-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
PoliGAF Thread of PRESIDENT OBAMA Checkin' Off His List
- Thread starter PantherLotus
- Start date
- Status
LovingSteam said:
Not very convincing, anecdotal evidence and fear mongering is no substitution for actual data and historical evaluations. Let the few people leave and the void will be filled with new entrepreneurs. And again its a cost/benefits thing, if you look at only the cost anything can be made to look bad.
Are the benefits of this new tax rate really being outstripped by the handful of people partially thinking about leaving the country? I doubt it, and I doubt once these business owners realize that their wealth only exists because their business is successful in Britain and that their is little guarantee that it will be successful elsewhere and will most likely leave them spending more money than they would lose on Britains new tax system to build their new business and establish residency elsewhere, they probably wont leave.
Frankly I could give a shit who you voted for. What I like to do is point out blatant hypocrisy, faulty rationale and conjecture as much as possible. Like yesterday's MOTOMAYOR IS AN ACTIVIST JUDGE!!! SEE FIREMEN!!!
Also your statement above. It's a bit foolish to demonize the Obama administration for fear-mongering (now!), when your stated voting record points to your absolute love of it. You eat it up. Relish in it instead of continuously diverting the argument to portray yourself the victim.
Also your statement above. It's a bit foolish to demonize the Obama administration for fear-mongering (now!), when your stated voting record points to your absolute love of it. You eat it up. Relish in it instead of continuously diverting the argument to portray yourself the victim.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
scorcho said:
Atleast I can admit when I am wrong. Like yesterday's Motormayor is an activist judge. And regarding LOVE OF FEAR-MONGERING? Because I voted for two people who were concerned about the security of this country I love the fear-mongering? Ok. I suppose you voting for Obama means you LOVE higher taxes and LOVE bigger govt and LOVE prisoners being held indefinitely and LOVE soldiers staying in Iraq longer than other candidates who said they would get them out sooner. I suppose you still supporting Obama today means you LOVE the fact that he still hired lobbyists to his admin even after saying he wouldn't. Yes, two can play that game scorcho.
charlequin
Banned
For anyone still talking about Sotomayor, I present to you a Reason blogger's take on why she isn't some sort of evil baby-eating political correctness monster.
True, and in a vacuum, that's a problem. But in general, tax money that's used to implement services that improve the quality of life of the lower classes has a net positive effect on their standard of living even if the tax is regressive.
Me, I'd like to see a whole host of new tax policy:
But none of that is particularly viable compared to "keep borrowing against tomorrow while looking the other way." :-/
Jason's Ultimatum said:
True, and in a vacuum, that's a problem. But in general, tax money that's used to implement services that improve the quality of life of the lower classes has a net positive effect on their standard of living even if the tax is regressive.
Me, I'd like to see a whole host of new tax policy:
- Reduce deduction amounts across the board, as well as the always-popular-to-talk-about-but-never-to-actually-implement loophole closings, etc.
- Instead of starting by jacking up marginal rates for the top bracket now, create a whole lot more brackets with relatively minor increases in marginal rate: one at $720k, one at $1.4m, etc.
- Then as prosperity returns, gradually increase tax rates slightly for everybody, including the poor.
- Supplement with targeted tax hikes on products with externalities or negative effects, i.e. alcohol, gasoline, sugar, etc.
But none of that is particularly viable compared to "keep borrowing against tomorrow while looking the other way." :-/
On that point. If we're going to have a sliding tax rate going up, does it make sense to have one going down as well? What about an adjustable tax rate, where the tax brackets had a range and dropped to the low end of the range during recession, and rose back up to the top end when the economy was growing?charlequin said:
What game? You seem to frequently miss the point of most people's posts and divert the conversation into a live journal-esque rant.LovingSteam said:
Fear mongering is okay when done in the security of this country. Got it. I guess that means that your critique against Obama's 'fear-mongering' means he isn't likewise concerned with the security/welfare of this country?
But hey, let me post some quotes from a fiction book to prove my point better. Wait...
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
scorcho said:
I haven't questioned Obama's desire to keep this country safe. I happen to have agreed more with the direction of McCain on the campaign regarding this goal. I agreed with McCain regarding the surge since it has shown to have accomplished many positive results. If you want to create a straw-man of me not believing that Obama is concerned with the welfare of this country then have at it.
LovingSteam said:
nothing really related to health care, having a wife working in the health care profession skews me a bit, but thats another point.
as far as short term profits, its a net negative when business begin to look at quarterly numbers as the measure of success. The people running the businesses make millions a year and if the company fails, they have no repercussions, they take their cash and move to a new job, making millions again. I have no idea how to fix it, gov't enforced pay standards is NOT a way to fix it, but until execs and board of directors realize that running a company a quarter at a time is not a way to run a company, these things will continue. Hopefully the recession has been a wake up call to these business. i agree that the writing on the wall back with the car bailouts was that they were going to bankruptcy, although at least now its not coming on the heels of a market at 6500 and i'd be suprised if there is much of an impact on daily life or the market since its out of the "doomsday" time frame (when everything was hitting the fan), but for that, we as a country lost billions.
As a random note when i was writing this, i got peeved thinking back to republicans laughing at trying to save hundreds of millions or a few billion dollars in budget cuts because its only a few percent... any fucking budget cut is a good cut, i dont give a shit how small
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
LovingSteam said:
I wouldn't necessarily say that. The surge wasn't soley responsible for the reduction in violence. There were many other contributing factors, such as the Sunni Awakening and the ethnic cleansing between different Shia groups such as the badr brigade and the mahdi army.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
gcubed said:
Same here lol. She does contracting
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Jason's Ultimatum said:
I realize that. I didn't say it was the only reason but it did lead to many positive results and opportunities.
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
And I never said you did, so get it through your thick skull.
charlequin
Banned
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
Fundamentally, it's not difficult to understand at all. Do you buy the idea that taxation of any kind is a legitimate activity of government? (If not, well, at least you're consistent.)
If so, then it really doesn't take much effort to understand that tax policies are set partially to raise capital and partially to incentivize behavior in certain ways; that there's no inherent, God-given standard of "fair," only a wide variety of different, contradictory philosophies of governance and fairness to which one might subscribe; and that assenting to taxation is pretty much the requirement for living within the boundaries of a nation and taking advantage of the benefits for which those taxes pay.
Pretty much every developed nation in the world has adopted some degree of progressive taxation because it's widely understood that the individual utility value of the millionth dollar in one's possession is far less than that of the tenth dollar, and also because governments are predisposed to consider the broader value of all those within their charge, with the knowledge that those who are wildly successful can indeed be relied upon to bear a heavier burden than those who are not.
It's certainly easy to disagree with this philosophically or ethically, but it's hard to really justify that disagreement unless you understand the reasoning of your opponent first.
JayDubya said:
This seems kind of... quixotic, you know? This idea that the "real" powers of the government are fundamentally out of line with what the government has chosen to make its powers equal to over time, and they should be realigned with one another (by just stripping the powers that aren't "legitimately" in the Constitution)?
I dunno. I don't know how I could operate under a framework like that.
What benefits? The surge's aim wasn't a reduction of violence. That was only the means to the political end (reconciliation) that was supposed to take place once the violence abated. That did not happen.
And as said before, the surge coincided with the awakening and both happened in the wake of extensive ethnic cleansing/consolidation of Iraqi neighborhoods. It's hard to say exactly what the surge did.
And as said before, the surge coincided with the awakening and both happened in the wake of extensive ethnic cleansing/consolidation of Iraqi neighborhoods. It's hard to say exactly what the surge did.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Main goals of the Surge:LovingSteam said:
-Reduce violence
-Create breathing room for a political breakthrough
It worked militarily but failed politically and since the ultimate goal was the political aspect, the surge really didn't succeed.
Not to mention the alliances made with teh Sunni Awakening and the buying off of other Shia militias is fragile and we already are seeing cracks in the policy that could lead right back to civil war and increased sectarian violence. But its a good thing for the republicans because it will allow them to blame it on the Obama administration if the situation re-sours.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
scorcho said:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ap88eeoC2OaA&refer=home
Obama Says Iraq Surge Success Beyond `Wildest Dreams'
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
scorcho said:
This is what I said, but totally forgot to mention the political reconciliation.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Jason's Ultimatum said:
"The surge wasn't soley responsible for the reduction in violence."
And I suppose I never said that you said that I said it was solely responsible.
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
LovingSteam said:
You fail at life:
He says militarily it was successful, but not politically.
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
LovingSteam said:"The surge wasn't soley responsible for the reduction in violence."
And I suppose I never said that you said that I said it was solely responsible.
So where do I say that you said that? Jesus Christ you're starting to annoy me.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Jason's Ultimatum said:
And guess what, my posting of said article wasn't in response to you but this
scorcho said:
I am done discussing things with you Jason. It's useless because all it does is become personal. I have no problem debating or discussing or admitting when I am wrong here but I won't do so when it gets personal.
Point being? Obama took heat for opposing the surge and had to make amends while an indignant McCain strolled around acting as if he saved the country.LovingSteam said:
Meanwhile, in the real world...
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
scorcho said:
OMG
SOTOMAYOR ONCE QUOTED A SOCIALIST IN A PAPER
A SOCIALIST
DON'T LET THE SOCIALIST CUBAN WOMAN IN THE SUPREME COURT
NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
A SOCIALIST
SOTOMAYOR A SOCIALIST
charlequin
Banned
GhaleonEB said:
I would actually really like to see something like this explicitly codified into the tax code.
I mean: we already know that the government should behave in a contracyclical fashion, taking in huge amounts of money from the populace during boom times when they can afford to, then spending it all during busts when the economy needs to get rolling again. Actually setting up the tax system to line up with this automatically would be beneficial, I think.
gcubed said:
Yeah. I think fixing this probably requires a lot of different small, persnickety reforms, which is why it seems so intractable. Part of the problem is the same thing that drives Americans' lack of savings (members of our society have an intratemporal equation that's hugely weighted towards immediate results), and part of it is the lack of accountability for corporate leadership, i.e. people can run companies into the ground and escape with golden parachutes, pretty much with impunity.
This represents a market failure because the market is assuming that companies are rational actors in their own self-interest, when in reality shareholders are too diffused and unconnected to company operations to meaningfully police their self-interest, and boards and CEOs are regularly engaged in cronyism that puts personal benefit above profitability.
As is increasingly my solution to many things, I think the answer is, instead of legalistically "banning" anything or making S-O-type rules that just make everyone's lives harder with their elaborate compliance requirements, we should actively use finely-tuned incentive policy to push markets away from the stuff we don't want. We should find ways to make long-term investments more profitable (say, by lowering marginal taxes on invested money the longer-term the recoupment threshold is), incentivize against current levels of executive compensation (which are almost unquestionably out of line with the actual productivity attached to them), and in general work against the concept of "too big to fail" by providing benefits to small businesses and startup entrepreneurs that let them effectively compete against economies of scale, while making true conglomerate status economically inefficient.
suicide? SUICIDE?LovingSteam said:
150,000 pounds is 240,510 dollars! Even a nominal tax rate of 50% still leaves someone with $120k of after tax income. that's plenty to live off of.
But it wouldn't be 50% nominal. it would be 50% on the highest bracket of their income (ie, say there are two brackets: a 25% bracket and a 50% bracket. income under $200,000 is in the 25% bracket. over 200k is in the 50% bracket. This means that someone making 250,000 a year would pay .25(200,000) + .50(50,000) = 75k in taxes, a 30% nominal tax rate on their salary.)
nominal or bracketed, 50% is not crippling to someone making a quarter of a million a year. Your comment about it being suicide is nonsense.
As for your comment about the rich not being able to spend if you tax them:yes, if you're richer, you spend more, total, than somoene who's poor, but you spend less, percentage wise. That's why trickle down economics doesn't work: the marginal utility of additional income decreases, and rather than being used to produce REAL value from goods or services, it is used to produce ARTIFICIAL value in the form of financial undertakings. Capital investments in bonds or stocks do provide funding for operations for firms, but these operations are not guaranteed to produce real value in the forms of goods and services for society (or, if they do provide them, to maximize the utility of the funds to produce them)
your argument is false
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
scorcho said:
Yes, the real world of June 2008? That article is almost a year old. It was written more than 3 months before Obama's statement.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
I can't believe you're trying to prove Trickle Down doesn't work. This has been proven over and over again and engaging in the debate only helps to validate the person that doesn't recognize reality.
Much with evolution/science deniers, you're just wasting your time. These are old and tired arguments. Might as well be attempting to explain gravity to someone that doesn't accept which way down is.
Much with evolution/science deniers, you're just wasting your time. These are old and tired arguments. Might as well be attempting to explain gravity to someone that doesn't accept which way down is.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
scorcho said:
Yes I am but that is besides the point
I didn't read it because I am not saying it achieved all of its goals but rather saying, like Obama, that it achieved goals. You posting an article a year old, 3 months before Obama's statement is useless for me to read in this circumstance since the positive results of the surge hadn't been seen full force at the time of this article.Obama is a divider not a uniter because he doesn't stand with hedge funds who waited for a tax payer funded bailout
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/05/27/a_divider_not_a_uniter.html#029954a
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/05/27/a_divider_not_a_uniter.html#029954a
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
Maybe i'm not seeing the clear picture, but how would the government pay for programs such as social security and medicare if they're spending our tax dollars during economic busts to get the economy moving again?
'Positive results'? Nothing dramatically changed in the narrative between the time that article was written and when Obama made that statement.LovingSteam said:Yes I am but that is besides the point
In fact, the entire article is still relevant now, except that the US continued both the top-down and bottom-up military approach and allowed Maliki to clean up the mess while consolidating his power. That is not the solution we want or expected.
speculawyer
Member
This whole Sotomayor thing is dull . . . and that is fine. Congrats to her. But she'll sail thru. Nominated initially by George HW Bush, approved for appellate court by many existing GOPers, the GOP doesn't have the votes for a filibuster, etc. It is a done deal. But the GOP will make some hay over it since it is good for the fund-raising business. But the outcome is pretty certain unless they discover some real bit skeleton in her closet.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
charlequin said:
You successfully talked around the real issue I raised until the very end of the relevant portion where you said, "because governments are predisposed to consider the broader value of all those within their charge, with the knowledge that those who are wildly successful can indeed be relied upon to bear a heavier burden than those who are not."
I'm taking that to mean that you subscribe to the philosophy that says they should be taxed more because they have more, and that it's acceptable to sacrifice the individual for the good of the many. They should be taxed more because they can be taxed more.
Basically you are agreeing that indeed, some should arbitrarily be taxed more than others.
I think you're also presenting this as there are only two "consistent" ways to view taxation, those being that you either agree that the government has no right to tax or you accept a progressive tax system, but I'm not entirely sure.
A flat tax as a percentage of income actually satisfies both the concept of utility, and the idea that who can bear the heavier burden should bear it. It's still not ideal, but it's certainly an improvement over a progressive tax.
Ideally we'd only pay for the government services that we actually use.
speculawyer
Member
:lolsyllogism said:
So the GOP stands with Hedge funds requesting socialism? WTF?
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
Mandark said:
So are you saying that those social benefits aren't universal for all citizens? If they're universal how is that a justification that some should support the services in place of others?
Edit:
I think you're taking "paying for the services they use" and extending it further than I meant. I'm not saying that people shouldn't pay for things like police or fire services, but since they are used universally everyone should pay an equal amount.
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
That's just libertarian/corporate double speak for not paying for any services, since they can almost always pay for the services privately on demand. Though I'm sure a sleuth can dig up a list of the formerly wealthy now living on the government's dole after their investments collaposed, or the never wealthy like Joe the Plumber towing the rich man's line.
If the proverbial public good, national defense, is often cited as an indispensible taxable benefit to society, why can't other services be classified in the same category.
Where as libertarians and corportarians like to live in the classical (19th century) past of narrow definitions of what a public good is, I'd argue that actual list of public goods is much broader and include things such a universial education, healthcare, and welfare transfer payments.
National defense is useless when the great majority of the citizens inside your borders are living in poverty, in prison or dead.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
Deku said:
Again, you're assuming that I wasn't counting services that have widespread, indirect benefits as things that don't need to be paid for. I'm all for paying for services such as these as long as it's done evenly for everyone.
- Status