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Sakurako Hino

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Canadians ....

They look like us, talk like us, and act like us, but THEY ARE NOT US!!!

The are hovering over our northern border, with their UN Peacekeeping Allies, just waiting to swoop over our frontier, topple our government, and seize our strategic Strawberry Harvest!!!

Am I the only one to see our Deadly Peril?

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Fair, would be a place where mothers don't have to chose between two/three jobs and giving up their child,cause they can't live in a house with the asshole who she married 5 years ago.Where working one job wwould be enough to suport at least you.

Fair would be if you make 1,000 times as much money as me,you should pay 1,000 times the taxes I do,if not more.As noted the larger amounts of money you have, the less each bill matters...But hey,I don't wnat a fair world..That would be a scary place.

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Ghetto Funk Baby:
Fair, would be a place where mothers don't have to chose between two/three jobs and giving up their child, cause they can't live in a house with the asshole who she married 5 years ago. Where working one job would be enough to support at least you.

Fair would be if you make 1,000 times as much money as me, you should pay 1,000 times the taxes I do, if not more. As noted the larger amounts of money you have, the less each bill matters...But hey, I don't want a fair world.. That would be a scary place.
So the government needs to reward the poor for being poor, full fill all our desires, and pay for all this by taking all or most of the rich's money?

First question: “Do you really trust the government with that kind of power?”

2nd & 3rd questions: “If successful people are going to be punished to that degree, why try to be successful? If there is no hardship to being poor, why should it be avoided?”

People who grew up under communism know a phrase, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” Eventually it doesn't work. Instead of making everyone rich it just made everyone poor.

Part of freewill is the ability to make bad choices. Part of freedom is the freedom to succeed, or fail.

(And by the way, income tax is graduated. If someone makes 1,000 times as much money as you they likely pay more than 1,000 times as much tax).
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Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:


Very true. And it isn't a coincidence that our country is richer and more powerful than those countries. We set up those conditions, let people earn money, and the world flocks to us to work and invest. If we start breaking rule "B" then that will cause problems.
Yes, and we have been richer and more powerful than other nations with MUCH higher tax rates. Even after we eliminated a huge number of deductions and tax shelters. Claiming the rich are over taxed now is silly. The money they save does not trickle down. It is spent within a very restricted level of society. They don't buy fifty Ford Taurus' at the local car dealership, they buy a single Bentley, imported. They don't buy more KFC, more VCRS, more washing machines. They don't spend their money in such a way that it trickles down. They buy more gold, more furs, more yachts. They buy fabulous houses from other rich people. Occasionally they improve upon them and some carpenters make a dime, but in relation to the amount of money they spend, not much.

Quote:
Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:

The rich *DO* pay more taxes. The problem comes when we get people to pay for things that other people use. There are limits to how much you can get other people to foot the bill. We are going to reach that point with Social Security.
They do use what they pay for. I said it already, they use our nation, our infrastructure, our freedoms, our economy, our population. That is what they pay for. It may not be direct, but as I pointed out Paris wouldnt' have inherited a vast fortune if she was born in Panama or China. Bill Gates wouldn't have had a chance if he was born in Ecuador. You want them to have the advantages of being Americans while only paying for those services they directly benefit from? Fine, I want to stop paying for everything spend on that is any advantage to any other state. Coast Guard? Not going to pay for it. Schools in other cities? Not going to pay for it. FBI in other cities? Not going to pay for it. You tally up the Federal spending that directly affects me and give me my bill. You can't, it's unreasonable. It's bigger than that.
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Originally posted by Vixen:
Careful, now. We burned down your White House once and we saved up and bought a second box of matches.
I think it's so cute when you little buggers up in the 51st state get all uppity. You just sit back and watch some nice Canadian Content TV.
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Knowing a few folks who would qualify as rich (Net worth in the $10~50 million range), and more than a few who live paycheck to paycheck, I can say that the rich invest there money in real estate and businesses. They put there money to work for them. This, in turn, provides jobs and services.

Car of choice? A Subaru(?), followed by Lexus.

The mistake is thinking that the wealthy are terribly different than the rest of us. They work alot, worry about their kids, and worry about the future. Yeah, they take vacations in Europe, or the Caribbean, while I go to some islands on my state's coast. One family I know takes two weeks in Aspen every winter. With the way they work, I don't blame them for the little bit extra they get.

As not paying for the services we don't get ...

The price of gas is what in this country? Its that way because the whole oil producing world isn't constantly at war.

What does the CIA do for me? Well, no biological or nuclear device has gone off in my city recently.

The Coast Guard? The FBI?

I'm not looking for perfection in my government. I'm looking for a degree of safety balanced with as much freedom as I can get away with.

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Originally posted by James 'Prodigy' Meehan:
I think it's so cute when you little buggers up in the 51st state get all uppity. You just sit back and watch some nice Canadian Content TV.
Actually, Canada's in the queue for statehood but we're behind England now, ever since we decided we didn't really want to go to Iraq after all.

(Did they rename Canadian bacon 'freedom bacon' down there?)

The 51st state, as we all know, is...

PROGRESS ISLAND, USA!

... aka Puerto Rico.

Bilingual schools! Bisexual students! Wah-wah pedals playing constantly.
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James 'Prodigy' Meehan:Claiming the rich are over taxed now is silly.
I saw the statistics about 5 years ago, and I vaguely remember that the upper fifth income of the nation pays 80% of the taxes. (Something like that, don't quote me).

Quote:
James 'Prodigy' Meehan: The money [the rich] save does not trickle down. It is spent within a very restricted level of society. They don't buy fifty Ford Taurus' at the local car dealership, they buy a single Bentley, imported. They don't buy more KFC, more VCRS, more washing machines. They don't spend their money in such a way that it trickles down.
So they put their money in hole in the ground to prevent it from helping anyone (including themselves)?

If you have a bank loan for your car or house, where do you think the bank got money to give you?
If you work for or with a public company, where do you think that company got its investment capital (i.e. who bought their stocks and bonds)?
Who do you think financed Amazon.com during the days when it was burning through millions of dollars a year?

The rich stay rich by getting their money to work for them. "Work for them" means it also helps the rest of us.

As for Paris, the stupid rich don't stay that way.
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Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:
I saw the statistics about 5 years ago, and I vaguely remember that the upper fifth income of the nation pays 80% of the taxes. (Something like that, don't quote me).

How much of the nation's wealth do the upper 20% control?
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Signy, on your scale, if someone who made 1000 times more than you paid, they'd have to pay way more than they take in.

Here's some numbers, just incase some people don't get it.

Salary: $20,000 Tax: 20% Total Paid: $4,000

Salary: $20,000,000 Tax: 20% Total Paid: $4,000,000

Now, here's Signy's scale:

Using the percentage above for the person making $20,000 a year.

Salary: $20,000,000 Tax: 200%(using Signy's scale) Total to pay: $4,000,000,000

Which means the person making $20,000,000 would have $3,980,000,000 more than they earned.

Yeah, talk about a fair world. Where no one can get a job because of the oppressive taxes scared off all the corporations, and our country wastes way into third world status.

No one realizes just how much 20% of someone's salary is when they make alot of money. Yeah, they have alot left over, but the chunk that they give out is huge.

The whole situation is, people see rich people, and immediately want a cut. Money is the root of all evil, everyone. Because the more you have, the more others want it. Money is a measure of how much effort a person puts into the economy. By just earning a living, you're putting an effort into it. The more you have to do, the more you earn. If you run a corporation, of course you're gonna earn a truckload of money. You gotta run a corporation! The amount of work is proportionate to the salary.

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Sakurako 'Endeavor' Hino:
Salary: $20,000 Tax: 20% Total Paid: $4,000
Salary: $20,000,000 Tax: 20% Total Paid: $4,000,000
Thus the taxes paid is 1000 times as much as the previous person. However this is wrong, as income rises the tax paid on each dollar goes up as well. I don't recall off hand what the upper limit is, but it comes out to something like a third. When you also start adding in State & City income taxes and social security, it is something like half.

Quote:
Sakurako 'Endeavor' Hino:...Money is a measure of how much effort a person puts into the economy.... The amount of work is proportionate to the salary.
I think you mean the importance of the work is proportionate to the money earned.

Money is the yardstick that measures importance, danger, supply & demand. Distorting the evalution is the fact that some jobs are "winner takes all", others have other perks (like power), and others are distorted by the political process. However, for the most part the system works, or at least works better than any other system we have found.
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"Using the percentage above for the person making $20,000 a year.

Salary: $20,000,000 Tax: 200%(using Signy's scale) Total to pay: $4,000,000,000

Which means the person making $20,000,000 would have $3,980,000,000 more than they earned."

I'm kind of lost here. Why 200%?

Also, 200% of $20,000,000 is $40,000,000. Mathematical error, but it doesn't invalidate your point. But still, where are you getting 200%?

"However, for the most part the system works, or at least works better than any other system we have found."

Well...the system does work, from a certain point of view.

And I suppose you could argue that all the nations out there with lower crime rates, better medical care, lower percentages of homeless people, a better sense of family, less littering, and more people who are kind to animals have systems that would not work when applied to America. Why not?

But our system does not work well. We live in a country with one of the highest unemployment rates of any fully developed nation, yet we have an economic system that rewards those who can devise ways to trim jobs out of a factory line.

Every year, we build more McDonald's, Wendy's, and Pizza Hut franchises, and every year we manufacture a larger number of automobiles. Yet we live in the nation with the single largest obesity problem, and heart disease is our number two killer (after accidents).

We consume vast quantities of every kind of refined and crude oil, and yet we have the means to economically construct buildings which produce more energy than they can consume.

I'm sure you already know these things, so I'll stop here. Point is, while America's system may work now, but we simply do not have any kind of long-term viability.

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Troll: "However, for the most part the system works, or at least works better than any other system we have found."
Quote:
Alex Craft:And I suppose you could argue that all the nations out there with lower crime rates, better medical care, lower percentages of homeless people, a better sense of family, less littering, and more people who are kind to animals have systems that would not work when applied to America. Why not?
You've got me on the crime rates. I'm not sure where you get stats for family, littering, or the homeless. Ditto about animals, America has a lot of pets and a large agro business.

Medical care is interesting. From many standpoints, our system works far better than other countries. From other standpoints it doesn't. In the US it basically it comes down to money and/or insurance, if you have one of those you can have great care. Other countries with universal access face long queues, shortages, and much less innovation, but when it is available it is cheaper.

Quote:
Alex Craft:But our system does not work well. We live in a country with one of the highest unemployment rates of any fully developed nation, yet we have an economic system that rewards those who can devise ways to trim jobs out of a factory line.
No. The US produces jobs much better than any of the other developed nations BECAUSE we allow people to be fired. If it is difficult to fire people then business thinks long and hard before hiring them.

Just looking at the unemployment figures for January:

USA: 5.7 (higher than normal with the recession)
Germany: 10.4
Italy: 8.4
Japan: 5.2 (not as nice as it sounds, but that is a longer story)
Canada: 7.4
Britain: 4.9
The Euro Area: 8.8

Quote:
Alex Craft:Every year, we build more McDonald's, Wendy's, and Pizza Hut franchises, and every year we manufacture a larger number of automobiles. Yet we live in the nation with the single largest obesity problem, and heart disease is our number two killer (after accidents).
True, but this is a societal problem rather than an economic one.

Quote:
Alex Craft:We consume vast quantities of every kind of refined and crude oil, and yet we have the means to economically construct buildings which produce more energy than they can consume.
And your point is? When did consuming oil become a bad thing? We consume it because it is cheap and easy. If it stops being cheap we will substitute something else.

Quote:
Alex Craft:I'm sure you already know these things, so I'll stop here. Point is, while America's system may work now, but we simply do not have any kind of long-term viability.
On the contrary, reading international economic magazines my impression is that we are continuing to outstrip the other industrialized countries.

The American worker is on average paid a lot more than in any other country, because the American worker is on average much more efficient. I don't see a lot of downward trends or any special reason why the system is headed for collapse.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Alex Craft:
"Using the percentage above for the person making $20,000 a year.
Salary: $20,000,000 Tax: 200%(using Signy's scale) Total to pay: $4,000,000,000

Which means the person making $20,000,000 would have $3,980,000,000 more than they earned."


I'm kind of lost here. Why 200%?

Also, 200% of $20,000,000 is $40,000,000. Mathematical error, but it doesn't invalidate your point. But still, where are you getting 200%?

"However, for the most part the system works, or at least works better than any other system we have found."

Well...the system does work, from a certain point of view.

And I suppose you could argue that all the nations out there with lower crime rates, better medical care, lower percentages of homeless people, a better sense of family, less littering, and more people who are kind to animals have systems that would not work when applied to America. Why not?

But our system does not work well. We live in a country with one of the highest unemployment rates of any fully developed nation, yet we have an economic system that rewards those who can devise ways to trim jobs out of a factory line.

Every year, we build more McDonald's, Wendy's, and Pizza Hut franchises, and every year we manufacture a larger number of automobiles. Yet we live in the nation with the single largest obesity problem, and heart disease is our number two killer (after accidents).

We consume vast quantities of every kind of refined and crude oil, and yet we have the means to economically construct buildings which produce more energy than they can consume.

I'm sure you already know these things, so I'll stop here. Point is, while America's system may work now, but we simply do not have any kind of long-term viability.
Okay, I get my 200% based of of simple mathmatics.

To find out what the percentage of a number is you multiply it by the percent. For example, to find out what 20% of X is you go: X times .2

Now, I multiplied .2 by 1000. I got 200.

So, I just multiplied X by 200.

As for jobs, our economy is evolving. The manual labor is switching from basic industrial to basic commercial. Now instead of hands making the goods, they're selling them. At least that's where the lower-paying labor jobs are. As technology becomes more ingrained in society (it takes a generation or two to do so, we've only been an information and tech society for one) you'll see where the chips fall. People are more needed now in two areas, the quality monitoring of the technology being made, and the people that sell it. Either in bulk to corporations that upgrade every year or need parts, or the lower-end consumer electronics. Now also, our economy is becoming service-oriented. That means it needs people to sell, buy, trade, and suport the new little toys we carry around with us every day.

I cannot say where the economy wil go completely. I have an inkling, but I never took Economy I in high school. (to my detriment.)
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Wow. I certainly hope none of you ever fall on hard times. Your total lack of anything resembling sympathy is astounding. Not all poor people are crackheads you know. Not all of us have made terrible decisions. I'm sure most ever had a proper education or never had any "starting capital" that they got to "work for them."

Most work every day just to make ends meet. And then they don't really meet. You have to cut things out. Ever try getting a job when you don't have a phone? "We'll get back to you" is the most often response I get. Followed by "How are we supposed to call you?". You can walk all over town, but if you don't have a phone any decent paying job won't take you.

And don't start on the health care. If you have health insurance you're almost taken care of. If you don't... well I hope you enjoy illness. And pray you never break a bone or its bread and water for dinner while you try and pay for the cast and x-rays. Or you just deal with it while it heals improperly. Nice new limp you get then, makes finding menial labor jobs fun. Anything more serious and you might as well throw in the towel. You'll never pay for it. At least you don't have to worry about telemarketers eh?

If you can't see the injustice of thousands of Americans starving, that WORK, while a few hundred live lives of excess then I really have nothing more to say.

Hey Canadians, if I move to Canada can I at least get emergency medical care? Or do I get a bill in the mail that is more than I make annually? Because that really sucks, makes me wish I'd bled to death.

And bless public libraries or I wouldn't be able to read your wonderful arguments on why the rich deserve to stay rich and the poor get what they deserve.

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Wetwear, it isn't lack of sympathy, but a different view of societal values. What is the price our society will pay, if no poor person is left behind? What will it cost us if have socialized medicine, and a Universal Dole?

I worked at UPS for 6 years with no health care, dammit. No work = no pay. I understand the concept of going to work sick, or injured, because it beats starvation, and working extra shifts so I could get the brakes on my car fixed before I died in an auto accident.

I'm used to a bi-weekly paycheck going to Health insurance, because having children without it is too bloody expensive.

Daycare? Can't afford it, so I work first shift, while my wife works seconds.

My wife and I get ahead, because we do without on alot of things. We save religiously.

Yes, bless public libraries. For a time, I was going to the library at a local university for my access, as well. I was working at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for $8.25/hour, because of the access, and the health care the job provided.

It isn't that the rich get to stay rich, while the poor get what they deserve. Sorry you see it that way. To me, it is that you get to keep most of what you work for, rich or poor. Its called equality.

Answer me this: (I sould seriously like to hear your arguments)

Why should the rich have to pay for the poor?

Why should your children have to pay for things you bought and payed for, when you die?

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WetWear:
If you can't see the injustice of thousands of Americans starving, that WORK, while a few hundred live lives of excess then I really have nothing more to say.
The problem is, what to do about it? I thought Jagger put it real well, "What is the price our society will pay, if no poor person is left behind?"

We don't know how to free people from bad choices, or bad results, without also removing the incentive to succeed. It has been tried. Does anyone remember "from everyone according to their abilities, to everyone according to their needs"? It hasn't worked, in part because people don't work that way, in part because giving the government that much power is too much.

A note about "bad choices". Some of them are programmed into us when we are young. Some of them are made young, or even for us by other people. Lots of them "aren't our fault". "Fault" doesn't matter, what does is the situation. If someone doesn't have a proper education, then chances are good that at some point, someone messed up. The local schools suck around here, I'm moving before my oldest child starts school.

I have seen intelligent, talented friends work for years at low paying jobs they hated, and they never seemed to do anything to change. I saw my brother dump a girl friend because, although she was intelligent, great looking, and a nice person, what she was looking for was someone to abuse her. Eventually she succeeded. Two of my cousins decided to not marry the fathers of their children because they could get money from the government. I've made mistakes that might have destroyed me without the support of my family. I also have a masters degree, it took 7 years at one class a semester.

You have my sympathy, but I'm not sure how the govenment could change things without doing more harm than good.
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To find out what the percentage of a number is you multiply it by the percent. For example, to find out what 20% of X is you go: X times .2

Now, I multiplied .2 by 1000. I got 200.

So, I just multiplied X by 200.

Ah. You wrote the decimal multiplier (200) as a percentage. We're looking at 20000%, not 200%. I see your math then, but I think Signy's meaning was not 1000 times the tax percent, but 1000 times the dollar amount. Of course, Troll already pointed out that with a graduated income tax, the wealthy pay more than that.

As for jobs, our economy is evolving. The manual labor is switching from basic industrial to basic commercial. Now instead of hands making the goods, they're selling them. At least that's where the lower-paying labor jobs are.

The much lower paying jobs. Most of the new jobs being produced by changes in our economy are at Walmart, Meijer, etc. These jobs are not enough to live on. Almost every adult you see in a Walmart is forced to carry two full time jobs just to rent a low-end apartment.

I don’t see a lot of downward trends or any special reason why the system is headed for collapse.

As briefly as possible:

We predicate our entire existence on indiscriminate use of resources. When the Industrial Revolution came around, we had vast quantities of resources - so much that we treated them as infinite. Today, we follow very similar practices - but our resources are a fraction of what they once were, and our demands are higher by entire orders of magnitude.

The fact that we make money is not a complete indicator of how well we are doing. We make money at the cost of our resources, population base, and environment. Without considerable change, we will undercut our own foundations.

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Alex Craft:Most of the new jobs being produced by changes in our economy are at Walmart, Meijer, etc. These jobs are not enough to live on. Almost every adult you see in a Walmart is forced to carry two full time jobs just to rent a low-end apartment.
Your first point is incorrect. Average income hasn't gone down (and has generally, but slightly, trended up), therefore the average income for new jobs must be at least as much as for job's eliminated.

I don't know enough to argue with your second or third points. The only person I know who works at Meijer and whose income I know gets 9 or 10 bucks an hour.

Quote:
Troll: I don't see a lot of downward trends or any special reason why the system is headed for collapse.
Quote:
Alex Craft: We predicate our entire existence on indiscriminate use of resources. When the Industrial Revolution came around, we had vast quantities of resources - so much that we treated them as infinite. Today, we follow very similar practices - but our resources are a fraction of what they once were, and our demands are higher by entire orders of magnitude.

The fact that we make money is not a complete indicator of how well we are doing. We make money at the cost of our resources, population base, and environment. Without considerable change, we will undercut our own foundations.
It is counter intuitive, but none of this is true (I've had a lot of economics). The arguments you are making are known as the fallacy of limited resources. It sounds good, but it has been made for centuries.

We are not running out of resources. After thirty years of burning oil like mad, our known reserves are greater, not less. For another example, the inflation adjusted cost of a raw material is a measure of its scarcity, but the price of most raw materials is going down, not up.

There are several principles of economics which prevent resources from running out. One of the is the principle of substitution. Basically as the price of something increases (as it becomes scarce), substitutes are found for it. Example: My wife is from Europe. You see a fair number of centuries old buildings there, and for the most part they are built with large wooden beams taken from monster trees. However, Poland ran out of this kind of wood decades ago. So all the newer buildings I saw were built with stone.

People have been predicting that the world would run out of food for centuries. But the reality is that we now have more food than we know what to do with.

The environment is getting better, not worse. When was the last time you heard of a few hundred people dying of air pollution? But this sort of event did used to happen. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" has a lot to say on this subject, although I haven't read it myself. When you actually start slapping numbers down (as the "Economist" does from time to time) it becomes clear.
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Way back when ... when I was growing up, it was predicted that we would run out of oil by 2010. Not going to happen.

Why?

As the Good Doctor said, we found new ways of locating and extracting oil.

Mind you, I still wish we had viable electric cars in mass production, but that's just me.

In 1980, 7 out of 10 college freshmen thought we would wipe ourselves out in a nuclear war. Thank God, that didn't happen either.

The world changes; we suffer, but we adapt, as well.

BTW, I worked as a farm hand for four summers, earning money for college. Thank goodness for service industry jobs. Working from 7 til 5 in tobacco fields is back breaking labor. I still don't fully understand how the grown men and women whom I worked with, and who had done this all their lives, could do it, but they did.

Wetwear, I am not belitteling you, or your struggle through daily life. I wish you would have a tad more hope, is all. It does get better.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Do they get 40% of the say in how those taxes are spent? I mean, fair is fair, right?

On the plus side, I am glad to hear that campaign finance reform seems to be working. Howard Dean really opened up a whole new fundraising arena with his internet donations, even though the average donations were only $61. Go America!

On the down side, we have the fight on the 527's coming up. The "Issue-Oriented" media campaigns. The FEC may shut down this loophole, but I will have to wait and see.

FYI, 527's allow unions to attack NAFTA and its supporters, and Pharmacuticals to attack the "evils" of socialized medicine, and its supporters. Since they are not party- or canidate-specific, they are presently allowed under the law. They can't tell you who to vote for, but they can tell you who to vote against.

An odd side note: Not only does the average Republican donate more money (up to the $2000 limit), but they have more people who donate. Democrats are both less likely to donate, and donate less if they do. I feel this is more a matter of affluence, than desire.

On a second side note: If Kerry wins the Democratic nod, will this be the Great Ketchup vs. Oil War?

(Kerry is married to the heiress to the Heinz fortune. The Bush/Cheney connection to Big Oil is well documented.)

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40% didn't sound right, so I went to Google and tried to look up what the actual facts were.

On January 20, Robert Samuelson discussed the tax burden on the top one percent in his column in the Washington Post.

,,
Quote:
SAMUELSON: Federal taxes come increasingly from the rich and the upper middle class. In 2001, the richest 1 percent of taxpayers (incomes starting at $373,000 a year) paid 25 percent of all taxes, including income and payroll taxes, according to the Center for Tax Justice, a liberal group. The share paid by the richest 20 percent (incomes starting at $72,000) was 68 percent. In 1979, these figures were 16 percent and 57 percent.

The concentration of taxes mainly reflects a concentration of income. In 2001, the richest 1 percent received 18 percent of income, up from 9 percent in 1979; the share of the richest fifth went from 46 percent to 58 percent. But tax cuts have also favored people in lower brackets. In 2001, the poorest 60 percent of Americans (incomes up to $44,000) paid 14 percent of taxes, down from 22 percent in 1979.

• Federal spending has shifted from defense to payments to individuals (Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicare). In 1955, military spending represented 62 percent of the federal budget. Payments to individuals accounted for 21 percent. By 2001 the figures were reversed: defense, 17 percent; payments to individuals, 61 percent.

• Not surprisingly, these transfers go heavily to the bottom half of the income spectrum. In 2001, about 60 percent of federal cash payments (retirement, disability, unemployment benefits) went to the poorest 40 percent of Americans, the Census Bureau reports. Non-cash programs (food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, public housing) are similarly skewed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn...p;notFound=true

Summation:

The upper 1% earns 20% and pays 25%.

The upper 20% earns 58% and pays 68%.

And this is according to liberal sources.

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{{Begin Sarcastic Rant}}

So, if the upper 1% payed 99%, and the upper 20% payed 80%, the rest of us wouldn't have to pay anything!?!?!?!

With 179% taxes, think of all the new things we could do?

For that matter, double all corporate taxes and capital gains.

Inheritance tax? Get rid of it. Let the government take it all when you die. Everyone gets the same unadorned little urn, in an identical plot ... paid for by the government, of course.

Hell, let's do it. Whip those fat bastiches to the slaughterhouse. Of course, we will have to chain them to their country homes (until we sell those off too), or the money will be gone by tomorrow.

I would kind of miss the charities, though. If it isn't a government program, I doubt it could survive. But who wants to direct were their money get's spent, anyway?

After all, think of those new, sweet government jobs that will open up. We will have to compete with the former-rich and -well-off for them. They won't be rich, or well-off anymore.

...

...

Whose going to pay taxes, then?

{{End of Sarcastic Rant}}

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Liberal,according to what standards?Not mine.

As the US wouldn't fallow the pit falls the Europe,and already have the fixes in place.Europe,is fixing it's propblems.The idea that said form of taxes would ruin an enconamy only work on some size scales.Like say states, or most euro-nations. But on a macro scale the size of the whole US you get the best of both worlds.

We in the US,right now have high crime rates,and low voting rates....

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I'm curious about what you think the rich should pay? And what, if any, benefits would they get from it?

Incomes from $72K to $372K would pay = ?%

Incomes in excess of #372K would pay = ?%

Just to get a feeling how far to the left you really are.

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Well, money is an interially faith based system.Money is inhearitly worth only as much as people think it is.That being said,I will move.

My point has always been this, the rich being rich have certant abilities.Take someone making 300,000 a year.The cost of living is nelagiable for them,they could lose half of their money and still not have to worry about puting food on the table,having new stuff,or really anything.They still are rich.What would the point of trying to get all that money,if you are going to have to pay it all back in taxes?You are still rich!

What about people who have too work two jobs,that then in turn keep wadges down,and cause more people to hae to work two jobs?What about those who paying sale taxes prevent them from living on their own?....

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Good enough. I will acknowledge that we have moved past a barter economy. We've also moved beyond a currency based economy as well.

Are you going to move, or move along with your argument?

Who pays half of their income in Federal Income Tax alone? At what point do you start paying half? At what point does it cease to be worth your while to work hard?

Yes, there working poor. They work there asses off and end up living paycheck to paycheck and without Health Insurance. Is penalizing the wealthy answer?

What about education?

What about creating higher paying jobs, through investment and expansion?

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Quote:
Ghetto Funk Baby:
My point has always been this, the rich being rich have certain abilities. Take someone making 300,000 a year. The cost of living is negligible for them, they could lose half of their money and still not have to worry about putting food on the table, having new stuff, or really anything. They still are rich. What would the point of trying to get all that money, if you are going to have to pay it all back in taxes? You are still rich!
Don't confuse wealth and income. Lots and lots of people making 300K a year also live paycheck to paycheck. You could take half their money and get something close to nothing.

You get wealth by spending, i.e. living on, less than you make. According to research done (and written up in "The Millionaire Next Door"), the typical "Millionaire" drives a beat up pickup, wears blue jeans, and earns less than 100K. They get and stay rich by spending less, not by earning more.

Many of the 300K crowd are Lawyers (Accountants, etc) for the super rich. Unfortunately for them, associating with the super rich means they have to dress the part, but don't have the cash to do so.

Others just have bad habits. I have a co-worker who has a brother who is a doctor and he is married to a nurse. Between the two of them they probably earn 250K. Recently they consolidated all their credit card debt, and then promptly ran out an maxxed out all their cards again, leaving them even worse off. It is a struggle for them to buy clothes for their kids.

Our culture encourages spending on things we "need". That doesn't change as you move up the scale.
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