The soul of the right is being displayed out in the open as never before.

[Nordberg]

hmmm.....who should I believe.......bureau of labor statistics or the New York Times......such a difficult choice.....

I found about 8 sources that were in line with NYT.

[PoliTalker]

Hello garyd,

But that's why it's called politics we decide every so often who gets to have a say this time. Everybody want's it there own way there is no neutral setting. Elections are about who get's there way this time.

Touche'

Again Great Britain. which in the sixties saw a tax the essentially stripped you of everything you made over about 50k. Most everyone from the Beatles and up left the country. And until the election of Margaret Thatcher and the repeal of that nonsensical tax England suffered by all accounts and astonishing loss of talented people. If there is no reason to excel few people will try and those that do will try elsewhere.

I am not proposing any type of tax plan which would result in no reason to excel.

I calculate that a tax rate of 50% on the highest incomes, with a progressive tax reduction across the income spectrum until the magic poverty level at which the rate is zero as it is now, would be sufficient to eliminate the deficit and begin paying down the debt. Well, I should clarify. I last performed that calculation during the Obama presidency. Trump has run the deficit way up since then, so I don't know if that would be enough currently. But if not, it is very close. Earners would be taxed at the same rate as everyone else for amounts up to what everyone else earns. The higher rates only kick on ON THE AMOUNT OVER WHAT EVERYBODY ELSE HAS. I wanted to emphasis that because it is important. There is no threshhold income level above which it is not worth earning any more. But for individuals who are earning more than 99% of earners, amounts earned above what the 99% earns would be taxed at 50%. They still get richer if they earn more, so there is no reason to leave.

Another thing I would like to see would be an executive pay cap for large employers. Executives must raise the pay of workers such that the average of all their workers is 5% of the top executive pay package (everything - all the perks, too.) That's what it was in the 60's and America was great then. (actually it was more like 10%, but 5% would be fantastic to what is seen on the free market.) The free market means employers will cut wages as low as they can get away with and still be functional. There is no pretense that the worker is part of a 'company.' No. The company exploits the worker's talents, which nets the company far more than the company shares with the worker, adn the company flips the worker a set amount. Equitable profit sharing is almost unheard of any more.

Of course we did. We also had a bout twice as man tax brackets and a great many more deductibles. And that top 90% tax rate as I believe I already pointed out only effected 3 people and they did indeed move. If adjusted for inflation and brought back today it is unclear as to whether or not anyone other than WArren buffet would be affected. And if you restored the old deductions present at that time next rate down 75% if memory serves was effectively only 50%.. And let us not forget that in the fifties everyone else had effectively been bombed flat, that is to say we had no competition. By the time Kennedy was elected that had changed and Our high tax rates had become an obvious burden on our productivity and out ability to compete in the world. And he cut the top rate to fifty percent This resulted in an immediate though brief economic rebound. Please note it was Brief because it was only in effect for a brief period of time because the worst president in the history of the country LBJ, The chief culprit in the destruction of the African American, raised it back up to 75% in order to finance both his destructive war in Southeast Asia and his equally destructive war on the African American family.

There is some truth there.

Self serving liberal Mythology, combined with a complete misunderstanding of how the tax code works and awful mathematics. Automation produces more jobs not fewer.

Gotta call baloney on that one. If automation resulted in more workers they wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be worth it. They automate jobs to reduce the number of workers and reduce the labor cost. Artificial Intelligence is not here yet, but we are getting close. When it is realized, our society will have to change drastically because automation will eliminate most jobs. Even doctors could be replaced by machines. There won't be any jobs building and servicing the machines because other machines will be doing that. By that point we will have to give up on most social assistance programs and simply issue a Universal Basic Income to everyone, paid for by taxing the rich. You might as well get used to the idea because it is coming.

Have you ever done your own taxes? In all my years of doing mine I have never seen a line that says you will pay x% for the first 20K then Y% for the next thrity k. Rather there is a chart and it shows your adjusted gross income, and across from that is an amount you pay based on that It goes up a bit through each bracket because after all 10% of 100 is less than 10% of $1000. And you get a big jump whenever you move from one bracket to the next.

I have done my taxes every single year, myself, since I first earn enough to file, as a teenager. I never hired anybody else. Every single time I read the materials, figured out and understood what was required, filed all the needed forms, on time, and paid all of my taxes. I have never been audited and never has the IRS even questioned anything on any of my returns. I never needed a lawyer or an accountant, despite having run businesses and used Schedule C and paid all the Schedule SE taxes, and quarterly payments where needed, as well as having worked for employers larges and small as both a direct employee and a contract worker.

What I have seen is a gradual rise of taxes across the spectrum until one gets to the top bracket, and a formula to calculate tax above that.

Au contraire we have a great country in spite of government spending not because of it. Name me one thing government produces other than red tape.

How can you not see all that government does for us? The fact that you have a safe car, the fact that there are almost no plane wrecks, the National Weather Service, Social Security. I could go on and on. Government does SO much for us.

And we could help OURSELVES if we would just tax the super-rich enough to start paying down the debt.

The chief product of government is sand in the gears, excessive paper work, sloth, unintended consequences and monumental stupidity. If you look at a chart of on the job industries and deaths over the last hundred years you cannot tell where OSHA came into being. Why? Well for one thing those capitalist may be greedy but they aren't stupid. Constantly having to train new people to do a given task because the other got killed or crippled is not only a tragedy for the guys family and a downer for work place morale, but grossly inefficient and during the training period makes accidents even more likely thereby increasing that inefficiency to say nothing of the fact that newbs are almost always less productive than old hands.

Don Blankenship.

Now that's just sad. Of course no one knows everything and that includes those bureaucrats in whom you place so much faith. About 25% of our federal government is involved in protecting us from dangers within and with out. The other 75% seems to be involved in trying to make sure that no one anywhere ever gets anything accomplished including at times the other 25% of the federal government.

OK, now you're just completely exaggerating. That is a completely unproveable claim.

There was, as I recal,l a story a few years ago about the navy being fined by the EPA for not using jet fuel that did not yet exist. And please government bureaucrats will always find a way to justify hiring more bureaucrats. It's like asking a rooster if he needs more hens, or an alcoholic if he needs more booze. The fox guarding the hen house metaphor comes immediately to mind. Bureaucrats are human beings too that in and of itself is sufficient reason to be wary of their answers when asking them about things that have a direct bearing on their livelihood.

Colorful descriptions but lean on verifiable facts. Seems to be offhand conjecture.

Please I didn't say they weren't training anyone, I said they weren't training them in skill sets that were terribly useful in the private sector. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blo...s-have-been-an That should tell you everything you need to know.

What you have linked is an opinion piece. It is not necessarily the whole story. The Heritage Foundation is dedicated to small government. It is their nature to attack parts of government, call them ineffective. It is good that we have these criticisms, but we should not accept them without balance and verification.

Which is like saying there needs to be permanent and mandatory and unstoppable inflation. Every time you hike minimum wage you set into motion a five year cycle during which the the new minimum wage slowly falls back to the purchasing power it used to have more workers than before are suddenly living hand to mouth and entry level jobs become rarer. And all but bureaucrats and the top 20% wind up worse off than they were before. Oh and for what it is worth minimum wage laws weren't instituted because capitalism failed but because bureaucrats and politicians full of little more than their own hot air and hubris thought they could dictate to economic reality. Economic reality laughed at them. It still does but the joke is lost upon them and it is increasingly less funny for the rest of us.

A little inflation is normal.

[garyd]

[QUOTE=PoliTalker;2476037]Hello garyd,



Touche'



I am not proposing any type of tax plan which would result in no reason to excel.

I calculate that a tax rate of 50% on the highest incomes, with a progressive tax reduction across the income spectrum until the magic poverty level at which the rate is zero as it is now, would be sufficient to eliminate the deficit and begin paying down the debt. Well, I should clarify. I last performed that calculation during the Obama presidency. Trump has run the deficit way up since then, so I don't know if that would be enough currently. But if not, it is very close. Earners would be taxed at the same rate as everyone else for amounts up to what everyone else earns. The higher rates only kick on ON THE AMOUNT OVER WHAT EVERYBODY ELSE HAS. I wanted to emphasis that because it is important. There is no threshhold income level above which it is not worth earning any more. But for individuals who are earning more than 99% of earners, amounts earned above what the 99% earns would be taxed at 50%. They still get richer if they earn more, so there is no reason to leave.

Another thing I would like to see would be an executive pay cap for large employers. Executives must raise the pay of workers such that the average of all their workers is 5% of the top executive pay package (everything - all the perks, too.) That's what it was in the 60's and America was great then. (actually it was more like 10%, but 5% would be fantastic to what is seen on the free market.) The free market means employers will cut wages as low as they can get away with and still be functional. There is no pretense that the worker is part of a 'company.' No. The company exploits the worker's talents, which nets the company far more than the company shares with the worker, adn the company flips the worker a set amount. Equitable profit sharing is almost unheard of any more.

Pay for top executives is where it is because the people who do the hiring and firing value that particular skill set because it is rare. If they could gain the talent they need for less than what they currently pay they would. Top execs are workers just like everyone else. They just have a more valuable skill set. Again sir the reality is that your pay is determined by your skill set and that skill set's relative rarity within society. Trying to increase the value of that skill set by government fiat just screws everything else up. Your pan will result in more concentration of wealth at the top. What you and most other leftist do not seem to understand is that once the tax rate goes above a certain level increasing amounts of money will be shifted into wealth preservation schemes rather than wealth generation schemes. Wealth preservation strategies create vastly fewer jobs and most of those jobs are high end specialist jobs not entry level. Wealth generation creates jobs at all levels of the economy.

Gotta call baloney on that one. If automation resulted in more workers they wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be worth it. They automate jobs to reduce the number of workers and reduce the labor cost. Artificial Intelligence is not here yet, but we are getting close. When it is realized, our society will have to change drastically because automation will eliminate most jobs. Even doctors could be replaced by machines. There won't be any jobs building and servicing the machines because other machines will be doing that. By that point we will have to give up on most social assistance programs and simply issue a Universal Basic Income to everyone, paid for by taxing the rich. You might as well get used to the idea because it is coming.

But their won't be any rich either or very few. After all if it is all robots and machines why do I need a highly paid human being to boss them around? After all Robots don't require leadership. Just programing. It is just as likely given 3d printing that everyone will have his or her own little factory with contracts to make widgets wingnuts or whatever and we will all be rich businessmen.

I have done my taxes every single year, myself, since I first earn enough to file, as a teenager. I never hired anybody else. Every single time I read the materials, figured out and understood what was required, filed all the needed forms, on time, and paid all of my taxes. I have never been audited and never has the IRS even questioned anything on any of my returns. I never needed a lawyer or an accountant, despite having run businesses and used Schedule C and paid all the Schedule SE taxes, and quarterly payments where needed, as well as having worked for employers larges and small as both a direct employee and a contract worker.

What I have seen is a gradual rise of taxes across the spectrum until one gets to the top bracket, and a formula to calculate tax above that.

But that formula applies to your total adjusted gross income. Not just this much at that rate this much more that much higher a rate.

How can you not see all that government does for us? The fact that you have a safe car, the fact that there are almost no plane wrecks, the National Weather Service, Social Security. I could go on and on. Government does SO much for us.

And we could help OURSELVES if we would just tax the super-rich enough to start paying down the debt.

Social security is just about the worst retirement plan other than the lottery ever conceived by the mind of man. In no small part because the investment strategy it is saddled with is ridiculous and is all but guaranteed to lose money over time. Add to this the fact that when it was originally established average life expectancy was 65 which meant half the country never collected a dime and the overwhelming majority of people never lived long enough to draw out all the paid in. It has long since been increased to 67, but given that we now live into our eighties on average even that was like too conservative. And please note we are in a lot better shape than most of Europe where retirement ages are much lower. This ticking demographic time bomb is why they are bringing in all the Muslims.

Don Blankenship.

Who?

OK, now you're just completely exaggerating. That is a completely unproveable claim.



Colorful descriptions but lean on verifiable facts. Seems to be offhand conjecture.

well as they say you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

What you have linked is an opinion piece. It is not necessarily the whole story. The Heritage Foundation is dedicated to small government. It is their nature to attack parts of government, call them ineffective. It is good that we have these criticisms, but we should not accept them without balance and verification.

So look up the government study it references and see if you can find any variances from there statements and it.

A little inflation is normal.

Alittle inflation, say 2-3% a year would be acceptable but that will generate 5 to 10% and slowly increasing over time Until it all collapses.

[PostmodernProphet]

I found about 8 sources that were in line with NYT.

how many were in line with the actual statistics?......

[PostmodernProphet]

Lots . Trump lied about the Germany getting 70 percent of energy from Russia. It is 9. However if selling to Germany means they own Germany, then China surely owns us.https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/t...s-what-we-know

Germany wants us to pay to protect them from Russia while they buy their energy from them........not logical......

[PoliTalker]

Hello garyd,

Pay for top executives is where it is because the people who do the hiring and firing value that particular skill set because it is rare.

I disagree. I think the pay is so high because it is artificially inflated. Here is why: The executives and their buddies often sit on each other's boards which determine their pay packages. I'll vote for your pay raise if you vote for mine. Done deal. Many top positions like that are not determined solely on skill sets. Multitudes graduate every year with top honors in MBA. But only a few top positions come open. (Holders of those top positions don't like to give them up.) Competition for those positions is fierce. People pull out all the stops. Often it boils down to not what the applicant KNOWS, but WHO he knows. That explains why so many of those positions are held by white males. It's the good old boy network. If you come from an influential affluent family and go to an ivy league school (which generally takes connections just to get into,) and your family is high in the social class strata, then you stand a FAR higher chance of getting a powerful top executive position.

That is often a make or break requirement.

If they could gain the talent they need for less than what they currently pay they would. Top execs are workers just like everyone else. They just have a more valuable skill set. Again sir the reality is that your pay is determined by your skill set and that skill set's relative rarity within society.

Guess again. Wake up and smell the pure power of capitalism. It's deal making. You give me this I'll give you that. Get my kid into here and I will make this donation to the school. Take my son into your executive fold and I will sell you that coveted art piece. Whatever the deal is, it's always a deal with those people. Almost nobody not previously acquainted or connected just applies out of the blue for top executive jobs and gets them. You have to know somebody.

Trying to increase the value of that skill set by government fiat just screws everything else up. Your pan will result in more concentration of wealth at the top.

How could it get any more concentrated than it does under the current class war system?

What you and most other leftist do not seem to understand is that once the tax rate goes above a certain level increasing amounts of money will be shifted into wealth preservation schemes rather than wealth generation schemes. Wealth preservation strategies create vastly fewer jobs and most of those jobs are high end specialist jobs not entry level. Wealth generation creates jobs at all levels of the economy.

Sounds like an unsupported justification for like trickle down. I do not believe that the way to help the 99% is to grease the 1%. But the 1% want you to believe it.

But their won't be any rich either or very few. After all if it is all robots and machines why do I need a highly paid human being to boss them around? After all Robots don't require leadership. Just programing. It is just as likely given 3d printing that everyone will have his or her own little factory with contracts to make widgets wingnuts or whatever and we will all be rich businessmen.

No that won't happen. If everyone can produce anything then nobody will need to buy anything. They can simply produce it themselves. Just tell the replicator on Star Trek what you want and poof there it is. What will happen is these machines will at first be owned only by the rich because they are initially very expensive. Only the rich and the most powerful corporations will be able to afford them. Those who own the machines will own the means of production. But they will face a terrible problem. Management has long sought to eliminate as much labor as possible with no regard to what that does to consumerism. AI will allow them to completely eliminate all labor. That will also eliminate their customer base. Big problem. Who is going to buy their products if there are no jobs, no income, and no consumers? We will have to have the UBI.

Social security is just about the worst retirement plan other than the lottery ever conceived by the mind of man. In no small part because the investment strategy it is saddled with is ridiculous and is all but guaranteed to lose money over time. Add to this the fact that when it was originally established average life expectancy was 65 which meant half the country never collected a dime and the overwhelming majority of people never lived long enough to draw out all the paid in. It has long since been increased to 67, but given that we now live into our eighties on average even that was like too conservative. And please note we are in a lot better shape than most of Europe where retirement ages are much lower. This ticking demographic time bomb is why they are bringing in all the Muslims.

Investing incurs risk. The higher the potential profit, the less secure an investment is. People don't want to spin the wheel of chance with their retirement. They want secure retirement. That's why Social Security does not use riskier investment strategies.

Who?

Don Blankenship. You never heard of him? I am surprised. Why, he is a CHAMPION of the right. He absolutely HATES government. He said the Obama presidency was 'pure hell.' (That meant that while he is still fabulously rich, he made less money during that period.) And OSHA is one if his biggest menaces. OSHA tried to tell him to follow safety protocols for his workers, to actually cut into HIS PROFITS to value the lives of his workers. VALUE THE LIVES OF WORKERS? Preposterous! Why, how is anybody supposed to get fabulously rich while CARING about people's lives?

Don Blankenship ignored the government and didn't spend a dime to ensure the safety of his workers. Some of them died, and Don Blankenship went to prison. Then he got out and ran for office. He was beaten resoundingly. But he did get the votes of some; and that is dismaying.

So look up the government study it references and see if you can find any variances from there statements and it.

I have no time for that. If you wish to present more evidence to support your claim besides an opinion piece I will read it here.

A little inflation, say 2-3% a year would be acceptable but that will generate 5 to 10% and slowly increasing over time Until it all collapses.

I doubt you could present anything more than opinion to support a belief that raising the minimum wage will lead to 5-10% inflation. That can't be proved. I am not going to be silly enough to demand that you prove something which cannot be proved, but I hope we can agree that opinion is one thing. Facts are another. I disagree with your opinion.

I advocate for setting the minimum wage at $15 and thereafter linking it to inflation. This is an attempt to regulate the free market in order to prevent dangerous levels of wealth inequality. It should also be tied in with other efforts toward the same goal. Wealth inequality must not be allowed to become ultimately extreme. The result of extreme wealth inequality would be the destruction of the middle class. Everybody can't be rich, so as the super-rich and super-powerful compete for fewer and fewer middle class and poor dollars, we are headed to a muted economy where more and more individuals have no wealth, no buying power, no way to participate in the economy. The end result would be fewer and fewer rich people who are very rich, and the rest have virtually nothing. This is not the picture of American prosperity or 'PROMOTING THE GENERAL WELFARE' as outlined in the Preamble.

The problem with the myth of widespread wealth creation is that capitalists are in the business of creating wealth for themselves. If they have to utilize the efforts of others toward that end, (they would ideally prefer not to at all,) they will entice them to provide labor with as little reward as possible for as short a duration as possible. Then labor is laid OFF. This shuts most of labor OUT of wealth creation, as the holders of capital amass as much as possible for themselves. For much of labor, capitalism represents a carrot on a stick tied to the back of labor and dangled in front, just out of grasp.

Capitalism is a wonderful engine of creativity, no doubt. But capitalism has an ugly side. Capitalism is not all unicorns and daisies. Capitalism looks for resources and imbalances to exploit for profit. Capitalism will dig mines, create towns, create jobs, etc, until the vein runs out. Then capitalism runs out too. It then leaves the town with no income. The workers are left with nothing. Captialism extracted all the profits of the resource for a few individuals, temporarily used other individuals in the process, then moves on to find another situation to exploit. As it moves on it shows absolutely no responsibility to what is left behind. If we didn't have government regulation, it would leave a total mess and a destroyed environment.

Capitalism is a wonderful engine of creativity, yes. Jobs can be created, yes. And jobs can also be eliminated. YES. Capitalism is a very powerful engine for creating wealth. It creates wealth for those who hold the capital. Everyone else is a pawn in that process, with no guarantees. People want prosperity, security. Capitalism wants to create wealth. The goals are different. Capitalism does not deliver what people want. It can help for a while, but ultimately it doesn't care if people live or die, eat or starve.

Like any powerful engine, capitalism must be regulated. You can't take a big giant V8 engine and just turn it loose with no governor. You can't just constantly run it at full throttle. If you try that, it will blow up. It's the same thing with the powerful engine of capitalism. It requires regulation if we want to harness the power of capitalism to do what people want.

Capitalism must be regulated.

Government is the entity to do that regulation.

No two ways around it. No government on the planet simply lets capitalism completely loose. That model can't possibly work. it would self-destruct. We must have proper regulation and we must have a powerful government to do that.

[Nordberg]

[QUOTE=garyd;2476271]

Hello garyd,



Touche'



I am not proposing any type of tax plan which would result in no reason to excel.



Pay for top executives is where it is because the people who do the hiring and firing value that particular skill set because it is rare. If they could gain the talent they need for less than what they currently pay they would. Top execs are workers just like everyone else. They just have a more valuable skill set. Again sir the reality is that your pay is determined by your skill set and that skill set's relative rarity within society. Trying to increase the value of that skill set by government fiat just screws everything else up. Your pan will result in more concentration of wealth at the top. What you and most other leftist do not seem to understand is that once the tax rate goes above a certain level increasing amounts of money will be shifted into wealth preservation schemes rather than wealth generation schemes. Wealth preservation strategies create vastly fewer jobs and most of those jobs are high end specialist jobs not entry level. Wealth generation creates jobs at all levels of the economy.





But their won't be any rich either or very few. After all if it is all robots and machines why do I need a highly paid human being to boss them around? After all Robots don't require leadership. Just programing. It is just as likely given 3d printing that everyone will have his or her own little factory with contracts to make widgets wingnuts or whatever and we will all be rich businessmen.



But that formula applies to your total adjusted gross income. Not just this much at that rate this much more that much higher a rate.



Social security is just about the worst retirement plan other than the lottery ever conceived by the mind of man. In no small part because the investment strategy it is saddled with is ridiculous and is all but guaranteed to lose money over time. Add to this the fact that when it was originally established average life expectancy was 65 which meant half the country never collected a dime and the overwhelming majority of people never lived long enough to draw out all the paid in. It has long since been increased to 67, but given that we now live into our eighties on average even that was like too conservative. And please note we are in a lot better shape than most of Europe where retirement ages are much lower. This ticking demographic time bomb is why they are bringing in all the Muslims.


Who?



well as they say you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.



So look up the government study it references and see if you can find any variances from there statements and it.



Alittle inflation, say 2-3% a year would be acceptable but that will generate 5 to 10% and slowly increasing over time Until it all collapses.

John Kenneth galbraith called execs ratifiers. The decisions they make Are determined by their staffs. Those people do the analysis and give the exc their paperwork. It is all determined for them. They are not creative. they are not doing the work. they are just OKaying the data their staffs give them.