At least until they run an anti-Romney story.
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PoliGAF 2012 Community Thread |OT2| This thread title is now under military control
- Thread starter AlteredBeast
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At least until they run an anti-Romney story.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Shit's gonna hit the wall with Akin v McCaskill (MO). At least Claire's playing hardball:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/claire-mccaskill-todd-akin-stuck.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/claire-mccaskill-todd-akin-stuck.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
gutter_trash
Banned
woha, where does the right dig up these candidates?
they forget that there are more women voters than men voters LOL
dog-whistle, you're just trying to project your insecurities and -ists on me
RustyNails
Member
lol if anyone thinks Akin will step aside. He's in fucking Missoura. I won't be surprised if majority of the voters there also believe what he said.
I doubt he would just on his own. But I'm guessing the whole party, including Romney's campaign, is calling his office and telling him to go away.
We just have to see if he's stubborn enough to stay.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Right. The damage will be peripheral and what it does to other, closer tickets.
Btw, I do think this cinched up McCaskill for MO. Call me crazy.
Btw, I do think this cinched up McCaskill for MO. Call me crazy.
I personally do not think that capital gains should EVER be taxed at lower rates than income.
Consider the following two scenarios:
Scenario 1:
I have $300k sitting around. I buy 2 shares of Berkshire Hathaway ($128880 per share) and, for the next 365 days, I relax at home, and live off of the remaining $42,240 in my savings/checking account, doing whatever I want, since I don't have to go in to work.
A year passes. Berkshire hathaway is now at $150,000 per share. I sell. I've made $42,240.
Scenario 2:
I don't have any money sitting around, as I'm just out of college. I land a job making $21.12 an hour. I work exactly 40 hours each week, for 50 weeks. Every week I get a paycheck with gross pay $844.80
After 2000 hours of labor throughout the year I have made $42,240 (gross).
In scenario 2, I clearly worked harder for the $42,240 than I did in scenario 1. In scenario 1, if I so choose, I can also work 2000 hours throughout the year making $21.12 an hour. I don't need to be around to make money of my stocks, I just need to tell my broker when I want to buy, and when I want to sell. That's it. It's a once or twice a year short phone call..
Now to be fair, I'm oversimplifying things as short term/long term capital gains have different rates, and transaction fees associated with them, but I think you get my point. One is discrete, the other is continuous. One takes time and effort, the other just takes timing and a few phone calls, and does not exclude you from acquiring wealth through tradiitional labor because hardly any of your time is consumed by your capital investment activities. That is the extent of the investor's involvement.
Some people might say "But if you make capital gains taxed at higher than income, no one will want to invest!"
Yes they will. Because only unused capital gets contributed towards investments. If you have thousands or millions or billions of dollars just sitting around after all of your expenses are accounted for (not just necessities, but discretionary expensees and luxury goods and vacations and... you get the idea), well, what's the point in letting it sit there in a savings account earning 0.5% interest when you can let it sit there in a portfolio and earn 7-13% instead?
Would we see executive compensation go back towards income if it lowered their tax burden? Probably. But now that you have executives being compensated in the same way as ordinary employees, you can better regulate a company's payroll distribution so that everyone benefits from the company's success to a similar degree, and no executive can make hundreds of times what the average salaried worker makes.
How common is it nowadays to see stock prices grow by a larger percentage than the largest payroll raise? Can any of us say that when the stock price goes up 15%, the workers get a 15% pay raise? No. Most merit, competitive-based large payrolls will have some kind of peak raise so that you can't end up too far above your job profile's market-based pay grade. Maybe if you're on the low end of the pay scale and you perform exceptionally well, you'll get a 7-8% raise. Less if your pay is more in line with the market rates.
Every executive that gets compensated in stock automatically gets a 15% raise when the stock price goes up by 15%. That's the bulk of their "raise."
So you need regulations to ensure every worker's pay scale is subject to the same influences, and to ensure fairness in the payroll distribution, so that everyone shares in the company's success. None of this stock-based compensation for one employee, salary-based for another.
If you really, REALLY have a problem with capital gains being taxed at higher than income, I propose this: your capital gains tax rate will never exceed your top marginal income tax rate, but it will never lower your effective tax rate below the next bracket.
So someone making $379k or more would never be able to use capital gains to lower their tax burden below 33%. They would be able to use it to lower it from 35% down to a floor of 33%, but no further.
That way, you can provide tax incentives for the uber rich to inject capital into the system, but you don't allow them to pay lower rates than the rest of the population.
worldrunover
Member
Was he quoting some bunk science or something? I had never heard anything like that but it sounds like something people might have said back in the 1700s or something.
Next he'll want to throw accused witches into the lake to see if they float or not.
The worst part is, he's not just a candidate. He's a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and has been since 2001. He's already been elected and re-elected. Think about that.
In this case, I think Akin's comments were highly offensive whether you are a fiercely pro-life conservative Christian or not. And even if you were somehow not offended you'd think he's a moron for him actually believing what he said.
I had a discussion with a co-worker last week who actually tried to tell me "Scenario 1" is what makes everything else possible. Between that and his use of the talking point, "50% of people don't pay taxes", I had to extricate myself from his vicinity.
Granted I think capital gains taxation should be low; for me
, not for those over 250k, so-called "venture capitalists" etc.Companies like Verizon have "record profits" once a year, and yet the employees still make a pittance in comparison and sometimes even receive lower bonuses in years where record profits were achieved; thanks for playing.
Yeah, man, it's kind of crazy that they're not. I don't really understand it at all. I really do wonder what it would do if it was taxed at the same rate as income, since we've never tried that in this country.
I think someone on here pointed out what is, in my opinion the perfect system. Have income and capital gains be taxed at the same rate, and with the same tax brackets, but have them be separate still. That way if you have a metric ton of money in capital gains it's taxed like income, but there's still a large incentive. If you're over the last tax bracket there'd be an incentive to split your money up to grab the lower tax rate of capital gains on that upper bit of money. I personally think this also helps some of the lower rungs get incentive for it, too.
For example, using 2012's brackets, say you have $396,000 coming. You could put that last $8,000 of it into capital gains and so instead of being taxed at the 35% upper bracket you'd be taxed 10% on that. But it ramps up. So if you have something like $800,000 you'd still have a large incentive to throw half of it into capital gains in order to grab some lower rates on it, but you'd cap out on that, too. Someone with millions and millions would pay quite a bit more than now, but they'd still have incentive to invest. As you said, it's unused capital. And they'd be putting that first, like $400,000 into it anyway in order to lower their tax burden.
Along with this, I think we need to change our tax on upper income and probably add a bracket or two. I think there needs to be another bracket at about $1 mil that's taxed at at least 50 or 60%.
The idea of separate is an interesting concept. The problem I have with keeping them separate though it makes is much easier to change rates of one bracket or the other in the future.
One problem that is usually glossed over is the 15% is after one year. What do people propose doing for short term capital gains? In your system there is no penalty for short term capital gains. I'd rather just add a robin hood tax ( say 0.01%) so that all financial transactions have a small fee attached. This would not be noticeable for your average investor, but would hit frequent traders using computers.
That is the one problem, but I think you could word the tax code in such a way that it would be harder to separate again. I'm not really knowledgeable on tax code wording and how that works with bills and laws, but you could probably write it in such a way that it just says Capital Gains are a separate "pile" of money, but are taxed at the same rates as income tax. That way a change in income tax would be a change in capital gains. There'd be no way to change cap gains by itself, because it's linked straight to income taxes. Whereas I think if you wrote things down separately such that there really was an income tax bracket and a separate capital gains bracket, then yeah you could change the cap gains easily, because there'd be no link between the two.
But, again, this is coming from someone that doesn't entirely know how these laws are written and how the tax code is specifically written down.
TacticalFox88
Banned
http://www.examiner.com/article/report-mitt-romney-threatened-to-boycott-the-presidential-debates
...How is he not laughed out of the race? My god, politics is such a joke in this country.
...How is he not laughed out of the race? My god, politics is such a joke in this country.
To be completely fair if you look at the source that came from right before Romney threatening to boycott it says of a possible Fox host moderating, "The Obama campaign raised questions about the network because of its conservative leanings." We don't entirely know how extreme "raising questions" is, or whether Obama would have boycotted or whatever, too (my guess is he probably wouldn't have). But both protested the use of biased networks.
I think he probably just put on an episode of "Fox and Friends" and just pointed at it saying "Really? Really guys, these are the guys you want to host the debate?"
CharlieDigital
Banned
Shepard Smith might pass mustard.
Maybe, and he'd be the only one. What are the odds that Fox would've picked him though?
Looks promising, but we really need to see other pollsters reflect this trend (assuming it is), too.
I doubt the Fox and Friends guys would be getting the nod for that anyway. You could point to their other pundits, though, and say the same thing. On the other side, though, you could say the same for MSNBC's hosts. I personally think Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow could do a great job moderating, but I could see how someone on the other side would automatically think about their bias coming into a debate. And someone like Ed Schultz would be seriously just as bias and/or dumb as some of the Fox news people.
Black Republican
Member
ppp says romney slightly ahead in Wisconsin, with the poll out tommorow
lol baised poll never trust ppp Romney hacks
Don't fret, chicken little. The thread's other resident defeatists covered for you.
There was no trend. Subsequent polls displayed a more typical partisan alignment.
Really, they did not select a minority to host a debate? Not even the VP debate? As I remember Gwen Ifill performed well in 2004 and 2008.
Now you're trying too hard.
Was that not the exact responses to the latest Rassmussen? I honestly don't know, I was out of town, but it generally tracks.
ErasureAcer
Banned
Let Wisconsin flip. Missouri will make up for it.
No, goddammit, I don't want Wisconsin to become a red state through and through *arms crossed*
I'm starting to think if I don't get this internship I'm trying for I might volunteer for the Obama campaign.
Oh I doubt they'd get it either, I just went with the first thing I could think of. I doubt they'd pick a pundit for something like this in the first place, but really there aren't may Fox anchors who don't take on that sort of role. What I'd really like to see is Soledad O'Brien or Anderson Cooper do one of these debates, but that'll never happen.
Edit: As far a recent polling goes I think it's best to ignore the numbers until after the conventions. Regardless of what the numbers look like, there is just going to be too much noise and people haven't gotten to know Ryan just yet.
You definitely should. It's a lot of fun and totally rewarding.
What exactly do you do when you volunteer for these campaigns anyway? I'm not a terribly outgoing person. I could probably work up the nerve to knock on doors, but I definitely wouldn't be the best at it.
Edit: Oh cool there's an event for the opening of the Ozaukee County office next Tuesday. I might head over to that and get to know people and see how that works. But if I get this internship I'm not going to have much time, unfortunately. We'll see.
I am kind of angry I missed a cool DNC/Obama sponsored 3 on 3 basketball tourney a while back. That would have been fun as hell.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Not surprising. They're running an entirely different campaign this time and I'd imagine there's a split between Chicago types who always wanted to do this and some younger folks who got into politics to end this type of campaigning
Both groups have basically seen who the Wizard of Oz truly is, and are disappointed. So basically that disappointment and anger is fueling a cmpaign that used to be about platitudes
Too late...
AlteredBeast
Fork 'em, Sparky!
I wouldn't like an opponent as lazy and dishonest as Romney, either.
PhoenixDark
Banned
But Ryan is gonna doom Romney and isn't even popular in his home state!
/post tpm article
cartoon_soldier
Member
good try PD
wuck fisconsin #tpm4life!
These indie-wave videos just makes me lol now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNJdJbpj1GE&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8-WzgSDvZQ
If Ryan were going to appreciably bolster the ticket, it would be in Wisconsin. Now, only time will tell whether it's ephemeral.
Canvassing is not the only job. They require volunteers to make phone calls, makes appearances at local gatherings such as a fair or fish fry, register voters, or perform clerical work at a field office.
maybe he was having a hot dog with shep and really needed him to pass the mustard?
Not really fretting unless PA becomes a very close race (i.e. within 2-3 points), you'd be out of your mind to not worry at that point. The whole ordeal in general makes me very angry and frustrated more than anything else.
Don't talk to me like I'm five.
AlteredBeast
Fork 'em, Sparky!
He is referring to your "sky is falling" mentality, not your mental capacity.
CharlieDigital
Banned
Sent from my iPhone
PhoenixDark
Banned
Do you get a welfare check if you skip?
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