Steve:
So much of that reply is so completely wrong it is mind blowing.
Your assumptions of what the GOP wants and likes, their motivations are so completely without any insight, any personal knowledge of the other side it basically screams "I don't know what I am talking about on this subject, but I hate them anyways."
It says, also, that you don't have the ability to comprehend or understand anything outside of your bias. That rigid level of ideology makes a great brainwashed patient, as in, nailed it 100%. You seem to have no ability for critical thought.
I suggest and hazard that in counter to your commentary, you do have it, even if your statements seems counter to that position. Maybe you can exist beyond the mild ability to ignore and be blind to any counter position, like Gordon, or maybe you can't. But lets take one point I get to make very often on the interwebs and see how your brain can handle it. Maybe you can at least lift yourself to an Ad Hom Fallacy, which would at least eclipse Gordon's really piss poor listening skills.
Lets kill this little stupid comment right here:
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But, like you, do you know what they fail to mention? Every. Single. Time? Fox news screams bloody murder about entitlement culture and the damn poors ruining the budget, yet they never mention all the tax subsidies that go to the middle class and above.
First, thank you for letting me what Fox news fails to mention, I didn't know you were an expert. Especially since I don't keep up with their low information, basic rhetoric new casts (nor listen to Rush Limbaugh for the same reason. It is like Seinfeld for conservatives.)
Okay, first point. The US has the most progressive tax structure in the world. It in fact incorporates a Negative Tax structure, as proposed by Milton Friedman actually. With all of the benefits kicks in, that means those on the lower end of the tax structure not only have the smallest tax, they get money back. This is exampled in Child Tax Credits, EIC, and Standard Deductions.
In every socialized nation in Europe, the poor still pay a net tax. The lower middle class still pay a net tax. In Canada they do also. It is the VAT. everybody pays. If we get a VAT, guess what, the poor will pay more in taxes.
In the US, they get money back instead.
So as, the end result, if you look at the financial class of people as the US government does, it breaks it up into 5 sections, or Quintiles.
Here is the CBO numbers before items like the EIC are put in:
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/fi...mefedtaxes.pdf
You can see by the chart at the top that the only areas that pay a substantial tax are the upper two quintiles. For example, the upper quintile receives 53% of the economy, and pay 69% of the taxes. Where as the lower Quintile makes 9% of the income, but pays 1% of the taxes.
But that, again, is before you look at the wealth re-distribution of the US Government.
http://www.heritage.org/taxes/report...d-taxes-income
And here is the rub:
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The analysis finds the lowest three income quintiles are in fiscal deficit (benefits received exceed taxes paid) while the two highest income quintiles are in fiscal surplus (taxes paid exceed benefits received). The average household in the bottom quintile received $29,015 in benefits and paid $4,251 in taxes, generating an average fiscal deficit of $24,764 per household. In the top quintile, the average household paid $69,704 in taxes and received $21,515 in benefits and services, yielding an average fiscal surplus of $48,189 per household. The bottom quintile of households received $6.82 in benefits and services for each $1.00 in taxes paid. By contrast the top quintile received 31 cents in benefits and services for every $1.00 in taxes paid. Overall, there was a transfer of roughly one trillion dollars in economic resources from the most affluent 40 percent of households to the bottom 60 percent.
Read that a few times before replying. Think about that a bit.
The Mid Upper quintile pays about 7% of the total tax burden after redistribution, and the upper quintile pays about 110% of the taxes.
Here is supporting information from the Tax Foundation:
https://taxfoundation.org/distributi...-united-states
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Key Findings
The question of who benefits from government spending is just as important as the question of who pays taxes. In other words, how do tax and spending policies redistribute income?
American’s lowest-income families receive $5.28 worth of government spending (federal, state, and local) for every $1 they pay in total taxes.
Middle-income families receive $1.48 in total spending per tax dollar, while America’s highest-income families receive $0.25 cents in spending for every dollar of taxes paid.
As a group, the bottom 60 percent of American families receive more back in total government spending than they pay in total taxes.
Government tax and spending policies combine to redistribute more than $2 trillion from the top 40 percent of families to the bottom 60 percent.
The total amount of redistribution has increased slightly over the past 12 years. Middle-income and working lower-income families were the biggest beneficiaries.
Lawmakers can remove equity as an issue in tax reform by matching any loss in progressivity on the tax side with an equal increase in progressivity on the spending side.
Your position that the subsidies might result in a surplus or related bypass the fact that most of what the government does is internal re-distribution from rich to poor. 3/5th of the budget is direct entitlement of wealth transfer (Medicare/Medicaid, Welfare, SS), and then in the remaining 1/5th that is non defense discretionary spending is all we really spend on education and related. Some of that is also wealth redistribution, but it is to small to direct vs the entitlement spending which has grown with small check.
This is, out of a $3.5 trillion tax income, up to $2B just in taxes from the upper quintile going to the lower quintiles.
You are commenting about tax breaks on housing, 401ks and related middle and upper tax breaks, or frothing commentary on how the tax breaks only help the rich...
They are the only ones paying net taxes.
Most of them are small business owners, who also pay the majority of the business taxes, and also employ the majority of new hires in the US.
So, lets look at this in context:
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The government handouts which are equivalent to cutting someone a cheque because they have a mortgage, or because their employer provides their health care, or because they're saving for retirement and their kids' college.
One small nit: everyone gets a cut on HC taxes, that goes for self employed or otherwise. You can itemize them if you have heavy usage in a year. Why is that a bad thing Steve? Do we need to add even more to the cost of HC? It now totals about $3.4-$3.6T a year, it is the same size of the US government. Put hey, you want it to be more expensive? Heartless bastard. :P And yes, if you are poor, you can use exactly the same tax breaks. Plus get medicaid/ACA or other subsidies. You can even carry over debt for years, and that allows you to basically pay no taxes at all even if you do later come into some wealth. I know, you most likely didn't realize that. But that is part of the bit about debt that is well dealt with by the US government's tax policies.
On the retirement tax deferment, this position makes me laugh, because you obviously don't know how retirement programs work. In one case, you pay taxes NOW, and there is no tax LATER, when you collect. The other route is to not pay taxes NOW, but LATER, allowing you to put in more money now and allowing it to return at a rate that results in a larger pool that you pay taxes on LATER. Got that? Nobody doesn't pay taxes on this. You are flat wrong in your assumption, or better yet, your transfer of ideas from somebody so doesn't know basic Investing 101, chapter 1. Maybe shouldn't listen to them when it comes to money. Evar.
The proposed change to the max 401k deduction to $2400 was to push people into Roth IRA's that would have been tax up front, no tax later investments, so the US Government would have money from taxes NOW, instead of LATER. That was the only reason. The government can't wait to spend that money. Huh. (the $2400 limit has since been nixed.) They would get more later, because the money would produce more taxes in the end when cashed out, and the investment is matured. Your conclusion that they US Gov would not get that money is false, they just don't get it right NOW. In fact, stupidly so, since they would earn more due to the investment growing faster than the economy, up to 2 or 3 times more. That really is a short term position that hurts us in the long run. To quote the DNC, why don't you think about the children? That is short term gains for long term loss. The reality is that is waiting 20-30 years for an inflation adjustment payment 2-3 times as much. Huh. It is as if they would rather have the money to spend while they are still a congresscritter instead of collecting it later when it would be a higher amount, reducing the burden on the next generation. Huh. Again, who is being heartless and spending it now selfishly?
As for a check for their mortgage: I can side with you, that is kinda of like pandering. It only is the largest purchase a person can make, but hey, lets make it a bit harder to buy a house, and leave more people renting. I get it. Same with allowing those in high income tax states the ability to not pay federal taxes on the amount the state takes out? Right? Oh wait.
Since I agree this is pandering to the middle class, lets look at that. How much is it? Lets use real numbers, not your pulled out of somebodies butt meme based ones:
http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-break-...ing-tax-credit
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The low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) is the fourth most expensive corporate tax break, and was enacted as part of the 1986 tax code overhaul. The LIHTC is the federal government's largest tax expenditure targeting affordable rental housing and (when enacted) represented a new approach to tax expenditures, rather than relying on direct subsidization.
Wow! 4th largest! That must be huge. BIGELY YUGE.
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According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the LIHTC will cost $6.7 billion in foregone revenue in 2014, or approximately $85 billion over the next ten years. Likewise, OMB estimates that the LIHTC will reduce revenues to the federal government by an average of about $8 billion each year over the next few years.
$8 Billion a year? Is that IT? OMFG people. Do you think that will fix the budget? We borrow $8 Billion in 2 or 3 days! We spend over $10B a DAY.
Wow is right. That is about the stupidest thing I have heard. That won't fix the budget. It is....not even within the margin of error. Less than a 1/3rd of 1% of the revenue, and even less than that for the total budget. And you are outraged at THAT?
Every point you have made is dwarfed by the absolutely massive transfer of wealth from our productive upper quintile to our lowest 3. The US government is now transferring more money than the economy of the entire nation of India's GDP from the upper quintile to the lowest.
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In the end, you are not playing with a full set of the numbers. I can see where bits taken here and there can look like the hair pulling out commentary you regurgitated. Same with believing Memes. But as you start putting together the picture as a whole the real, large, complex interchange starts coming forward. And you don't have the maths. Absolutely failed at the maths.
Since most people would have glazed over my haphazard and messy reply, a quick recap:
I showed that the vast majority of the tax is paid for buy the upper quintile, and that the lower quintile gets a huge return on their tax input already. So much so that 3/5th of the US tax payers get money back instead of taxing in. To the order of Trillions.
I showed that taxing investments now results in less money later, even adjusting for inflation, and that your understanding of people being taxed or not is incorrect.
I showed that collecting the taxes that you think are large subsidies actually result in very minimal, totally insignificant change to the total tax burden.
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Until your party can start doing maths, and I know YOU can do it but not when it comes to this it seems, they will still keep butting heads with those of us who actually DO look at the numbers.
Steve, you are way too friggen smart to be this dumb on the budget. I have met you, you are smarter than this.
Your entire commentary is invalidated by really bad math.
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That you use that to base the moral or emotional content of the other party actually makes my point. Harshly.
You don't have a clue about the US budget or spending or taxation. That is proven above. Neither do you have a clue about the conservative or libertarian factions of the US political make up. You make baseless conclusions about both based on poor information.
I would be highly embarrassed if I made those types of budget claims and was proven so wrong, same as you should be embarrassed by making the same conclusions about the other party.
How wrong can you guys be on the GOP? Well, lets see what the former CEO of NPR says:
http://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-oth...-doesnt-cover/
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Most reporters and editors are liberal — a now-dated Pew Research Center poll found that liberals outnumber conservatives in the media by some 5 to 1, and that comports with my own anecdotal experience at National Public Radio. When you are liberal, and everyone else around you is as well, it is easy to fall into groupthink on what stories are important, what sources are legitimate and what the narrative of the day will be.
This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience. Spurred by a fear that red and blue America were drifting irrevocably apart, I decided to venture out from my overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhood and engage Republicans where they live, work and pray. For an entire year, I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon’s radio show. I found an America far different from the one depicted in the press and imagined by presidents (“cling to guns or religion”) and presidential candidates (“basket of deplorables”) alike.
He goes on:
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It’s not that media is suppressing stories intentionally. It’s that these stories don’t reflect their interests and beliefs.
It’s why my new friends in Youngstown, Ohio, and Pikeville, Ky., see media as hopelessly disconnected from their lives, and it is how the media has opened the door to charges of bias.
The mainstream media is constantly under attack by the president. They are “frankly disgusting,” “tremendously dishonest,” “failing,” “they make up the stories” and are now threatened with loss of broadcast licenses if they continue to author “fake news.” And that is just a random Wednesday’s worth of words from Donald Trump.
Some may take pleasure in the discomfort of the media, but it is not a good situation for the country to have the media in disrepute and under constant attack. Virtually every significant leader of this nation, from Jefferson on down, has recognized the critical role of an independent press to the orderly functioning of democracy. We should all be worried that more than 65 percent of voters think there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media and that our major media institutions are seen as creating, not combating, our growing partisan divide.
Some of this loss of reputation stems from effective demagoguery from the right and the left, as well as from our demagogue-in-chief, but the attacks wouldn’t be so successful if our media institutions hadn’t failed us as well.
Is it s good read. He found, to back up all of my commentary, that they were not a bunch of idiots or crazy people. He ended up writing a book about it:
https://www.amazon.com/Republican-Li...&tag=nypost-20
And, while you are at it, try Sarah Silverman's new show: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...ulu/740025001/
Hate to break it to ya, but they found we are not crazy either.
Maybe you might find out, like Ken Stern or Sarah Silverman have, that the deplorables are actually really great people.
It might require math though. ;)