The Democrat Thread

[BigSqwert]

Wow.

What a f***ing asshole.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Wow.

ummm... actually if the tax is reinstated (which I whole heartedly oppose), I heard it might be retroactive to Jan 1, 2010.

[Balta1701]

ummm... actually if the tax is reinstated (which I whole heartedly oppose), I heard it might be retroactive to Jan 1, 2010.

The next Congress will make sure that doesn't happen.

[HuskyCaucasian]

The next Congress will make sure that doesn't happen.

The retroactive part, or the entire death tax?

Edited July 14, 2010 by Athomeboy_2000

[Balta1701]

The retroactive part, or the entire death tax?

I'll bet the entire thing, because the Dems will cave and Obama won't veto it...but any bill to bring it back retroactively would have to have 60 votes. Good luck getting that past this Senate...let alone the next one.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I'll bet the entire thing, because the Dems will cave and Obama won't veto it...but any bill to bring it back retroactively would have to have 60 votes. Good luck getting that past this Senate...let alone the next one.

Good. I hate the idea of a "Death Tax"

[Balta1701]

Good. I hate the idea of a "Death Tax"

The idea that it's actually a death tax is laughable.

[Rex Kickass]

Reinstating an estate tax would be a great way to help close a deficit gap with minimum pain for the general population in a difficult economy. IIRC, when reinstated it will only apply to inherited estates in excess of 2 million dollars (and I think a house is exempted from that to begin with.)

 

If people want to be serious about balancing budgets, no matter what we do - we have to raise taxes.

[HuskyCaucasian]

The idea that it's actually a death tax is laughable.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it's a tax imposed after assets are transfered after ones death. Correct? I know "Death Tax" is a bit extreme, but it does describe it pretty well IMO.

[Balta1701]

Correct me if I am wrong, but it's a tax imposed after assets are transfered after ones death. Correct? I know "Death Tax" is a bit extreme, but it does describe it pretty well IMO.

It is a tax on the handing down of high value estates to one's heirs. So yes, it happens after death. Calling it a "Death tax" is just as loaded as calling someone "anti-choice" or "Pro-abortion".

[HuskyCaucasian]

It is a tax on the handing down of high value estates to one's heirs. So yes, it happens after death. Calling it a "Death tax" is just as loaded as calling someone "anti-choice" or "Pro-abortion".

fair point. I know this tax is something that will never effect me, but I just dont like it. That's my opinion.

[whitesoxfan101]

Reinstating an estate tax would be a great way to help close a deficit gap with minimum pain for the general population in a difficult economy. IIRC, when reinstated it will only apply to inherited estates in excess of 2 million dollars (and I think a house is exempted from that to begin with.)

 

If people want to be serious about balancing budgets, no matter what we do - we have to raise taxes.

 

This was my initial thought to the idea of the estate tax. While taxing the inheritence the heirs receive (which is what it sounds like the estate tax is, correct me if I'm wrong though) doesn't sound like a wonderful thing, it does sound like a good way to close the deficit, and it also doesn't sound like it'd be sending the wealthy into bankruptcy either. But I can see why people would be against such a thing too, because it just sounds kind of dirty.

[kapkomet]

Gee, I have an idea... STOP SPENDING. Wait, we can't get more people on entitlements and redistribute wealth out of the private sector if we do that.

 

[KipWellsFan]

fair point. I know this tax is something that will never effect me, but I just dont like it. That's my opinion.

 

Sacrifices need to be made, like Kap says. In such an individualistic country an estate tax is a hard sell, but isn't allowing relatives to inherit millions a clear disincentive for future generations to work, and achieve on their own?

[kapkomet]

Reinstating an estate tax would be a great way to help close a deficit gap with minimum pain for the general population in a difficult economy. IIRC, when reinstated it will only apply to inherited estates in excess of 2 million dollars (and I think a house is exempted from that to begin with.)

 

If people want to be serious about balancing budgets, no matter what we do - we have to raise taxes.

 

Yea, and Barackus the Great knows it. He's getting ready to shred everything in his wake... you know, "those who are serious can't tell me no" when he goes to crank taxes sky high. Fiscally responsible, he is... my ass.

 

AmeriKKKa... getting ready to tax ourselves to prosperity... 'cause it's always worked...

[bmags]

Lowering taxes has clearly led to an incredibly balanced budget. We have absolutely no recent stories of taxes being raised prior to the budget being balanced.

[lostfan]

Lowering taxes has clearly led to an incredibly balanced budget. We have absolutely no recent stories of taxes being raised prior to the budget being balanced.

Not spending is really easy. I wonder why they haven't thought of that yet?

[lostfan]

^^didn't think green is needed on either of those posts

[kapkomet]

Lowering taxes RAISED (and always does...) the amount of money coming into treasury. Deficits, however, is because every dollar that was brought in left in about 1992. It's just too damn hard for people to accept the fact that cutting entitlements and putting that money back into the private sector would actually bring us back around. Why is that so bad?

 

Oh, capitalism is EVIIIIIL. I forgot about that. Take all of it and redistribute it.

[whitesoxfan101]

Gee, I have an idea... STOP SPENDING.

 

That almost seems unrealistic at this point since nobody stands for that right now.

[KipWellsFan]

Lowering taxes RAISED (and always does...) the amount of money coming into treasury.

 

Not according to the CBO

 

This brief by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzes the macroeconomic effects of a simple tax policy: a 10 percent reduction in all federal tax rates on individual income.

 

...

 

The various economic estimates imply changes in government revenues and interest payments. As noted above, the conventional estimate (without macroeconomic feedbacks) is that the tax policy, if implemented, would reduce revenues by a total of $466 billion over the first five years and an additional $775 billion over the second five years. Under various assumptions, the supply-side economic effects of the tax cut are estimated to offset between 1 percent and 22 percent of that revenue loss over the first five years and add as much as 5 percent to that loss or offset as much as 32 percent of it over the second five years (see Table 3). According to models that account for both supply-side and demand-side effects, those effects might offset somewhat less than 15 percent of the revenue loss over the first five years.

 

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6908/12...rcentTaxCut.pdf

 

Tax cuts do have stimulative effects, everyone agrees on that. But the tax cut itself results in an immediate and absolute reduction in government budgets.

[lostfan]

A simple graph of tax rates vs. government revenue vs. GDP shows that's bulls***. Here's one:

[lostfan]

Also a lot of times when people don't pay estate tax that's a huge chunk of money that just never gets taxed at all, a total get-over and makes higher income types effectively pay less taxes overall. Don't let them bulls*** you. (I could explain this better another time)

[GoSox05]

Argentina Gay Marriage Law: First Country In Latin America To Approve Same Sex Marriage

 

Argentina

 

 

[bmags]

Perfect timing.

 

Yglesias:

"One piece of pushback I got from some right-of-center folks to yesterday’s post on how conservatives don’t care about the deficit was to say that well maybe some Republican Party elected officials are bad on this, but the conservative movement is different. I think that’s entirely false. President George H.W. Bush struck a bargain with congressional Democrats that reduced spending and decreased the deficit. Some Republican Party elected officials backed him. But conservatives were apoplectic. After all, the bill raised taxes. And conservatives care more about making taxes as low as possible than they do about reducing spending or reducing the deficit.

 

I had Intern Ryan take a look at National Review’s Reagan Archive and it makes the point quite clearly. Take a look at Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute and the Club for Growth celebrating the triumph of Reaganomics without offering even a glancing criticism of Ronald Reagan’s high deficits. Instead we get this:

 

The Reagan way was spurned throughout the 1980s as “voodoo economics” (one of George Bush Sr.’s few memorable comments.) Many college textbooks to this day even argue that Reagan’s economic policies were flawed because they created record budget deficits. But the textbooks don’t mention that as the national debt rose by $2 trillion, national wealth rose by $8 trillion. They also don’t mention that the Laffer curve worked: Lower tax rates did generate more tax revenues at the federal, state, and local levels. Federal tax collections rose from $500 billion in 1980 to $1 trillion in 1990.

 

In August of 1982, NR ran an editorial on the question “Has Reagan Deserted the Conservatives?” that doesn’t mention the word “deficit” at all in evaluating his record, but does deem it “astonishing that Reagan should support, rather than threaten to veto, the huge tax increase being engineered by Senator Robert Dole,” a tax increase designed to reduce the deficit.

 

Jonah Goldberg edged close to the truth when he wrote “the argument about government over-spending has become an argument about the deficit. I care a lot about the former, I don’t care very much about the latter.” But while it’s true that conservatives do care about spending, it’s important to remember that their overwhelming preoccupation is with taxes. The major examples of spending reductions we have, the 1990 and 1993 deficit reduction bills, are both loathed by conservatives because they included tax hikes. Conservatives don’t think it’s necessary to “pay for” tax cuts with offsetting spending reductions and they don’t think balanced deficit reduction packages make sense. That’s because they don’t care, even a little bit, about the budget deficit."