No wonder the GOP gets away with the things they get away with. look at what one of

[mrcheerful]

the GOP enablers say about taxes............................................................Also please keep in mind that I am not doubting the fact that the percentage of tax over income is lopsided.

It is a fact that the middle class pay a higher percentage of tax over income then the upper class. I also have no problem with that.

Each person living in this country uses a certain amount of government service. Each year I use government roads, bridges, airports, military protection Ect.Ect. I am smart enough to know that the amount of tax I pay as a middle class citizen cannot possible pay for my share of the services I use. Therefore some rich person is partly paying my way.

The percentage means nothing to me. What does is that we all use the same, while some pay hundreds of thousands in tax, and some pay a few bucks. I have never been into Robin Hood mentality and I never will.

They may not pay as high a percentage but trust me they pay dearly, and we all benefit from their accomplishments. Period.

http://midmichiganforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2765&whichpage=10

[SammyWinstonJack]

1. Wait, you have no problem with the middle class paying a higher % of fed taxes than the rich do?

Would that be collectively or individually? Color me confused. :shrug:

[mrcheerful]

7. I Didn't write that one of the biggest puke supporters wrote it

I thought it was weird myself. These are the people who live in mid michigan, brain dead and Reaganites one and all. They hate the poor, disabled, union worker, EPA, DEQ, and public schools. But god will show us godless liberals, don't forget the god threats, why if we are godless would we fear what god was going to do to us? Thats stupid lol.

[SammyWinstonJack]

14. Okay, sorry!

:blush:

[patrice]

2. It's the definition of those "benefits" we Need to talk about + the liabilities the Rich inflict on

others as a factor of their wealth, say for example . . . . Bush's War.

[mrcheerful]

17. You should here some of this guys rants on the poor, disabled and the honest business person

The guy is 100% head shoved up his ass bat shit nuts. The war in Iraq is cost effective, in fact it costs less for Iraq then giving government handouts to the poor, besides we are safe from Al Kadia and thats worththing, yeah like terrorist are going to blow up his small town that isn't even on a map. The disabled are lazy free loaders, heck he even produced an article about a guy in a wheelchair working for an nonprofit agency that helps find disabled people jobs, that escapes his notice. He also cherry picked the article without reading much except the guy had a job. If he had read it, first thing he would have saw was the agency had to hire the guy an aid so he could do the job. Not only that but right out of the disabled guys mouth was that without the job he had and without the help of his support group the guy knows he wouldn't be where he is.

Things said that make you wish the planet got hit by a huge space rock and was destroyed.

[bbgrunt]

3. I'm not sure what your

point is, but I would suggest that the upper class benefits much more that the lower and middle classes from government expenditures on law enforcement and national defense--they are the ones who really have something to lose if there is popular unrest or, gods fobid, a revolution.

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. Yeah I didn't get it either.

:shrug:

[no_hypocrisy]

5. One of the things conservatives dislike is sharing with others through

public works, public institutions, public entities. In their minds, if they paid for it, it belongs exclusively to them. The way taxes are distributed to "poor people who don't deserve the money or services" is what galls them.

[Juche]

10. You obviously missed the John Stossel refrigerator analogy

He was doing one of his 'investigations' that by total coincidence justified his libertarian idealogy and he used a refrigerator analogy. At his work there is a public refrigerator but because it is public, nobody took care of it. In his mind, a private refrigerator system will solve everything by putting personal accountability back because the person is accountable for it.

So the fact that the refrigerator at the 20/20 breakroom is a mess is why we need to privatize social security. Follow that logic.

[EOTE]

18. Obviously the solution is for everyone to bring in their own fridges.

That Stossel is one bright bulb! The question is, does he stay on when the refrigerator door is closed?

[klyon]

19. there could be someone in charge, if someone set-up a

democratic system. Maybe revolving duty would work.
but businesses seem to have more of plantation viewpoint.

[Juche]

6. She actually right

With medicare, a person making 20k a year and paying $300 a year into the system gets alot more out of it than a self employed person who makes $500k and pays over $15,000 a year into the system.

Social security is paid on a sliding scale too, the poorer you are the more money you get back.

So she has a point. I don't think shes right that the midle class pay more in taxes. I think middle class families pay about 25%, wealthy people pay about 35%.

Then again rich people are generally only rich because they take a share of someone else's labor. ie, a rich CEO of a company of 100,000 people is taking a small chunk of the products of the labor of all 100,000 workers. The reality is the rich are only rich because they take a small amount of money from each of a huge swath of middle class workers.

Then again, without that infrastructure people can't become rich. Without a trillion dollars in public funds spent on education every year there is no educated workforce that wealthy people can use to become wealthy.

Here is another issue that will probably get me handed my ass with verbal abuse. Corporate taxes. We hear about corporate welfare and corporate taxes. But Corporations pay about $350 billion in corporate income taxes, as well as another $400 billion or so in payroll taxes. And they get maybe $100 billion in corporate welfare in return.

Again, I'm not opposed to it but corporations are paying $750 billion+ a year in taxes and getting less than that in return via subsidies. So even though corporations are getting way too powerful, they still pay $750 billion+ a year in taxes. In return they get politicians who do them favors though. Change the laws to benefit them, etc.

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. wtf?

Social security is paid on a sliding scale too, the poorer you are the more money you get back.

I don't think so.

But feel free to provide a link to back that up, if you can.

[Juche]

15. Sure

Using the quick calculator at the SS.gov website

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/index.html

If you retire at 67 and have the following earnings, these are your benefits.

$10,000 a year in earnings get you $648 a month in benefits.

$30,000 gets you $1,212

$60,000 gets you $1,891

$90,000 gets you $2,266


People who make 90k pay 3x more but only get 2x the benefits of people making 30k. People making 30k pay 3x more than people making 10k but only get 2x the benefits. People who make 90k pay 9x more in SS taxes than someone making 10k but only get 3.5x more benefits.

I don't have a problem with this system (taxation should be progressive), but that is how it is.

[EOTE]

20. The greater PERCENTAGE of initial investment you get back.

By leaving out those few words, it really changes the meaning. The way you said it made it seem like the less you contribute, the more you receive back. That's simply not true.

[Juche]

21. I see

The way I worded it in my original post, I can see the confusion. I meant that the return on investment is measured on a sliding scale, not that the total returns are. If you make 90k, your return on investment is alot lower than someone who makes 20k. But I can't edit it now because too much time has elapsed.

[patrice]

8. I'm unhappy that the definition of those benefits "provided by the Rich" is nothing but money.

Money would not exist, in the first place, were it not for the individual's cooperation with the economic system, so there is no choice being offered in a "social contract" that says "Cooperate and don't cause trouble for the Rich and we will give you a paycheck."

There would only be a choice as to whether I am going to cooperate with the "social contract" if you offer me something that has the same inherent value as my body-and-labor. The value of such items are independent of money (which can only be created by m/your labor so the labor is a GIVEN if you accept money). This would be things such as: Health Care, Authentic and Complete Education, Genuine Security, and Appropriate Economic Opportunities (note the plural of this last item = economic opportunities that give me some choices as to what kind of compensation I may want/need).

[Gold Metal Flake]

9. Mr Cheerful, HTML is your friend.

No matter the content of your leading sentence, many here will intepret the quoted text you posted as your own views. When posting quotes from other forums, format them into a "blockquote". Just click in the HTML Lookup table link in your post screen and use the provided code for quotes so it looks like this:

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if people tolerate the growth of private
power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself.
That, in it's essence, is Fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a
group or by any controlling private power." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

:hi:

[mrcheerful]

13. Thanks for the tip lol.

[JDPriestly]

11. Face it. It's a cost benefit equation.

The government, like any other entity or even person, gets its money through the means that pays the most for the least effort. The rich pay big bucks and even cheat big to get out of taxes, so it is hard to raise money from them. For every cent you get from Exxon, you have to invest a lot of time, effort and money. It's easy to get the tax revenue from Joe Schmo who works as an accountant for Exxon. That's because you can take your money directly from Joe's paycheck. And Joe can't afford 100s of lawyers and accountants to reduce his tax responsibility. It is not a matter of ideology or who gets what for their money. It's a matter of how the government can get the money at the least cost and effort.

[napi21]

16. Typically his statement is not true. Higher income people USUALLY use MORE

sovernment services. They usually have bogger cars (which are heavier thus more wear on the roads per mile), they drive more miles per year, actually expect BETTER service from the fire department & police than lower earners because their house is bigger and stuff is worth more.

All that aside, that statement ignores "the common good". There are many services that are necessary for the commons, and it's far easier for a wealthy person to pay an additional $5,000/yr in taxes than it is for a poor person to pay an additional $100, and it's all for the benefit of the commons.