Trickle-down is a scam, extending the Bush tax cut is wrong:

[75th]

The riots across the EU are due to a host of reasons, but its primarily driven by austerity measures that the countries are forced to enact due to the financial collapse. The bond market is concerned about the deficits of countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc so in order to bring the deficits under control, the countries have made tough decisions concerning cutting back on entitlements and (in a few cases) raising taxes.

The French specifically are bitching primarily because the retirement age was raised from 62 to 65 over the next 30 years I believe.

Anyway, as far as countries with higher taxes than us while the citizens seem happy, you only need to look at places like Canada, Australia, and Japan.

In fact, one of Japans biggest problems is that its unemployment rate is too low.

 

[binö]

boy, there is here! and most of them are not bs, minimum wage jobs either...and the people that used to occupy these positions??? they don't wanna go back to work because they are making 75% of what they did before and they're sitting on their asses...or they're out in the woods hunting deer...but, they aren't taking their fucking jobs back, even though the hr person calls them once a week trying to drag them back to work...it's fucking horseshit.

yeah i have to agree...i think a better statement is, the jobs available don't pay as much as the person's last job, and therefore they feel above that and chose to collect UE instead.
cause i can get anyone a job that doesn't have felonies...a pretty good fed job...if you are physically fit and not a dumbfuck i could set things in motion as quick as next week.
but the money isn't gonna be engineering/IT/etc sorta money...and folks can't come to terms with that

 

[Mr. dB]

If I make $10K a year, and pay $1K taxes, which is about what I'd pay, then why aren't the Dems happy if I make $1M, and pay $100K? The pre-Bush tax rate would have made the tax on $1M earned income appx $550,000!!!!! A flat tax is perfectly fair as far as I can see, and it would encourage me to make more & more; not watch out for a ceiling whereby if I make a penny over, I get raped.

LOL, if we had a flat tax the rate would be a whole hell of a lot higher than 10%. To support the present size of government it would be in the high 20% range. So the rich would get a moderate tax cut and the poor would get a huge tax hike. Yeah, that's "fair".

The point of a progressive tax rate is that it taxes disposable or discretionary income. It takes into account that for some people, virtually all of their income is used to pay for necessities, and for other people there is money to burn. The money-to-burn crowd are still left with plenty to burn.

 

[75th]

i'm not a finacial euro genious, but one could deduct that higher taxes in france led to:
-business owners getting the fug out.
-less tax base, forcing an increase to make up the loss
-further tax hikes scares away more business
all this equals less money for social programs, and forces an increasing in the retirement age, thus leading to the riots.
proly more to it than that but i'm sure that figures into it

The riots are due to changes being made to account for the large deficits.

The irony is that letting the Bush tax cuts expire as they were always intended to do would help close our deficit by a significant percentage.

 

[75th]

Also, another factoid:

The top .1% (one tenth of one percent) of earners in this country in 2008 had 11% of the wealth. The top 1% had 23% of the wealth. Over the past 10 years, the top 400 earners have seen their effective tax rate cut in half.

The last time so much wealth was concentrated between so few people was 1928 folks.


Also, its the middle class that creates the most jobs, folks. They are the ones who spend the money, keeping businesses in business. A strong middle class is essential to a strong economy.

 

[javaguru]

Here's what I don't get:

Why is this one of the FEW countries where the wealthy resent giving back? Seriously. They're wealthy, primarily, because of where they live. Why do wealthy Americans resent paying more than someone who isn't? This argument of "Well, you're not rich because you're lazy" doesn't cut it. Not everyone can be wealthy (or even comfortably middle class, we won't go there). If you aren't born rich then acquiring wealth is often about being dealt the right genetic hand so you have the intellect to be successful and the ambition to implement it. And even if you have the smarts and drive, if you were handed a total shit sandwich in terms of life start (which includes, though to a much lesser degree, GENDER and/or RACE) then you could have all the brains and ambition in the world, but you could still be spinning your wheels.

Why should the rich people pay more taxes than the poor? Simple: The closer you get to the poverty line, the more valuable nickles and dimes become. $5000 a year in extra taxes is an okay vacation for some people, for others it's an entire year's rent.

Roughly 40% of Americans don't pay income tax after deductions, credits and rebates. The wealthiest already pay the vast majority of the income tax revenue to the government. I saw an interview, on ABC I believe, with one of those billionaires that wants to pay more taxes. The interviewer asked him why he just didn't turn his billion dollar charitable foundation over to the feds.....his response was the feds would squander it. Given that opinion, I have no idea why he would support raising taxes except that he must be a progressive liberal that loves to spend other people's money more than his own...

Essentially, the reason people making 251k a year don't want to turn more money over to the feds is the same reason you don't take a twenty out of your purse and burn it.

 

[Mr. dB]

No one WANTS to pay more taxes. The difference is whether or not one accepts that it's a necessary sacrifice.

 

[mrplunkey]

Ok.

Seriously though...

The fact of the matter is that Bush lost 670k private sector jobs during a pretty remarkable economic growth period. Ironically, Bush presided over a pretty strong public sector growth period.

I understand how theoretically tax cuts for the wealthy are supposed to work, but reality shows that it hasnt been doing anything close.

Einstein and the whole insanity definition kind of applies.

You are assuming there is a one-to-one relationship between jobs and economic growth. It's a simple fact that while the two are highly correlated, it's never one-to-one -- nor should it ever be. That's the entire basis behind productivity.

Here's an exaggerated example: I bet if we forced every American to grow their own food, growth in private sector jobs would skyrocket. But would be be wealthier? No, we'd all get poorer because we'd take a huge productivity hit.

Overall employment diminished during the Bush years because productivity grew, but a huge portion of that growth came from moving jobs overseas (yes, that is a form of productivity enhancement). To stop that, you've got two choices: Either 1) re-write the business laws for every other country in the world or 2) make the US a more friendly place to employ people. How do you do that? Easy -- less regulation, less litigation and alas yes... lower taxes.

 

[mrplunkey]

It depends on your definition of wealth, but I would look at Europe at showing people who don't resent giving back (to some degree), no?

Absolutely!

Look at these happy taxpayers:

 

[mrplunkey]

The riots are due to changes being made to account for the large deficits.

The irony is that letting the Bush tax cuts expire as they were always intended to do would help close our deficit by a significant percentage.

So you're be for letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire? The ones that affect every single bracket?