Red Dreams
Full Member
now if Romney suddenly got 'religion'...the 'Christian' kind I mean...he will be the nominee.
It's Cain's tax plan. Drop both personal and corporate income tax to flat 9% rates, then have a 9% national sales tax. It's called 9-9-9 because, "feck poor people. I want more yacht money" isn't as catchy.
Its the mantra of the dems and most right thinking people that those who can afford the most should pay the most. Their are no deductions in Cains plan, only about half of those in the US earn enough to pay Federal income tax after deductions, this plan would see a massive number of people who currently don't pay income tax start to pay, many of whom can barely afford it. Conversly the very wealthy will pay a lot less. On top of that the cuts to welfare that will have to come as tax take collapes will feck the poor.Now wait, I'm not a huge fan of this 999 thing for the most part but I like the idea of the flat tax. The problem with a national 9% sales tax is then you pay nearly 20% tax at the register in some areas. But how is this "feck poor people". Isn't the mantra of the dems to make sure everyone pays their fair share? If we're going to back gov't spending then we need to sign up to pay for it.
Making sure businesses pay their share is the tough part really. A company like GE paying nothing is a shame, should be a crime.
Now wait, I'm not a huge fan of this 999 thing for the most part but I like the idea of the flat tax. The problem with a national 9% sales tax is then you pay nearly 20% tax at the register in some areas. But how is this "feck poor people". Isn't the mantra of the dems to make sure everyone pays their fair share? If we're going to back gov't spending then we need to sign up to pay for it.
Making sure businesses pay their share is the tough part really. A company like GE paying nothing is a shame, should be a crime.
When Gregory then asked Cain whether he was a "neoconservative," the presidential hopeful admitted he had no idea what Gregory was talking about.
"I'm not sure what you mean by neoconservative," said Cain. "I am a conservative, yes. Neoconservative -- labels sometimes will put you in a box. I'm very conservative."
"But you're familiar with the neoconservative movement?" asked Gregory.
"I'm not familiar with the neoconservative movement," admitted Cain. "I'm familiar with the conservative movement. Let me define what I mean by the conservative movement -- less government, less taxes, more individual responsibility."
How the feck is this imbecile a millionaire.
Romney,Perry, Cain....
which of the 3 stooges will get the nomination....
The nomination is Romney's to lose, I agree.
But the Presidency is Obama's to lose.
Still think Obama will win comfortably. But honestly you will only find out when they start debating each other.
Well, all of them were essentially bought and paid for. Some more than others, of course. The money just flows too freely in American politics. That doesn't mean I think they've all been corrupt bastards who only care about taking a cheque from the corporations. Some did.
Little harsh on Lyndon Johnson to include JFK on that list and not him! Johnson became a very important president, achieving more than even JFK had the will for.agree with that.
since WW2, I think FDR, JFK and Carter were the least corrupt.
Now I know President Kennedy's father purchased the presidency for him, I believe he tried to be a real president...and got killed for it. Though I was fed up with Carter at the time, looking back he did try to do what was right for the country.
since then, the hold of corporate power has got stronger on all candidates.
Little harsh on Lyndon Johnson to include JFK on that list and not him! Johnson became a very important president, achieving more than even JFK had the will for.
Pretty much everyone who is president in recent times is bought to some extent, as has been said, maybe its just bias but it does seem that the Democrats were the least overtly corrupt up until Clinton.
I really doubt any president in the last century hasn't had his nose in the trough a little bit though.
The nomination is Romney's to lose, I agree.
But the Presidency is Obama's to lose.
Still think Obama will win comfortably. But honestly you will only find out when they start debating each other.
Sales taxes are regressive. When a tax is regressive it means that it will be a smaller % of your income, the larger your income. A cucumber that costs $1 and has the 9% sales tax costs $1.09 for both a rich person and a poor person, clearly this is a larger proportion of the poor man's income.
Progressive income tax rates are meant to "even out" the overall % of tax paid. Shifting the national tax burden onto the poorest people will be a disaster, the whole economic crisis and recession has been caused by the squeezing of the poorest.
Less money in middle classes pocket= less spending= less demand= less jobs= less money in their pocket and so on.
It is a MYTH that tax cuts for wealthy people creates jobs. Demand in a market and requiring labour to meet that demand creates jobs FFS. If you gave one rich man $100,000 a month or 10,000 people $10s a month which do you think will stimulate the economy more? Of course, the poorer people are more likely to purchase things with the money. The rich guy is more likely to save it.
In a true Capitalist system the rich people will compete for this extra spending and it will make its way to the top anyway, the problem is that the people in charge are convinced that directly giving people more money to invest increases investment and increases access to capital for smaller businesses. Unfortunately, they don't seem to understand that investors need to have a return greater than is larger than the required return at that level of risk, having a situation of depressed consumer spending is just as harmful as having slightly higher tax rates.
The 999 plan would be a disaster as it discourages consumer spending by the middleclass and doesn't get enough revenue in to fully pay for public spending so would require HUGE cuts in public spending, even further depressing the economy by making needless redundancies just to get to the current deficit levels.
Of course, the rich will do well but I suspect they would hold onto their money like they are at the moment and invest in low to medium risk projects- not small businesses.
Edit: on your GE point, thats a point of international tax law.. it is VERY hard to get a large company to pay their fair share in taxes while you don't enforce a strict policy on internal transfer pricing on assets, particularly IPs and software.
For example, say I am company X, My subsidiary in panama pays 10% tax, while my office in America pays 35%. I will try to get as much of my profit to Panama as possible and get as little as possible to the US. How I would do this is by giving the rights to the custom systems programs to my Panama office and lease it out to my other subsidiaries. I set the rate at $10,000,000 a year, claiming this is essential to the business and a similar product in the open market that has the same features would cost the same. I effectively am screwing the US tax payer out of $10million a year by "attributing" a cost to my US office in favour of Panama. While there may be some technicalities Im missing in my example it is certainly something that happens.
Larger portion of income yes. Same percentage. I know what you're saying but while some would say you're screwing over the poor (which I'm not sure I agree with) you're penalizing people that make more. I'm not sure how the word fair applies here. Just say what it really means. Because as it is now the rich are already floating the economy. (And no I'm not rich, middle class sure)
Even out? Again, I understand what you're saying but when the largest portion of Americans don't pay income tax I'm not sure how much more evening you can do.
Wouldn't disagree with this on whole.
Possibly. But I like that it starts to talk about tax reform. Which needs serious attention.
Again, see my bit about tax reform. Hearing about GE not paying any tax or someone like Buffet say he should pay more is ridiculous. He uses they system to his advantage then criticizes it. Disingenuous at the least.
Good post.
The reason I'm quite confident Obama has an excellent chance next November is that Romney is polling quite low in the south in contrast to Perry and Cain at the moment. If indeed Romney gets the nomination, he still isn't likely to get heavy GOP base turnout throughout the south, which will be an absolutely critical area for Republicans to sweep in order to have a chance against Obama. If Obama manages to pick off a one or two "southern" (or at least traditionally red) states, then he will win the election quite comfortably by about 100 electoral votes.
The concept of a filibuster really seems absurd to me. Why would a modern democracy allow such tactics?
another GOP myth that people who dont pay income tax dont pay taxes. They pay payroll taxes.
9-9-9.
(Modric)
And sales taxes, and property taxes, (either directly, or through their rent, which pays the landlord's property taxes,) and license fees, and public utility fees, etc, all of which represent significantly greater proportions of a poorer person's income than a richer person's.