms, but those same failure are present in Appalachia as well as Harlem. If I roll my eyes at your primary issue, which seems to be pointing out the ethnic breakdowns, its not "living in ignorant bliss" so much as believing that the racial breakdown numbers aren't particularly instructive.

You know what I mean, I notice you left out smoking/drinking/drugs. At 50 bucks a carton, or 20 bucks a bottle and so on. Incredibly expensive. I was just using those as non-neccessities that have somehow become entitlements, like cable or high speed internet.

I left those out because I have no idea what percentage smoke, drink, or use drugs. I was unwilling to make gross generalizations. I am betting that they don't spend $20 a bottle though.

[RickOKC]

On a general note, I'm going to be a father for the second time this Saturday if everything goes to plan.

Hey, early CONGRATULATIONS!!!

[Marlin]

I only want to address two points, because the military compensation issue is a rabbit whole upon which we will never agree. So, two points:


This is particularly instructive and points to exactly what I am saying about not viewing with total disgust those less fortunate. If your comparison is with animals and bugs, that says a lot about your entering attitude with regard to the poor. My point as to race and ethnic breakdown is that the problems and challenges of the bottom income brackets, particularly the poverty stricken, transcend those particular categories, and worrying excessively about what percentage happen to be latino is less then helpful. Grinding poverty may indeed by accerabted by culture failures and norms, but those same failure are present in Appalachia as well as Harlem. If I roll my eyes at your primary issue, which seems to be pointing out the ethnic breakdowns, its not "living in ignorant bliss" so much as believing that the racial breakdown numbers aren't particularly instructive.



I left those out because I have no idea what percentage smoke, drink, or use drugs. I was unwilling to make gross generalizations. I am betting that they don't spend $20 a bottle though.

I did use the bugs and animals concept on purpose. The driving dynamic behind the process is the same. Poeple and animals are very much the same at a base level, especially when it comes to survival. If you offer people something, such as foodstamps and welfare and so on, in exchange for doing nothing, then that is what they will do. The ants found a way to get free food and expend a minimal amount of effort. I took away the easy to get free food, the ants had to go find their food elsewhere. Its not like the majority were going from 6 figures to 15k in welfare. Those folks will work their *** off to gain their previous life style back and this is a temporary setback. The generational poor have always been poor and are therefore ok with always being poor. To say its not driven by ethnic triggers is ignoring a completely related cause for the sake of PC is ridiculous, the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. We have to change their culture, wait the generation or two for the old to die off, and voila, everyone is happy! Ignoring the cultural shortcomings is going to result in the same poverty statistics for generations to come.

As for the 20 bucks a bottle, you're probably right, but if they are buying the Mccormicks at 4 bucks a bottle, they are probably not just drinking on Friday night and are still spending some bucks per week.

As for smokes, this is from Minnesota, so take it as just that:

"Seifert said the welfare recipients who use tobacco -- up to 40 percent of them, at a cost of at least $1,200 a year for a pack-a-day smoker -- could be offered cessation programs through the private Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco."

Here is a recent one from Arkansas:
"According to ATR, “55 percent of smokers are 'working poor,' and one in four smokers lives below the poverty line.” Additionally, on average, smokers, whose median income is a little more than $36,000, make about 30 percent less than non-smokers.”"

Smoking seems to be more prevalent in the poor communities. Be it education or social culture, I have no idea. The can read the warnings on the pack just as well as I can. I quit smoking 10 years ago when I did my budget for when I got married. I was spending 50 bucks a month on smokes. I know smokes are way more expensive now, that is a chunk of change. A carton here in SC is 50 bucks. 100-150 bucks a month, thats half the rent in a crappy apartment. That would pay for my groceries if I went bare bones and so on.

[Ebenezr]

[Ebenezr]

Taxes

By Edgar A. Guest

When they become due I don't like them at all.
Taxes look large be they ever so small
Taxes are debts which I venture to say,
No man or no woman is happy to pay.
I grumble about them, as most of us do.
For it seems that with taxes I never am through.

But when I reflect on the city I love,
With its sewers below and its pavements above,
And its schools and its parks where children may play,
I can see what I get for the money I pay,
And I say to myself: "Little joy would we know
If we kept all our money and spent it alone".

I couldn't build streets and I couldn't fight fire.
Policemen to guard us I never could hire.
A water department I couldn't maintain.
Instead of a city we'd still have a plain.
Then I look at the bill for the taxes they charge,
And I say to myself: "Well, that isn't so large".

I walk through a hospital thronged with the ill
And I find that it shrivels the size of my bill.
As in beauty and splendor my home city grows,
It is easy to see where my tax money goes.
And I say to myself: "If we lived hit and miss
And gave up our taxes, we couldn't do this".

[Osteomata]

I understand your incentive/disinsentive based argument, I just don't think its true because the data does not support it. It sounds good but doesn't actually play out in real life. With a more robust welfare system developing since the later 1930s, we have not seen an increase in the poverty rate, but rather a significant drop from the 1940s-1970, and it has held roughly steady at 14% since then, although the current recession has caused an upward trend. What I think we get from these various programs is a lack of starvation, mass malnutrition, gross illiteracy, and epidemics that your proposed solution would generate. You would get your two generation die off alright, just not in the way you mean.

I did use the bugs and animals concept on purpose. The driving dynamic behind the process is the same. Poeple and animals are very much the same at a base level, especially when it comes to survival. If you offer people something, such as foodstamps and welfare and so on, in exchange for doing nothing, then that is what they will do. The ants found a way to get free food and expend a minimal amount of effort. I took away the easy to get free food, the ants had to go find their food elsewhere. Its not like the majority were going from 6 figures to 15k in welfare. Those folks will work their *** off to gain their previous life style back and this is a temporary setback. The generational poor have always been poor and are therefore ok with always being poor. To say its not driven by ethnic triggers is ignoring a completely related cause for the sake of PC is ridiculous, the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. We have to change their culture, wait the generation or two for the old to die off, and voila, everyone is happy! Ignoring the cultural shortcomings is going to result in the same poverty statistics for generations to come.

As for the 20 bucks a bottle, you're probably right, but if they are buying the Mccormicks at 4 bucks a bottle, they are probably not just drinking on Friday night and are still spending some bucks per week.

As for smokes, this is from Minnesota, so take it as just that:

"Seifert said the welfare recipients who use tobacco -- up to 40 percent of them, at a cost of at least $1,200 a year for a pack-a-day smoker -- could be offered cessation programs through the private Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco."

Here is a recent one from Arkansas:
"According to ATR, ?55 percent of smokers are 'working poor,' and one in four smokers lives below the poverty line.? Additionally, on average, smokers, whose median income is a little more than $36,000, make about 30 percent less than non-smokers.?"

Smoking seems to be more prevalent in the poor communities. Be it education or social culture, I have no idea. The can read the warnings on the pack just as well as I can. I quit smoking 10 years ago when I did my budget for when I got married. I was spending 50 bucks a month on smokes. I know smokes are way more expensive now, that is a chunk of change. A carton here in SC is 50 bucks. 100-150 bucks a month, thats half the rent in a crappy apartment. That would pay for my groceries if I went bare bones and so on.

[Ebenezr]

INSTALLING COMMON SENSE IN WASHINGTON.....
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Install delayed....please wait.
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[Marlin]

INSTALLING COMMON SENSE IN WASHINGTON.....
????????????????????????????? 44% DONE.
Install delayed....please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again.
404 error: COMMON SENSE IN WASHINGTON not found

Thats because it wasn't an apple processor.

[Marlin]

I understand your incentive/disinsentive based argument, I just don't think its true because the data does not support it. It sounds good but doesn't actually play out in real life. With a more robust welfare system developing since the later 1930s, we have not seen an increase in the poverty rate, but rather a significant drop from the 1940s-1970, and it has held roughly steady at 14% since then, although the current recession has caused an upward trend. What I think we get from these various programs is a lack of starvation, mass malnutrition, gross illiteracy, and epidemics that your proposed solution would generate. You would get your two generation die off alright, just not in the way you mean.

So we are stuck. We know the current system doesn't work, as evident by our current situation and the fact they are breeding their way to the top via numbers. My way is probably too callous and may result in many deaths.

So, what do we do now? I thought my short term assistance was fair. No lifers allowed. When I went out to Moab, I stayed a night in Salt Lake with a buddy's parents. His family were of course Mormon. They have some interesting practices. His dad was a roofer, fell off a roof and was injured. Rather than collect workman's comp and whatnot, his church pays his bills and helps him out. In exchange, he works out the church doing what he can. He does paperwork, cleans, helps with their lineage research and so on.
Once he was back on his feet, he began paying back that debt via a direct tithe. Makes sense to me.
Why can't our system work like that? Oh wait, thats because there is no exchange for their assistance. They do absolutely nothing for it!!!! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. I don't get it. If it doesn't cost anything, then it has no value to them. Why don't they have to do menial labor?! How about we chase illegals off and use prisoners and aid receivers? Bingo, farms get low wage workers, its not "unfair" because they receive a salary. They would hate their job, and therefore do anything they could to get out of it!

I am sure there are all kinds of pitfalls and its a violation of the civil rights to receive aid in exchange for work. The drug test would be an invasion of their privacy and all. (No one makes you go on welfare, I do drug tests all the time, my friends that work at Dupont do them monthly)

Let the US default, let the revolution begin, there will be some hard times for sure, but in the end it will be better for the nation.

[Ldub]

But I'd like to know why...

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

[Osteomata]

Why are we stuck? I don't think the current system is particularly broken. In exchange for moderate assistance, we preclude a significant chunk of our society from ending up in prisons (expensive), diseased (dangerous to the herd) or further destabilizing our country do to rampant illiterate unhealthy starving mobs. it also provides quite a number of people the opportunity to get back in teh game rather than end up in an every spiraling cycle towards grinding poverty. The flaws in our social safety net system, which by industrialized world standards is pretty conservative, is not these limited cost provisions that worry you so, but rather the structural aspects of the three big ones (Medicare, Medicaid, SS). Food programs and dozens of other lower scale programs make us all a bit safer and our nation more stable.

And as a minor recommendation for your future discussions with people more sensitive than me: it just sounds a little odd to refer to them as "breeding" their way to the top." Its that whole animal thing again. Take it or leave it. Besides, if minority representation in our country has been growing steadily, and yet the poverty threshold has held steady, does this not refute your assertion that these breeding minorities are endangering our future?

As for just hoping that churches and what not will take over that responsibility: nothing is stopping them now! Nothing Nothing Nothing, as you would say. Government programs do not exclude the participation of churches and the religious in charity work outside of a few very narrow and socially contentious areas like adoption agencies. What we know from the historical record is that exclusive church/philanthropic based charity is grossly insufficient and unevenly applied, to say the least. Besides, for every anecdote you can provide about the white guy in Moab, do you think I can't come up with an equally compelling story of a black guy in Baltimore or Hispanic guy in Miami that got himself back on his feet, or was able to transition out of poverty to college, first in his family etc etc due to a gov program? Anecdote anecdote anecdote. Which is not evidence.

Every single program that is in any way broad and semi-comprehensive will have cheaters and various levels of abuse or inefficiency, but the presence of such issues does not mean the program as a whole is wrong or a net negative impact on our country, particularly given the alternatives.

Immigration is a hole nother issue and would only further derail us for sure. But for the drug testing thing: for someone so distrustful of government programs, you seem might quick to render yet another intrusive power to the State. No way that would be abused heh? No way it would steadily spread beyond a few select aid programs, all in the name of "won't someone think of the children" or "terrorism" or the "war on drugs" or whatever, into ever broadening, unevenly applied, deeply abused authority by multiple levels of government.

So we are stuck. We know the current system doesn't work, as evident by our current situation and the fact they are breeding their way to the top via numbers. My way is probably too callous and may result in many deaths.

So, what do we do now? I thought my short term assistance was fair. No lifers allowed. When I went out to Moab, I stayed a night in Salt Lake with a buddy's parents. His family were of course Mormon. They have some interesting practices. His dad was a roofer, fell off a roof and was injured. Rather than collect workman's comp and whatnot, his church pays his bills and helps him out. In exchange, he works out the church doing what he can. He does paperwork, cleans, helps with their lineage research and so on.
Once he was back on his feet, he began paying back that debt via a direct tithe. Makes sense to me.
Why can't our system work like that? Oh wait, thats because there is no exchange for their assistance. They do absolutely nothing for it!!!! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. I don't get it. If it doesn't cost anything, then it has no value to them. Why don't they have to do menial labor?! How about we chase illegals off and use prisoners and aid receivers? Bingo, farms get low wage workers, its not "unfair" because they receive a salary. They would hate their job, and therefore do anything they could to get out of it!

I am sure there are all kinds of pitfalls and its a violation of the civil rights to receive aid in exchange for work. The drug test would be an invasion of their privacy and all. (No one makes you go on welfare, I do drug tests all the time, my friends that work at Dupont do them monthly)

Let the US default, let the revolution begin, there will be some hard times for sure, but in the end it will be better for the nation.

[Osteomata]

It is a fair question, and I am not particularly hard over on the issue, nor especially well versed in the argument. Three things spring to mind, let me run them up the flag pole:
1. The majority of the high paying jobs you are referring to are in the corporate/private sector. I think it is one thing to enter into voluntary contract with an employer in which they pay you hefty salary in exchange for standards of conduct of all types, and quite another to cede to the State yet another power over personal privacy and actions for an ever widening sector of the populace.
2. Food stamps versus a high paying job? No contest. Lots and lots and lots of people would trade the first in favor of the second.
3. Given that these programs dramatically impact the children of the poor to an even greater degree than the adults, are you not simply stigmatizing poverty rather than merely government assistance?

But I would like to know

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

[Osteomata]

I've been thinking this one over some more Ldub, and I guess what surprises is me is the vehemence and apparent anger over the issue of providing a minimum subsistence for those in poverty. Do those not in it think it fun or something? I am being intentionally rhetorical, but still, seriously? Living ****ty lives and counting dimes and being in an unsafe neighborhood and barely able to provide for your kids and you depend on some aid from the state and now some petty authoritarian bureaucrat says you have to pee in a cup every month, for which you now have to get a babysitter and take the bus down town etc etc etc. Are we as a nation really that angry and disdainful of them? But hell why stop there. Why not urine tests for SS, medicare, school lunch programs, work assistance programs and all of them? Heck we can set up a hole new government agency to monitor and enforce it. And as has been pointed out, those dang poor people have the gall to smoke too, so might as well test for nicotine while were at it. Don't give me any of that nonsense about "well cigarettes aren't illegal" because some of you can surely name restrictions on otherwise legal activity that your well paying job puts on you. Soon as I can figure out how to test for alcohol use beyond about a day we need to add that too. I guess I am just trying to say that reasonable people can disagree about the best way to set up and too what extant or scope we should have any number of programs, but there is really no need to be pissed off at the majority of the recipients and their families, it just doesn't become us as a nation.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/