There are long-term problems with debt, but it's in no way the short-term crisis some are painting it as.
No argument there. There is certainly no shortage of fear-mongering.
I simply remained concerned that we'll continue to be unable to address the long-term problem.
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There are long-term problems with debt, but it's in no way the short-term crisis some are painting it as.No argument there. There is certainly no shortage of fear-mongering.
I simply remained concerned that we'll continue to be unable to address the long-term problem.
I'm also not scared by the "it's the apocolypse now" types, (and to answer your question Bugley, not much more than an intro class for a small business degree, but I don't hold a negative connotation to it, it just helps me to understand where his POV is coming from, plus what he said was what I'd been hearing from a lot of keynsean economists on NPR.) I just believe in a smaller national government and a less obtrusive state government, and I worry that the more they raise the more comfortable they get with raising, rather than dealing with some of the issues that are necessitating them raising taxes.
Senior Software Developer
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Removed a *bunch* of posts. Throwing tantrums is NOT ever OK here, even if it is off-topic. Had I had a chance to check this thread earlier today, someone would've gotten a 24 hour timeout to cool down.
(And the climate change stuff is kind of a giant derail, if you want to talk about that, why not make a new thread so the grar can migrate and then we can lock that one instead of this one?)
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So raising taxes on income over $250,000 or on certain deductions for people making over $1 million will put him out of business even though he isn't in those categories? Those are the only Democratic proposals on the table at the moment.
No one is proposing special taxes on small businesses below that cap.There is a proposal, the only one Republicans have shown any support for, to simplify the tax code by removing deductions and lowering the top rate. That might save him a little, depending on where his income falls, but is more likely to cost him, and the rest of us, in lost deductions.
The income taxes are on the gross income of the business you own, whether or not you the business owner actually use that income for personal reasons. The tax raise would definitely hurt business owners. So if I make $24,000 a year at my day job and my business grosses $300,000 (before expenses and such), I'm paying that increased tax rate, even though I guarantee the business owner is not seeing much, if any, benefit from his gross business income unless he is flat out embezzling from the business.
Many small business owners fall into that $250k+ tax bracket and don't have enough deductions to dent the adjusted gross income enough to avoid paying any increase in tax rates. And let me be very clear: inventory costs cannot be deducted as a business expense. As far as I know, neither rent or payroll costs are tax deductibles for businesses.
So yes, a raise in tax rates for people who make $250,000+ a year is absolutely going to hurt small businesses.
As someone else said, if you are running your business like this you need to hire an accountant quick. You are doing it wrong.
250,000 is income, not revenue.
Income is what you pay yourself above and is actually a business expense.
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Removed a *bunch* of posts. Throwing tantrums is NOT ever OK here, even if it is off-topic. Had I had a chance to check this thread earlier today, someone would've gotten a 24 hour timeout to cool down.
(And the climate change stuff is kind of a giant derail, if you want to talk about that, why not make a new thread so the grar can migrate and then we can lock that one instead of this one?)
Considering what has lead to others getting 24 hour vacations, I can't imagine how that person didn't earn one...
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Senior Software Developer
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24-hour timeouts are mostly in this type of case meant to be a "dude, here, why don't you chill for awhile". If the tantrum is already over and the poster has stepped away voluntarily, there isn't much point to a short timeout like that.
The idea of using a timeout as punishment is kind of backwards to me, I think in that case it just makes people madder.
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24-hour timeouts are mostly in this type of case meant to be a "dude, here, why don't you chill for awhile". If the tantrum is already over and the poster has stepped away voluntarily, there isn't much point to a short timeout like that.
The idea of using a timeout as punishment is kind of backwards to me, I think in that case it just makes people madder.
I agree with you conceptually, but as someone who recently received a vacation for much, much less more than 3 hours after my last inappropriate post I have to question the consistency of implementation of the rules.
He went way, way off the rails.
But I will leave it at that as it is a whole other side derail and not my job.
I'm also not scared by the "it's the apocolypse now" types, (and to answer your question Bugley, not much more than an intro class for a small business degree, but I don't hold a negative connotation to it, it just helps me to understand where his POV is coming from, plus what he said was what I'd been hearing from a lot of keynsean economists on NPR.) I just believe in a smaller national government and a less obtrusive state government, and I worry that the more they raise the more comfortable they get with raising, rather than dealing with some of the issues that are necessitating them raising taxes.
Heh...it's not like I'm Fed chairman, either. :)
Keynesian economics (as I understand them) aren't anti-private enterprise. Rather, they contend that there are some things that the market doesn't handle very well, and that the government has a legitimate role to play in trying to regulate the extremes of the market. But Wikipedia can explain it better than I can.
And you know what they say about economists and conclusions. ;-)
Not too much of a de-rail.
"I don't care if it makes sense so long as it's fair" is a common theme in politics.
I once got a multi-day time-out from <RPG site name redacted> for poking fun at the difficulty of typing on an iPad (due to the lack of a keyboard). Seriously.
Needless to say, I never went back.
Heh.
I did similar for lack of a built in USB port.
"WHO DESIGNS A MOBILE DEVICE WITH NO USB PORT!?!?!"
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I'm sorry, but if we're both homeless and a stranger gives us both $5, if you blow yours on strippers and I set up a lemonade stand and turn my 5 into 20, I'm not giving you ten bucks. :)
Kirth Gersen's Lemonade Stand, An All-American Success Story
So, someone gave two homeless guys $5 each. One blew it on strippers and one opened a lemonade stand with it and parlayed his $5 into the princely fortune of $20. But not for long. Because my fictitious father is a drug lord from some third world country, financed by the U.S. government to "fight communism" on top of his drug empire earnings. I start the lemonade game with $5,000,000,000, not $5.So I bribe (aka "lobby") the U.S. government to make sure that only Approved Quality Lemons get used in lemonade, legally. And the fine print means that the only lemons that get selected as Approved Quality Lemons are the ones my father's serfs grow for free, because he'll shoot them if they don't. So I wait for the feds to shut down all the other lemonade stands, and set up my own everywhere. If you want lemonade, I'm the guy.
The original lemonade stand guy tries to get back in the game with some of my leftover lemons, but he's working two full-time jobs just to buy food, so he's only got 2 hours left to work on his stand, and he's groggy from lack of sleep and poor health due to unpaid medical bills (his jobs don't have insurance, because he can't get good benefit jobs with only a lemonade stand on his resume. Sucks to be him!). By working 6 hours a day, I'm outworking him on lemonade stands by a factor of 3, and he can't keep up. He drops of a heart attack and I'm free of his bothersome efforts.
Now I'm employing 6,000,000 people to sell my ultra-low-quality lemonade; I pay them minimum wage, have them work 60 hours a week but only let them log 39 (so I don't have to give them full-time employment benefits). I end up putting maybe a dollar a year into the U.S. economy, and funnel the rest into the Bank of Third Worldia offshore. Because my profits are "going into the business" and "creating jobs," and because I have a bunch of my father's drug CPAs working full time on loopholes, I pay no taxes. Life is good!
Over cigars at his mansion, the governor of my state tells me he has listed all my lemonade jobs to prove his state wasn't affected by the economic downturn because of his awesome business-friendly fiscal policies, and asks what he can do to thank me for that and the $1,000,000 in bribes (aka "campaign contributions") I gave him. I explain that my brother Karth is trying to muscle in on the market, with more of dad's lemons. Grrrr! So I ask the governor to set up a licensing board for lemonade stands, and appoint me the head, and no one can sell lemonade without a license. He doesn't want to make it a state board, because that would be "regulation," but he sets up a "Private Industry Self-Regulatory Board" for me with the backing of the state, which is the exact same thing except I run the whole thing without the state as a partner. We shoot some coyotes for fun, and I shut down Karth the next week.
Eventually people realize my lemonade is horrible, and start bootlegging their own or going without. I look at my profit sheet, realize I'm running my company into the ground, and won't even have Dad's drug profits to rely on anymore due to monitoring of that kind of stuff after 9/11. So I go to the Fed and explain to them that if my business fails, the Beverage Bubble will burst, all my employees will be unemployed, and Armageddon will occur. I'm Too Big to Fail. So the U.S. taxpayers bail me out. I pocket their $80 billion as a golden parachute, leave my company to collapse anyway, and retire to the Caribbean.
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That's how the lemonade stands really work in this great nation of ours -- if you don't believe me, look at the news some time. There are a thousand guys just like the one I described for every wholesome self-made rags-to-riches millionaire you're envisioning. And it would be easy to fix. If any collusion between government and business legally constituted an unconstitutional conflict of interest, carrying lifetime prison sentences, 90% of the tricks I used to create this financial nightmare would evaporate. Government needs to be re-cast as a counter to Big Business, and vice versa, by Constitutional amendment -- instead of the current situation, in which the two of them are in bed together to screw everyone else -- the poor, the middle class, and the small businesses alike. Until that happens, people aren't "self-made," they're government-made -- the same government that won't touch their profits for revenue, but prefers to tax their smaller would-be competetors and the working class instead, and/or cut "entitlements."
What happened to the tax discussion? Taxation today is one form of tyranny of the majority and that is one thing the founding father's feared.
You mean those same founders who raised taxes on whiskey, which was at the time the only means that farmers could use to save and transport their surplus?
The same founding fathers that passed an estate tax (that's a death tax to republicans) to pay for the quasi war with France?
The same founding fathers who decided "hey, there ain't no law against it and the country needs it " and used that reasoning to found a national bank
The founders pratted on about the right not to be taxed, but as soon as they were actually responsible for running the government they said "Holy BLEEP this government stuff is expensive" and had to do the exact same things they'd revolted against England for.
The same founding fathers who printed worthless money and gave it to their soldiers, waited decades to pay out on it, and finally did pay out on it once it had been sold for a fraction of its value to wealthy speculators?
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Lemonade screed.
I was going to put a rebuttal here, but sadly, that seems about right.
Not to continue the derail too much further, but this is part of the problem with having humans do moderation. We're not 100% consistent all the time. Maybe I should move "build moderator robots" higher up the todo list...
The Daleks will exterminate us all!!!
HILARIOUSNESS
Dammit, why don't we agree on politics more often?
Kirth, there's a fatal flaw in your analysis.
All of that lobbying money will go right into the pockets good old American small business pharmaceutical and "escort" services, so you are adding millions to the economy.
If any collusion between government and business legally constituted an unconstitutional conflict of interest, carrying lifetime prison sentences, 90% of the tricks I used to create this financial nightmare would evaporate.
And so would most legitimate government services and utilities. We'd have to have 8 power and 4 water/sewer companies, and the government would have to have a government employee to do ANYTHING the government wanted to do, and would need to supply itself with everything.
Example: We want to build a road. No problem. We have a road crew, they're full time employees, there's always work for them. Now we need to buy them black top. Since we're not allowed to enter into a business arrangement with blacktopcorp to buy any, we need to make our own blacktop, which means the government needs its own blacktop plant. Blacktop is made with mostly gravel, so we need to own our own gravel pit. And tar pit.
The government colludes with business all the time because it is on some level necessary that government does so and its often easier.
How many of those entrepreneurs make over a billion in profits?How many take my equal share of everything and try to sell it to me and when I object have Armed minions to put down my objections.
Your factory my arse.
They USED to do that. Thankfully the government stopped them.
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Kirth, there's a fatal flaw in your analysis.
All of that lobbying money will go right into the pockets good old American small business pharmaceutical and "escort" services, so you are adding millions to the economy.
If any collusion between government and business legally constituted an unconstitutional conflict of interest, carrying lifetime prison sentences, 90% of the tricks I used to create this financial nightmare would evaporate.And so would most legitimate government services and utilities. We'd have to have 8 power and 4 water/sewer companies, and the government would have to have a government employee to do ANYTHING the government wanted to do, and would need to supply itself with everything.
Example: We want to build a road. No problem. We have a road crew, they're full time employees, there's always work for them. Now we need to buy them black top. Since we're not allowed to enter into a business arrangement with blacktopcorp to buy any, we need to make our own blacktop, which means the government needs its own blacktop plant. Blacktop is made with mostly gravel, so we need to own our own gravel pit. And tar pit.
The government colludes with business all the time because it is on some level necessary that government does so and its often easier.
Note the "conflict of interest" line. I think that he is getting at the lobbying is the problem, not that government contracts out for services.
b]Kirth Gersen's Lemonade Stand, An All-American Success Story[/b]
So, someone gave two homeless guys $5 each. One blew it on strippers and one opened a lemonade stand with it and parlayed his $5 into the princely fortune of $20. But not for long. Because my fictitious father is a drug lord from some third world country, financed by the U.S. government to "fight communism" on top of his drug empire earnings. I start the lemonade game with $5,000,000,000, not $5.
I think it is necessary to nationalize Kirth's lemonade stand.
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I think it is necessary to nationalize Kirth's lemonade stand.b]Kirth Gersen's Lemonade Stand, An All-American Success Story[/b]
So, someone gave two homeless guys $5 each. One blew it on strippers and one opened a lemonade stand with it and parlayed his $5 into the princely fortune of $20. But not for long. Because my fictitious father is a drug lord from some third world country, financed by the U.S. government to "fight communism" on top of his drug empire earnings. I start the lemonade game with $5,000,000,000, not $5.
For the good of the people! (unless the kickbacks keep coming of course...)
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I am a firm believer of K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Sir...Get rid of the current tax system and just tax things that you buy. Prices will jump but they should come to a steady price or no influx of tax money...Everyone pays even non US citizens...Damn I am a Genius LMAO
Do you want a value added tax, or a simple sales tax? Should we only tax goods, or will we tax the purchase of services as well?
"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea -- God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." - Elizabeth Warren
Commie propoganda...
But in all seriousness, where there is great wealth, there is also great crime.
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"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea -- God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." - Elizabeth WarrenCommie propoganda...
But in all seriousness, where there is great wealth, there is also great crime.
Generally wealth is not the result of altruism. The free market is a great motivator, but it needs checks and balances as much as any other system where power is allocated.
A common argument here is people pointing out how corporations dodge taxes, so we need to raise taxes so they pay their share. This is qualified moronity, unless it's intentional, then it's dishonest. If we're talking about company taxation, let's. It's not the same as the taxation on individuals. You are disgusted by wealthy companies, then raise THEIR taxes. Of course, this will eradicate smaller companies, but you are the ones who will have to deal with taking intellectual responsibility for your suggested policies.
However, it is also something that should be discussed here, whether the laws concerning corporations, specifically their rights to secrecy, are reasonable. Changing that would hurt them far worse than changing their taxes. Just a thought.