The divide in this country is growing, and is alarming

[n_huffhines]

I agree with most of your points, however, if we are going to tackle the deficit, everything has to be tabled and the Bush tax cuts seem to be doing nothing productive for the economy, so they need to be smashed. I know it's harsh to ask the wealthiest 1% to sacrifice, but something has to give.

Any financial wizards have an approximation as to the amount we are giving to the top 1% in yearly tax breaks under the current administration?

That's actually in dispute. You can't really say whether or not they worked. One issue with tax cuts that people don't understand is that they have to be long term in order to serve their purpose. The whole point is to allow producers to keep more of their money so they reinvest in our economy. If they feel like the tax cuts are temporary and that the US isn't a good long-term environment for reinvestment than the tax cuts will have less impact in stimulating the economy.

Obama waffled back and forth over his tax cuts and they will probably provide little stimulus. Business owners are doing him like they did FDR.

 

[therealUT]

Wealth stratification in the US? No...oh, wait, is this what happens when their is a high minimum wage, high corporate income taxes, and a lot of red tape surrounding domestic industry?

The seeds were sewn for this long, long ago.
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[volinbham]

The Bush tax cuts were sold on the notion that they would create jobs.

They haven't.

Heard on Bloomberg this morning that a lot of people, including Bill Clinton, is proposing a repatriation of massive U.S. corporate profits being held overseas to avoid taxation. Apparently over a trillion dollars in corporate profit is being kept out of the country to avoid paying taxes.

The plan is to give a one year tax holiday on such monies, to encourage return of it to the U.S. and to possibly condition some portion on reinvestment that can demonstrably be linked to job creation.

This sounds like a good idea, but it should tell you something that U.S. corporations could even have done this in the first place. Through loopholes and dodges -- which by the way they created through lobbying -- massive amounts of money are being held just out of the reach of the IRS.

That GE paid no taxes at all, and that folks making billions manage to manipulate things to pay lower rates than their secretaries, tells me all I need to know about how tilted the system has become.

Wait, more tax breaks for evil corporations? I can't believe you are advocating that.

By the way, R's have been arguing for repatriation for quite a while. Now that Clinton is onboard you think it makes sense?

 

[Tenacious D]

Lack of education, lack of opportunity to enter the system of making money off of business interests, whether direct or through stock or asset ownership.

A tax system manipulated to tax the poor and middle class and to encourage the flight of capital overseas, the hiding of income, etc.

I remember a number of years ago living in West Palm and a controversy erupted when several of the wealthiest people in the world, with mansions in Palm Beach, were buying art from the auction houses in New York or London and having it delivered elsewhere in order to avoid sales taxes usually running into the range of a hundred thousand dollars or so.

Imagine that -- a single purchase where the sales tax is almost 20 times the entire wealth of the median black family, avoided.

Do you not see something wrong with that?

No.

Don't like the laws which allow them to do it (they're "wrong")? There is a straight-forward and well-known path toward their amendment. Exercise it.

Pretty simple, really.
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[PoochPunt3rdDown]

That's actually in dispute. You can't really say whether or not they worked. One issue with tax cuts that people don't understand is that they have to be long term in order to serve their purpose. The whole point is to allow producers to keep more of their money so they reinvest in our economy. If they feel like the tax cuts are temporary and that the US isn't a good long-term environment for reinvestment than the tax cuts will have less impact in stimulating the economy.

Obama waffled back and forth over his tax cuts and they will probably provide little stimulus. Business owners are doing him like they did FDR.

OK, so what is "long term"? The BUSH tax cuts didn't happen recently, obviously.

 

[droski]

the article LG was quoting:

For all groups, home ownership is the biggest contributor to net worth. The surge in home prices early in the past decade was accompanied by a historic increase in home-ownership rate, to 69% in 2009 from 64% in 2004. But plummeting house values then became the biggest cause of the erosion in household wealth, the study found.

The price drop had a more detrimental impact on minorities than on whites: Hispanics and blacks derive more than half of their net worth from home equity, whereas it accounts for 44% of a white household's net worth.
White-Minority Wealth Gulf Widens - WSJ.com

Damn those racists that caused the housing bubble!

 

[MystifyingVol]

...snip...

I happened to have the pleasure of meeting and speaking at length with a civil rights leader last week and the discussion was very interesting. His answers probably aren't what you'd anticipate.

...snip...

Please elaborate and share, thanks!

 

[droski]

The Bush tax cuts were sold on the notion that they would create jobs.

They haven't.

Heard on Bloomberg this morning that a lot of people, including Bill Clinton, is proposing a repatriation of massive U.S. corporate profits being held overseas to avoid taxation. Apparently over a trillion dollars in corporate profit is being kept out of the country to avoid paying taxes.

The plan is to give a one year tax holiday on such monies, to encourage return of it to the U.S. and to possibly condition some portion on reinvestment that can demonstrably be linked to job creation.

This sounds like a good idea, but it should tell you something that U.S. corporations could even have done this in the first place. Through loopholes and dodges -- which by the way they created through lobbying -- massive amounts of money are being held just out of the reach of the IRS.

That GE paid no taxes at all, and that folks making billions manage to manipulate things to pay lower rates than their secretaries, tells me all I need to know about how tilted the system has become.

wait so if taxes are too low for corporations here why are they going overseas to pay less in taxes? does not compute.

as for GE they have a thing called a tax loss carry foward. google it. and the only reason why they are still around and can claim that tax cut is because of your boy obama giving them hundreds of billions of free money that he didn't give anyone else without asking for 80% of the company.

 

[volinbham]

I know I'm being simplistic, but how are the tax breaks promoting job growth?

1) each additional unit of revenue yields a greater final return thus serving as a bigger incentive to earn more.

2) more economic activity (see above) has a multiplier effect.

Obviously there are diminishing returns but this is the general mechanism.

The alternative is that more revenues to the government will be SPENT which also has a multiplier effect. However, in this case the argument is that additional revenue will not be spent (deficit reduction) so it basically takes money out of the economy and there is no multiplier effect.

The positive could be in reducing interest rates but honestly they can't be much lower. If we eventually went to surplus it would lower interest costs for the government so the revenues could be more productive but that's fairy-tale land given our current situation.

 

[VolsNSkinsFan]

I know I'm being simplistic, but how are the tax breaks promoting job growth?

b/c if I make $1 Million a year in my business and say I get a $100K tax break, I am going to use that $100K to hire someone, give them a machine to work on and next year I will make $1.2 Million.

 

[KB5252]

Where is an iota of proof that shifting more taxes away from white families (median wealth $113,000) and to black families (median wealth $6,000), is going to help the black families?

You are reframing the the point here. What the poster you replied to was saying was that years of liberal policies directed at minorities and lower income Americans in general seem to have had a negative effect. If they believe that to be the case wouldn't seeking other alternatives be prudent?

You are using rhetoric directly from the liberal playbook concerning the taxes wealthy pay and it is rather disengenious. You know as well as anybody that the wealthy already pay the lion shareof taxes in this country, it isn't even debatable.

 

[volinbham]

OK, so what is "long term"? The BUSH tax cuts didn't happen recently, obviously.

The effect may be done with.

However, raising the tax rate would pull us back from where we are now - at least that's what the work of many economists (including Roemer) suggests.

 

[PoochPunt3rdDown]

b/c if I make $1 Million a year in my business and say I get a $100K tax break, I am going to use that $100K to hire someone, give them a machine to work on and next year I will make $1.2 Million.

In theory yes, but is this happening in actuality? It seems, from my personal experience, that the only company hiring is McDonalds.

 

[lawgator1]

the article LG was quoting:

For all groups, home ownership is the biggest contributor to net worth. The surge in home prices early in the past decade was accompanied by a historic increase in home-ownership rate, to 69% in 2009 from 64% in 2004. But plummeting house values then became the biggest cause of the erosion in household wealth, the study found.

The price drop had a more detrimental impact on minorities than on whites: Hispanics and blacks derive more than half of their net worth from home equity, whereas it accounts for 44% of a white household's net worth.
White-Minority Wealth Gulf Widens - WSJ.com

Damn those racists that caused the housing bubble!

I don't think anyone created the bubble out of racist points of view. And I don't think that accumulating wealth has a racist purpose.

But,

1) The reality is that white households benefited from their ownership of stocks and corporate interests flowing from the financial markets, while black and Hispanic households largely benefited from the direct ownership of homes. When the housing market tanked, both got hurt. But the homeowners got hurt more. (See the Pew Research page for a discussion of this.)

2) Regardless of the lack of racial motivation in the accumulation of wealth in the first instance, there is most definitely an appeal to racial stereotypes and categorizing when it comes to taxation and spending. The characterization of the problem as being that black people don't work hard enough and don't pay taxes, versus being that the raw opportunity for black participation in corporate or business participation is too low, well, that's where the debate should be imo.

 

[lawgator1]

You are reframing the the point here. What the poster you replied to was saying was that years of liberal policies directed at minorities and lower income Americans in general seem to have had a negative effect. If they believe that to be the case wouldn't seeking other alternatives be prudent?

You are using rhetoric directly from the liberal playbook concerning the taxes wealthy pay and it is rather disengenious. You know as well as anybody that the wealthy already pay the lion shareof taxes in this country, it isn't even debatable.

You don't think that racial minorities, on the whole, are better off now than they would have been but for the efforts of the 1960s and 70s?

 

[droski]

OK, so what is "long term"? The BUSH tax cuts didn't happen recently, obviously.

true but the bush tax cuts did not happen in a vacume. we had 9/11, housing crisis, and the dot com collapse.

 

[PoochPunt3rdDown]

How about everyone on here who is rich goes and hires someone today, then! :rock:

Can we do this people? Do it for America!

 

[Tenacious D]

How exactly are we going to lower the deficit without raising revenues?

In atypical liberal fashion:

1. Wish things weren't this way. When that fails,

2. Hope things weren't this way. When that fails,

3. Label it racist / sexist / elitist / etc.

4. Have some know-nothing celebrity decry it

5. Stage a boisterous, yet entirely ineffective, public rally or Internet campaign

6. Urge the usurping or subduing of the standing rule / law / code as a (laughable) means of "moral dissenting" from it's many "evils" - until such is changed more to their liking - and then (remarkably, with a straight face) demand an exacting, unwavering and universal adherence to it.

7. Then, tax the shiz out of it. Then, tax it again. And then some more.

8. Find the next nonsensically naive "cause" to champion.

9. Rinse. Repeat, ad nauseum. And then tax that, too.
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[volinbham]

In theory yes, but is this happening in actuality? It seems, from my personal experience, that the only company hiring is McDonalds.

Isn't it theory that raising the tax rate on the wealthiest 1% will reduce the deficit?

Bottomline, economic theory is pretty clear that tax rate increases have a negative impact on economic growth. Revenues are a function of tax rate and economic activity. The real question is which effect is stronger? Will a reduction in economic activity be offset by the increase in tax rate or vice versa?

 

[n_huffhines]

OK, so what is "long term"? The BUSH tax cuts didn't happen recently, obviously.

"Long term" is in the eye of the beholder (the producer). Bush era tax cuts have been going a while. They probably did provide stimulus but in the face of dire conditions in the economy. The reason you can't really nail down how much impact the Bush tax cuts had is because we don't know how much worse off we'd be without them.

 

[droski]

I don't think anyone created the bubble out of racist points of view. And I don't think that accumulating wealth has a racist purpose.

But,

1) The reality is that white households benefited from their ownership of stocks and corporate interests flowing from the financial markets, while black and Hispanic households largely benefited from the direct ownership of homes. When the housing market tanked, both got hurt. But the homeowners got hurt more. (See the Pew Research page for a discussion of this.)

2) Regardless of the lack of racial motivation in the accumulation of wealth in the first instance, there is most definitely an appeal to racial stereotypes and categorizing when it comes to taxation and spending. The characterization of the problem as being that black people don't work hard enough and don't pay taxes, versus being that the raw opportunity for black participation in corporate or business participation is too low, well, that's where the debate should be imo.

why is this exactly? because poor people shouldn't have been buying homes in the first place. if your home is 99% of your net worth than that is a stupid investment no? diversification is the #1 rule of smart investing.

you seriously think that the black people have low opportunities in corporations? i'm guessing you have never worked for a major corporation.

 

[PoochPunt3rdDown]

In atypical liberal fashion:

1. Wish things weren't this way. When that fails,

2. Hope things weren't this way. When that fails,

3. Label it racist / sexist / elitist / etc.

4. Have some know-nothing celebrity decry it

5. Stage a boisterous, yet entirely ineffective, public rally or Internet campaign

6. Urge the usurping or subduing of the standing rule / law / code as a (laughable) means of "moral dissenting" from it's many "evils" - until such is changed more to their liking - and then (remarkably, with a straight face) demand an exacting, unwavering and universal adherence to it.

7. Then, tax the shiz out of it. Then, tax it again. And then some more.

8. Find the next nonsensically naive "cause" to champion.

9. Rinse. Repeat, ad nauseum. And then tax that, too.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

That sounds like terrible reasoning. Glad I'm not one of THOSE liberals.

 

[KB5252]

There is nothing wrong with accumulating wealth. Our society encourages it as part of our economic model. It drives industry and creates jobs.

But most people are not capable of, nor interested in, taking a step back and seeing the big picture. What they care about is their own stuff, and right now. The building of roads, schools, and medical care for the guy down the street?

Someone else's problem.

The part in bold is equally true for those who are poor and likely a big part of the reason so many stay in poverty.

 

[VolsNSkinsFan]

In theory yes, but is this happening in actuality? It seems, from my personal experience, that the only company hiring is McDonalds.

Thats because we have the most anti-business administration we have ever seen sitting in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Nobody knows what Obamacare will cost employers, nobody knows what the taxes will be in the future, nobody know if regulations in their business will suddenly change. If business owners are uncertain of the future, they will hunker down and wait out the storm

 

[droski]

You don't think that racial minorities, on the whole, are better off now than they would have been but for the efforts of the 1960s and 70s?

before the civil rights bill black americans were narrowing the gap between themselves and whites, both by education and income, every genearation. after it that trend reversed. do you think that is a coincidence?