California Passes Internet Tax Law, Amazon Halts Associates Program

Team Obi Juan said:
These numbers are wrong
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The numbers aren't exact but the top 1% of the earners in the US pay the overwhelming majority of the taxes, while something like 45-50% of US citizens pay zero federal income tax.

I do think they should tax the ultra-wealthy slightly more than they do now, but I think that they should do so by adding additional tax brackets. It doesn't really make sense for the highest tax bracket to stop at ~350,000. There is a pretty big difference between someone earning $350k a year and someone earning $10 million a year.
 
Team Obi Juan said:
And also useless if you don't list off the percentage of income those people have as well. Who cares if the top 50% pay 95% of the taxes in the country if they also earn 95% of the income?
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Go find the right ones then if you want the exacts, I said in the post I wasn't sure they were spot-on. I care, income isn't something you just are given and that's it, unless you're a deadbeat ;)... go earn some more money then instead of whinging that those who earned it should have to subsidize you.
 
Rizen said:
The numbers aren't exact but the top 1% of the earners in the US pay the overwhelming majority of the taxes, while something like 45-50% of US citizens pay zero federal income tax.

I do think they should tax the ultra-wealthy slightly more than they do now, but I think that they should do so by adding additional tax brackets. It doesn't really make sense for the highest tax bracket to stop at ~350,000. There is a pretty big difference between someone earning $350k a year and someone earning $10 million a year.
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The top 1% of income earners in America earn 20% of the income of the country and pay 38% of the income taxes of the country.

The top 50% of income earners in America earn 87% of the yearly income and pay 97% of the taxes.

The evil, freeloading sons of bitches in the bottom 50% of the income earners of America who only pay 3% of the taxes, earn 13% of the yearly income.

Based on 2010 tax data. http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
 
Team Obi Juan said:
Then either get rid of the sales tax altogether, or apply to etailers as well. Only making B&M adhere to it is BS. Looks like Cali Cali chose option 2.
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Yes, get rid of it alltogether. It is money for them doing nothing. It's not like income isn't taxed, so why tax the same thing twice. It doesn't cost the goverment/local goverment anything when I buy something. So why should they be compensated?

If all items were 20% cheaper, i'd spend 20% more, and the retailer would get 20% more from the sales if they were real stores or internet ones. The shops could afford more employees and afford to pay them more. Plus they would have less complicated accounting and not have all the associated overheads for a stupid illogical tax.
 
Team Obi Juan said:
And also useless if you don't list off the percentage of income those people have as well. Who cares if the top 50% pay 95% of the taxes in the country if they also earn 95% of the income?
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Everyone hates the rich. I hate the rich. We should soak the rich. Confiscate all their wealth. They can get by with a few 100k a year right?

Except there's one fact of life you will never escape: The rich create jobs. The rich employ people. The rich pay your salaries. How many of your neighbors earning salaries in the $35k to $100k created a single job, employed another who earns a similar wage? Not one.

Your rich boss, that SOB that created and runs your company? You can take away 80% of his wealth and yeah, he won't starve anytime soon. But it'll be a cold day in hell before he expands his business, creates another job, or gives you a raise.
 
alxnet2003 said:
Everyone hates the rich. I hate the rich. We should soak the rich. Confiscate all their wealth. They can get by with a few 100k a year right?

Except there's one fact of life you will never escape: The rich create jobs. The rich employ people. The rich pay your salaries. How many of your neighbors earning salaries in the $35k to $100k created a single job, employed another who earns a similar wage? Not one.

Your rich boss, that SOB that created and runs your company? You can take away 80% of his wealth and yeah, he won't starve anytime soon. But it'll be a cold day in hell before he expands his business, creates another job, or gives you a raise.
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I'm well aware of all of this. I simply hate the stat that "the top 1% pay 95% of all taxes". It's not true, and does not take into account their percentage of income. See my above post.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
Our government is like a dumb bitch that takes your credit card and goes on a wild spending spree, maxes it out, then runs to you begging for more money.

And some of you WANT to give that stupid bitch more money? WTF is wrong with you?
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HAHAHHAHA. I totally agree with this. Best way of putting it I have seen so far.

Those of you that want to be taxed more.... voluntarily start sending your paycheck straight to the IRS. I am sure that thay can spend it no problem.

Or are those of you that are wanting more taxes the people that are leeching off of the rest of us already?
 
Zarathustra[H];1037451905 said:
Hehe, I'd sooner shoot myself in the face than live in the mid west (or whatever Kansas is considered.)

I'd consider living in eastern Massachusetts (where I live), eastern New York and possibly California (not a huge fan of the place, but I would consider living there. Possibly also Washington state.

And that's about it.

Anything in the south would be out. I'm not a big fan of racism, hillbillies, football or pickup trucks.

Anything between the two coasts is pretty much just large cultural void. I wouldn't set foot there either.
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HAHAHAHAHAHA. As long as you don't live out in the sticks in the south, you really don't have to worry about "racism, hillbillies, or pickup trucks"... The football does get out of hand though... I just don't take sides. Once the people know that they pretty much stop asking about it.
 
The capitalistic free market system is the best economic system invented to date, but one of its limitations is that it will over time concentrate wealth in the upper 1%.

This is simply because it becomes ever increasingly easy to make money and mitigate risk, the more money that you have. CEOs and board members also tend to form buddy-buddy systems where they agree to reward each other ridiculous bonuses for a job well done, even as the company is going bankrupt.

Thus, the top 1% of earners in the United States have an income that is completely divorced form their contribution to society. They tend to be educated and valuable, but not hundreds of times more skilled and intelligent than a medical doctor, when they can and often have hundreds of times the wage. For almost everyone else though, your income is based on your work and value, and makes sense. So income redistribution for the ultra-wealthy top 1% makes sense to correct the inherent problem of a capitalist system, but you have to be cautious not to go overboard else these powerful people simply take their money and their businesses overseas to more attractive countries. Its all a balancing act.
 
cyclone3d said:
Or are those of you that are wanting more taxes the people that are leeching off of the rest of us already?
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There's some of that to be sure what about these statists and other rich liberal elites out there practically campaigning for taxes raises and such? Zuckerberg. Immelt. Buffet. Gates. People like that.

There's NOTHING says they can't put down a lot more money on the IRS forms themselves.

Put down as much as you want and leave the rest of us the hell alone. All these bleeding heart liberals...put YOUR money where your mouth is and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

But of course I know that misses the "real point."

And people wonder why there's so much anger out there. Something's gotta give eventually.
 
There is something mind bogglingly wrong with a country that is currently fighting 2 wars - financed by debt - and at the same time give out huge tax cuts, primarily to its wealthiest citizens.
 
Team Obi Juan said:
These numbers are wrong
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Q-BZ said:
There's some of that to be sure what about these statists and other rich liberal elites out there practically campaigning for taxes raises and such? Zuckerberg. Immelt. Buffet. Gates. People like that.

There's NOTHING says they can't put down a lot more money on the IRS forms themselves.

Put down as much as you want and leave the rest of us the hell alone. All these bleeding heart liberals...put YOUR money where your mouth is and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

But of course I know that misses the "real point."

And people wonder why there's so much anger out there. Something's gotta give eventually.
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None of those people are "campaigning to raise taxes", especially not on those who earn less than they do. I guess it's pretty easy to throw out unfounded statements, though, when you are anonymous on the internet.

I think some of you are a bit delusional about the economic state of this country, personally. I'm firmly middle class but I would be okay with small tax raises if it was combined with extensive spending cuts to assist in paying down the crushing federal debt we are accumulating.
 
pgwalsh said:
It's been proven over and over that Keynesian economics doesn't work. You can't spend your way out of debt and raising taxes decreases consumer spending which decreases tax revenue. If you know your history then you know Keynesian economics is shit.
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This is the most idiotic post I have seen in my life.

Of course you can't "spend your way out of debt". That's not what anyone is proposing. You have to take on temporary debt to fix an economic downturn, which you then pay back during recovery

You do - however - as a government HAVE TO spend more than you take in in a economic downturn in order to get more money out on the market and turn the downward spiral into an upward one. Once this turnaround is complete then you have a healthy economy with surpluses that can be used to pay down that said debt.

It is important to note that traditionally there is no difference between increasing spending, or cutting taxes. Both result in more money being spent than is taken in, and this is what is needed during a recession.

More recently - however - with the increasingly globalized economy, tax cuts don't work as well as they used to to stimulate the national economy as a lot of the money (both business and private) gets spent on products from abroad. Thus the best return on investment is to increase spending on projects. Not only is there a full cycle of income/spending in the private sector before the money starts going abroad, but you also have something (highways, bridges,schools, education, etc) to show for it, which you don't with tax cuts.

The problem we are in right now is based on the fact that we spent too much and taxed too little during the boom years (when we should have been paying down our national debt) so that now - during the bust years - we already are saddled with debt, and have a harder time taking on debt to stimulate our economy. (You can thank Reagan and Bush Jr. for this)

Summary:

During a recession you have to either:
  • Lower taxes, while keeping spending fixed,
  • Increase spending while keeping taxation fixed; or
  • lower taxes AND increase spending.
This gets more money into the market by addind national debt. This helps turn around the economy.

Once the recession is over you have to have the discipline to:
  • Raise taxes, while keeping spending fixed,
  • Decrease spending while keeping taxation fixed; or
  • Raise taxes AND decrease spending.
The surplus is then used to pay down the debt you took on during the recession.


What the Teabaggers want to do right now is complete crazy talk and a recipe for complete economic meltdown. they want to cut spending and pay back the debt during a recession. The only thing this will accomplish is to make the recession worse, as now there will be less money in the marketplace, and it will turn our fragile upward spiral into a violent downward one again.

If you don't understand the concept above, you have no place talking about national economics on this or any other forum.
 
High taxes + a bad economy = less consumer spending and thus less tax revenue, so they make those already high taxes HIGHER.

he's right, those kind of economics don't work.

I didn't need a wall of text to make my point either :D
 
Fail said:
High taxes + a bad economy = less consumer spending and thus less tax revenue, so they make those already high taxes HIGHER.
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You're right; a big part of CA's problem is that its tax base is so volatile. It's incredibly difficult to manage a state where the tax revenue can fluctuate so much. This is in part due to Prop 13 which limited property taxes.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037452507 said:
This is the most idiotic post I have seen in my life.

Of course you can't "spend your way out of debt". That's not what anyone is proposing. You have to take on temporary debt to fix an economic downturn, which you then pay back during recovery

You do - however - as a government HAVE TO spend more than you take in in a economic downturn in order to get more money out on the market and turn the downward spiral into an upward one. Once this turnaround is complete then you have a healthy economy with surpluses that can be used to pay down that said debt.

It is important to note that traditionally there is no difference between increasing spending, or cutting taxes. Both result in more money being spent than is taken in, and this is what is needed during a recession.

More recently - however - with the increasingly globalized economy, tax cuts don't work as well as they used to to stimulate the national economy as a lot of the money (both business and private) gets spent on products from abroad. Thus the best return on investment is to increase spending on projects. Not only is there a full cycle of income/spending in the private sector before the money starts going abroad, but you also have something (highways, bridges,schools, education, etc) to show for it, which you don't with tax cuts.

The problem we are in right now is based on the fact that we spent too much and taxed too little during the boom years (when we should have been paying down our national debt) so that now - during the bust years - we already are saddled with debt, and have a harder time taking on debt to stimulate our economy. (You can thank Reagan and Bush Jr. for this)

Summary:

During a recession you have to either:
  • Lower taxes, while keeping spending fixed,
  • Increase spending while keeping taxation fixed; or
  • lower taxes AND increase spending.
This gets more money into the market by addind national debt. This helps turn around the economy.

Once the recession is over you have to have the discipline to:
  • Raise taxes, while keeping spending fixed,
  • Decrease spending while keeping taxation fixed; or
  • Raise taxes AND decrease spending.
The surplus is then used to pay down the debt you took on during the recession.


What the Teabaggers want to do right now is complete crazy talk and a recipe for complete economic meltdown. they want to cut spending and pay back the debt during a recession. The only thing this will accomplish is to make the recession worse, as now there will be less money in the marketplace, and it will turn our fragile upward spiral into a violent downward one again.

If you don't understand the concept above, you have no place talking about national economics on this or any other forum.
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This man knows his economics, though I'd say the US has not ever properly followed Keys. It would work (not my prefered method as I am an Austrian guy myself) but the host nation has to freaking follow it to the T and lawmakers probably has no idea who or whats Keys said.
 
next-Jin said:
This man knows his economics, though I'd say the US has not ever properly followed Keys. It would work (not my prefered method as I am an Austrian guy myself) but the host nation has to freaking follow it to the T and lawmakers probably has no idea who or whats Keys said.
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Keynes stated to save in good times, then overspend in bad. Our problem is we spend like crazy in both good times and bad. Ever since Reagan figured out that people will love you if you both cut taxes AND raise spending, everyone has been following his example.
 
Red Falcon said:
What's to hate? CA has the most debt of the 50 states and has continuously high (and increasing) taxes, now this.

Aside from their nice weather and beaches, there really isn't a reason to go their, let alone live there imo.

An Internet tax, lame. :rolleyes:
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You also make a lot more money here:p
 
Fail said:
High taxes + a bad economy = less consumer spending and thus less tax revenue, so they make those already high taxes HIGHER.

he's right, those kind of economics don't work.

I didn't need a wall of text to make my point either :D
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Welcome to sound bite politics, where the shorter the message, the more right it must be. No one wants to hear the explanation of why not raising the debt ceiling will cripple the US and world economy, probably start a few wars, and send us into a great depression. They just want to hear "CUT SPENDING!"
 
TwistedAegis said:
Keynes stated to save in good times, then overspend in bad. Our problem is we spend like crazy in both good times and bad. Ever since Reagan figured out that people will love you if you both cut taxes AND raise spending, everyone has been following his example.
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Yep, exactly what happened in Britain under labour, we were riding an upturn for a decade, economy expanding at a great rate and still we were spending more than we made in the good times.

That is why Britain is even more screwed up right now than America. Keynes in a nutshell is basically save in the good times so you can spend your way out of the bad.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Why not commute/work over internet. Earn CA salary/don't pay as many CA taxes. Quick someone build a fortified atoll :D
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But then I wouldn't live in Cali, where else can I go snowboarding in the morning and lay out on the beach in the afternoon?
 
I've resisted going into this thread, since I came home last night and 5 hours after the news was posted this was already to page 8 of arm chair economist, and now at page 12 (maybe 13 by the time I respond) might as well get my 2 cents in as I see this thread getting closed soon anyways :D

Rizen said:
The numbers aren't exact but the top 1% of the earners in the US pay the overwhelming majority of the taxes, while something like 45-50% of US citizens pay zero federal income tax.
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A slight misconception that the right likes to toss around. While yeah the tax paid for the lowest 50% might be zero, that's based on number of people, which means the kid working at mcdonalds part time, or working in the library at school part time, hell maybe even the kid slinging news papers, which translates to a HUGE number and as a result percentage of citizens, and even though you might get people making a few grand a year you add up the total number of people and it makes up a sizable amount of income (someone mentioned 13% in the thread), and according to our tax rules (standard deduction mostly) they have no taxable income. So treating them like freeloaders, or welfare recipients really is putting them in unfair light.

Also to say they pay nothing really not true as well, since FICA/SS/Medicare gets everyone, a quick google shows 7.65% of income is taxed for that. Bets of all there's an upper limit of around $100k that can be taxed on the social security aspect, which is a good paying job, but hardly something that'd make you a "rich person". So those who actually are rich (making many times more) actually pay less a smaller percentage of taxes as a result in that department.

Overall if you look at sights like taxfoundation.org or what not, you see that EVERY income bracket the percentage they actually pay in taxes (as an average) is less than it should be if it simply as cut and dry of plugging in your income into a calculator and here's what you owe as a percentage. So there's deductions and breaks at EVERY level... everyone cries at the poor people who don't make much, and when they get deductions boo they're evil... yet the highest incomes who pay more in taxes, yet what they don't pay because they have great accountants absolutely dwarfs what the poor slobs don't pay.
 
Rizen said:
None of those people are "campaigning to raise taxes", especially not on those who earn less than they do. I guess it's pretty easy to throw out unfounded statements, though, when you are anonymous on the internet.

I think some of you are a bit delusional about the economic state of this country, personally. I'm firmly middle class but I would be okay with small tax raises if it was combined with extensive spending cuts to assist in paying down the crushing federal debt we are accumulating.
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You think that if they raise taxes on the "wealthy" that they are just going to take it in stride?

RIIIGGGGGHHHHHTTTTT.

Tax increases on businesses and "the wealthy" only brings about higher prices and/or fewer jobs for the "peons".

The tax increases are just passed onto the lower people on the totem pole.

See, businesses have to make a profit if they are to stay in business (unless of course you are "TOO BIG TO FAIL", in which case the government will just in effect steal more money from the tax payers in order to prop up and/or take over the "TOO BIG TO FAIL" business).

If taxes are raised on businesses, then they raise their prices or eliminate unnesessary workers in order to stay within their needed profit margin. If they start spending more money then thay make, they have to do something about it.

If the governement were put under the same type of rules a business or a household is operated under then there wouldn't be a freaking huge deficit. If the money isn't there, you don't just keep spending.

You have to fix the problem at it's source, not just temporarilly treat the symptoms.
 
cyclone3d said:
Tax increases on businesses and "the wealthy" only brings about higher prices and/or fewer jobs for the "peons".
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It's funny this is economics 101 here.. yet evidence shows

tax%20cuts%20and%20job%20creation.jpg


Granted there's more than a single number influencing job rates, but still its hard to ignore.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037452507 said:
This is the most idiotic post I have seen in my life.

Of course you can't "spend your way out of debt". That's not what anyone is proposing. You have to take on temporary debt to fix an economic downturn, which you then pay back during recovery
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You're on here.

You do - however - as a government HAVE TO spend more than you take in in a economic downturn in order to get more money out on the market and turn the downward spiral into an upward one. Once this turnaround is complete then you have a healthy economy with surpluses that can be used to pay down that said debt.
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The issue we face now though is that the increased government spending has not generated growth.
I contend that it is not being spent in a way which will promote future growth to help off the current accumulated deficits.
Per Keynes, even broken windows help the glassmaker... but we should focus on more productive uses of our borrowed money than funding rejected pork projects.
We could just give cash to fatcats and they would probably try to put that to work... this would also fit into the "borrow to grow" mentality but is obviously not preferred.

It is important to note that traditionally there is no difference between increasing spending, or cutting taxes. Both result in more money being spent than is taken in, and this is what is needed during a recession.
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Not entirely valid.
Government revenues are not linearly related to tax rates. Just because they raise taxes does not mean they will take in more revenues.
For more info on this see Hauser.
Tax policy (as well as spending policy) can certainly impact economic growth in different ways. The goal of each decision should be focused on real GDP growth, not increasing government revenues; lest you get your causes and effects reversed.
That said, I don't think you'd argue that the "new" expenditures are best suited to promote economic growth.
I think the case *could* be made that certain tax cuts are; despite the deficit.


More recently - however - with the increasingly globalized economy, tax cuts don't work as well as they used to to stimulate the national economy as a lot of the money (both business and private) gets spent on products from abroad. Thus the best return on investment is to increase spending on projects. Not only is there a full cycle of income/spending in the private sector before the money starts going abroad, but you also have something (highways, bridges,schools, education, etc) to show for it, which you don't with tax cuts.
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You're losing track of cause and effect again.
Growth resulting from tax cuts can increase revenues, thus increasing ability to increase infrastructure.

You are likewise correct that increasing infrastructure can increase future productivity to payoff incurred debt.
Problem is that I don't think you can demonstrate how our current stimulus is being used for this purpose.

The problem we are in right now is based on the fact that we spent too much and taxed too little during the boom years (when we should have been paying down our national debt) so that now - during the bust years - we already are saddled with debt, and have a harder time taking on debt to stimulate our economy. (You can thank Reagan and Bush Jr. for this)
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No.
We spent too much on unproductive pursuits.
Government revenue is not proportionally related to tax rates *except* to the extent that tax rates lead to GDP growth.
Our debt problems are related to our incurred long term debt which are legislated regardless of our ability to pay for them, and indeed are not even included in congressional budgets.

For a good example see projected medicare costs from CBO reports from the last 20 years.
These obligations were never projected to be possible to fund, regardless of which party made the promises.
You can blame Bush/Reagan if you want (and I'm sure you will continue to do so) but you'll be deluding yourself. Politicians from both parties have been pro-entitlements and pro-government growth. Spending obligations legislated during booms are myopic and agitate debt problems later because, by the time we are in a recession the money is already spent and allocated.

Summary:

During a recession you have to either:
  • Lower taxes, while keeping spending fixed,
  • Increase spending while keeping taxation fixed; or
  • lower taxes AND increase spending.
This gets more money into the market by addind national debt. This helps turn around the economy.
Click to expand...

Government must be able to run deficits.
That has nothing to do with the fact that government spending should be restrained and growth oriented.

Once the recession is over you have to have the discipline to:
  • Raise taxes, while keeping spending fixed,
  • Decrease spending while keeping taxation fixed; or
  • Raise taxes AND decrease spending.
The surplus is then used to pay down the debt you took on during the recession.
Click to expand...

Raising taxes does not inherently increase government revenues.
Once the recession is over (and this is where Keynes rolls over in his grave for modern politicians) we need to have the fiscal discipline to stop taking on excessive debt.

What the Teabaggers want to do right now is complete crazy talk and a recipe for complete economic meltdown. they want to cut spending and pay back the debt during a recession. The only thing this will accomplish is to make the recession worse, as now there will be less money in the marketplace, and it will turn our fragile upward spiral into a violent downward one again.
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Paying back the debt is a silly idea right now.
Ending deficit spending is a silly idea right now.

However, the concept that we should avoid long-term cost obligations that may not increase productivity is a very valid point (though outside the grasp of most voters, party irrelevant).

If you don't understand the concept above, you have no place talking about national economics on this or any other forum.
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And you should stop equating tax increases to revenue increases.
 
sfsuphysics said:
It's funny this is economics 101 here.. yet evidence shows

tax%20cuts%20and%20job%20creation.jpg


Granted there's more than a single number influencing job rates, but still its hard to ignore.
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Cause and effect.

I could claim that high growth periods caused politicians to seek higher corporate taxes just as easily as you chart implies the reverse.
 
Zangmonkey said:
Cause and effect.

I could claim that high growth periods caused politicians to seek higher corporate taxes just as easily as you chart implies the reverse.
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Those are individual taxes not corporate. And while true you could imply what you said, it'd be a wrong conclusion.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Those are individual taxes not corporate. And while true you could imply what you said, it'd be a wrong conclusion.
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Neither conclusion can be effectively made from the chart.
Nonetheless, the conclusion the chart's publication is intended to display seems pretty obvious to me.
 
MrValentine said:
I cant DISAGREE more. I want TX to move to a sales tax only system. No school tax, or anything. (maybe a little property tax). TX is full of people that cheat income tax, OR they are illegal and dont pay income tax anyway. If we had a 18% sales tax, everyone would pay it, and buisnesses that dont collect should get shut down. Out of my closest 5-6 friends I am the only one that truely pays income tax. All the rest get out of it and dont pay a single dime. F income tax. I have heard rumblings of Texas moving to a state income tax, and when that happens, thats the day I burn my davy crockett hat and bury my TX flag.
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sales tax is regressive and all this would do is penalize the poorest people in your state

i cannot believe how naive some people here are
 
Zangmonkey said:
Not entirely valid.
Government revenues are not linearly related to tax rates. Just because they raise taxes does not mean they will take in more revenues.
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Agree it is not perfectly linear, but I challenge your notion that increased tax rates do not lead to any revenue increases. At some point you run into limiting returns, yes, but at the point we are today, I highly doubt we are anywhere near that level.

This is related to the inverse justification used by conservatives for years which states that by lowering taxes you actually increase revenues due to driving business growth. This has proven to be completely and totally false.

Zangmonkey said:
You're losing track of cause and effect again.
Growth resulting from tax cuts can increase revenues, thus increasing ability to increase infrastructure.
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Yes, but you have to look at the efficiency of the conversion into growth for each. Spending on projects leads to 100% infusion of those funds into the economy through national salaries, nationally purchased materials, etc. plus the completely free benefit of actually having the infrastructure that was built. With tax reductions of the same dollar value you only get the first part, and its further diminished by there not being anything to stop these funds from being spent abroad.

Zangmonkey said:
You are likewise correct that increasing infrastructure can increase future productivity to payoff incurred debt.
Problem is that I don't think you can demonstrate how our current stimulus is being used for this purpose.
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I agree. There are problems with how the stimulus funds were spent. I am certainly not an Obama apologist in this regard. The money provided to the financial institutions was a good - mostly untested - theory that turned out to not work in producing consumer credit as had been hoped. I think it was worth trying, but it should have been done with MUCH higher both equity and interest costs to said institutions than was demanded. The leverage should also have been used to diffuse lobbying and institute much stronger financial legislation, including among others, the following:
  • Complete reinstatement of the Glass-Stiegel Act including among other things preventing firms that invest on behalf of clients from also investing on their own behalf
  • limiting the use of short positions and reverse repo's (only allowing investors to gain on the upside of a financial instrument)
  • Preventing the further use of any derivatives of financial instruments
  • Allowing only owners of a defaulted financial instrument to collect on credit default swaps, just like regular insurance (You can't insure you'r neighbors home or car, you should be allowed to insure a security you don't own)
  • Force the industry to take on conflict of interest rules similar to those in government (no more fancy dinners / gifts/ sports tickets to sweeten the deal for (bribe) clients)
  • etc. etc.
Essentially, Obama should have used this leverage to push to bring Investment banking back to the state it was in in the 70s, before they were allowed to become "creative" and introduce new ways to earn money. Back when the market actually was rational, as opposed to today, now that the theory of the rational market has been completely turned on its head.

But now I'm starting to get off track. Stimulus funds should also have been spent on more appropriate projects, not rejected pork, I agree.

Another reason we haven't seen the stimulus be as effective as we would have liked is quite simply because there has been to little of it. To get ourselves out of a downturn of this magnitude we should have spent 3 to 5 times more in stimulus than was done. Seeing the debt burden the country had at the onset of the financial meltdown, this was - however - not a viable option.

Zangmonkey said:
No.
We spent too much on unproductive pursuits.
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Preaching to the choir here.

Zangmonkey said:
Our debt problems are related to our incurred long term debt which are legislated regardless of our ability to pay for them, and indeed are not even included in congressional budgets.

For a good example see projected medicare costs from CBO reports from the last 20 years.
These obligations were never projected to be possible to fund, regardless of which party made the promises.
You can blame Bush/Reagan if you want (and I'm sure you will continue to do so) but you'll be deluding yourself. Politicians from both parties have been pro-entitlements and pro-government growth. Spending obligations legislated during booms are myopic and agitate debt problems later because, by the time we are in a recession the money is already spent and allocated.
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You are right, Long term entitlements are a huge part of the problem. They would have been less so had social security not been pillaged for pork in the 1980s, or had we not had unfunded tax cuts under both Reagan and Bush (W) or two HUGELY expensive wars...

Let's not forget, the budget was balanced under Clinton. Yes, it was a strong economy which helped, but Bush W had a strong economy (at least for his first several years in office) and instead of balancing the budget he focused his time on giving his wealthy buddies unfunded tax cuts, and cutting regulation in the financial sector, partially contributing to the meltdown.

Zangmonkey said:
Government must be able to run deficits.
That has nothing to do with the fact that government spending should be restrained and growth oriented.
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I agree 100%. Deficits are essential tools, but there must be discipline to repay them and not run deficits during economic upswings.

Zangmonkey said:
Raising taxes does not inherently increase government revenues.
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Partially agreed. Raising taxes does not always lead to revenue growth, but the conditions under which the revenue doesn't grow at all are rather rare.

Zangmonkey said:
Once the recession is over (and this is where Keynes rolls over in his grave for modern politicians) we need to have the fiscal discipline to stop taking on excessive debt.
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I don't think I could agree more here. This is the biggest problem. The fact that debt was allowed to get out of control when we didn't really need it.

Reagan had the first part of the equation right. In the economic downturn in the early 80s he lowered taxes and ran a deficit to try to stimulate the economy out of the hole. His problem? He never stopped once the economy recovered. He kept running low tax rate induced fiscal deficits throughout the boom of the 80s, leading to tons of unwarranted national debt by the late 80s and an overheated inflationary economy and a minor (by comparison to today) economic crash in the early 90s.

Zangmonkey said:
Paying back the debt is a silly idea right now.
Ending deficit spending is a silly idea right now.
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Agreed, and agreed!

Zangmonkey said:
However, the concept that we should avoid long-term cost obligations that may not increase productivity is a very valid point (though outside the grasp of most voters, party irrelevant).
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Unfortunately, I fear this is correct as well, and why I have only bleak outlooks for the future.


Zangmonkey said:
And you should stop equating tax increases to revenue increases.
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I can't make any promises here :p
 
Zarathustra[H];1037453835 said:
used to diffuse lobbying and institute much stronger financial legislation, including among others, the following:
  • Complete reinstatement of the Glass-Stiegel Act including among other things preventing firms that invest on behalf of clients from also investing on their own behalf
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Please forgive my incredibly silly misspelling of Rep Henry B. Steagall's last name :p
 
steal said:
sales tax is regressive and all this would do is penalize the poorest people in your state

i cannot believe how naive some people here are
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They don't have to be regressive and I don't know of any state where sales tax are regressive.

Unless you consider things like alcohol and tobacco taxes regressive because the poor are disproportionally consumers of those products, perhaps gas since private transportation is close to essential, other than those things it's not though.
 
mope54 said:
They don't have to be regressive and I don't know of any state where sales tax are regressive.

Unless you consider things like alcohol and tobacco taxes regressive because the poor are disproportionally consumers of those products, perhaps gas since private transportation is close to essential, other than those things it's not though.
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Any use based tax (and sales tax is a use based tax of everything, except in some states where they have sales tax exemptions for non-luxury food and clothing) is automatically regressive due to the fact that low income people have to spend a greater portion of their income on life sustaining necessities.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037453907 said:
Any use based tax (and sales tax is a use based tax of everything, except in some states where they have sales tax exemptions for non-luxury food and clothing) is automatically regressive due to the fact that low income people have to spend a greater portion of their income on life sustaining necessities.
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I'm familiar with the definitions. That's why I said they don't have to be.
You responded to say that "any" are "automatically" regressive even though you then list a few exemptions that would render them non-regressive.

So I'm not quit sure what you're trying to do as you're certainly not correcting me nor substantiating the claim that all sales taxes are regressive.
 
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