Having spent so much time around upper-middle-class Americans, and having entered their ranks in my own ambivalent way, I’ve come to understand their power. The upper middle class controls the media we consume. They run our big bureaucracies, our universities, and our hospitals. Their voices drown out those of other people at almost every turn. I fear that the only way we can check the tendency of upper-middle-class people to look out for their own interests at the expense of others is to make them feel at least a little guilty about it. It’s not much, but it’s a start.Shaming, eh? Salam imagines guilt-tripping families that make $200,000 a year or so into sacrificing their mortgage interest and college savings tax breaks for the greater good. If we could only get the people who have gained some decent economic security to stop paying attention to their own self interest, we could avert the destruction of America — that's Salam's idea. I'm not exaggerating: the article accuses the upper-middle class of "ruining America."
Meanwhile, liberals are always fretting about the way less-than-upper-middle-class Americans are failing to pay attention to their own self interest. That's "What's the Matter with Kansas."
Exactly how selfish are we supposed to be? Promoting unselfishness is a strange business, but I don't trust the big shamers and guilt-trippers of this world. They have their own self-interests, and they're choosing to promote them by tromping about in the darker parts of our psyche.
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173 comments:
How much of his own personal $$ or position does Salam give away? It is Always "the others" that to need to give up something. Never people like Salam.
Big Shame is a rascally oligarchy that wants to destroy America.
The upper middle class and upper class basically (but not literally) pay for EVERYTHING in this country.
Let's shame them.
Shame on you for working so damn hard and being successful and thinking about your own family first. Shameful.
I agree with Tim. I think Salam should release his tax records to show the amount of charitable contributions he has given over the years.
Meanwhile, over here we've got a case of someone who does not look challenged for her next bite of food mocking Jodi Ernst's impoverished childhood. The upper middle class lefties are the ones who need to be more considerate of poor people.
People in the backseat always know all there is to know about driving.
They don't want anyone to not be dependent on the government. A few really rich people they can shame and control, but a large number is a problem. They want 99.9% to be poor. Soon the rich that have earned it will be replaced by a rich that have achieved it politically.
I'm sensing a pattern of realignments here.
In the space of hours after the announcements, the Globe wants Jeb to fill the "boarding school bully" void left by Romney, and Salam himself wants to fill the "conservative" jackass void left by Andrew Sullivan.
It's in your self interest to trade with somebody in whose self interest it is to trade with you.
If you do the right thing, you become wealthy as well.
That self interest is an incentive to do the right hing.
Or you can have five-year plans which always fail owing to bad weather.
Riight: A "conservative" who wants to increase taxes and make them more progressive.
The upper middle class already carries much of the load: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivity_in_United_States_income_tax.
So, Mr. "Conservative," how much heavier should it be? What's the "fair share" of the poor and lower middle class?
EDH,
The 'Boarding School Bully' typically may/may not be racist, homophobic and/or sexist. A suspicious character.
He usually leaves a lot of folks with PTSD in his wake. Studies have shown this. Statistics agree.
He learned all he needed to know about corporations from his frat brothers.
Once again we are being told the ideal society is the Roman Empire model with a ruling class oligarchy and all the rest noble peasant/serfs dependent on the Emperor's great mercy.
The Roman Empire's church has re-taken up its role in the Francis the "world government as the savior of Gaia from co2 Pope."
The real issue of course is that the upper middle class having money just causes large crowds at luxory resorts which annoys the Oligarchs every where they fly their Private Jets seeking solitude.
Ergo: Malthusian population extinctions must be the first goal of great Rulers.
So, how is this for upper middle class foolishness?
A liitle practical selfishness might help keep your feet on the ground and keep you from making a total ass of yourself by trying to direct engineering design by executive orders.
I suppose my household falls into this ne'er-do-well category. I make $110K a year in my blue collar job (with overtime), I make an additional 24K in Military Retirement. My partner makes 100K a year as a small business owner (she has 9 employees)... its a hamburger stand... so we aren't exactly the social elite.
Sure we recognize that we aren't living paycheck to paycheck, but our house is only valued at $250K in Boise, Idaho. Both our neighbors are teachers, so its not like we are living with the Doctors and Lawyers.
However, I'm pretty sure that we have zero political pull. My girlfriend works 6 days a week, and has never taken a vacation longer than 5 days. I spend 220 days a year on the road working 12 to 14 hour shifts.
Most of the people with similar incomes I know fall into this category. We know we are lucky, but I could get laid off or an In-n-out burger could open next to my girlfriends restaurant and we would be f'd. So I really don't feel like we qualify as rich. We worry about how to pay for our kids colleges (we have 5).
We are by no means set up for life so its sort of strange to hear ourselves described as this evil cabal of country club hooligans.
Another thing that separates the upper middle class from the truly wealthy is that even though they’re comfortable, they’re less able to take the threat of tax increases or benefit cuts in stride. Take away the mortgage interest deduction from a Koch brother and he’ll barely notice
If you want their tax deduction, offer something in return. Like say, lowering their marginal rate.
Hey TurbineGuy, you are the enemy that Zero, Salam and their ilk seek to PUNISH.
Shame on you you greedy fucker. Damn you and your partner for working so hard, employing people and omifu**inggod occasionally thinking about yourself.
==============================
Your evil partner has done more by employing nine people than a hundred charities.
Pols think families like Turbine Guy's are sitting pretty and veritable multi-millionaires but even if they made that $200K for ten straight years, I bet they'd have only about $250K left to show for it after paying living expenses, taxes and the full price for college tuition etc.
Flat tax, no deductions.
Accept selfishness because it is the natural order of things, and find out how to use self interest for good.
The points about upper middle class political power and mortgage interest point to a separate issue--not that that class is "selfish" but rather that government control is being used in inefficient ways that ultimately cause more harm, by letting the tax code regulate behavior and creating entitlements no one wants to pay for.
"Families that make $200,000 a year or so" ain't upper middle class. Lower upper class maybe, but definitely not within middle class, at least as determined by (since we do not have a nobility-type class structure) income, material possessions and social attitudes.
TurbineGuy and his wife don't have tenure. That is the problem. What percentage of Americans have tenure? I'd bet that it's a lot less than 1%.
People who are rich don't have to work to make a living. In Obama's America, workers who earn above the average wage are called "rich'.
A major problem with those insist that they are middle class when making $200,000 a year -- like many, many, many of the progressives who live in places like the D.C. area -- is that they are all too happy to agree to higher local taxes for all of those community "improvements" because they do live so comfortably and can afford to pay more. Meanwhile, those who are, in fact, middle class, making middle class money (the national average of $50,000 a year) are the ones who are not simply squeezed, but crushed, leaving them with no savings, much less the $250,000 plus the money to pay their kids college tuition that is cited here as practically near poverty level.
The problem Salam has with the upper middle class is that these people have resources and are not entirely dependent on the State. In Progressive utopia the elite benefits from its connections to the State and everyone else from the State's largesse. Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.
They first try shaming you to make sacrifices to realize their pet ideas, and when that doesn't work, they pass laws and ordinances, and when doesn't work, they arrest you and send you to the gulag.
The problem is that somebody has to pay the taxes, and everyone is mostly willing to pay their fair share, but whatever has been around for a long time or has inspired serious reliance is very hard to see as unfair.
I don't see the point of making people feel that they are ruining America and that they are bad people and they need to throw away regard for their own well being and become good. That's the role for religion and philosophy. Political argument that comes in this form is spurious and potentially quite abusive.
There's some argument for reforming taxation, but... what a mess.
Adam Smith and James Madison fundamentally had the right idea.
What this guy is arguing for results in unworkable foolishness for everybody.
The value of his observations is obvious when he attacks doctors for resisting foreign medical graduates, who by the way have NO clinical contact with patients during training, and he fails to mention thousands of nurse run clinics ate WalMart and CVS pharmacies.
Reagan said something about lefties (I don't like calling them "liberal") who knew so much that wash;t so.
It's Michael Crichton's "murray Gell Mann effect " again.
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories.
Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
"Meanwhile, those who are, in fact, middle class, making middle class money (the national average of $50,000 a year) are the ones who are not simply squeezed, but crushed, "
What's the federal income tax liability at $50k/yr? Damn near zero, especially with children.
But then, to these people, shared misery is preferable to unevenly distributed happiness, even if the least happy are still happier than under their rule.
Individuals acting in their own self interest is the only way to prosperity for society as a whole. It's up to the politicians to craft a tax system that compliments that. They have failed utterly.
@Althouse, I think there's more to it than that. Let's parse a few sentences from the article.
"Though virtually all of these polite, well-groomed people were politically liberal, I sensed that their gut political instincts were all about protecting what they had and scratching out the eyeballs of anyone who dared to suggest taking it away from them."
Dead giveaway #1. He's writing about limousine liberals. He's writing about people who got where they're at by being born in the right bed, going to the right schools, and voicing the right opinions. Not people like Sarah Palin who went to second tier or third tier schools and rose above an impoverished childhood by brains and hard work.
Do not get me started on limousine liberals.
"Well, part of my objection is that upper-middle-income voters only oppose tax hikes on themselves. They are generally fine with raising taxes on people richer than themselves ..."
Dead giveaway #2: This guy is too dense to realize that he's describing every income group in the country!
My parents might be considered that, they're in the $60.000 and above category. So, screw him.
More of the class warfare B.S. that comes from the left.
If he wants to attack wealthy people for having wealth and using it, Mr. Salam can probably aim higher than dentists in North Carolina.
If you count SS and Medicare plus state withholding taxes as taxes, including the so-called employer paid parts, and they should be so counted, then the tax rate on a 50K income is significant, over 12% on average IIRC. And then there is the direct and indirect taxation through sales taxes and gasoline taxes, auto registration, property taxes (which fall indirectly but substansively on renters too), etc., etc., so the effective overall tax burden on the median income is probably over 20%.
"If you count SS and Medicare plus state withholding taxes as taxes, including the so-called employer paid parts, and they should be so counted,"
BULLSHIT!! SS and Medicare are not taxes. They are prepaid retirement benefits. The system is horribly inefficient and should be overhauled, but SS and Medicare are not on the same footing as income taxes.
As to all of the other taxes you list, (sales taxes, etc.) I agree they are taxes, which is why I carefully said income taxes. But it is a fact that somewhere around half of workers do not pay federal income taxes. The people who are getting killed are the people Salam is trying to shame.
What's the federal income tax liability at $50k/yr? Damn near zero, especially with children.
I don't begrudge people making $200,000 per year. Make all you want. And yes, taxes are much too high. Period. But please have the decency and the honesty not to claim that somehow this income class is "middle." It isn't. Admit that it is high.
Meanwhile, last year on an income of $49,800, I paid over $14,000 in taxes -- which is quite a bit more than zero -- equal to about 28 percent.
Again, I don't criticize anyone making $200,000 or more. It's a comfortable living. So live it. Just don't give us this @#$% that you are not in the upper income levels. Don't give us this crap that you are in the middle or barely getting by. You're a lot better off than most.
Sounds like Instapundit is right: The Democrats are going where the money is: The middle class. 529s first (though that didn't fly - this time!), now mortgage interest, next your 401ks.
(The mortgage interest deduction is a good example: It is a deduction from income, not a credit on taxes. Therefore it benefits mortgage holders in the higher brackets more than mortgage holders in the lower brackets. Thus, middle class and especially upper middle class. The upper class has other, better, ways to avoid taxes.)
Payroll taxes for people making <$106k in America come to about 15.3%. (Because the employer computes taxes as a total cost of hiring a worker.)
We can argue about whether it's a PAYGO system...but it's not. SS and Medicare have always been funded by workers still getting W-2 wages, and SS is pretty much a slush fund for the federal government.
So: about 15% off the top of every dollar for most in the middle class. If you're lucky enough to be poor, you can get some of that back in tax credits, and if you're lucky enough to be rich, you avoid some of it by having more than $106k income and by paying capital gains tax rates.
This "upper middle class" BS for people making $200,000 comes from a lot of progressives who don't want to be associated with "the wealthy." That's how you end up with Hillary making a hell of a lot more than $200,000 claiming that she and Bill are dirt poor.
Mark, how did you manage to pay 28% on $50k income? Sounds like you need to fire your tax software.
"Again, I don't criticize anyone making $200,000 or more. It's a comfortable living. So live it. Just don't give us this @#$% that you are not in the upper income levels. Don't give us this crap that you are in the middle or barely getting by. You're a lot better off than most."
If you're talking to me, I never claimed otherwise.
Your taxes are "high" (though with the current level of government spending they can hardly be otherwise). Presumably you have no deductions, which I think is a fault of the system. I support no deductions and low rates.
The people who are getting killed are the people Salam is trying to shame.
Gee, that's right. Let's all throw a pity party for those of you making $200 K a year. The effective income tax rate-married filing jointly with two kids-with the standard deduction (and I doubt many people making that much take the standard deduction) is 18.8%. It jumps to a whopping 23.3% for the worst case (single no dependents).
Hardly a crushing burden.
Leftists complain, It's what they do. Downers, the lot of them!
SS and Medicare are properly counted as taxes for purposes of comparative economics. If one were to compare tax burdens of Britain to the US it would make no sense to include spending on the NHS, which is paid out of general taxation, and leave Medicare out of the US portion. And all government spending can be construed as some sort of insurance or shared expense just as SS and Medicare.
I would go so far as to include mandated private spending such as the Obamacare system inside the tax burden these days. The distinctions are fuzzy at the edges but the real world effects are there. They reduce private discretionary incomes.
The argument about the relative share of the tax burden still applies and the math still works out in your favor, even counting payroll taxes, so your point is safe.
A more comprehensive analysis of taxation will, however, push the tax burden down the scale. It can be argued, and argued well, that taxes that are paid by the higher quintiles have the effect of raising prices for goods and services for all, and these cost of living issues are much more evenly spread than direct taxation.
And then there is the regulatory burden, which is best considered as taxation, in that public goods are mandated to be supplied through forced private spending. These also disproportionately burden the poor.
I support no deductions and low rates.
Yeah, I bet your tune would change if they took away your mortgage and property tax deductions.
"Therefore it benefits mortgage holders in the higher brackets more than mortgage holders in the lower brackets."
I would be OK with a cap on the mortgage deduction at around $250k. The problem is that it is built into housing prices by now, just as California's Prop 13 is built into this state's home prices. You would have to deal with a collapse in price that would probably tank the economy.
I remember when a mortgage for a home over $500k in price was not available at all. If you were building such a house, you were expected to pay cash.
That is where we have gone with inflation.
I'd support no mortgage-interest and property-tax (and also state/local tax) deductions in favor of a flatter rate system.
Most people who argue about taxes simply know nothing about them. We're paying 20-something percent, most of us. That's the way it is. And when George W. Bush lowered taxes about 14 years ago, he brought rates close to zero for poorer folks. Al Gore was a lying jerk about that issue.
Depending on where you live determines whether $200k/yr is "rich." Remember Michelle could barely afford ballet lessons for the girls and they were making $300k/yr.
"Yeah, I bet your tune would change if they took away your mortgage and property tax deductions."
You're wrong, light-bulb boy. An efficient tax system would do more for prosperity in this country than all your progressive schemes rolled into one.
We should eliminate mortgage deductions in a revenue-neutral manner.
We're paying 20-something percent, most of us.
Are you talking about federal income taxes? If you are, then you are lying. Unless by "most of us" you mean single people making much more than $200,000 who don't own a home.
Freder Frederson, I'm sorry, but I haven't the time or inclination to pull you out of your mythology. Maybe you can start with a book on arithmetic. Also, consider the various taxing authorities and how much goes to all of them.
We should eliminate mortgage deductions in a revenue-neutral manner.
That certainly could be done. But it would shift the tax burden down the income scale considerably. And probably hurt the population we are discussing here the most.
US tax rates are fairly low by some analyses, and middling by others. Its complicated by the variety of US state taxation and spending models.
In international comparisons it all seems to depend on the degree of control of various social spending categories, mainly medical, unemployment and pensions.
Vs Europe the US has low taxes, vs Japan the US tax burden is comparable, vs developed parts of Asia the US has high taxes.
Freder Frederson, I'm sorry, but I haven't the time or inclination to pull you out of your mythology. Maybe you can start with a book on arithmetic. Also, consider the various taxing authorities and how much goes to all of them.
We are discussing federal income taxes. Focus! Just because you believe something is true, doesn't make it so. Here try it out for yourself
Freder - as a compromise, I'll give you a progressive rate. But our tax system is horribly complicated and unfair. It's a cancer (having cancer, I hate that metaphor, but it's apt).
I'm a conservative in a blue state, freder. As long as the blue state caring vile progs who vote for this shit take it without lube, I'm all for removing the state and prop tax exemptions which I think are curtailed after $160k/yr income. Curtailed isn't the right word. I don't think they're capped, phased? I don't think the write off is as much people think.
It's like that idiot femAle from Austin TX who can't understand cause and effect. The idiot prog voted for every tax increase and whined the state has to step in cos now her taxes are too high. Clueless bimbo.
But our tax system is horribly complicated and unfair.
No argument here. It is written by the rich for the rich.
Complication is its own burden, an in this regard the US is in its own category. US taxation is messy beyond anything in the developed world. The US seems to spend far more (private spending) on tax compliance and avoidance than anyone else.
I'd say nearly the same about the general level of government regulation. Even in highly regulated countries, like Germany, they do not seem to have to spend anything like the time and energy in regulatory compliance seen in the US. This is the hidden side of US taxation.
Omg just cap the deduction at 28% or whatever the middle class fed tax rate is with phaseouts after the 1% income rate which is around $400k. Everyone is equal, they get the middle class rate.
Now let's talk 2nd homes and more.
For the rich by the rich doesn't get to the heart of it.
Rather, it is written for the lawyers by the lawyers, in order to soak the rich. Not through taxation but to create a market for their services. Its one of the more significant cases of public choice economics.
Mark said... What's the federal income tax liability at $50k/yr? Damn near zero, especially with children.
I don't begrudge people making $200,000 per year. Make all you want. And yes, taxes are much too high. Period. But please have the decency and the honesty not to claim that somehow this income class is "middle." It isn't. Admit that it is high.
Mark, I would say it depends where you live whether this is upper-middle or lower-upper income. In a low-cost small town in flyover country, it is clearly upper income, in non-coastal urban places like Minneapolis-St. Paul where I live it would tend to be lower-upper, but it would definitely be upper-middle or middle in NYC, the remainder of the urban East coast, or in coastal California.
Broad generalizations do not work in trying to nationalize the definition of upper class income.
Capitalism is based on people pursuing their own self interest which collectively helps everyone.
The people that got rich developing cell phones and making them cheap enough for most people to buy and use were pursuing their own self interest which therefore made things better for many people.
All we have to do is look around us at all the things we can buy and enjoy because of a lot of very smart people were pursuing their own self interest.
Don't worry. The real money is in a Value-Added Tax (VAT). That's how they'll getcha.
More on tax rates..
2011 Household average income tax by quintile:
Lowest Quintile -7.5 percent
Second quintile -1.3 percent
Middle Quintile 2.4 percent
Fourth Quintile 5.8 percent
Top Quintile 14.2 percent
Top one percent 20.3 percent
CBO
"It is written by the rich for the rich."
Not really. It's written by busy bodies for their pet behavior modification goals. But, the rich succeed in twisting it to come out unscathed or better and the result is a huge millstone on the economy. And it will be ever thus. The only solution is to scrap it all so there's nothing to manipulate.
It's written by busy bodies for their pet behavior modification goals.
Most of the "behavior modification" goals written into the tax code are conservative (e.g., encouraging single earner families, home ownership, and children).
"everyone is mostly willing to pay their fair share"
Is 0 fair? If so, why? If not, how are you going to get the 43% of freeloaders pay any federal income tax at all?
"dreams" wrote:
"Capitalism is based on people pursuing their own self interest which collectively helps everyone."
Wrong! It helps some people and hurts others.
Take 50% of my income, give the money to ten people in the poorest part of the world, and you have helped them, and hurt me.
Ship my job overseas and you might help a dozen Chinese peasants, but you have hurt me.
"Most of the "behavior modification" goals written into the tax code are conservative (e.g., encouraging single earner families, home ownership, and children)."
Liberals are just as guilty. A pox on both their houses.
All the conservatives that I read were against this tax and thought it was just a another typical liberal tax that punishes good behavior and rewards bad behavior, in other words punishes those who save and rewards those who don't.
SS and Medicare are taxes. To be a pre-paid benefit, the deductions need to be invested and held (along with any growth they generate) until they are paid out to the beneficiaries. From the beginning every penny collected for SS and Medicare has immediately been paid out to beneficiaries and/or squandered on our bloated federal government. The fact that politicians have lied from the beginning about the structure and solvency of the program should surprise no one.
No, the big regulations that affect the 1%, where the tax burden lies, concern investments, capital gains, depreciation, foreign income, etc.
And the so-called middle class tax benefits like 401k and home interest deductions are designed to create a market for financial and investment services, plus a market for tax consulting at all levels.
I have two houses and three cars. My Federal Income taxes cost more than all of them together.
But I am the problem
"Take 50% of my income, give the money to ten people in the poorest part of the world, and you have helped them, and hurt me."
That isn't an example of capitalism, that is an example of liberal tax and spend big government. Conservatives are for low taxes and small government.
@WhoKnew: I decline to argue semantics but unlike the income tax, SS and Medicare are funds "dedicated" to the welfare of the individual paying the freight (and yes, I know exactly how it works, the fraud that is the trust fund, etc.)
Ship my job overseas and you might help a dozen Chinese peasants, but you have hurt me.
How did it become "your job" if somebody else had the power to take it away?
The SS and Medicare systems are mandated and unavoidable, and the benefits they pay are not directly related to what was paid in, not even considering the systems as insurance rather than investments. Anyone who has paid in even a trivial sum is entitled to minimum benefits, and anyone paying in above the median (more or less IIRC) will receive much less in payouts than with a private system. And the payout formula is controlled by legislation, subject to change, not by private contract. This is in reality very much the same as European social insurance and state pension systems, that are normally counted in tax burden calculations.
Freser fails arithmetic:
"The effective income tax rate-married filing jointly with two kids-with the standard deduction (and I doubt many people making that much take the standard deduction) is 18.8%. It jumps to a whopping 23.3% for the worst case (single no dependents).
Hardly a crushing burden.
Losing 1/5 of one's income isn't "a crushing burden."? Okay, Freder, which two of your fingers may I amputate this year?
Assume 1/4 of one's income goes to housing, that's almost half (45%) off the top just to avoid sleeping in one's car or in jail.
If one lives in a coastal blue state, it would be at least 1/3 for housing, with the upfront gone =54%.
Out of what's left, pay state & local levies, transportation, food, utilities, savings for college/retirement/vacation, ESPP, insurance, etc., etc.,. All those thing that employ other people.
Not very good at math or thinking things through, are you, Freder?
dreams-
The statement "collectively helps everyone" is paradoxical. "Collectively" refers to a group of individuals. "Everyone" refers to all individuals within the collective group.
Not to mention Freder is only considering federal income taxes.
Promoting unselfishness is a strange business, but I don't trust the big shamers and guilt-trippers of this world. They have their own self-interests, and they're choosing to promote them by tromping about in the darker parts of our psyche.
Oh, I don't doubt that your psyche has many dark parts. But you severely overestimate the acceptability, normalcy and prevalence of your clinical narcissism.
In this share-all age in which we live, you need to get used to the fact that people will catch on to how unbalanced your priorities are and how much they hurt the vast majority of people, and all for the purpose of promoting a fantasy of achievable opportunity. You can leave those "darker parts" in as much obscurity as you can discern, but everyone else will know better. That's why narcissists tend to become paranoid. But the easier answer is just to confront it and redeem yourself, as nearly impossible as it would have to seem to you.
promoting a fantasy of achievable opportunity.
What utter bullshit. Anybody who believes this is condemning themselves to a life far less than it could be.
"promoting a fantasy of achievable opportunity."
Loser.
If one lives in a coastal blue state, it would be at least 1/3 for housing
Even in Manhattan, $5500 a month will get you a nice, although quite small, apartment. (Remember the 23.3% is single with no dependents taking the standard deduction).
Tim in Vermont wrote:
"How did it become "your job" if somebody else had the power to take it away?"
How can it be "your" small business when someone else has the power to take it away?
How can it be "your" house when somebody else has the power to take it away?
How can it be "your" life when somebody else has the power to take it away?
For example
Ann Althouse said...
The problem is that somebody has to pay the taxes, and everyone is mostly willing to pay their fair share, but whatever has been around for a long time or has inspired serious reliance is very hard to see as unfair. "
What is the 'fair' share? Is it the per capita amount spent? In that case most people can't pay it and those that can wind up overpaying. And those that do pay are paying far in excess for what they directly benefit from. So not withstanding long time reliance by those who aren't paying, for the payers it's mostly a bad deal.
I believe it applies to losers like tim and original mike, not to me. But then, there are a bunch of average people like them who appreciate being approached in a balanced way by policy, based on what their lives are really like, not based on what fantasists like original mikey and timmy dream of. Policies need to be based in reality, not in dreams.
Keep your dreams to yourselves. Obviously no one else is seeing any benefit coming from them.
Next year the president will propose, a la tim and mike, a "dream budget." You know, because policies should be based on dreams.
We will also have those dreamy tax-cutting-revenue-creationists. Because, obviously the fact that revenue from tax cuts is an unrealized dream doesn't mean that we shouldn't increase the deficit by promoting that non-real dream of a policy prescription.
This is how houses go underwater. Dreamers. Most Americans think they're richer than they are, too. Fuck that! Numbers are meaningless! Dreams are everything!
Wake up.
We are so far in hock we can't afford tax cuts. We need a revenue-neutral tax overhaul, coupled with spending reductions.
Freder Frederson said...
The people who are getting killed are the people Salam is trying to shame.
Gee, that's right. Let's all throw a pity party for those of you making $200 K a year. The effective income tax rate-married filing jointly with two kids-with the standard deduction (and I doubt many people making that much take the standard deduction) is 18.8%. It jumps to a whopping 23.3% for the worst case (single no dependents).
Hardly a crushing burden.
1/31/15, 12:29 PM "
Obviously you don't pay any appreciable amount in taxes. Most people find paying one out every four dollars they work for for largely nothing that directly benefits them to be a crushing burden.
"Most of the "behavior modification" goals written into the tax code are conservative (e.g., encouraging single earner families, home ownership, and children)."
So, raising capital gains tax rate is "conservative?"
That is an incentive not to invest and it is working fine.
Most people find paying one out every four dollars they work for for largely nothing that directly benefits them to be a crushing burden.
If you think that your taxes pay for "largely nothing that directly benefits you", I suggest you move to Somalia where taxes are non-existent and the living is easy.
Well Terry, the solution is to vote Fascist Democrat. Then you can own your job even if somebody else owns the business and you can have a right to keep your job even if the employer gets driven out of business.
Freder Frederson said...
I support no deductions and low rates.
Yeah, I bet your tune would change if they took away your mortgage and property tax deductions.
1/31/15, 12:31 PM "
Why stop there? Go big my man, go big. Lets get rid off deductions for all taxes including state and local income taxes and eliminate the deductions for charities, tax non-profits and tax municipal bond incomes.
So, raising capital gains tax rate is "conservative?"
Having the capital gains tax lower than the tax for earned income (and no one in power is advocating raising it to be equivalent to taxes on earned income) is certainly a conservative value.
"I believe it applies to losers like tim and original mike"
Ha ha ha ha! Whatever. Any new updates on Sarah Palin's uterus for us?
"Having the capital gains tax lower than the tax for earned income (and no one in power is advocating raising it to be equivalent to taxes on earned income) is certainly a conservative value."
I don't know (nor do I care) whether it is conservative, but it is pro-growth which is what should matter, not someone's idea of "fair". It especially matters now when the political class has spent us into such a deep hole.
"We will also have those dreamy tax-cutting-revenue-creationists. Because, obviously the fact that revenue from tax cuts is an unrealized dream doesn't mean that we shouldn't increase the deficit by promoting that non-real dream of a policy prescription."
We have all these dreamy tax, borrow and spend creationist......
Lets cut non-essential government functions like all non-earned income entitlement programs by 80%. let the healthy and able-bodied deadbeats stop being deadbeats and support themselves and if they can't, not my problem. Or they can clean my house, cut my grass and do other chores in return for stealing my money.
Don't worry. The real money is in a Value-Added Tax (VAT). That's how they'll getcha.
Countries with Single Payer have some form of a VAT or sales tax to support it. This is because that is where the big money is, and if you want everybody to have insurance, everybody is going to have to pay for it.
Freder Frederson said...
Most people find paying one out every four dollars they work for for largely nothing that directly benefits them to be a crushing burden.
If you think that your taxes pay for "largely nothing that directly benefits you", I suggest you move to Somalia where taxes are non-existent and the living is easy.
1/31/15, 2:43 PM "
Stupid reply by a stupid commenter. How does your welfare benefits benefit me? Answer: it doesn't. How does you college loans benefit me? Answer: doesn't.
Most federal government spending after national defense and law enforcement the judiciary doesn't benefit anyone in the private sector, those who actually pay taxes. It's time to use flea medicine to get rid of the fleas, you obviously being one of them. No one is stopping you from giving all of your income to government so put your money where your mouth is and write the check. Others have better uses for their hard earned money that having it stolen from them to float parasites and worthless government drones in most government agencies.
"Well Terry, the solution is to vote Fascist Democrat."
I'd love to find a solution to your silliness, Tim in Vermont.
I'd love to find a solution to your silliness, Tim in Vermont.
I would love to know how you think that you own a job somebody else created, at their own risk and on their own initiative. Seriously. I would love to know what your justification is for thinking that.
It sounds like fascism to me, in the economic sense of the term.
The more the government controls, the more incentive one has to fight his way into and stay inside the ruling class. Government ossifies class structures.
You know, whenever Reihan Salam, or Megan McArdle, for that matter, writes a piece like this, I think that there must be a major cultural gulf between upper-middle-class as I experience it in suburban Chicago, and what he perceives as UMC on the coast. His world is full of people who won't give up their nannies. The only person I know who had a nanny hired her through a service and paid all the taxes, thank-you-very-much.
Or is my world the exception?
Besides, he misses the point on 529 plans -- people were upset because this was a clear tax-and-spend. In the context of true tax reform, it'd be a different story.
FWIW, here's the little piece I just wrote up on this.
http://janetheactuary.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-there-hope-for-tax-reform.html
Someone else always owns the business, tim. Ownership is everything here. What did you think, that workers' cooperatives were a norm in America?
I'm actually sympathetic to lower taxes, less "redistribution" (not that providing services is such a redistributive thing) and more of the theoretical "ownership society". But I'm not a utopian. I'm dealing in reality. And the reality is, that much of what you guys are fighting here sounds more and more like a John Lennon version of household economics. There are realities to contend with and hopping for every American to become a millionaire doesn't sound like a very practical one. Browbeating those who don't as "losers" doesn't sound like a way to make that wish more practical, either.
Well mike, if the current environment isn't sufficiently "pro-growth" for you then there's always bubbles and speculation to inflate. It's actually the best strategy the GOP has.
https://twitter.com/theonion/status/557970732526104577
Even in Manhattan, $5500 a month will get you a nice, although quite small, apartment.
That's just sad (and I clicked at the link. What a sucker's game.
"Besides, he misses the point on 529 plans -- people were upset because this was a clear tax-and-spend."
They think we're stupid.
Tim in Vermont wrote:
"I would love to know how you think that you own a job somebody else created, at their own risk and on their own initiative."
I would dearly love for you to show that I ever wrote such a thing, Tim.
But of course you can't.
Ship my job overseas and you might help a dozen Chinese peasants, but you have hurt me.
Maybe I read to much into what you wrote.
then there's always bubbles and speculation to inflate. It's actually the best strategy the GOP has - Rhythm&Balls
So do you think that there will ever be a reckoning for the low interest rate, "Quantitative Easing" that has been going on for years now under Obama? Is this a bubble? How do we get out of it?
What happened in Wiemar Germany wasn't called "Quantitative Easing," they couldn't create money by manipulating ones and zeros in some silicon machine, they had to actually print money. We are "printing money" too, just doing it virtually.
Can this go on forever? Is this a bubble? How do we ease out of it? Is it a case of Obama saying "Apres Moi, le Deluge"?
What is the plan to get out? What will happen to the national budget if interest rates ever hit, for example, 3%?
If they never do, how long can the dollar maintain its reserve status?
I am certain you have answers for all of these questions, or is the plan to just blame Republicans when it all goes pear shaped?
From Jane's blog: "I think the obstacles [to real reform] are not the Upper Middle Class protesting the loss of tax breaks, but the special interests (like the Realtors) who want something to help their industry, and, of course, the politicians who want to keep receiving campaign donations."
Real reform would trade deductions for rates, keeping tax-payers whole. And, the tax-preparation burden would evaporate. You're right that it is the special interests and politicians who would squeal, not tax-payers.
Did the Administration really bill this as tax reform? How disingenuous (or clueless).
(Jane - I tried to post this on your blog, but for some reason the interface would not work for me. I'm using an iPad).
"then there's always bubbles and speculation to inflate. It's actually the best strategy the GOP has - Rhythm&Balls"
The current "pro-growth environment" is a bubble. It's 6 years of QE. And Tim's right; it will end badly. You're a fool.
Why should we have an income tax at all? The 16th amendment was passed so the federal government could control the wealth produced by the US the way the royal houses of Europe controlled the wealth their nations produced. By definition any tax on wages will hit people who work for a living the hardest.
Its very complicated, Takes a tremendous amount of work and sacrifice. Only the most intelligent and resourceful are able to accomplish it. Luck.
Here's the secret.
Go to school everyday. Don't impregnate, or become pregnant while in school. Learn a trade, craft, or business, or go to college and study STEM. Dont impregnate, or become pregnant before you have a full time job. Work, everyday. If you choose, meet and marry the person of your dreams. Have children only then. Work hard. Everyday. (The most lucky people are usually the hardest working)
Rinse and repeat.
Freder, if no one in power is advocating that the capital gains tax be equivalent to earned income tax, please explain the proposed inheritance tax. Cos in some cases, it would be higher. You're talking indexing to the upper tax rates. Wiggle room weasel words.
Remember the early to middle '80s when real estate loans were at 14% and business loans at 22% +/-?
I sure do - it still smarts!
From McArdle last week:
Why did I find that particular question a compelling topic for a column? Because it's a question we may have to ask ourselves. As I observed when I first wrote about the plan, the very fact that we are discussing taxation of educational savings -- redistributing educational subsidies downward -- indicates that the administration has started scraping the bottom of the barrel when seeking out money to fund new programs. Why target a tax benefit that goes to a lot of your supporters (and donors), that tickles one of the sweetest spots in American politics (subsidizing higher education), and that will hit a lot of people who make less than the $250,000 a year that has become the administration's de facto definition of "rich"?
Presumably, because you're running out of other places to get the money. The top tax rate on people who make more than $413,000 ($464,000 for married couples) is already almost 40 percent. That's on top of Medicare taxes (2.9 percent, not capped), Social Security taxes, state and local taxes (in a deep blue area like New York City, these can amount to 10 percent, though you get some of that back by deducting state taxes from your federal tax) -- a marginal tax rate of around 45 to 50 percent in blue states, and possibly even more if you run a business.
Capital gains are taxed at a lower rate, of course. But if you combine the Obamacare capital income surcharge for higher earners, and the administration's new proposal to raise the base rate to 28 percent, you're looking at a capital gains tax of almost 32 percent for people who make more than $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married couples). We are simply running out of room to pay for generous new programs with higher taxes on the small handful of people who make many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I'm not saying that it's impossible, politically or otherwise, to further raise their tax rates. I'm just saying that there's not all that much money there left to get.
Sportsfans/
Giving up deductions for lower rates is a snare and a delusion. Because the same fiscal pressures (i.e., runaway spending) that caused the need for the original rates will continue unabated--only when tax rates are eventually raised once again there will be no deductions to off-set the higher rates. Don't believe me. How about TEFERA (Tax Reform Act) of 1986 under Regan? People gave up deductions for car loans and credit card expenses (among other things) for the magic of lower rates. Well, sportsfans, guess what?...the elimination of the tax deductions were permanent but the rate reductions were only temporary. Fool me once, etc...
Once the progressives get hold of this idea and start running with it, the number of those in "the upper middle class" will increase--not because more people will be earning $200,000/yr., but because people earning $50,000/yr. will be considered to be in "the upper middle class".
Lol. So I guess we're in Weimar Germany now. Hilarious.
You know, it might behoove you to learn more about how basic comparisons work. And here's one that works very well - in 2009 the DJIA was barely a third more than it is now, unemployment double, and every other economic indicator off the charts. And this was after a couple decades of conservatives having more say in how the economy is run than at any time before.
So compared to then, it looks like the Democrats performance, based on where all the economic indicators are now, is much better. Of course, it could be doing even better than that since, as you (or at least someone competent would know), regulatory bills and funding for state/municipal employment would have been even better had the GOP not re-branded itself as "not Republicans" and convinced the electorate to forgive them for their sins all the way up through 2008, gained office, and blocked a good half of everything that had been turning us around from where Bush's company had gotten us.
So yes. Compare. Contrast. But make sure to go off of real, measurable indicators while remembering which party did and fought for what and which one is less interested so much in growth for growth's sake as to be more complacent about bubbles doing the growing.
@seeing red/
Remember, both the Clinton AND Obama Administrations have already previously floated (1) taxing the "inside build-up" of cash value life insurance and, (2) "monetizing all personal/corporate pension plans by trading plan assets (stocks, bonds, etc., for more "secure" Govt Treasuries. In short outright confiscation of hard assets in return for an IOU from a bankrupt government.
My first salaried job out of college in 1960 was as a GS7, Step 5, and paid $6,780 per annum. My last full-time position in 2009 paid $65,000, which was effectively about the same salary I was paid in 1960.
Pretty soon, we will all be millionaires, if not billionaires!
I hear you Virgil. All I can say is each generation needs to fight this anew. Rates are still lower than they were before TEFERA (aren't they?). The real issue is that we can not keep hanging more and more crap on the tax-system tree. It is a horrible drag on the economy (not to mention providing cover for a politically corrupt IRS). For the examples you site, credit card and car loans, there is no good economic reason why those should be tax-favored.
In any case, I don't think you have anything to worry about. I see no political support for real tax reform right now.
"Having the capital gains tax lower than the tax for earned income (and no one in power is advocating raising it to be equivalent to taxes on earned income) is certainly a conservative value."
So you are OK with taxing that income twice. I knew you were an economic illiterate.
It's all about politics for you, R&B. I've got no interest in that. Nor am I going to waste my Saturday evening arguing with a Keynesian. We are $18T in the hole and counting. Keynes is rolling over in his grave.
"Remember the early to middle '80s when real estate loans were at 14% and business loans at 22% +/-?"
I remember when real estate loans hit 22% about 1979. My partner was building a custom house on a lake here. His neighbored on either side were doing the same thing. When their houses were finished neither could qualify for permanent financing and they lost their houses to foreclosure. Both houses were in the $500k range to build (plus the lot) and both were high income professionals.
"And this was after a couple decades of conservatives having more say in how the economy is run than at any time before."
So Maxine Waters is a conservative ? You are a joke. Just a joke. I had suspected it but thanks for the proof.
Original Mike wrote:
"Keynes is rolling over in his grave."
True. Obama is called a keynesian by people who nothing about economics. In the keyensian formula for GDP, government spending has no multiplier until it gets back into the hands of consumers -- meaning a government spending program is no more effective an economic stimulus than a tax cut, assuming that deficit spending pays for each.
Keynes was also aware of the problem of forward-lookers and backward-lookers. If consumers anticipate that a future tax hike or benefit reduction will be needed to pay for a stimulus package, they will reduce spending accordingly and the stimulus will not be effective.
A keynesian stimulus is only effective at countering a recession where wages and prices are "sticky", so the markets can't clear. Wages and prices are far more "slippery" in 2015 than they were in the 1920s and 1930s, yet morons like Krugman continue to push for a program of keynesian stimulus. Like our president, Krugman wants to pass off an income redistribution scheme as a keyensian stimulus.
Keynes would indeed be rolling over in his grave.
The idea that numbers matter to the same people who hate context is even funnier. $18 trillion? What's the matter? Is that too big a number for you to understand? I get that. But it's not too big a number to work with.
And that's because we have these wonderful inventions called "division". Check this out, you can actually divide that number by the much larger economy we have now and find that, compared to other economic crises the conservatives inflicted upon us, the current debt/GDP ratio is still not quite what it was after getting through the Great Depression and WWII. So yes, it's a concern. But not a catastrophe. Not if we keep Republicans from enacting their War on Revenue and turning it around.
So, stay out of the way, allow the revenue to staunch the debt, and then you can manufacture another crisis or near-crisis sometime down the road -- long after you've forgotten how Democrats, once again, bailed your sorry, forgetful, arrogant asses out of this one.
Because there's one virtue in being a partisan Republican shill. It's this: Preciptating a crisis, resenting the opposition for regaining more trust and power to deal with that crisis, and promising to do more of what preceded the crisis in the first place.
It's part of the melodramatic reality of who you are.
And we all get it, now. You don't feel like you've accomplished anything unless you can find a way to put everyone else through hell, first.
Eventually the American people will catch on.
It's ok Michael and mike. (And what's with the lack of originality? Do all predictable douchebags need to go by the same name?)
You had nothing to add anyway. Pick one politician's name and use that as a way to dispute that all the deregulation of the Bush-Gingrich era didn't happen and that they weren't conservative priorities. Talk about a joke. Lol. Yep, now you dildos are going to try to convince everyone that you actually care about income inequality and inadequate regulation. That's a laugh.
I don't care how much money you make, but I've noticed the ones that make just slightly more than the majority around them act the most pretentious.
It's the pretentiousness that I can't stand, and brings out a mean streak in me.
"And that's because we have these wonderful inventions called "division"."
Yep, things are coming up roses.
What are you complaining about, remedial student Mike ("Original" version)? That 87% is, as I said, lower than we've dealt with in previous crises. So again, all you have to do, is get your ass out of the way, put off the War on Revenue, find actually significant sources of spending to cut, and let the numbers correct themselves.
But you guys seem to have an addiction to addition. It's always under Republicans that debts and deficits rise unnecessarily (not as part of the necessary spending to avert their self-inflicted crises),, and that's because you still haven't figured out that lowering revenue increases debt.
One day everyone else will. Or maybe, they'll just forget. And you can pretend that you had nothing to do with it.
Like I said, I'm not providing you a mark for your partisan rants. Don't know why you think I support Republican policy, anyway.
To put a dollar figure on "middle class " is misleading since-pay close attention feder-taxation is going to vary depending on how that income is earned and on what kind of and how many deductions are allowed.
Freder Frederson said...
I support no deductions and low rates.
Yeah, I bet your tune would change if they took away your mortgage and property tax deductions.
If the rates are lowered to reflect the rate increase then there is no difference. Is that so hard to comprehend?
Anyone else see a trend here?
Republicans like "Original Mike" apparently don't.
They have partisan deficit blind spots. It's probably congenital.
Don't know why you think I support Republican policy, anyway.
Only the Republican party comes closest to supporting what you say you want.
Poll you in a survey and the way you order your priorities inevitably leads only to Republicans being able to take power.
So yes, you're about as close to a welcoming sign for Republican take-overs as they come.
"Only the Republican party comes closest to supporting what you say you want."
So you are a commie, then, R&B?
You can't argue with logic and you do not understand economics.
You didn't pose any logic (other than a pathetic fallacious attempt at a false either/or dichotomy), economics is endlessly debatable (even though the mutual exclusivity of deficit reduction and tax cuts are not) and the ad hominem "commie" label is pretty shopworn. Get a new insult - one that doesn't confuse 1980 with 2015 and one that doesn't propose opposition to deficits as a form of totalitarianism.
And get a new avatar, too, you cartoon. Besides, the coyote never won anything.
R&B, you wrote that since Original Mike supported ideas that that were similar to GOP ideas, that made him a Republican. Since you support some ideas that are similar to communist ideas, that makes you a commie.
See how I did that? Logic!
You can't argue with logic.
You're a pretty shitty logician if you think a tu quoque fallacy is an example of logic.
If you don't understand why failing to support the opponents of Republican hegemony ultimately helps the Republican deficit-spending-and-growing agenda, then you fail to understand politics, not logic. I suppose that, in your guilt, you got confused and missed that point.
And also, if you think throwing mean! words - oh no - about dead authoritarian regimes is a significant enough distraction from the way Republican allies and bystanders pose greater harms to America today, then you're also wrong.
But again, I suppose that in the fog of your own guilt or impotence to use ideological purity to somehow effectively stop Republican deficit-expenditures, you thought this distraction would confuse others, as well. It didn't.
R&B, let me respond to you wind-baggery with my @7:44:
"You can't argue with logic and you do not understand economics."
- about dead authoritarian regimes
If you would stop recycling their ideas, we would stop talking about them. It would be very convenient for you if we ignored the track record of your ideas, I am sure. That's why young people tend to be Democrats and older people get conservative, we know more than we did. For you, ignorance is strength.
I am sure that QE has nothing to do with the current levels of the Dow either. All that money has to go somewhere, doesn't it?
But this isn't more bubble economics because it's a Democrat doing it. I get it.
I'm a Republican because "I [fail] to support the opponents of Republican hegemony." Got it.
The fact that all you can do is repeat yourself (like a wind-up toy) shows that windbaggery is actually something you yourself do quite well.
And only an illiterate claims six sentences to be TOO LONG for him! And illiterates can't understand logic or economics - as understanding those subjects requires being able to read.
Go back to your trailer and pontificate to someone impressed with your arrogant ignorance.
Tim - you're a retard. Associating everything you don't like about being forced to support Republicans doesn't mean everyone else is a communist. Association fallacy helps you make sense of your paranoid fears of failing to ally yourself with the Republican regime, but the psychology is quite transparent. We might as well call you a Nazi for having any trait that Hitler did, including the wearing of shoes. At some point you have to stop thinking by rote bumper sticker and get some reasoning about you. Most of Western Europe and the world is not "communist" but doesn't have a problem opposing the bootlicking of the corporate class. The fact that you do does not make you an "anti-communist"; it makes you someone who sees communists coming to get you at every corner and hiding under your bed. Stop elevating your paranoia to a level of exquisite political sophistication. It's not. It's just your same old paranoia. Think for a change instead.
And tim, you need to keep up. QE ended after some tapering off, anyway. Of course, it was an alternative policy by necessity after you austerity-lovers failed to find alternative ways of saving the economy.
Other than that, pick something real to debate. No one's impressed by your "picking the right team to fall behind". That's why your attempts at addressing policy are so scattershot. Republicans don't know what they want, but you claim to not be one so go ahead and impress us and tell us what that is.
It's true, Mike. Once Republicans give a repeat performance of what they did leading up to 2008 I'm sure you'll feel your milquetoast support of them to be quite mitigating. But no one else will. Articulate a stronger set of policies to advance, identify someone most likely to advance them, or really just STFU. No one's impressed by being "anti-Democratic" anymore. It's just not saying much. Especially given how much you guys love Putin. The real deal is finding anyone in this large country of 300+ million who can articulate your political principles, assuming you can't voice them effectively on your own. But just standing aside and saying, "Wasn't me," a la Shaggy, is pretty pathetic.
*sigh* you do not understand what a "tu quoque" logical fallacy is, R&B. That was why I reposted my @7:44. If I wrote that mebbe Original Mike was a Republican but you are a commie and a commie is worse than a republican, that would be tu quoque. Instead I merely pointed out that by using the argument you endorse, you are a commie.
I'm trying to help you out here, R&B, so that you think twice about posting drivel in the future.
Terry, that was the biggest pile of drivel I've seen yet. Slither around what you did all you want, claim it to be a way of making an example, your dated ad homs are still boring and useless. Condescend all you want, you're adding nothing to any discussion. Just preaching to your own arrogant ego and need to hate everyone not Team Republican who's actually unafraid to say why.
Tim - you're a retard.
Yeah, OK, what was it yesterday, I was afraid of women's vaginas because I am not obsessed with Sarah Palin's uterus. What failing will you diagnose me with tomorrow? Who knows where your mind is going to go next?
there's always bubbles and speculation to inflate. It's actually the best strategy the GOP has
Of course, it was an alternative policy by necessity after you austerity-lovers failed to find alternative ways of saving the economy
So aren't you saying that bubbles are the best strategy the Democrats have? I mean if it has been adopted "as a necessity," I just don't see the difference in actual meaning between the two statements. But then I am a retard. Maybe you can explain why the bubble strategies are different.
Shorter Tim: Economic recovery = Bubble. Because Democrats. Details to follow.
Wait a second, R&B. Do you think being a commie is a bad thing? I mean, worse than a republican?
I had no idea.
Your sloppy application of ad-hominem - and let me be precisely, crystal clear about this, since you seem a little dense -- you attacked Original Mike not on the basis of his ideas, but on the basis that he was a Republican, and when he denied it, you claimed since he appeared to have similar ideas to Republicans, that this made him a Republican in your eyes.
It might be illuminating of you replaced the word 'republican' in your posts with the phrase 'commie'.
See how I did that, R&B?
You understand how this 'logical fallacy' thing works, now?
I can always 'larn ya' some more', if you like, R&B.
---encouraging single earner families, home ownership, and children
I’m pretty sure that conservative support for single earner families has been overcome by the marriage penalty.
Home ownership and children are conservative values? Well, don’t be mad as liberals more and more depopulate themselves out of the political equation.
"But not a catastrophe. Not if we keep Republicans from enacting their War on Revenue and turning it around."
Sorry, I didn't realize you were a troll.
Your comments make no sense and you seem mainly to be about insulting people and trying to get angry replies. That is the definition of a troll and I, for one, will not respond anymore.
Good bye.
I don't debate weasely assholes who would, like you do, prefer shutting down debate. But I can explain what your slug-like essence is up to.
There is no communist party in America with a chance of winning an election. However, you can't call being a Republican something other than mainstream, seeing as how often they win majorities. So obviously you're into demonization, as being called one thing is considered more intentionally insulting than being called the other. All your artifice doesn't conceal the fact that you only pretend to be too dense to get this.
I am not doing anything to make totalitarian Soviet redistributionists an effective political force. However, opposing the only viable opposition to Republicans, does effectively give Republicans more of the power they crave.
So go on and lecture and pretend that calling someone "commie" is the reciprocal, proportional defense/attack against someone charging that they're doing nothing to keep Republican deficit-growers-and-spenders from gaining more power. Only the most self-delusional would agree. But then, your mascot, Wyle E. Coyote was self-delusional enough to persistently walk off of cliffs.
Of course, you already knew all that. You only presumed I wouldn't see through it.
But I did. So you can go fuck off.
Good riddance, Michael K. I never intended for any of my comments to be read by someone too stupid to understand them, anyway.
Althouse, is this what you want ? I can see this stuff at Washington Monthly.
What makes you so arrogant as to think that you're the bestest commenter here anyway, Michael K? Your only salvo was to protest that someone who wasn't much interested in your opinion wrote things that you couldn't make sense of. You don't take a second to consider that maybe that reflects on your ability to understand things, not on their non-obligation to explain things in a way that you're capable of understanding.
I've checked out your blog. Some of the longest and most pointless masturbatory, solipsistic rambling on the inter webs. But you have your work cut out for you. Good luck getting conservatives to become a driving force against creation-'science'.
Maybe we can simplify things, though. Were there certain ideological confines put upon you growing up? I find that makes it easier to understand people's fears, emotions and other substitutes for principled ideology.
Same old Ritmo.
What should I do differently, Original Mike?
You see, I'm interested in what would make me into the… what exactly? More intelligent? More ethical? kind of commenter that you must somehow be.
What exactly is it that makes you and your ideas so great? Because once I know that, there will be no holding me back, no stopping me. I'll have no choice but to desire to emulate them.
I guess your greatness is to be merely presumed. Its evidence an aura, ephemeral and fleeting. Yet, so strong. Undeniable, even.
"Same old Ritmo."
You may be right. It does sound like the same old bullshit.
That's such a substantive comment, Michael K. Much like what's contained on your blog. More than just a blithe opinion, what you wrote is the result of long, careful and rigorous thought. You really are one of the 21st century's leading intellectual lights. Don't you ever deny it!
So much enlightenment you have to offer the world. It's amazing to think humanity survived for all these millennia before you were born. Amazing!
So much tribalism in this thread. 90% of the voting population supports a moderately progressive marginal set of rates with no deductions. There needs to be a cap on government spending as well. All income needs to be treated equally and taxed only once. That means taxing corporate income once at the corporate level or distribution level or income level.
Our current tax system is written to give political elite opportunities for graft and influence. Blaming it on one political party or the other misses the point. The two party system is just another tool to divide the 90% of the population that would normally agree on a simple fair tax system.
I am not really a disinterested outsider, being a foreigner, as I am a longtime US resident and support the US Republicans.
Still, it seems that Rhythm ex. Ritmo may be missing the general thrust of US politics in recent years, being a conflict of outsiders vs insiders in terms of institutional control, and of the failure of democracy to reflect the demonstrated will of the people.
The same sort of split is now happening in Europe, interestingly, in spite of there being no infection from the US on the right side of politics, the US right having no visibility there.
The sides are, in the one corner, a mainly populist anti institutional reaction vs a hegemony of public institutions plus finance capital, plus the perceived crony industries. The people vs the corporatist state, to put it crudely. The Republican party is now largely but not entirely on the populist side of the split, the Demicratic party entirely in the corporatist camp.
The last financial crisis was the result of the corporatist system , abetted by both parties, getting out of control and creating a bubble. One of the present dangers is that a similar bubble, or worse, could be in the wings due to the corporatist patch up job implemented by the present administration.
Michael K is a distinguished California physician, an eminent man well worth listening to.
Communism in the US is no longer a political entity (where I come from we had real, respectably dangerous communists). However, communist ideology, if only as a founding mythology and the leftovers of old propaganda campaigns, is well embedded in the cultural institutions and everywhere their pupils have gone. It affects the culture of every large bureaucracy including most large businesses. It does affect decision making, institutional culture and policy direction despite there being no directing, disciplined party.
I first noted this effect outside the US and was quite struck by the phenomenon. The communist party is dead and buried, but the infections it propagated while it was a living plague carrier are now endemic.
"Michael K is a distinguished California physician, an eminent man well worth listening to."
I hold no position of authority and am not afraid of trolls. My opinions are not concealed behind a pseudonym, as is the case with most trolls. Everyone who goes to my blog knows a lot about me. To use the information, which I do not conceal, as some sort of weapon is the act of a coward. I do not care about the opinions of some creep who skulks about under a false identity. Have at it, creep !
Michael - can you not have the decency to stop trolling my comments? I have not undertaken to initiate responding to your inane comments. I mean, they're inane! You say you hold no position of authority. I'll grant you better than that and give you the benefit of the doubt of some expertise on tissue removal - something I hear surgeons are good at. Beyond that though, you really don't have anything more knowledgeable or interesting to say about Islam, politics or gum chewing (or blog "etiquette" - if there is such a thing), worth my notice. You need to accept that response worthiness is a two-way street. Your comments are not somehow more worthy of response than anyone else's. Lose the surgeon's temper and accept that.
As for IRL identity on Blogger, really. It shows how out of touch you are. No one really cares. Not that "K" is somehow a very identifiable way of putting one's last name anyway. But the idea that attaching your "real life" identity to your posts somehow gives credibility or authority or interest to your opinions is absurd. It didn't do so for the authors of The Federalist Papers. It doesn't do so for tons of people who use the internet today.
In fact, in all likelihood the widespread anonymity/pseudonymity of much of this manner of the 'net is a good thing. Unlike Facebook, people don't obsess endlessly about self-promotion. Ideas are explored or attacked, in the abstract, devoid of the distraction of how it makes one "look." So, you might try it sometime. Lose the "authority" of self, and accept that the fact that you actually have a real-life identity - (guess what? We all do, dude) - is really nothing special. Everyone here is a person. But that's not the point. We're here to discuss ideas, assuming those things actually interest you, and not the presumption that messengers are somehow more important than messages. They're not. Messengers should, in an ideal world in fact, be completely unnecessary and beside the point.
But that's just me. Of course, I'm sure many others see what I'm getting at, too. But then, we're not you. We don't rely on comments chat sections to share too many personal details about what sort of quiche was cooked the night before. Or at what time the soccer mom picked up the soccer kid. Because no one really cares. That's "social media" stuff, which obviously gets in the way of the politics and the philosophy and the big ideas. But then, you've got the integrity to realize that, right? Of course you do. How could you not.
Which Catholic school did you go to?
Unfortunately, yes they do care about identity.
Any person in a position of responsibility, employed in the private sector for a large or medium size business, with no protection from a union or tenure, has to watch his words, even in purely theoretical argument, and defend anonymity, because it is SOP to complain to their employers. The business also has to fear retribution from politicians and regulators.
And this rule seems to be applied primarily to the right, not the left. This is a real thing.
Like military officers, Republican business executives other than some in very priveleged positions, have to hold their fire until they retire.
The people who are the problem are the political crony class. They wrote the tax code and use it to create permanent wealth and control. The problem is the 7 out of 10 wealthiest counties in the nation around DC that gain their wealth through political influence. General Electric gets a much higher return on investment donating money to government than developing decent products.
There are no communists or even socialists outside of the protected education system in power. They are trained tools who lack the necessary skills to keep and hold a productive job so they run around and protest things generally acting like trolls. They are feminists and occupy losers.
Most of us want the same things. Most of us would rather watch the super bowl and not give a shit about who is in DC. That is how it is supposed to be with a limited government. Sadly there is a small number of people who make more through cronyism.
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