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GOP may OK tax increase that Obama hopes to block

TheDemSocialist said:
What some on the GOP want to raise taxes now!! According to a select few that means that those who want to raise taxes are "socialists" igniting "class warfare"!!!! AHHHHHHHHH:scared:
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I don't think you understand it quite right. If your decision is that everyone must pay the tax then let's raise the rate on everyone. The objection I have to your arguments is that you want to tax one group of people for he benefit of other people who do not pay the tax.

That is class warfare. It is Marxist. The more steeply progressive the taxes the better in the Marxist formulation. How much steeper can one make it than some pay none and others pay nearly all?
 
AdamT said:
Yeah, except for GOP candidates like Rick Perry who says that SS is unconstitutional. :roll:
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I believe it is extra-constitutional. For the good of the nation it needs to be phased out.
 
Misterveritis said:
I don't think you understand it quite right. If your decision is that everyone must pay the tax then let's raise the rate on everyone. The objection I have to your arguments is that you want to tax one group of people for he benefit of other people who do not pay the tax.

That is class warfare. It is Marxist. The more steeply progressive the taxes the better in the Marxist formulation. How much steeper can one make it than some pay none and others pay nearly all?
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It is pragmatism -- not class warfare. The bottom 50% of the population controls just 2% of the country's wealth. It would be foolish and self defeating to ask those people to shoulder as much of the burden as the top 10% of the population, which controls over 70% of the country's wealth.
 
AdamT said:
It is pragmatism -- not class warfare. The bottom 50% of the population controls just 2% of the country's wealth. It would be foolish and self defeating to ask those people to shoulder as much of the burden as the top 10% of the population, which controls over 70% of the country's wealth.
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Is it foolish to ask that those 50% pay into the fund for their own social security and medicare benefits? Or are we of the mind that these people should not be responsible for their own retirements and future stability?
 
tessaesque said:
Is it foolish to ask that those 50% pay into the fund for their own social security and medicare benefits? Or are we of the mind that these people should not be responsible for their own retirements and future stability?
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You realize that they do pay into those funds right? Everyone who earns a paycheck pays payroll taxes.
 
Ockham said:
So you want to control people from being selfish? How about angry people - 10% tax on them too?
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Of course not, but a time out wouldn't hurt them. LOL.
 
tessaesque said:
Everybody's swallowing the pill. Did you completely ignore the first part of my post? People making more than 106k are already paying for themselves and a portion of somebody else, in terms of social security. And somebody making the median income, at the standard rate of 6.2% doesn't pay in enough to cover their benefits from 66 until death (assuming average life expectancy).

I have never said I propose cutting taxes for the wealthy and not for anybody else. Not once. You're making stupid assumptions based on a stupid bias you've developed thanks to political talking points. Think and act for yourself, not for labels. What I do not support are taxes that would put a heavier burden on specific income levels based solely on an arbitrary income (i.e. $250k in every state, county, city, etc, despite standard of living and cost of living variations) in defense of "easing the strain on the middle class", as though punishing success is going to encourage growth in any capacity.

The "rich" will not likely need social security. The middle class will. And part of the reason they will is because they don't prepare for their own futures. People in America are practically famous for spending everything they earn (and then some) without planning for future needs. And we've been taught that social security will keep us comfy in retirement. This is a program we're expecting to support us, but wait....we want somebody else to pay for that protection? Why do we get to shirk our responsibilities to ourselves simply because we aren't "rich"? What the hell logic is that?
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this post is so completely full of crap. NOBODY has mentioned anyone shirking their responsibility, and i don't know how YOU were raised, but i sure wasn't raised to depend on ss. as far as "punishing success"...THAT'S a trite talking point. the entire point HERE is that the middle class and working poor pays 6.2% on their entire salary, while the wealthy do not. hell, some of the wealthy pay nothing, because this is a payroll tax. so here's the question, at a time when MOST republicans have signed a pledge to RAISE NO TAXES, why do YOU find it perfectly fine that they renege on that pledge? oh, the horror! won't that dampen any recovery we've got going? after all, rasing taxes on the wealthy is a no-no because it hurts the economy, right?

the middle class is eroding, thanks to people like you who have some unknown reason to "protect" the wealthy. and btw, yes, a person paying into ss for 48 years with an average salary of 25k HAS absolutely pays enough to cover their ss benefits. another point.....since when have TAXES EVER been based on your location's standard of living?
 
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VanceMack said:
You want the wealthy to be taxed more to pay for social security benefits of the poor? Is that the gist of it? As I understand it now people are currently capped at income levels based primarily on what their level of return of investment is. Someone that makes over...what is it...$104k is taxed the same as someone that makes $500k...because the rate of return will be the same regardless. So you believe that regardless of the capped rate of return, those that make more than $104k should have to pay more into a retirement account that they will never possibly receive a benefit from. Am I tracking you correctly?
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Yes. In fact, I also want to charge SS tax on unearned income such as capital gains. Actually, what I want to do is scrap social security tax and fund social security through (increased) general income taxes. I also want to scrap medicare tax. These separate taxes by the federal government that GOP like to pretend aren't taxes does nothing other than confuse things by creating statistics like 51% of American's don't pay federal income tax, while that's false if you count other taxes based on income by the federal government such as social security and medicare tax.

As far as it being an investment, social security is a TERRIBLE investment. The rate of return is pathetic. Forcing someone to put a higher percentage of their available savings dollars into social security just seems cruel. What it does (I won't say well) is act as an insurance rather than a retirement system. Disability, lack of planning, stupidity, what have you. At least you have social security.
 
AdamT said:
It is pragmatism -- not class warfare. The bottom 50% of the population controls just 2% of the country's wealth. It would be foolish and self defeating to ask those people to shoulder as much of the burden as the top 10% of the population, which controls over 70% of the country's wealth.
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Then we are back to class warfare. Easy peasy. It is all you know.
 
vvx said:
Yes. In fact, I also want to charge SS tax on unearned income such as capital gains. Actually, what I want to do is scrap social security tax and fund social security through (increased) general income taxes. I also want to scrap medicare tax. These separate taxes by the federal government that GOP like to pretend aren't taxes does nothing other than confuse things by creating statistics like 51% of American's don't pay federal income tax, while that's false if you count other taxes based on income by the federal government such as social security and medicare tax.

As far as it being an investment, social security is a TERRIBLE investment. The rate of return is pathetic. Forcing someone to put a higher percentage of their available savings dollars into social security just seems cruel. What it does (I won't say well) is act as an insurance rather than a retirement system. Disability, lack of planning, stupidity, what have you. At least you have social security.
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Again...I always applaud honesty. As long as people recognize it has nothing to do with fair or fair share and it remains solely in the realm of screw them...make them pay for the poor...well...we will disagree...but I'll at least give you props.
 
of course the GOP would go along with what they formerly would scream is a TAX HIKE because it does not impact the wealthy. As my kids used to say when they were teenagers - DUH.
 
haymarket said:
of course the GOP would go along with what they formerly would scream is a TAX HIKE because it does not impact the wealthy. As my kids used to say when they were teenagers - DUH.
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LOL. If everyone pays the tax then how is it that you believe the wealthy wage earner is exempt?
 
VanceMack said:
Again...I always applaud honesty. As long as people recognize it has nothing to do with fair or fair share and it remains solely in the realm of screw them...make them pay for the poor...well...we will disagree...but I'll at least give you props.
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Well, fair is open to interpretation. Is it fair that I can be a millionaire by nothing more than being born to the right person? Or, does fairness occur when everyone pays a proportionate tax relative to their benefit of government? You could say that communism is the most fair, in that people are treated equally and there's no benefit to being born wealthy. Or, you could say a fixed tax per person is fair, as everyone pays the same. And there's millions of shades of gray.

So, yes, I suppose I do see it fair that those with higher income pay more tax. And I understand how others could see that as not fair. How they define fair is different than how I define fair. My beliefs may have nothing to do with what you perceive as fair.
 
SheWolf said:
I am a little confused by the article in the OP, but the hypocrisy of the GOP is not surprising.
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it's only actually hypocritical if you assume a strawman conservative position. the argument from the GOP is that low, flat, permanent tax rates will spur growth. temporary tax credits, breaks, and so forth, are really just a form of stimulus spending. Which is why Bush's first "stimulus" attempt featured them.


A good read for those who are actually interested in understanding what their opponents are saying, rather than trying (and failing) to play gotcha:


....One of Milton Friedman’s key achievements was working out a formal version of this idea, which is known as the “Permanent Income Hypothesis.” In short, it holds that most people are not utter fools, and that they therefore recognize temporary fluctuations in their income as temporary, and therefore as no basis for making long-term economic commitments. If your take-home pay is normally $5,000 a month, and you get a $1,000 Christmas bonus, you don’t go into January acting like a guy whose take-home pay is $6,000 a month. You act like a guy who just got $1,000 in new net worth, not $1,000 a month in new income. Likewise, if the government gives you a temporary tax break that adds $200 a month to your take-home pay, you don’t move from a $1,500-a-month apartment to a $1,700-a-month apartment, or build a $20,000 extension onto your house, or buy a $35,000 car instead of a $25,000 car. You know that the extra income won’t last forever.

That’s why the ever-burgeoning stimulus project has underperformed. It started with those embarrassing $300 checks from the 2008 Bush stimulus, which grew up to be the $400 Making Work Pay tax credit, and then provided the mutant offspring of the payroll-tax cut, which is good for a few hundred bucks for most families, and up to a couple of grand for the high-rollers. It all adds up to about $10 billion a month — not the smallest of potatoes...

And while temporary tax cuts probably aren’t very effective in general, there’s good reason to think that this one would be less effective than most. As Bryan Caplan explains, under perfectly free labor-market conditions it wouldn’t matter whether we cut the employee side or the employer side. But we have regulated labor markets (minimum-wage laws, union rules, etc.), and so it does matter. We cut the employee side rather than the employer side, which raises compensation. Cutting the employer side would have reduced the cost of labor: Prices go down, demand goes up — what is true for widgets is true for workers...

Whatever they end up doing, Republicans should fight for one more change: making the rates permanent, at whatever level they end up at. More important than a relatively modest tweak of the tax rates here and there, the fact that we’re set to have a major national political brawl every year or so over tax rates is the source of a great deal of economic uncertainty. Investors need stable rules (recent EPA adventuring is unhelpful) and a stable political-economic environment in which to operate...
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Zyphlin said:
I do find it a wonderfully delicious bit of hypocrisy on BOTH sides, though I find utmost and distinct humor in the fact that the AP via MSNBC decided to...shockingly...focus only on the republicans. On one side, you have Republicans pushing against something that would cut taxes and put money into peoples pockets. On the flip side, you have Democrats pushing for something that will reduce revenue during a time when they say its most important to increase revenue.
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That has never been the Democratic argument. The Democratic position was that it was most important to stimulate the economy now, as it is a more critical and immediate issue than the debt. And to the extent that we ARE going to focus on reducing the deficit, the Democratic position was that we should increase revenue AND cut spending. I don't know who said that increasing revenue was the most important thing right now, but it wasn't any prominent Democrats that I'm aware of.

Yep, its a tax increase. Its also one I have no huge issue with. I think the economic benefit of the additional money it puts into the market is largely negated by the short term nature of it, which I think is likely to lead it to be saved or simply used to pay down debt rather than actually significantly reinvested back into the economy on the near term. One or two year temporary tax holidays do little but let people have money they know is temporary and tenuous during a troubled time for the economy. What helps to stimulate is conrete, stable, secure economic conditions and a short term drop doesn't really do that.
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Paying down debt is fine...we need to remember that this wasn't just any recession, it was a financial crisis. The median time for a nation to deleverage its excess debt after a financial crisis is 7 years, during which time the economy is growing slowly (if at all). Helping people pay down their debt speeds up the deleveraging process so that people can get back to spending sooner rather than later.

This kind of tax cut is CERTAINLY more justifiable than the extension of the Bush tax cuts which occurred last year. The unemployment problem is almost entirely on the demand side, not the supply side. The reason that businesses aren't hiring has little to do with a lack of money to hire people; on the contrary, many businesses are sitting on top piles of cash and posting record profits. The reason they aren't hiring is because there isn't enough demand for their products/services, due to consumers not having as much cash. If we're going to give a tax cut to anyone in order to stimulate the economy, it should be the poor and middle class.
 
donsutherland1 said:
The temporary reduction in the payroll tax has reduced cash inflows to Social Security. It has had an actuarial impact on the program's long-term imbalances. Moreover, the Social Security Disability Insurance program is nearing insolvency. Unless some offset is found to focus on Social Security's long-term future, which is vital given the importance of the program, I don't necessarily disagree with allowing the temporary tax reduction to expire. This, in my opinion, is a clear example where the long-term should take precedence over the short-term.
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But in terms of actual damage to SSI, this is minor. Remember that Congresses and Presidents have basically stolen hundreds of billions from SS replacing them with IOUs. A temporary reduction to money flowing into SS is hardly a big issue compared to the massive gaping hole in SS's balance sheet from decades of treating SS income as general funds. Furthermore, considering how this actually impacts those who spend money faster, it would help the economy over all, which in theory would propagate increased amounts of money flowing into SS later on. The SSDI problem is a big concern though.
 
mike2810 said:
Do the 46% who pay no federal income tax, want SS to be around to draw upon or not? We know SS is in trouble.
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"Back in 1983, the ceiling was set so the Social Security payroll tax would hit 90 percent of total income covered by Social Security. Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 84 percent of total income.

It went from 90 percent to 84 percent because income inequality has widened. Now a much larger portion of total income goes to the top -- almost twice the share they got back then.

If we want to return to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000. Do that and Social Security's long-term problem is solved."
How to fix Social Security | Marketplace From American Public Media
 
Its a just a withholding trick you fools.
 
SheWolf said:
So now the GOP cares about saving SS... :lamo
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Somebody has to pay for our ME wars for the rich that SS helped fund, right? :sun
 
Misterveritis said:
I believe it is extra-constitutional. For the good of the nation it needs to be phased out.
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Its funny, presidential candidates that support your position usually get less than 1% of the vote. Best of luck to you with your "plan"!
 
Catawba said:
Its funny, presidential candidates that support your position usually get less than 1% of the vote. Best of luck to you with your "plan"!
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Why thank you Cat. Than you very much. Your attitude is one of the reasons that I believe the nation is doomed to pass through a civil war or a revolution.
 
Misterveritis said:
Why thank you Cat. Than you very much. Your attitude is one of the reasons that I believe the nation is doomed to pass through a civil war or a revolution.
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LOL! Won't be much of a civil war or even a revolution with less than one percent of the population supporting your "cause!"

Viva la revolution!!! :2rofll:
 
vvx said:
Well, fair is open to interpretation. Is it fair that I can be a millionaire by nothing more than being born to the right person? Or, does fairness occur when everyone pays a proportionate tax relative to their benefit of government? You could say that communism is the most fair, in that people are treated equally and there's no benefit to being born wealthy. Or, you could say a fixed tax per person is fair, as everyone pays the same. And there's millions of shades of gray.

So, yes, I suppose I do see it fair that those with higher income pay more tax. And I understand how others could see that as not fair. How they define fair is different than how I define fair. My beliefs may have nothing to do with what you perceive as fair.
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Nope...and thats OK. Personally...I hate the word 'fair'. Life isnt fair. No one is guaranteed fair. And if more people were invested in changing their future than whining about how unfair life is, Im certain their lives would be better.
 
Catawba said:
LOL! Won't be much of a civil war or even a revolution with less than one percent of the population supporting your "cause!"

Viva la revolution!!! :2rofll:
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Time will tell, won't it?

Successful revolutions require active participation of about 5% of the populace with another 20-25% providing some marginal assistance.
 
AdamT said:
It is pragmatism -- not class warfare. The bottom 50% of the population controls just 2% of the country's wealth. It would be foolish and self defeating to ask those people to shoulder as much of the burden as the top 10% of the population, which controls over 70% of the country's wealth.
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Well, Okay. I pay in federal income taxes about what one of them earns. Are you arguing that the bottom half of wage earners would shoulder as much of the burden as I do if they were taxed 10%? Are you arguing that their 5,000 dollar federal income tax load is the same as my $40,000?
 
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