Having lived in New York you pay almost half of your wages in Federal, State and Local taxes and are taxed at every damn opportunity available. Cigarettes are taxed so much they're 300% of the cost of other places, gasoline is taxed so much that they don't even show it as we'd all be steaming. If I buy a car, then someone else buys it from me and this happens 3 times, we all get taxed. We have sales tax, annual property taxes of 1%-3% annually depending where you live. We're paying so much money in taxes to a government that has proven over and over to be an inefficient deployer of capital. The multiplier effect of government spending versus people spending is horrendous and even with all this taxation, the government spends too much and has to borrow from us in the form of US bonds and Muni-bonds. That is just an utter lack of discipline on the part of the government and portr ays the bureacracy that is government labor. Having family that works in the government, it sickens me to see their ability to manuver and manuver until they can take 2 months off a year, make six figures and then find a way to get multiple pensions and retire early. That is all paid for by our tax dollars and the inefficient use of it by the government.
That article really cuts to the point and is important. It should be linked and and talked about any time we hear the lame cry about how bad taxes and regulations are.
It is not required that you live in NY. You have your choice of places to live. Which recoups some of the societal costs that tobacco products levy on society in the form of lost work time, higher healthcare costs, and premature deaths. Not me, I think gasoline should be taxed FAR higher than it is already, given the problems inherent in petroleum products (pollution, giving money to some of the world's worst regimes, stifling of other technologies). In fact, one of the things that made me vote for Ross Perot was his promise to raise the gasoline tax by $0.50 per gallon. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. If you don't like it, just like living in NY, you have the choice to move elsewhere. I hear Somalia is nice this time of year and they don't have ANY income or corporate tax at all! Based on what data? You can't just claim it based on the rantings of pundits, please provide empirical data rather than anecdotes. Again, I will ask for data to back up your assertion. I have heard pundits spew this one too, but their spew doesn't convince me. Data please, not fictional stories. You don't seem to understand how capital expenditures work. It is inefficient for government to tax people enough to build up multi billion (or, if you are talking about the Federal level, trillion) dollar surpluses in order to pay for new construction of schools, roads, wastewater treatment plants, or any of the other myriad of infrastructure improvements that might be necessary. Just like in a corporation, if the debt service is manageable, then it just makes more sense to finance such construction. Out of curiosity, did you buy your house by writing a check or did you take out a mortgage? The same principle that applies to business financing and consumer mortgages applies to the government too. I shouldn't have to explain this. Issuing muni bonds (some of the lowest interest bonds available on the market) is because the government isn't disciplined enough to save millions or billions for school or road construction? When Intel built their latest plant, they financed most of the construction so that they could amortize the cost over a decade. What is your beef with SOP for capital improvements? After working for the government for 30 or so years, some people can take 2 months off per year, but most of them don't because they have a job to do. Of course, in PRIVATE industry, the average is 27 paid days off per year after only 15 years of service. At the PRIVATE university, Carnegie-Mellon, After 15 years it is 30 days per year. Of course, in the federal government, they don't get that much, but don't let the facts get in the way of your diatribe. According to OPM, after 15 years of service, you can earn up to 8 hours per two week pay period, for a total of 26 days per year. http://www.opm.gov/oca/leave/html/annual.asp http://business.salary.com/paid-time-off/ http://www.cmu.edu/policies/documents/PTO.html If one works themselves up the ladder in a government agency, they might get to retire early so that they can go get another job to earn another pension. If they were in the military first, then they might have that pension too, but you don't just go to work for the government and after a couple of years, have a pension you can retire off of, much less multiple pensions. If you know of such a government job, please let me know, Glad could use that kind of retirement plan, but I also know that they are a figment of your imagination (or that of the pundits to whom you have been listening). Provide some data to back up your claim and I will agree with you. In the meantime, I maintain that you have been drinking the pundit colored kool-aid.
This BS Occupy Wall Street movement is a despearate attempt by Barry and his people to get him re elected. Nice try Barry but it won't work this time, the American people truly wise up to your con game. P.S: It is so sad when all it takes for these useful idiots to stage a protest are some free food, booze, and condoms.
esteban you are not a virile young water buffalo looking for its virgin ride. No, you are the type of crass maggot who spews his filth into several buckets at a time, and then stores them in some slummy, God-forsaken trailor in the back of an old apartment complex, choosing just the proper time and place to lay out a cacophony of uninspired snippets so overtly derogatory that not even a zombified Ronald Reagan would attempt to belt out from a McCarthyist loudspeaker. You're a special type of scum. The kind that appears on the bottom of the floor boards of rusted out Ford Pinto wagon. You wear your ugliness like a badge of courage for the sins of those you still blame the erosion of the 1950s on. You will fail in your quest to make the turncoats see the forest for the trees. Instead it will be you, caught in a firestorm of Bradbury-ian proportion. All your text and vitriol up in precious smoke. As your ideas turn to cinder, take a moment to look back at the rest of the herd: flourishing. See the young maiden water buffalo roaming around, fat upon fresh seed grass and the blood of caterpillars. See the honey badgers rise from their haunts to snatch up their larvae. You are that caterpillar. You will be flushed down the toilet of mass extinction if you do not emerge out of your cocoon. You must undergo a life altering metamorphosis or you will surely be caught up in the floodgates of another drunken Ted Nugent worshipping Keynes disciple. REFORM ESTEBAN! REPENT ESTEBAN! LEST YE BE CAST INTO THE ETERNAL PASSIVITY OF POLITICAL PURGATORY!
You're right. We need to have an effective tax rate beyond 49% not including sales, real estate, capital gains and all other taxes. Why not just tax people at 80%? All I hear are a bunch of whiners that didn't have the balls, work ethic or acumen to rise up out of their situation and became actors, teachers or lawyers and now are pissed that others are making so much more than them though they feel they're so much smarter. This world is becoming more and more mobile for people and companies. You keep pounding on the most productive people and businesses and they will one day just leave. That day is not soon, but the rest of the world is catching up and over half of S&P 500 profits come from overseas anyway. Tax, tax, tax is not going to solve our income disparity problems. Don't vilify the one's that produce the most to pay for everyone.
Your employer knows the cost of living is high. That's why you get paid more than someone with the same skill set that lives in Houston.
3 years later and you're still drinking that koolaid, let me clue you in: your little man child Barry is toast bro. Even your far left buddies can't stand him now!
Do we really need a re-quoting of half page rants? Esteban= xxxdeathbyfartsxxx He just calls em likes he sees em <object width="512" height="288"><param name="movie" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/RNq8lUB_uVZiQCN_ht2lMA"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/RNq8lUB_uVZiQCN_ht2lMA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="512" height="288" allowFullScreen="true"></embed></object>
One of many ways you are delusional is to think we are all Obama worshippers just because we recognize that many of your favorite political points are absolutely untenable, illogical, and even anti-Christian.
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1 An excellent analysis (mostly graphs) explaining why the Wall Street protestors are justifiably protesting at businessinsider.com. Here's one that explains a lot - Wages (you know ... what workers get paid) as a percent of the total economy:
Why is this such a problem of Wall street? 12 million illegal immigrants, technology allowing companies to outsource jobs, consumers opting for cheaper products made overseas is their problem? At least Wall Street was able to keep their business in the USA.
So wages have only fallen 7% since 1959? I'd say the US is still doing pretty damn well given that we compete globally now against the likes of SE Asia and central america for labor costs (you know, often the highest single overhead item to run a business?)
Seriously ... are you guys r****ded? You either misunderstand the information, or you take the chart as a single argument when, clearly shown in the article, it's one small facet of a bigger argument. Just admit it. You don't want to believe any of this, and you will go well out of your way to avoid acknowledging the issue. If you look at this from the perspective of "I will not accept anything that does not jibe with my preconceptions," then more power to you. If you look at this with a genuine openness to the fact that you might be wrong ... then that's a different story. But I've really been trying to avoid these debates. It's just like bashing your head into a r****d wall.
