Republican Explained...

[DaveH]

I don't think how people make money makes any difference. If they want to kiss butt, lay bricks, sell drugs, manage people, etc. it doesn't matter (ok, well as long as it's legal). If someone makes a million dollars a year, good for them. Anyway, we could go round and round on this.

I'm too lazy to figure this out, so maybe Chuck will. What would the flat tax rate have to be to make sure there is enough tax revenue to cover expenditures? 10%? 15%? 25%?

tjamz wrote:
2. But, everyone is paying the same percentage regardless of their profession/wealth class. The system you are suggesting is similar to the one that caused people to immigrate to the united states in the first place. They felt they were being taxed at an unfair rate in comparison with the "rich". Let's face it, its not unbelievably hard to make $100,000/year. Most successful sales people can do that fairly easily. But what separates those making 100,000 a year and 1,000,000+ a year as a CEO/executive of a fortune 500 company? Likely it is who you know, family name (Bill Ford anyone?), incredible luck, and severe ass kissing....some people rise to the top, but not as many as the other 4 ways. Working for a multi billion dollar corporation, I can tell you that the upper echelon of management will do just about anything to make sure that no one else will get promoted or warrant a huge promotion to upper management (insanely high quotas, cut in pay for top producers, etc...), instead there is a constant hiring from OUTSIDE the industry (see "who you know") It's not like you can take a class at NDSU/UND titled "CEO 101" or any other class that will tell you how to make it to the top of any given industry. This is kinda getting off topic, but what I'm getting at is that I don't understand why they shouldn't pay at least the same amount for every dollar they make as I do.

[StangerBanger96]

My joke thread turned into a political debate thread...who wouldn't have guessed?

[CivicEX7777777]

MethodlesS wrote:
Also, clinton is one of the best presidents to come through the white house.

Ever.

You should do your research.

Hell Ya!

[Guest]

DaveH wrote:
I'm too lazy to figure this out, so maybe Chuck will. What would the flat tax rate have to be to make sure there is enough tax revenue to cover expenditures? 10%? 15%? 25%?

The GDP of the US is $12,980,000,000,000 with a labor force of 151,800,000 (thanks wikipedia!!) and our gov't spent $2,600,000,000,000 last year.

so, 2,600,000,000,000 / 12,980,000,000,000 = 20% which is 5% lower than I paid this year.

I guess I didn't need the labor force total number for that equation, but I found it so I thought I'd post it.

[Guest]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that the $12.98trillion number includes social security spending as well, which would be another tax break.

[AcesHigh]

It is interesting to note that liberals occur in the highest percentage in the highest tiers of education. With that being said, there is no prerequisite for intelligence in politics. I think Bush makes a fine example of this.

[StangerBanger96]

With education comes liberalism as 99% of teachers are liberal and shove liberal ideals down your throat from kindergarten up. It takes a real kid to try find his own opinion rather than being spoon fed everything their teachers tell them.

[MisterCMK]

AcesHigh wrote:
It is interesting to note that liberals occur in the highest percentage in the highest tiers of education. With that being said, there is no prerequisite for intelligence in politics. I think Bush makes a fine example of this.

Funny, seems to be that Bush graduated with a Bachelors from Yale in 1968 and then from Harvard with a Masters of Business Administration after serving in the military.

Next time do a little research before spouting off at the mouth.

Its funny how every time a political discussion comes up, those who cannot come up with any solid arguments end up trying to bash Bush. He may not be a slick mouthed democrat, but he sure as hell makes his point. I would rather have a man that is just like you or me than some slick talking sleezeball.

[AcesHigh]

I don't like to get into internet debates since it is unlikely either one of us will change our minds, but I will say a few things.

I was speaking about the highest tier of education - the doctorate. Doctorates often required to teach college level courses. Almost all of the doctoral professionals I have spoken to have been democratic, including most of those in even a conservative a state as North Dakota. There is a higher ratio of college educated professionals are democratic, and this percentage increases as education level increases. The more uneducated you are the more conservative you tend to be.

Now with that being said, most of the comparable Democratic candidates have doctorate degrees of some form or another, whether it be Ph.D or equivalent law school or business doctorate. As I recall Obama, Edwards, and both Clintons (Hilary and Bill) are all doctorates from law. Heck, Bill was a law professor down in Arkansaw.

And that is all I want to say about education.

It isn't about whether or not Bush has completed the highest level of graduate study or not. It's not about whether he can form a cognitive sentence without grammatical mistakes or not. There's basically a big bag of less than prudent things the Bush administration has done that is inexcusable and really makes him a terrible president. It's a big can of worms and I don't want to get into it as I have had my share of debates against North Dakotan conservatives already.

The point of all this is that some Democrats have really intelligent and progessive ideas that the typical uneducated person would interpret as bureacratic mumbo jumbo simply because they don't get it. The Democratic mindset is to think about others and not ourselves. Improving society together.

It seems to be a hard concept for some Republicans.

[DaveH]

AcesHigh wrote:
<snip> The Democratic mindset is to think about others and not ourselves. Improving society together. It seems to be a hard concept for some Republicans.

This is really going off on a tangent, but oh well.

The education thing is just silly, not worth discussing.

If Dems mindset is to think of others and not themselves, then how can you explain that conservatives give far more (as a percentage of income) to charity than the dems do?

This is my take on that statement. In general, Dems like to position themselves and may even believe that they are thinking of others more than themselves, but what comes out of their attempt to help others is just another step toward socialism. I like the usa the way the founding fathers set it up, it is what has made us the greatest country in the world.

[StangerBanger96]

If you honestly believe the Dems are concerned first and foremost with helping others you yourself are blind. Both parties want nothing more than to advance their ideals...Republicans use the "we don't tax the hell out of you" platform and democrats use the "we accept everyone and all ideas" platform. The truth is that both party says what they think the majority want to hear and then just use the public as a semi-guide to allow them to be re-elected.

Democrats supposedly are open to all ideas but are pretty closed minded on many issues.
Republicans supposedly lower taxes but thats just income tax (the one most people care about since they see the direct affect it has on them) but then raise other taxes to make up for that lost income.

Republicans and Democrats both suck, you need a mixture of both parties to run the country.

[AcesHigh]

DaveH wrote:
The education thing is just silly, not worth discussing.

It was more of an ethos assessment, if anything.

[24valvenotak]

MisterCMK wrote:
Funny, seems to be that Bush graduated with a Bachelors from Yale in 1968 and then from Harvard with a Masters of Business Administration after serving in the military.

Next time do a little research before spouting off at the mouth.

Its funny how every time a political discussion comes up, those who cannot come up with any solid arguments end up trying to bash Bush. He may not be a slick mouthed democrat, but he sure as hell makes his point. I would rather have a man that is just like you or me than some slick talking sleezeball.

i bet if he took osama's cock out of his mouth for two seconds he could speak a bit more clearly....:eek:

[24valvenotak]

AcesHigh wrote:
It was more of an ethos assessment, if anything.

id rather hear the logos side

[Instigator]

It was a pretty good joke...:D

-Eric

[thrash]

People with a passionate interest in taxes, economic policy, personal freedom, and politics, would do well to read the following:

"Free To Choose", by Milton Friedman, a nobel prize winning economist, and a frequent columnist in various publications.

"The Road to Serfdom", by F.A. Hayek, an austrian economist who wrote about his observations on socialist economic policies and their inevitable tendancy towards totalitarianism, based on him witnessing the construction of Nazi germany. Hayek predicted during the WW2 time frame that the recent eastern block communist nations would degenerate into authoritarian prison. To decide if he was right or not, you need only look at the case of divided germany. One socio-economical situation built a wall to keep its citizens from leaving. One turned into a cultural, economic, and industrial powerhouse.

Friedman's book laments the unfortuneate expansion of government power via economic regulation and manipulation, and the inevitable restrictions this creates on personal freedoms. The most striking and illustrative example of this in the united states is Appendix A of his book - which is an enumeration of the economic planks of the 1928 Socialist Party of the USA. That is, in 1928, there was a socialist party here, that was trying to get elected, and they layed out their vision for a socialist america.

They didn't get elected - infact, they hardly got any votes.

But every single one of their economic dreams for a socialist america has since come true. The water temperature has been increased 1 degree at a time ever since FDR and the new deal (and actually starting even before then.. Friedman argues that the Federal Reserve's inappropriate manipulation of money supply led to the crash that instigated the depression.. which gave FDR the political capital for masssive unchecked expansion in government power)

I can't state the facts any better or more clearly than Friedman and Hayek do. Everyone that cares to have an opinion about matters of taxation, economic freedom, and the role of government owes it to themselves to pick up Friedman's book.

As an aside, social security is architected incorrectly if you take at face value what its proponents claim it is designed to do. Social security is a regressive tax, the poorest pay the highest percentage of their income. This is a result of the contribution cap (its around 95k or something like that, isn't it?). Income above the cap is not taxed for SS reasons. This necessarily means that this tax is artificially high on the middle and lower income segments of society. Strike 1.

Strike 2 has to do with how social security pays out benefits. SS pays until you die. If you beleive that there is a correlation with material wealth and life span (hint: there is), then the net effect is that the lower income segments of society are paying a disproportionate share of the contributions, contributinos which get paid out disproportionally to the rich if for no other reason then they tend to live longer. There are other factors that make SS distributions a bad deal for the poor but i don't remember the off the top of my head.

Irrespective of your opinions on the merits of a program with the stated goals of SS, a relatively simple analysis shows that it is failing to meet them. If policy makers are true to their word about what the point of SS is, they would at a minimum restructure the taxation side so that there was a contribution floor rather than a contribution cap. Fixing the distribution side of the program is more involved.

The hard lesson learned throughout the development of western civilization is that moneyed interests will seek to retain their financial security via government manipulation. The key contribution of the British was to adopt an open econmic policy that allowed for better wealth mobility. The key contribution of the American system was to supplement that with an intentionally limited governement. Jefferson and his ilk understood that expansion of government power inevitably means reduction in individual freedom.

Progressives, like socialists and marxists (who, through no deliberate acts, but only through good but misplaced intentions, perverted themselves into the National Socialists, or the Nazis -- read Hayek's book), have high minded ideals and an agenda that is perhaps praiseworthy. However, their methods are at fault because they nearly universally revolve around government compulsion to acheive their aims. Each tenet of the progressive (and typically, democratic) agenda requires an expansion of government powers, and the correspoding reduction in individual freedom.

this in effect creates a government "machine" with more power than people feel comfortable with. Progressives tend to support this as long as they are running the show, but once an opposing ideology takes control (say, the republicans, although the notino of democans and republicrats having any real differences these days is somewhat suspect) of the machine, the Progressives lament all of the radical changes the opposition is able to make. "If only we were still running things, this wouldn't have happened", they say.

No. This will always happen. Someone will always displace the current ruler, and some new opinino will always displace the previously fashionable one.

This is why a government ethos which is fundamentally limited, and only with great care and reservation, expands its powers, is the most just, least invasive, and most ethical choice.

But don't take my word for it - read the books I mentioned earlier.