Political dueling ground

[DadOf5]

Political dueling ground

I have a little bit of time this morning, so I looked up a few things about taxes.

In 2001 the median adjusted gross income was $28,117. According to the tax schedules found here: http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id...=109877,00.html the average person paid $3,518 in tax, leaving them $24,599 to live on after taxes.

On the high end of the spectrum, someone with an adjusted gross income of $311,950 paid $84,389. Sound like a lot? Well, this leaves them with $227,561 to live on after taxes. Think you could live on this? I know I could! :lol:

The point of all this mathematical wizardry, and to me anything to do with math is wizardry , is that even though it looks like the wealthy are being hit hard on taxes, and they are, they can certainly afford to pay it and still live a comfortable life, enjoying the benefits that go with the high income and still give back to those in need, albeit through government enforced philanthropy!

 

[Unintentional]

Political dueling ground

We don't need to repeal the 16th admendment, just have someone in power with the balls to acknowledge that it was NEVER ratified!! Besides income taxes, so many bad things have occured due to this admendment. Redistribution of wealth. It spawned a huge lobby to represent interests to twist income taxes theier way. It took accountability for welfare from the local level to a national level (i.e. NO ACCOUNTABILITY). I could go on and on and perhaps I will...later.

I propose a national sales tax. This way EVERYONE pays. Absolutely NO DEDUCTIONS, EXEMPTIONS, or ANYTHING! (This will kill the lobby industry.) The shawdow economy that works for cash will finaly have to pony up. Does anyone see what might be wrong with a national sales tax? If you wanted to make sure the rich paid a higher percentage, you could graduate the national sales tax as well. The more expensive an item the higher the NST on it. A jug of milk at $3.00 might be taxed at 4% NST, a $40,000,000 yaht might have a NST of 30%.

Any thoughts?

Time Travel Forum

 

[Judge Bean]

Political dueling ground

As a finale to my series on the Constitution, I posted this on the old site. I think it may be of help here.


Grounds for a General Impeachment

The people are not burdened with the responsibility to specifically accuse elected or appointed officials, or branches of the federal governm?ent, when the offenses against them are of so long a duration, the culpability for them spread unevenly throughout, and of such enormity. Instead, we give grounds for a general impeachment, not being required by law to specify particular ?high crimes and misdemeanors? when individuals are not forced to Congressional trial, but all of the governm?ent and Congress are called out on having together failed to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The elected officials comprising the Executive and Legislative Branch, and the nine Justices of the Supreme C?ourt, having failed to delegate the powers entrusted to them in a manner consistent with the protection and defense of the Constitution, and having failed since at least 1964 to correct or mitigate the effects and consequences of the policies, decisions, and acts under their leadership, are called out in general impeachment to resign their offices in the year 2005, 2007, or 2009 for the reasons that as successors to those offices, or for their own part, among other numerous acts, they

1. Have embarked on military adventures without the consent of the people, costing tens of thousands of lives, and ruining the economy with debt, unproductive spending, and overtaxation;

2. Have rendered the laws subordinate to the profiteering and private interests of numerous parties while the standards of public health and education have steadily declined, and have even waged war overseas for the benefit of such interested parties, at the cost of citizens? lives;

3. Have depleted the power and reputation of the United States by means of its policies and conduct of international policy, compromising the people?s full exercise of diplomatic representation and putting both trade and cultural exchange at risk by exporting fear, threat, arrogance, and ignorance of other peoples in their place;

4. Have amassed an arsenal of doomsday weapons of which even a small fraction of the number can never be used without destroying civilization, and comparable to which no nation on Earth has any but the same fraction, in spite of having no nation or alliance opposed to the general policies and continuing existence of the United States able to launch attack or invasion against it; and has held the lives of the citizens and of all people in the world in fear and forfeit to the plausibility of nuclear attack for decades;

5. Have amassed stockpiles and arsenals of unknown extent and precise character which contain inhuman weapons of chemical and biological agents, likewise without an enemy, and posing a threat to world health, on the basis that such weapons might possibly be used in the future, thus presenting to the world a national character of willingness to use absolute violence against helpless populations;

6. Have undermined and corrupted the Constitution and succeeded in centralizing political and military power in itself contrary to the initial design of the United States govern?ment;

7. Have embezzled and squandered the public funds and betrayed the public trust in the mishandling and waste of tax and investment revenue, at one time permitting the theft of billions of dollars, never recovered, from the treasury, to underwrite the failed Savings and Loan system;

8. Have extended the explicit powers in the Constitution to include by preemption and c?ourt opinion the control of all rivers, ports, harbors, interstate highways, lands of indigenous peoples, and lands in the public trust confiscated without remedy, constituting a majority of open land in some States;

9. Have instituted general policies of secrecy despite the unmistakable call of the public and of the Constitution for revelation, and in some cases violating clear law requiring disclosure, and in any event cutting against the plain intent of the Constitution and its Framers to conduct an open and accessible govern?ment in form and function, thus further undermining the public trust;

10. Have mismanaged the country?s natural resources even while intruding jurisdiction over them contrary to the original intent of the Constitution, and by their environmental and economic policies and acts permitted the extensive ruin of the atmosphere, pollution of the air and water, and destruction of wildlife and their natural habitat throughout the world;

11. Have undermined the ability of the majority of citizens to obtain inexpensive and competent healthcare, including mental health treatment, in apparent collusion with pharmaceutical and medical interests, and to meet the unconscionable expenses of their military, intelligence, and secret projects and programs;

12. Have levied taxes upon the American people in an ever-increasing severity, making the value of one?s labor to the govern?ment nearly the equal of its value to himself, in sharp contradiction to the intent of the Framers that each citizen should be protected in his enjoyment of property as an aspect of his liberty;

13. Have extended administrative powers of the Executive Branch into law enforcement nationwide, into the summary collection of onerous taxes without review or remedy, and into the control generally of the national economy, education, and law enforcement, among others, violating the Constitutional directives of Separation of Powers and Rights Reserved to the States and People;

14. Have by Supreme C?ourt opinion diluted and weakened Constitutional guarantees of rights, instead of expanding the recognized scope of such rights, and aided in the violation of Separation of Powers and Rights Reserved, as above, by honoring the arbitrary and capricious expansion of the Executive War Powers; and have failed to interpose a judicial review system to avert the majority of Constitutional questions having been neglected on writs of certiorari;

15. Have encouraged and sponsored partisanship of the judiciary, and subjected candidates for the courts of the United States to the mutable demands of inconsistent politics; and

16. Have permitted the pervasive influence of corporate interests to direct the affairs of Congress and the presidency, and to participate in the drafting and execution of regulations in all departments, and in the policies and acts of govern?ment overall.





--------------------

Paul J. Lyon

 

[Anoah]

Political dueling ground

We don't need to repeal the 16th admendment, just have someone in power with the balls to acknowledge that it was NEVER ratified!! Besides income taxes, so many bad things have occured due to this admendment. Redistribution of wealth. It spawned a huge lobby to represent interests to twist income taxes theier way. It took accountability for welfare from the local level to a national level (i.e. NO ACCOUNTABILITY). I could go on and on and perhaps I will...later.

I propose a national sales tax. This way EVERYONE pays. Absolutely NO DEDUCTIONS, EXEMPTIONS, or ANYTHING! (This will kill the lobby industry.) The shawdow economy that works for cash will finaly have to pony up. Does anyone see what might be wrong with a national sales tax? If you wanted to make sure the rich paid a higher percentage, you could graduate the national sales tax as well. The more expensive an item the higher the NST on it. A jug of milk at $3.00 might be taxed at 4% NST, a $40,000,000 yaht might have a NST of 30%.

Any thoughts?

I think that's a lot more fair than anything we have currently.

 

[Cornelia]

Political dueling ground

smuda,
good idea. And... we have it, in EU! :lol: When you buy something, you pay a 20% tax. Some things have a lower tax, like books (4%), food, and more I don't remember. So, we have sales taxes AND income taxes! Nice, huh? :blink:
Your idea is good, but sales taxes are not enough to support free healthcare and free education. But maybe in USA it could work, if you don't mind about welfare and so on.

Anoah,
you often talk of "sponges". In my country we have no "sponges", because we don't give cheques to jobless people. There's no people living on public money. If you work, ok, if you don't, then you're on your own. But you still have the right to get free healthcare and schools, and this is very good in my opinion.

 

[Anoah]

Political dueling ground

Interesting...so there is no unemployment benefit?

 

[Unintentional]

Political dueling ground

Originally posted by Cornelia@Jun 24 2004, 10:57 PM
smuda,
good idea. And... we have it, in EU! ?:lol: When you buy something, you pay a 20% tax. Some things have a lower tax, like books (4%), food, and more I don't remember. So, we have sales taxes AND income taxes! Nice, huh? :blink:
Your idea is good, but sales taxes are not enough to support free healthcare and free education. But maybe in USA it could work, if you don't mind about welfare and so on.

But we DO have free health care in the US. If you are sick, you can go to any emergency room in the USA and by law they have to treat you. You don't have to pay, but they will try to collect. You can do this your whole life and they CAN'T turn you away...ever. If you need something that needs planned like surgury, you have to pay or you are out of luck. But the poor have medicaid which is free health insurance. The only people in the USA who don't have health care are those people who make too much for free medicaid and either can't afford health insurance or choose not to buy any.

If the US went to national health care, it would not benifit the poor. The only people who would benifit would those in the middle who are too rich for medicare but either can't afford it or choose not to buy it. The people who would pay for this is those who pay taxes, ie the guys in the middle. If they don't have health insurance because they cant' afford, they are gonna be forced to pay for it anyways via taxes. Granted it would be less because it would be subsidized by those even richer who pay even more taxes anyways, but even the people in the middle who would benifit the most are against national health care because I think they hope someday to be able to afford it themselves someday.

It's realy kinda strange when you think about it.

Time Travel Forum

 

[Cornelia]

Political dueling ground

smuda,
free healthcare benefits everybody. My mother is not poor, but she got a transplant from the BEST doctor in his field (world famous), in the BEST hospital for her disease, and all this for free. My sister talked online with some people in USA with the same disease, and they say they can't have a transplant because it would cost $ 200.000. My parents would be forced to sell the house if in USA.
Sometimes I think that those people are likely already dead, while my mother is still alive.

When it comes on big diseases or elders, and not emergency accidents, free healthcare is something sacred to me. Big diseases are very expensive and many insurances don't cover them, unless you're rich and can afford a ? 10.000 per year insurance.

Anoah,
yes, there's no unemployement benefit (thanks for the english words! ) Only sometimes, for huge companies, when they fire a lot of people the govt support them for six months.
But if you think of it deeply, it's not that intelligent. I mean: let's face it, in the modern world there are NO jobs for everybody. No way. Unfortunately, an 8-10% of jobless people is phisiologic.
What will those people do, lazy or fathers? Desperation, or... joining the gangsters? We have that problem, expecially in the South of the country: jobless youngs go criminal. And I think this people cost more than a simple ? 500 per month to the country... If they'd get a check, maybe they wouldn't go criminal to be safe with the check.
Jobless people are a problem, benefits or not. And you can't simply tell them: go find a job. There are no jobs for everybody.

 

[Unintentional]

Political dueling ground

There is an excellent comparison on the WSJ

6/18/04 editorial page.

I'll quote a little of it:

"The study was done be Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag for a Sedish think tank Timbro.

Only the tiny country of Luxembourg could rival the richest of the 50 American states in GDP per capita. Most European countries are way below. The GDP per capita was a whopping 32% higher in the US. Higher GDP allows the average American to spend about $9,700 more per year!

What about equality? The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has dropped to 12% from 22% since 1959. In 1999, 25% of American households were considered "low income" - less than $25,000/yr. In Sweden 40% of the household are considered low income.

In the US 45.9% of the "poor" own their own homes, 72% have a car, and 77% have air conditioning (A/C still a luxury in Europe). The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 sq ft. The average space for all Eurpoean households (not just the poor) is 1000 sq ft!!!

The percapita GDP of Arkansas is 99 - in Germany it's 100.

I don't mean to ruffle any feathers. I am not completely "American is better than everyone else" attitude. Just stating the facts. Why do you think America is so rich? You can't just say slavery because slavery has occured in almost every country and we were one the first countries to ban african slaves. Another question is why do you think so many other countries are less well off than AMerica? It lends weight to the arguement that we should not model any of our social systems off of any other country.

 

[Unintentional]

Political dueling ground

The other day Rush Limbaugh commented about how the word "terrorist" has been replaced in the media by "militant".

I have posted how I am against this softening of the naming of people who would kill innocent people unprovoked.

Rush said he was all for the change. He sees it as a stepping stone to the untimate destination of labeling "terrorist" as to what they really are: "islamic extremist". He further said this war on terror hasn't even started. Once we label the enemy with their true name, "islamic extremist", then the war will really start. This is not a war againt terror, it is a war again "islamic extremist" and once everyone realises this then they can finally be fought correctly.