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Are savings from a tax law change "income the tax payer did not earn">

Are savings from a tax law change "income the tax payer did not earn"?

  • Yes, if the government takes less-it is unearned income for you

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    20
More idiocy. So i work hard and make 100K and I invest it and from that investment I make more money


how is that UNEARNED.
You said it yourself you "made money" but you didn't "earn" it. There is a big difference between investing money and earning money. One is that much like gambling, you are not guarenteed a return on your money from investing, whereas if you work hard at a job using your labor for someone you are almost guarenteed to get to paid because you earned it.
 
I suspect her definition is not based on the tax code definition. many people who don't have the wherewithal to invest wisely think its like winning the lottery.
My definition is based on the tax code and I know this because I looked it up before responding to you. Maybe you should do the same before posting such an ignorant thread.

http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=176508,00.html

Examples of Income that is Not Earned Income:

Pay received for work while an inmate in a penal institution
Interest and dividends
Retirement Income
Social security
Unemployment benefits,
Alimony
Child support.
 
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Income not earned is income that is grossly disproportional to what the income is being paid for. For example, those who are paid extraordinary sums for doing nothing by shuffling money around so that other people can obtain extraordinary sums. Meanwhile, people who actually make things are getting almost nothing. The first group is making a whole lot of money that wasn't "earned", in the sense of being deserved. The second is making a whole lot less than they deserve.
 
on the contrary, the thing itself is distinct and unique. in my world, we also point out that words are important and definitions matter :)
This isn't English class, son, it's politics. Misleading names and swapping labels is common practice. Words mean what Madison Ave decides can be sold and spun. Obviously you're too young to understand this simple idea. Give it a couple more decades of watching the circus and maybe you'll figure it out. "The labels will be changed to protect the guilty" - standard protocol in all capital cities across the country and especially in DC.
 
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Income not earned is income that is grossly disproportional to what the income is being paid for.

That's you trying to impose your personal judgment on whether an agreement between two other parties satisfies your definition of fair.

For example, those who are paid extraordinary sums for doing nothing by shuffling money around so that other people can obtain extraordinary sums. Meanwhile, people who actually make things are getting almost nothing. The first group is making a whole lot of money that wasn't "earned", in the sense of being deserved. The second is making a whole lot less than they deserve.

If you're not one of the parties involved in the business arrangement, your concept of what is deserved within that business arrangement is meaningless.
 
on the contrary, the thing itself is distinct and unique. in my world, we also point out that words are important and definitions matter :)
Words are important all right. Use the right words and you can convince grandma to give up her life savings for a chance to own a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge - or you can convince a room full of people to donate thousands to help fund cancer research. They're just tools but quite unlike a wrench or screwdriver words are as fluid as the speaker wants them to be - or rather, as he can convince his audience they are. Madison Ave makes billions a year playing with words and selling concepts. "It doesn't matter that product A has been around for a decade and is getting stale - we'll re-label it, re-package it, and we'll be able to sell it for another five years without changing the content." So much for words, definitions, and meanings. I've seen too many years of their use, misuse, and abuse to drink that Kool-Aide anymore.
 
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That's you trying to impose your personal judgment on whether an agreement between two other parties satisfies your definition of fair.

If you're not one of the parties involved in the business arrangement, your concept of what is deserved within that business arrangement is meaningless.
That's how slavery and other illegal activities get started. "It's not your business!" LOL!
 
Words are important all right. Use the right words and you can convince grandma to give up her life savings for a chance to own a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge - or you can convince a room full of people to donate thousands to help fund cancer research. They're just tools but quite unlike a wrench or screwdriver words are as fluid as the speaker wants them to be - or rather, as he can convince his audience they are. Madison Ave makes billions a year playing with words and selling concepts. "It doesn't matter that product A has been around for a decade and is getting stale - we'll re-label it, re-package it, and we'll be able to sell it for another five years without changing the content." So much for words, definitions, and meanings. I've seen too many years of their use, misuse, and abuse to drink that Kool-Aide anymore.

:shrug: in your line of work apparently you are paid to twist words and meanings and so you have chosen to follow the money and deny meaning. my line of work is rather the opposite - if my meaning does not correspond exactly, accurately, and finely to the ground reality, then disaster can occur.

the cynical always forget that theirs is simply a different form of naivete.
 
You said it yourself you "made money" but you didn't "earn" it. There is a big difference between investing money and earning money. One is that much like gambling, you are not guarenteed a return on your money from investing, whereas if you work hard at a job using your labor for someone you are almost guarenteed to get to paid because you earned it.


Yeah I suppose if you are hateful of those who have more prosperity than you do you might feel that way. and many people work very hard investing money. But what I love is the underlying attitude that the government somehow deserves the money more than the person who made it in the first place
 
This isn't English class, son, it's politics.

no - this is political philosophy. we aren't spinning narrative and counter narrative here in a partisan manner, but discussing and defining the nugget of the matter.

Misleading names and swapping labels is common practice. Words mean what Madison Ave decides can be sold and spun. Obviously you're too young to understand this simple idea. Give it a couple more decades of watching the circus and maybe you'll figure it out. "The labels will be changed to protect the guilty" - standard protocol in all capital cities across the country and especially in DC.

:roll:
 
Income not earned is income that is grossly disproportional to what the income is being paid for. For example, those who are paid extraordinary sums for doing nothing by shuffling money around so that other people can obtain extraordinary sums. Meanwhile, people who actually make things are getting almost nothing. The first group is making a whole lot of money that wasn't "earned", in the sense of being deserved. The second is making a whole lot less than they deserve.

completely irrelevant to this thread. MOre class envy nonsense. Lots of people who are not wealthy have investment income even if its interest on a savings account.
 
This is nonsense. We didn't earn a tax cut, but we earned a stimulas?




That kind of thinking turns the government into parents. No, dude, the government keeps what we, as voters, let them. You've got it backwards.

You have obviously never been audited by the IRS. I've had it done three times and I can tell you that they agree with me.

When was the last time that you voted out an IRS agent?
 
....that the IRS agrees with you is sort of a point in his favor....
 
So I buy a nice little house in Alabama for $150,000, and I raise my children in it, grow old, and 35 years or so from now, get ready to retire and move down to Florida to be with the other old people. My house has kept up with inflation, which has averaged at 2.5% a year, bringing the house up to $365,000. Mind you, it's still the exact same value, just inflation has cheapened the dollar.

Yet I'm going to get taxed for $215,000 of "unearned income". Tell me, how the hell is that "unearned income"? In real terms, I didn't even make a dime. Or, if I put in the time and labor to turn my basement into another bedroom with a full bathroom plus a living room, and that boosts the value of my house another $35K, plant some nice trees and do a little landscaping that gets me another $5-7K, and then pay to put in a pool that increases the value of the house by the exact price of the pool, how the hell is that "unearned" income? I went to quite a bit of effort, time, and labor for some of that "income", and paid full price for the pool the first time around.
 
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Yeah I suppose if you are hateful of those who have more prosperity than you do you might feel that way. and many people work very hard investing money. But what I love is the underlying attitude that the government somehow deserves the money more than the person who made it in the first place
I find it rather curious that you claim to have so many prosperous investments and don't know that the IRS classifies them as "unearned income" on your income tax returns.
 
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I find it rather curious that you claim to have so many prosperous investments and don't know that the IRS classifies them as "unearned income" on your income tax returns.

I noted in an earlier post that you are mixing the definitions.
 
So I buy a nice little house in Alabama for $150,000, and I raise my children in it, grow old, and 35 years or so from now, get ready to retire and move down to Florida to be with the other old people. My house has kept up with inflation, which has averaged at 2.5% a year, bringing the house up to $365,000. Mind you, it's still the exact same value, just inflation has cheapened the dollar.

Yet I'm going to get taxed for $215,000 of "unearned income". Tell me, how the hell is that "unearned income"? In real terms, I didn't even make a dime. Or, if I put in the time and labor to turn my basement into another bedroom with a full bathroom plus a living room, and that boosts the value of my house another $35K, plant some nice trees and do a little landscaping that gets me another $5-7K, and then pay to put in a pool that increases the value of the house by the exact price of the pool, how the hell is that "unearned" income? I went to quite a bit of effort, time, and labor for some of that "income", and paid full price for the pool the first time around.

Are you confusing "property taxes" at the local level with the unearned income you might recieve if and when you sell your house? For example, if you bought your house for 150K and sold it for 215K then you would have a 100K of unearned income aka profit on your investment. But if you still had principle to pay on your mortgage, then your profit would be less after paying off the principle. If you don't own your house outright then paying a mortgage isn't much different than paying rent to a bank, except when you go to sell your house and if you're lucky you might get a return on your money. Keeping your property up simply means keeping up the value of your investment and that is no guarentee you will see a return on your investment either because there are other factors involved such as location, location, location.
 
Are you confusing "property taxes" at the local level with the unearned income you might recieve if and when you sell your house? For example, if you bought your house for 150K and sold it for 215K then you would have a 100K of unearned income aka profit on your investment

except that since that 100K price change was produced by inflation rather than any actual capital appreciation, I didn't see any "profit", just a tax bill.

keeping up the value of your investment and that is no guarentee you will see a return on your investment either

and that is why we tax capital gains lower :).
 
....that the IRS agrees with you is sort of a point in his favor....

I'm sorry, but I do not see it that way. Everyone knows that you file on your total income, all of it. Then you figure out what your taxes will be and you pay that amount. Capital gains and winfalls will hurt you. You need to talk to Mitt's overseas banker. Shovel it out of the country and mums the word.

I'll never tell.

There is a price associated with being an American citizen and it does get much higher for the much higher earning individuals. You've got to hide your dough away.

Not you Will. You're in the service.
 
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except that since that 100K price change was produced by inflation rather than any actual capital appreciation, I didn't see any "profit", just a tax bill.



and that is why we tax capital gains lower :).
Actually, home prices are determined by demand and/or the value of what other similar homes are selling for in the area. A cracker box in a good location is going to sell for more than the same cracker box in a bad location. However, the devaluing of one home on a street has the effect of devaluing all the homes that are similar on the same street and thats why foreclosures have been devaluing peoples homes, which is for most people their largest investment. Most people depend on their jobs (labor) to pay for that investment and so without earned income they could lose all of their investment.



If everyone could make money without working like Romney does, then who would want to work at a boring job all day and get little return for their hard work? Devaluing ones labor provides little incentive to work hard. So rewarding people who don't have to work to make money with huge tax breaks seems rather unfair to those who have to use their labor to earn their money.
 
Actually, home prices are determined by demand and/or the value of what other similar homes are selling for in the area. A cracker box in a good location is going to sell for more than the same cracker box in a bad location. However, the devaluing of one home on a street has the effect of devaluing all the homes that are similar on the same street and thats why foreclosures have been devaluing peoples homes, which is for most people their largest investment. Most people depend on their jobs (labor) to pay for that investment and so without earned income they could lose all of their investment.

You keep avoiding the point that the capital gains tax does not account for inflation, and thus I am paying taxes on income I never accrued. Why do you keep doing that?

If everyone could make money without working like Romney does

full stop - investors do the work of properly allocating resources, or they hire others to do so for them; the same as running a small business.

then who would want to work at a boring job all day and get little return for their hard work? Devaluing ones labor provides little incentive to work hard. So rewarding people who don't have to work to make money with huge tax breaks seems rather unfair to those who have to use their labor to earn their money.

:shrug: I have to labor to earn my money, and frankly, i would rather be able to save for my and my childrens' future tax free. If Romney is successful in getting capital gains tax struck for all families making less than $250K a year, hey, I'll be the guy pumping my fist.

Why is it that you wish to discourage the lower and middle class from building wealth and raising themselves up by taxing them for attempting to do so?
 
That's how slavery and other illegal activities get started. "It's not your business!" LOL!

Nice try. Slaves are never allowed to agree to the terms/conditions of the arrangement.

In that sense, it's the liberals that want to usher the coercion inherent in slavery back into society, by forcing one side of a contract to its terms without their own consent/agreement.
 
:shrug: in your line of work apparently you are paid to twist words and meanings and so you have chosen to follow the money and deny meaning. my line of work is rather the opposite - if my meaning does not correspond exactly, accurately, and finely to the ground reality, then disaster can occur.

the cynical always forget that theirs is simply a different form of naivete.
I've been watching people - most notably politicians, advertisers, and other salesmen - deceive other people for decades. People have taught me to follow the money. But this is a VERY old idea. Ever hear the saying "actions speak louder than words"? That's not something I or even my generation made up and the idea, if not the saying, has probably been around since people started talking. So you can take the "holier than though" attitude somewhere else, it doesn't work here. People lie, people deceive, and people stretch & flip meanings of words - it happens every hour of every day. If you don't understand this then you'll learn soon enough or go broke finding out.
 
no - this is political philosophy. we aren't spinning narrative and counter narrative here in a partisan manner, but discussing and defining the nugget of the matter.
You mean like this incisive and well-balanced post?
the parasite mentality holds that existing near someone entitles one to his neighbor's wealth. THose who think all wealth belong to the government try to justify handouts to non-earners as balancing less theft from the earners



And, hey, what about those "death taxes"?


Right, there's no PR going on HERE!!! We're just "discussing and defining the nugget of the matter". :lamo
 
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completely irrelevant to this thread. MOre class envy nonsense. Lots of people who are not wealthy have investment income even if its interest on a savings account.
And how many of them fall into a 15%+ tax bracket??? :roll:
 
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