"Fair Share"

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

Joey: please tell me what flat tax rate we would need to assess everyone, to pay for what we have today, with no increase in government services - you can exclude the wars.

Define 'fair' regarding taxes. Please include in your description; work and travel schedules, money earned annually, education received, years of service, and total employed (yup, I pay taxes on them too).
At what point in the year should taxes be paid in full assuming keeping nothing for oneself, utilizing the factors above.
How much is enough?

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

Define 'fair' regarding taxes. Please include in your description; work and travel schedules, money earned annually, education received, years of service, and total employed (yup, I pay taxes on them too).
At what point in the year should taxes be paid in full assuming keeping nothing for oneself, utilizing the factors above.
How much is enough?

What do you think about your taxes being pretty near or at historic lows right now?

I'm not against a flat tax. I want to know what flat federal tax rate would have to be charged, on top of our state and local taxes, to maintain what we as a nation want to continue to provide us (excepting wars)?

Joey? What is that projected rate?

See, we have a major problem: our last president increased our expenditures massively, while decreasing our income massively at the same time.

Wow, how stupid, right? Now we're in severe financial trouble.

Cutting expenditures alone can't fix it. That's simply physically impossible. We need our "part-time" income level to go back up to "full time", where it was before the previous administration took a growing surplus and threw us under the financial burden of total fiscal irresponsibility and massive debt.

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by Riot

What do you think about your taxes being pretty near or at historic lows right now?

I'm not against a flat tax. I want to know what flat federal tax rate would have to be charged, on top of our state and local taxes, to maintain what we as a nation want to continue to provide us (excepting wars)?

Joey? What is that projected rate?

See, we have a major problem: our last president increased our expenditures massively, while decreasing our income massively at the same time.

Wow, how stupid, right? Now we're in severe financial trouble.

Cutting expenditures alone can't fix it. That's simply physically impossible. We need our "part-time" income level to go back up to "full time", where it was before the previous administration took a growing surplus and threw us under the financial burden of total fiscal irresponsibility and massive debt.

It's NOT impossible to cut expenditures to fix it. That's going to happen anyway. WE ARE OUT OF MONEY! We're about to have our credit card cut up and go out of business. You ought to be very scared of what it means when a country goes out of business.

It's impossible NOT to cut SPENDING.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by joeydb

It's NOT impossible to cut expenditures to fix it. That's going to happen anyway. WE ARE OUT OF MONEY! We're about to have our credit card cut up and go out of business. You ought to be very scared of what it means when a country goes out of business.

It's impossible NOT to cut SPENDING.

What I said was that ONLY cutting spending cannot fix our debt problem.

And Joey, there exists multiple estimates of what a flat tax rate would have to be for this country. Please google that and get back to us with the figures. Because that is the essence of your argument: either we have the current tax code, we keep the code and eliminate loopholes, or we go to flat tax. Well, what rate would that flat tax have to be? How much would you pay under your own flat tax proposal?

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by Riot

What I said was that ONLY cutting spending cannot fix our debt problem.

Well the taxes are too high already, so the spending being lowered (to the point of not borrowing any more in lieu of taxes) is what has to happen. There hasn't even been a budget for 3 years. In many ways that's the most honest Congress has ever been. They have no intention of keeping ANY limit on spending.

The party is over, especially for the dead beats and leeches.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by joeydb

Well the taxes are too high already,

Taxes are at historic lows.

so the spending being lowered (to the point of not borrowing any more in lieu of taxes) is what has to happen.

Okay: Say it costs $1000 a month to pay your mortgage. If you quit your job that pays you $2000 a month, and take a job that only pays $1100 a month (i.e. "the Bush tax cuts"), "cutting spending" isn't your problem, nor will it help you survive.

The party is over, especially for the dead beats and leeches.

Who are you referring to as "dead beats" and "leeches"?

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by Riot

Taxes are at historic lows.



Okay: Say it costs $1000 a month to pay your mortgage. If you quit your job that pays you $2000 a month, and take a job that only pays $1100 a month (i.e. "the Bush tax cuts"), "cutting spending" isn't your problem, nor will it help you survive.



Who are you referring to as "dead beats" and "leeches"?

Historic lows? Compared to whom? Carter??

Your mortgage example is not a good fit. IF ONLY it was a fixed rate percentage on a bounded sum that is actually being repaid. That is not what the national debt is and you know it. The deficit each year is the difference between the tax revenue and the Fantasyland budgets of Washington DC. They haven't paid back dime ONE. It just keeps accumulating. When was the last year that the actual amount OWED went DOWN? Not a reduction in the deficit of a given year versus the deficit of the year before - I mean actual repayment of part of the principal of the loan. I believe it was 1969. Even Clinton's "surplus" did not count Social Security, though even I will admit that compared to what we have seen since in both Obama and Bush, Clinton's spending for those years would be a welcome step in the right direction.

Dead beats, or leeches, are exactly what they sound like: those who consume "the goodies" without contributing in the form of income tax. 49.5% of the population of adults of working age fall into this category. They file a return - but when all the math is added up, they owe $0 or even get money "back" from taxes they didn't pay in the first place.