Usa Thread

[BelgianBoy]

Hitler is now a baptized Mormon

who is probably is now God over his own World.

 

Probably very similar situation as to most of your ancestors......

can I have one of the pills you just took ? just one pretty pleeez..... :elephant:

[unit731]

There are some odd variations in any religion.

 

Here we have a few remnants of the Shaker religion. Shakers had thriving communities. Shaker furniture is worth quite a bit today.

And more than a few of their buildings were made out of granite. Buildings still in great shape.

 

Unfortunately the Shaker separated the sexes. No sex allowed.

 

And the remaining Shaker villages are either museums or condos.

 

Ain't no Shakers left. (A few in some places).

[Flashermac]

Some of my grandmother's ancestors became Shakers in early Kentucky. Fortunately, the younger ones left it or there wouldn't have been any more generations.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

Is Mitt Romney right to question representation without taxation?

 

 

Most commentators agree that Mitt Romney has committed political suicide by pointing out that 46pc of Americans pay no income tax but he may have done us all a favour by raising a fundamental weakness in many developed economies – including Britain’s – which is also one of the causes of the credit crisis.

 

Whether or not his candour costs the Republican candidate any hope of winning the Presidential Election in November, he has certainly demonstrated the modern meaning of the word ‘gaffe’ – that is, a statement of the bleedin’ obvious by someone in the public eye.

 

There can be no doubt that substantial numbers – on his estimate, nearly half – of electors who decide how a democracy spends its money no longer make any financial contribution to the taxes it must raise to do so. Bearing in mind that one of the rallying cries of America’s founding fathers was “no taxation without representation†is it really so unspeakable to ask whether some link between representation and taxation should be restored?

 

Many people are understandably eager to stifle this debate – as demonstrated by the furore caused when I last asked in this space whether votes should be restricted to people who actually pay something into the system. Perhaps to encourage more critics to ‘play the ball rather than the man’ and address the issue rather than merely post slabs of vulgar abuse, I had better emphasise straightaway that I am not suggesting a return to property-based eligibility; although that system worked quite well when Parliament administered not just Britain but most of the world.

 

Today, income would be a much better test, setting the bar as low as possible; perhaps including everyone who pays at least £100 or even just $100 of income tax each year. That minimal requirement would include everyone who gets out of bed in the morning to go to work and could easily be extended to include, on grounds of fairness, several other groups.

 

For example, all pensioners would have automatic eligibility to vote because of the fiscal contributions to society they are likely to have paid earlier. The same exemption could be extended to all mothers because of their contribution to defusing the ‘demographic time-bomb’ of an ageing population.

 

This modest proposal would, however, exclude large numbers of people who have no ‘skin in the game’ and who may even comprise the majority of voters in some metropolitan areas today. Their contribution is not just negative in financial terms – they take out more than they put in – but likely to be damaging to the decisions taken by democracies.

 

For example, it is sometimes said – and uncertainly attributed to Alexander Tytler – that: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.

 

“From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy.â€

 

Hard to believe? The credit crisis afflicting democracies around the world demonstrates the truth of this observation. So does the fact that our less democratic competitors in the emerging markets suffer no such crisis, as Mitt Romney is no doubt accutely aware.

 

People in the developed economies have been voting ourselves better benefits than we have earned for decades and – sooner than later – that has got to stop. Restoring the link between contributing to society and voting about how it is run would be a sensible first step.

 

If all that sounds rather dry, then – with apologies to regular readers – here’s an anecdote from Max King, global asset allocation strategist at Investec, which sets out to explain the macroeconomics of tax and benefits in terms we can all understand.

 

Suppose that once a month, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all of them comes to £100 – it could just as easily be $100 but I will stick to sterling for now. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes and claim State benefits, it would go something like this;

 

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay £1. The sixth would pay £3. The seventh would pay £7. The eighth would pay £12. The ninth would pay £18. And the tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

 

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every month and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until, one day, the owner caused them a little problem. “Since you are all such good customers,†he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your weekly beer by £20.†Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

 

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free but what about the other six men; the paying customers? How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33 but if they subtracted that from everybody’s share then not only would the first four men still be drinking for free but the fifth and sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

 

So the bar owner suggested a different system. The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing. The sixth man paid £2 instead of £3 . The seventh paid £5 instead of £7. The eighth paid £9 instead of £12. The ninth paid £14 instead of £18. And the tenth man now paid £49 instead of £59. Each of the last six was better off than before with the first four continuing to drink for free.

 

But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got £1 out of the £20 saving,†declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got £10!â€

 

“Yes, that’s right,†exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a £1 too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!â€

 

“That’s true!†shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get £10 back, when I only got £2? The rich get all the breaks!â€

 

“Wait a minute,†yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!â€

 

So, the nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. Funnily enough, the next month the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him.

 

But when it came to pay for their drinks, they discovered something important – they didn’t have enough money between all of them to pay for even half the bill.

 

That’s how non-contributory democracy led to the credit crisis in a nutshell. Or a joke, on the basis that you don’t need to be solemn to make a serious point. Perhaps Mr Romney has unwittingly raised an issue that should be more widely debated. Is it time to restore the link between paying something into society and voting on decisions about how it is run?

 

Oh, the world owes me a living ...

[Steve]

There are a tons of people, millionaires in this country who pay very litte taxes and some that pay none. There are multi-millionaires who pay a far far lower rate than Romney did. Which is almost like paying no taxes due to the paucity of their tax committment. There are corporations that pay no taxes. They make a healthy profit.

 

The FACT is that very wealthy people and companies benefit from the government. In various forms, write offs, tax abatements, low or no interest loans, subsidies, many, many different ways of paying less because they own the pols through their donations, lobbyists, interest groups and PACs and write the laws and regulations that affect them. What is this complete and utter bullshit that the rich are left to pay for the rest of us. They OWN the friggin' government.

 

Again, I have no problem with the rich. I would love to be one of them. Were I in their shoes I would be doing the same possibly although I would like to think I'm better than that but when you have money you want more and you want to keep more of it.

 

The overall point is that the 47% living off the government is a fallacy. Its pretty much everyone. Everyone is taking advantage of some form of government largesse. The rich moreso oftentimes than the rest of us who a) don't have the resources or knowledge to take advantage and/or don't have the voice in the government to get the benefits the rich and powerful do.

[Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romneys-theory-of-the-taker-class-and-why-it-matters/

 

Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that. (You also see a jump after the financial crisis begins in 2008, but we can expect that to be mostly temporary.)

 

Some of those tax cuts for the poor were there to make the tax cuts for the rich more politically palatable. “Do you think we wanted to include a welfare payment to people who don’t pay taxes and call it a tax cut?†A top Bush administration official once asked me. “No. But that’s what we needed to do to get it done.â€

 

But now that those tax cuts have passed and many fewer Americans are paying federal income taxes and the rich are paying a much higher percentage of federal income taxes, Republicans are arguing that these Americans they have helped free from income taxes have become a dependent and destabilizing “taker†class who want to hike taxes on the rich in order to purchase more social services for themselves. The antidote, as you can see in both Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney’s policy platforms, is to further cut taxes on “job creators†while cutting the social services that these takers depend on. That way, you roll the takers out of what Ryan calls “the hammock†of government and you unleash the makers to create jobs and opportunities.

So notice what happened here: Republicans have become outraged over the predictable effect of tax cuts they passed and are using that outrage as the justification for an agenda that further cuts taxes on the rich and pays for it by cutting social services for the non-rich.

 

That’s why Romney’s theory here is more than merely impolitic. It’s actually core to his economic agenda.

 

The 47%

 

"61 percent of them paid payroll taxes — which means THEY HAVE JOBS and, when you account for both sides of the payroll tax,

they paid 15.3 percent of their income in taxes, which is higher than the 13.9 percent that Romney paid."

[unit731]

Good story.

Flawed argument.

The 47% mentioned by Romney do pay many taxes. It's just that they do not pay federal income taxes.

Why don't they pay federeal income taxes? Because their income is below the federal IRS guidelines. That is, they don't have enough income to pay federal income taxes. They are what is sometimes called "poor" people.

 

The rants heared on the tele, read in the newspapers, or read on some blog - claim that "all" should pay "their fare share" of income taxes. Well, what is rarely mentioned is that the tax codes would have to be changed for these folks to pay any income taxes.

There are all sorts of proposals such as a flat tax, a rolling tax, a dunce tax, and on and on. All with no traction.

 

The better solution is to raise the income of these "poor" working folks.

[Steve]

The Republicans are right. There is widespread voter fraud. How do they know? They're the ones that are doing it.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49227596/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/t/more-suspicious-voter-forms-found-florida/

[Bangkoktraveler]

There is some talk that ALEC is really running the country!

[Flashermac]

The Republicans are right. There is widespread voter fraud. How do they know? They're the ones that are doing it.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn...-found-florida/

 

 

Good thing they don't run Chicago.

 

 

 

"Currently, 43% of voters are “certain†they will vote for Romney. Forty-two percent (42%) are that certain they will vote for Obama. The remaining 15% are either uncommitted or open to changing their mind. To many Americans, especially partisan activists, it is hard to imagine how someone could be anything but certain at this point in time. One of the distinguishing features of these potentially persuadable voters is that they don’t see the choice between Romney and Obama as terribly significant. In terms of impacting their own life, just 28% say it will be Very Important which man wins.

 

"There is particular pessimism among these persuadable voters about the economy. Only 14% think it will get better if the president is reelected. But just 28% believe it will improve with a Romney victory."

 

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