The Democrat Thread

[Balta1701]

I'm happy to see you endorse removing the cap on payroll taxes. Thanks.

[southsider2k5]

I'm happy to see you endorse removing the cap on payroll taxes. Thanks.

 

I'm not surprised that the only consistent thing about your is your partisan colored glasses.

[NorthSideSox72]

Considering that 1470 people with incomes over $1 million paid $0 in federal taxes in FY 2009, and that the average tax rate drops as incomes increase over $1 million, yes, what they're paying right now isn't nearly enough.

Which is one of the reasons why a simpler tax code is a good thing. And as SS pointed out, simpler doesn't have to mean completely flat. It could simply mean removing most or all special deductions and credits, keep the income tax brackets, and lower all the rates a bit.

 

I kind of like the idea of limiting Congress to a specific maximum number of credits and deductions. Make the law so that the income brackets and rates can be changed, but that the tax code can only have a MAXIMUM of, say, 5 possible credits and/or deductions on personal taxes (and 5 on businesses). It allows for some flexibility, but keeps things from getting out of control again. And it forces Congress to prioritize. So you might go with, say...

 

PERSONAL

1. Mortgage interest - deduction

2. School tuition, room and board - deduction

3. Property taxes paid - deduction

4. Charitable contributions - deduction

5. Purchase of solar/wind/other alt energy equipment - % credit of total amount spent

 

BUSINESS (keep in mind that this tax on income, not revenue like it is for personal, so employee and facility costs are already deducted)

1. Fully US-based project R&D spending - deduction

2. Purchase of solar/wind/other alt energy equipment - % credit of total amount spent

3. Charitable contributions - deduction

4. Net increase of US employees - credit per increased net head count

5. Purchase of real estate - deduction

 

Just saying, something like this, with a progressive tax bracket like we already have, could make for a tax code that would be just a few pages long. And would also make it so that any individual could file their own return quite easily.

 

Also, related topic... I'd be in favor of lowering the tax % on cap gains and dividends, in exchange for not being able to deduct losses from investments (on net - so if you lose net money total on the year, you get no tax, but also no deduction). See if you can guess why I think that's a good idea.

 

[Balta1701]

I'm not surprised that the only consistent thing about your is your partisan colored glasses.

Let's do a little bit of math. The Social Security tax rate on a person earning $114k is 12% (1/2 paid by employer, small cut this year). Thus, they pay ~ $13680 in that tax.

 

Because of the cap on payroll taxes, they are forced to be regressive. Thus, a person earning $1 million in a year pays $13680 in that tax.

 

Thus, a person earning $1 million a year pays a 1.37% payroll tax rate. A person earning $2 million a year pays 1/2 that, and so on.

 

While on the other hand, a person earning $40k a year pays..12% in payroll taxes (1/2 born by the employer).

 

Yeah, it's totally insane to get annoyed when someone ignores that tax for a person with a low income and then neglect it at high incomes. That 1%...man, that sting.

[southsider2k5]

Let's do a little bit of math. The Social Security tax rate on a person earning $114k is 12% (1/2 paid by employer, small cut this year). Thus, they pay ~ $13680 in that tax.

 

Because of the cap on payroll taxes, they are forced to be regressive. Thus, a person earning $1 million in a year pays $13680 in that tax.

 

Thus, a person earning $1 million a year pays a 1.37% payroll tax rate. A person earning $2 million a year pays 1/2 that, and so on.

 

While on the other hand, a person earning $40k a year pays..12% in payroll taxes (1/2 born by the employer).

 

Yeah, it's totally insane to get annoyed when someone ignores that tax for a person with a low income and then neglect it at high incomes. That 1%...man, that sting.

 

I expect the same sort of consistency when it goes the other way... Oh wait, why bother.

[Balta1701]

Which is one of the reasons why a simpler tax code is a good thing. And as SS pointed out, simpler doesn't have to mean completely flat. It could simply mean removing most or all special deductions and credits, keep the income tax brackets, and lower all the rates a bit.

 

I kind of like the idea of limiting Congress to a specific maximum number of credits and deductions. Make the law so that the income brackets and rates can be changed, but that the tax code can only have a MAXIMUM of, say, 5 possible credits and/or deductions on personal taxes (and 5 on businesses). It allows for some flexibility, but keeps things from getting out of control again. And it forces Congress to prioritize. So you might go with, say...

 

PERSONAL

1. Mortgage interest - deduction

2. School tuition, room and board - deduction

3. Property taxes paid - deduction

4. Charitable contributions - deduction

5. Purchase of solar/wind/other alt energy equipment - % credit of total amount spent

 

BUSINESS (keep in mind that this tax on income, not revenue like it is for personal, so employee and facility costs are already deducted)

1. Fully US-based project R&D spending - deduction

2. Purchase of solar/wind/other alt energy equipment - % credit of total amount spent

3. Charitable contributions - deduction

4. Net increase of US employees - credit per increased net head count

5. Purchase of real estate - deduction

 

Just saying, something like this, with a progressive tax bracket like we already have, could make for a tax code that would be just a few pages long. And would also make it so that any individual could file their own return quite easily.

 

Also, related topic... I'd be in favor of lowering the tax % on cap gains and dividends, in exchange for not being able to deduct losses from investments (on net - so if you lose net money total on the year, you get no tax, but also no deduction). See if you can guess why I think that's a good idea.

Here's the biggest problem NSS.

 

Everyone here will agree in principle that the tax code is way too complicated. Just yesterday saw another international survey of business "competitiveness", and the U.S. was solid on a lot of rankings like technology availability, access to capital, etc., but one thing the U.S. is very weak on is the tax code complexity. Robs a lot of manhours, wastes resources that could be spent elsewhere.

 

The problem is...this is the tax code our system is designed to create. Every one of those deductions that makes the system more complex is in there because someone benefits hugely from it. Thus, if you try to "Simplify" things, there's no real constituency lobbying hard for a more simplified tax code, but the 5 big guys who are going to lose their billion dollar exemption will spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying to make sure theirs is protected.

 

Any "Simplification" fix you make is likely to make the system better...but even the simplest "Simplifications" are going to be fought against tooth and nail, with only a weak constituency behind the changes.

 

I have no answer for this problem. Any solution anyone writes is likely to be better than the current web...but that solution will have zero chance of passing.

[Balta1701]

I expect the same sort of consistency when it goes the other way... Oh wait, why bother.

I will happily pay a 1.3% higher tax rate in exchange for removing the cap on payroll taxes. Fair?

[southsider2k5]

I will happily pay a 1.3% higher tax rate in exchange for removing the cap on payroll taxes. Fair?

 

Keep hammering the party lines.

[Balta1701]

A big pile of additional data showing once again that there has been no surge in executive branch regulations in this President's term.

Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg.

 

The number of significant federal rules, defined as those costing more than $100 million, has gone up under Obama, with 129 approved so far, compared with 90 for Bush, 115 for President Bill Clinton and 127 for the first President Bush over the same period in their first terms. In part that’s because $100 million in past years was worth more than it is now due to inflation, Livermore said.

 

In the last 12 months through the end of September, the cost range of new regulations is estimated to be $8 billion to $9 billion, a decrease from 2010, according to non-partisan Government Accountability Office reports analyzed by Bloomberg. That total put the average annual cost of regulations under Obama at about $7 billion to $11 billion, compared with the $6.9 billion average from 1981 through 2008 in current dollars, according to the OMB data.

 

Bush Record

 

The record came in 1992 under George H.W. Bush when that total hit $20.9 billion in current dollars. In the last year of Ronald Reagan’s term it was $16 billion in today’s dollars.

 

Republicans say that the number of high-cost regulations are up, damaging an already weak economy, and more rules are on the way. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a report on Sept. 14 alleging a “tsunami” of new federal rules.

 

“I don’t think there is a measure by which there has been a regulatory tsunami,” Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House, said in an interview Oct. 19. “The costs are not out of line by historical standards.”

[StrangeSox]

It's not too often you see an out-and-out defense of sweatshops:

 

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/.../#disqus_thread

 

Ben Powell and I have a new paper coming out in the Journal of Business Ethics in which we defend what we take to be the mainstream libertarian position on sweatshops against some critiques that have emerged in the recent academic literature.* That position (which I have defended before here, and Ben here and here) looks something like the following:

 

Sweatshop labor is very often the best option individuals in the developing world have for improving their lives and the lives of their families.

 

We know this partly because individuals reveal a strong preference for sweatshop jobs both behaviorally in their eager acceptance of such jobs when they are made available, and verbally in their response to questions by journalists and researchers. [see informal reports such as this and more formal reports such as this]

 

And we know it partly by looking at quantitative data on sweatshop jobs vs. other forms of employment. [see Powell and Skarbek's paper here]

 

Because sweatshop labor is often the most attractive option that individuals in the developing world have available to them, those of us who care about their welfare and their autonomy have strong prima facie moral reason to refrain from taking those jobs away from them.

 

Boycotting sweatshops, or imposing onerous restrictions on the importation or sale of sweatshop-produced goods, often has the effect of taking sweatshop jobs away from people (i.e. of reducing the demand of sweatshops for labor).

 

Increasing the legal regulation of sweatshops – requiring them to pay a higher wage, to improve safety conditions, to make concessions to organized labor, etc. – also often has the effect of taking sweatshop jobs away from people. [For one recent illustrative analysis, see this paper from Ann Harrison and Jason Scorse]

 

Therefore, we should avoid, or at least be exceedingly cautious about, boycotting, banning, or increasing the legal regulation of sweatshops and/or sweatshop-produced goods.

 

For me, at least, this is a quintessentially bleeding heart libertarian position. I support sweatshops because I believe that they are good for the poor, not because I believe that interfering with them violates the non-aggression principle, or a natural right to freedom of contract, or whatever. If you could convince me otherwise – if you could convince me that the policies I advocate set back the autonomy and welfare of the poor rather than advance them – then I would change my mind.

[bmags]

It's not too often you see an out-and-out defense of sweatshops:

 

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/.../#disqus_thread

 

It's sort of a hard truth but there's a lot right about it. These countries are catching up. Part of catching up is going thru the same levels of an economy that the first world already went through. So while it seems grotesque to work 16 hours in a hot factory, it's actually a step up from a subsistence living. Many places in India and China and elsewhere are still very poor but measurably better off than 30 years ago. That's not to say all sweatshops should not be criticized. Clearly the ones submitting their workers to dangerous fumes and quick deaths are something we should work toward.

[GoSox05]

Wow, advocating for sweatshops. Shouldn't say i'm suprised.

 

What's next slave labor?

 

"Well alot of these people are better off as slaves, as least they get a free bowl of rice".

[StrangeSox]

Wow, advocating for sweatshops. Shouldn't say i'm suprised.

 

What's next slave labor?

 

"Well alot of these people are better off as slaves, as least they get a free bowl of rice".

 

no, child labor! (see the comments or vonmises.org)

 

If someone isn't literally holding a gun to your head, it's not coercion or "aggression." It's two parties entering a voluntary contract!

[StrangeSox]

I don't like Obama.

 

What, at this point, is the rationale of the Democratic Party? We'll kill terrorists twice as hard and only slash the safety net half as much? We'll pass the Republican agenda so they don't have to?

 

So here's what's happened so far. The President put forth a jobs bill, which didn't make it through the congress, as expected. This jobs bill was highly touted as containing "ideas" that Republicans had proposed in the past and therefore, it should have "something for everyone." Needless to say, the GOP wasn't interested in any one from column A and one from column B negotiating. After the defeat of the big jobs package, the Democrats announced they were going to propose popular pieces of the bill and force the Republicans to prove once and for all that they don't care about the plight of the average American as they join together in Scrooglike conformity.

 

Unfortunately, the Republicans decided not to play (surprise!) and are instead proposing their own combinations of the most toxic conservative elements of the President's bill and the President is apparently signing on, thus signing into law a terrible GOP policy while simultaneously giving them a "bipartisan" win.

 

I'm not sure what the President hopes to gain by proposing and then signing deeply unpopular GOP legislation, but that appears to be the plan.

 

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/ove...ill-gambit.html

[bmags]

Yes, advocating for slave labor. Brilliant comment.

[StrangeSox]

What is that in response to?

[Balta1701]

What is that in response to?

Was there some sarcasm in your post that was missed?

[Balta1701]

Oakland police broke up their "Occupy Oakland" protest site last night using force. One of the protesters was an Iraq war veteran...he was shot in the head by a "Non-lethal weapon" and is now lying in a coma in a hospital with multiple skull fractures.

 

After the man was hit and went down, a crowd of 10 people formed around him to try to either render him aid or move him out of the tear gas cloud (unconscious people can't get away on their own). An Oakland PD officer fired additional weaponry, what video seems to suggest was a flash-bang grenade (although Oakland PD Denies having used those) into that group to force them to disperse.

 

He was eventually taken to the hospital by other protestors anyway.

[bmags]

how many deaths need to happen from these non lethal weapons from police before they stop using them on massive crowds. Unbelievable. Between bart shutting down cell phone service and this, the bay area has some f***ed up police stuff happening.

[NorthSideSox72]

how many deaths need to happen from these non lethal weapons from police before they stop using them on massive crowds. Unbelievable. Between bart shutting down cell phone service and this, the bay area has some f***ed up police stuff happening.

1. Do you know what the crowd was actually doing before this happened? And thereby be able to make any rational judgment as to the police response?

 

2. Do you understand what non-lethal means in terms of police tools? It doesn't mean zero chance of death, because frankly, ANYTHING the police do in terms of use of force, including just cuffing someone if they resist, can occasionally result in death. Non-lethal means the percentage chance of death is very low. A gun on the other hand, or a blunt force weapon if used on red zones, is lethal because the chances are much greater.

 

3. If the protestors were doing something illegal - breaking stuff, burning stuff, throwing stuff, whatever - what tactics would you suggest they use?

 

[Balta1701]

3. If the protestors were doing something illegal - breaking stuff, burning stuff, throwing stuff, whatever - what tactics would you suggest they use?

Prior to the police moving in, by all accounts, the only illegal thing the protestors in Oakland were doing was occupying a public space that is allowed for protests but not permanent occupation.

 

The police warned that they were going to disperse the camp well beforehand. Several hundred protestors chose to stay and be arrested. The police responded with force.

[StrangeSox]

By the accounts I've seen, they were occupying, albeit illegally. No violence or destruction.

 

For the second point, the problem is that police seem to have become overly reliant on "non-lethal" options, which means harsh physical force is the go-to option for many situations where it shouldn't be.

[bmags]

1. Do you know what the crowd was actually doing before this happened? And thereby be able to make any rational judgment as to the police response?

 

2. Do you understand what non-lethal means in terms of police tools? It doesn't mean zero chance of death, because frankly, ANYTHING the police do in terms of use of force, including just cuffing someone if they resist, can occasionally result in death. Non-lethal means the percentage chance of death is very low. A gun on the other hand, or a blunt force weapon if used on red zones, is lethal because the chances are much greater.

 

3. If the protestors were doing something illegal - breaking stuff, burning stuff, throwing stuff, whatever - what tactics would you suggest they use?

 

There are plenty of tools beside rubber bullets. I've failed to see a report that this was anything like rioting. So I suppose if it's a matter of trespassing, death isn't the most reasonable response.

[NorthSideSox72]

There are plenty of tools beside rubber bullets. I've failed to see a report that this was anything like rioting. So I suppose if it's a matter of trespassing, death isn't the most reasonable response.

And death wasn't their response. You know what else occasionally kills people? Tear Gas / CS. And OC. And batons. And physical restraint. And tasers. These are all force tools that rarely kill people, but on occasion do.

 

Now, that all said, I have not seen the videos, and I don't know if what they did was appropriate or not. Have you? Do you?

 

[Balta1701]

And death wasn't their response. You know what else occasionally kills people? Tear Gas / CS. And OC. And batons. And physical restraint. And tasers. These are all force tools that rarely kill people, but on occasion do.

Then none of them should have been used to disperse a peaceful crowd (sans physical restraint in the event that a person is actually arrested).