Let's have that political discussion.

[Claeyt]

long live Silvio.

...I hope you do not mean Silvio Berlusconi...

No, Steven Van Zandt played Silvio on the Sopranos TV show and he's in Bruce Springsteen's band.

Silvio Berlusconi is an embarrassment to Italy.

[imvexus]

So many pages so quickly...

I have something to share which is/is not relevant, I don't care.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b2jojrt80tiez ... esting.pdf

The lady has 2 kids, and claims head of household. We are paying her $7500 because she doesn't work as hard as everyone else and only makes $19.5k a year.

I would love to have a -45% tax rate. Yes, tax me negative half of all my money please! I am pretty sure, but cannot confirm, this person is on other welfare systems such as food stamps, further adding to the 'benefits' we tax PAYERS are giving to her.

I don't mind, I just think it is an interesting problem. I always wonder how those with less income than myself manage nice cars and long vacations. Ah, because they don't work as much and have kids, they can splurge more often when I pay them their tax. Got it. You're welcome.

[L33LEE]

So many pages so quickly...

I have something to share which is/is not relevant, I don't care.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b2jojrt80tiez ... esting.pdf

The lady has 2 kids, and claims head of household. We are paying her $7500 because she doesn't work as hard as everyone else and only makes $19.5k a year.

I would love to have a -45% tax rate. Yes, tax me negative half of all my money please! I am pretty sure, but cannot confirm, this person is on other welfare systems such as food stamps, further adding to the 'benefits' we tax PAYERS are giving to her.

I don't mind, I just think it is an interesting problem. I always wonder how those with less income than myself manage nice cars and long vacations. Ah, because they don't work as much and have kids, they can splurge more often when I pay them their tax. Got it. You're welcome.

Happens in the UK.

I have a friend who is unemployed and his GF is unemployed, they have 3 kids and live a better lifestyle than myself + my fiance and we both work full time. It does get under my skin, but if he can do it why not ? Its the system which has a problem, not the people sponging off it.

[Claeyt]

First off, nobody with an annual income of 15,000 is going on any grand vacations. Are you guys really going to attack the poor over incomes like that. She received 7500 in tax credits which were probably designed to help her give her 2 kids a better life, health insurance, and housing. Nobodies getting rich off the government by being poor. Is there room for improvements to helping people get into the workforce versus letting them get full benefits, Yes. Let's have that conversation. Attacking a single mom with two kids for getting tax breaks after she clearly worked some **** job while raising those 2 kids is simply wrong.

As for her 7500 tax credit. Anybody gets that in America for having 2 kids, the cutoff for the Child Tax credit is 110,000 dollars.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-Child-Tax-Credit

They can also get a tax deduction for kids. It's a standard deduction. She's just above the poverty line so she probably gets a few more deductions and credits above that, but if she made a million dollars a year she would still be able to get tax deduction for her 2 kids.

[wormcsa]

She's just above the poverty line.

As usual Claeyt is wrong. I know of no metric where a family of three is above the US poverty line at $15,062. In 2013 (presumably not too different from 2012,) the federal poverty guideline for a family of three was $19,530. If he meant single person then it was $11,490, in which case she was significantly (31%) above.

Not surprisingly, he also missed the point of the photo. It was showing a $7,518 as "Amount to be Refunded," after showing she had paid $4 in taxes. As in the federal government was sending her a check for that amount as a sort of negative income tax, not as a refund on taxes already paid. This, as far as I am aware, does not occur- the photo is either highly misleading or a fake.

It just so happens, however, that I am in favor of doing precisely what is in the photo. Replace the hundreds of inefficient broken welfare programs with one simple cash payment. Milton Friedman suggested a negative income tax, but I prefer Charles Murray's (Claeyt's bff) suggestion in "In Our Hands." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skDgS5nEY6c

Is there room for improvements to helping people get into the workforce versus letting them get full benefits, Yes. Let's have that conversation.

No thanks. I do not want to discuss "improvements helping people get into the workforce" with someone who cannot read a graph, asserts the Sandistas were not allowed to compete in the 1990 election of Nicaragua, does not know the difference between "median" and "mean," and thinks "Jorgen" is Jorb running around killing noobs. And it is precisely because people like Claeyt are the ones running the welfare state that I am against it. When the US has an estimated 50 million people living below the poverty line, yet spends $550 billion on anti-poverty measures ($11,000 per person,) and still has people living in squalor, the US tax payer is not getting good value for his money. When I get poor value for my money, I am inclined to spend less. When I get good value for my money I am willing to spend more...Let's compromise and just give them (the poor) the money.

[Kandarim]

When the US has an estimated 50 million people living below the poverty line, yet spends $550 billion on anti-poverty measures ($11,000 per person,) and still has people living in squalor, the US tax payer is not getting good value for his money. When I get poor value for my money, I am inclined to spend less. When I get good value for my money I am willing to spend more...Let's compromise and just give them (the poor) the money.

i haven't read this thread thoroughly, but i'll just link this.

[MagicManICT]

As for her 7500 tax credit. Anybody gets that in America for having 2 kids, the cutoff for the Child Tax credit is 110,000 dollars.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-Child-Tax-Credit

This is what people complain about. Your statement doesn't align with the facts. In order to get that full 7500 USD, you have to be the working poor. You make under a certain amount, and you don't qualify for as much, if any, because it's figured you have non-taxable income or assistance (such as welfare or disability). There's an earnings table to figure out how much tax credit you get just like the table to see how much you pay in taxes based on your earned income. It's why it is called the "earned income credit"--it encourages those that are underpaid to get out and find better employment. At that point, the person should be out of dead end jobs, have a position with some sort of advancement or training possibility for an even better living.

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p596/apa.html

As you can see, those who make nothing get little or nothing. The max amount of EIC for 2012 taxes is 5891 if you were single or head of household, which was an EARNED income (after all deductions) of 13,050 to 17,100.

My brother works at Wal-Mart and his wife works near full-time. I think they make about $40k a year between them and they get much less than half of that with 3 kids. The only state assistance they qualified for was daycare.

COULD my brother have a better job? Definitely. He's a college graduate, and so is she, but by the time he graduated college, he had been at his job long enough that it would have been about 25% cut in pay to take an entry level job in his field of study. If he had went that route, he probably would be making $60-70k+ a year (assuming he still had a job and didn't get laid off in this nasty ass economy we've had for 5+ years now). However, this kind of accentuates the point I made earlier about limited choices and such and the "slave to the system" that has developed. Of course, we can play the woulda-coulda-shoulda game all day.

Also: must be nice to be the multimillionaire and be able to pay relatively low taxes on income. If stories are true, then some of these guys pay in the single digits as a percent of total income. I think my last year I was single (filing for myself only and no dependents) I paid in more than Romney did based on percentage of income (based on information released by his campaign). I have never made enough to be considered more than working class. I'd make some stink about how I could do more with that money as a "percentage of my income," but I was effectively living at home and going to school. It would have just gone on more Magic cards or a trip to a tournament.

i haven't read this thread thoroughly, but i'll just link this.

I like Forbes, and that headline is one of the reasons why. Not sure if I should be laughing or crying....

edit: read the article, and you can't really count medicaid as reducing poverty, as was finally stated in the end. It makes for better health and life for the poor, but it doesn't pay the other bills, just makes sure people don't end up in bankruptcy court every few years from outrages medical expenses. It would end up the tax payers footing the bill, anyway, and this is just cheaper (at least according to the pundits). But why not give every person making under X amount a year a yearly stipend? We could certainly afford it as a nation. Maybe we could demand something in return.... like work? OMG!! That'd be socialist!!!

[wormcsa]

This is what people complain about. Your statement doesn't align with the facts.

I'm glad to see MagicManICT also understands what riles me (and others) about Claeyt.

COULD my brother have a better job? Definitely. He's a college graduate, and so is she, but by the time he graduated college, he had been at his job long enough that it would have been about 25% cut in pay to take an entry level job in his field of study. If he had went that route, he probably would be making $60-70k+ a year (assuming he still had a job and didn't get laid off in this nasty ass economy we've had for 5+ years now). However, this kind of accentuates the point I made earlier about limited choices and such and the "slave to the system" that has developed. Of course, we can play the woulda-coulda-shoulda game all day.

Not too sure what to make of this- except that perhaps your brother enjoyed his current job, despite the (ultimate) lower pay. In which case, god bless him. Otherwise, it was his choice that led to his less than ideal situation...what exactly do you propose? I too have made choices that in the long run may turn out to be unwise. But at least they were my choices. I feel a lot of sympathy for someone who makes the wrong choices. But ultimately, I feel much more strongly about someone whose unfortunate decisions are the result of someone else's bad decisions. A trivial example here is how bad you feel about a drunk driver driving himself into a pond versus a child killed on the street by a different drunk driver. Most people would feel pity for both, but significantly more so for the child. I think you can apply this statement to the role of government, and draw your own conclusions.

Also: must be nice to be the multimillionaire and be able to pay relatively low taxes on income. If stories are true, then some of these guys pay in the single digits as a percent of total income. I think my last year I was single (filing for myself only and no dependents) I paid in more than Romney did based on percentage of income (based on information released by his campaign). I have never made enough to be considered more than working class.

I do agree that something is apparently not working as intended. However, dividends and so forth are not really the same as "earned income." Theoretically before you pay a capital gains/dividend, the money you invest has already been taxed when you earned it, and then is taxed again by the corporate tax. Thus, the capital gains tax (15%) is the third tax. In practice, however, we have a whole industry of intelligent people whose sole raison d'être is to minimize tax exposure, which I think is scandalous. And so we have people like Romney who seemed to "earn" his income, but paid a very low tax rate (not quite single digit, but whatever.) Both left leaning and conservative economists have come up with proposals that would lower the taxes across the board, eliminate entirely the corporate tax, remove deductions of all kinds, and equalize the capital gains tax with the income tax. Only the first part would help wealthy Americans. Corporate taxes are mostly passed on to the consumers, and deductions are mostly used by the wealthy (and especially corporations.) You could design this to keep the wealthy paying the same amount of taxes (as Romney essentially suggested,) or with the wealthy paying more (as Obama has essentially suggested.) The fact that this sort of tax reform has not come it pass, despite widespread academic and political support, is mostly a reflection on people being fiscally conservative in principle but not on specifics. "Remove the rich's deductions, but don't touch mine." "Capitalism and free trade, but don't you dare touch that farm subsidy my family and I are (apparently) dependent on!"

i haven't read this thread thoroughly, but i'll just link this.

I like Forbes, and that headline is one of the reasons why. Not sure if I should be laughing or crying....

edit: read the article, and you can't really count medicaid as reducing poverty, as was finally stated in the end. It makes for better health and life for the poor, but it doesn't pay the other bills, just makes sure people don't end up in bankruptcy court every few years from outrages medical expenses. It would end up the tax payers footing the bill, anyway, and this is just cheaper (at least according to the pundits).

Being able to rely on medicare should free the poor to use their money (that they would otherwise be using on medical related expenses) in other areas. Therefore, it is usually viewed as a method of poverty reduction. Yes with the figures of $550 billion and 50 million people, there is much with which to reasonably object, but I do think it suggests that we are doing something seriously wrong here.

But why not give every person making under X amount a year a yearly stipend? We could certainly afford it as a nation. Maybe we could demand something in return.... like work? OMG!! That'd be socialist!!!

Without the work part, it is precisely the solution Milton Friedman, and Charles Murray (and I) propose. And if Milton Friedman and Charles Murray agreed on something (in principle at least,) I can assure you it is not socialist. Adding the work part (for the government I assume,) yeah you're a communist

[Claeyt]

She's just above the poverty line.

As usual Claeyt is wrong. I know of no metric where a family of three is above the US poverty line at $15,062. In 2013 (presumably not too different from 2012,) the federal poverty guideline for a family of three was $19,530. If he meant single person then it was $11,490, in which case she was significantly (31%) above.

I forgot she had two kids instead of one. Either way my points the same.

Not surprisingly, he also missed the point of the photo. It was showing a $7,518 as "Amount to be Refunded," after showing she had paid $4 in taxes. As in the federal government was sending her a check for that amount as a sort of negative income tax, not as a refund on taxes already paid. This, as far as I am aware, does not occur- the photo is either highly misleading or a fake.

It clearly says Credit which probably includes the EITC or the Child tax credit.

Is there room for improvements to helping people get into the workforce versus letting them get full benefits, Yes. Let's have that conversation.

No thanks. I do not want to discuss "improvements helping people get into the workforce" with someone who cannot read a graph, asserts the Sandistas were not allowed to compete in the 1990 election of Nicaragua, does not know the difference between "median" and "mean," and thinks "Jorgen" is Jorb running around killing noobs. And it is precisely because people like Claeyt are the ones running the welfare state that I am against it. When the US has an estimated 50 million people living below the poverty line, yet spends $550 billion on anti-poverty measures ($11,000 per person,) and still has people living in squalor, the US tax payer is not getting good value for his money. When I get poor value for my money, I am inclined to spend less. When I get good value for my money I am willing to spend more...Let's compromise and just give them (the poor) the money.

Keep trolling jackass. I clearly read the graph right, and I knew the difference between median and mean. You misunderstood the argument and jumped in for no reason other than to argue about nothing. The Sandinistas were not allowed to campaign throughout the country and the election was influenced by the Contras saying that if the Sandinistas won that they'd start the war again. Jorgen is running around killing noobs with chief and the tribe according to several people who listened in on their vent. As for giving poor people money to get out of poverty, would you rather direct it to health care and food or just hand them the cash. It seems like spending it on medicaid, food stamps and HuD is a much better use of our taxes while being the same amount.

i haven't read this thread thoroughly, but i'll just link this.

As a Belgian, I'm sure you guys spend much more on the poor and unemployed and you guys live longer too. I'll say it again. We can spend 550 billion a year to provide health insurance, food assistance and housing assistance not to get people out of poverty. I think the directed assistance is the better option. What exactly are you guys arguing that we do, just pass out cash on the street?

As for her 7500 tax credit. Anybody gets that in America for having 2 kids, the cutoff for the Child Tax credit is 110,000 dollars.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-Child-Tax-Credit

This is what people complain about. Your statement doesn't align with the facts. In order to get that full 7500 USD, you have to be the working poor. You make under a certain amount, and you don't qualify for as much, if any, because it's figured you have non-taxable income or assistance (such as welfare or disability). There's an earnings table to figure out how much tax credit you get just like the table to see how much you pay in taxes based on your earned income. It's why it is called the "earned income credit"--it encourages those that are underpaid to get out and find better employment. At that point, the person should be out of dead end jobs, have a position with some sort of advancement or training possibility for an even better living.

I never said they'd get the full amount if they have a high income. I just meant that they still got some Child tax credit. Her 7500 could include a lot of different credits as well, not just the EITC.

Also: must be nice to be the multimillionaire and be able to pay relatively low taxes on income. If stories are true, then some of these guys pay in the single digits as a percent of total income. I think my last year I was single (filing for myself only and no dependents) I paid in more than Romney did based on percentage of income (based on information released by his campaign). I have never made enough to be considered more than working class. I'd make some stink about how I could do more with that money as a "percentage of my income," but I was effectively living at home and going to school. It would have just gone on more Magic cards or a trip to a tournament.

Romney would pay more in other more rational countries that consider Capital Gains as regular income.

Romney Magic.jpg (43.13 KiB) Viewed 4466 times

I do agree that something is apparently not working as intended. However, dividends and so forth are not really the same as "earned income." Theoretically before you pay a capital gains/dividend, the money you invest has already been taxed when you earned it, and then is taxed again by the corporate tax. Thus, the capital gains tax (15%) is the third tax. In practice, however, we have a whole industry of intelligent people whose sole raison d'être is to minimize tax exposure, which I think is scandalous. And so we have people like Romney who seemed to "earn" his income, but paid a very low tax rate (not quite single digit, but whatever.) Both left leaning and conservative economists have come up with proposals that would lower the taxes across the board, eliminate entirely the corporate tax, remove deductions of all kinds, and equalize the capital gains tax with the income tax. Only the first part would help wealthy Americans. Corporate taxes are mostly passed on to the consumers, and deductions are mostly used by the wealthy (and especially corporations.) You could design this to keep the wealthy paying the same amount of taxes (as Romney essentially suggested,) or with the wealthy paying more (as Obama has essentially suggested.) The fact that this sort of tax reform has not come it pass, despite widespread academic and political support, is mostly a reflection on people being fiscally conservative in principle but not on specifics. "Remove the rich's deductions, but don't touch mine." "Capitalism and free trade, but don't you dare touch that farm subsidy my family and I are (apparently) dependent on!"

...or we could just count it as earned income instead. Most investment income doesn't start with earned income in any shape or form. It's inherited, it's given as a bonus, It's given as a dividend, or it's given as a replacement for earned income (such as Romney's). We agree that the system is broken and needs major repairs but the Republicans won't agree to it. Simply count any Capital Gains as earned income or at Pre-Reagan taxed amounts and levels and the problem is half solved.

But why not give every person making under X amount a year a yearly stipend? We could certainly afford it as a nation. Maybe we could demand something in return.... like work? OMG!! That'd be socialist!!!

Without the work part, it is precisely the solution Milton Friedman, and Charles Murray (and I) propose. And if Milton Friedman and Charles Murray agreed on something (in principle at least,) I can assure you it is not socialist.

You guys are both missing the point of the 550 billion. Magic even mentioned it in his post. His brother's family receives subsidized daycare so that he and his wife can work. Other families receive medicaid so that they can function with health problems. Both of these programs are designed to help people work, not to prevent them from working or allow them to not work. Other programs like food stamps and Housing subsidies are designed as a base level of assistance for the poor. You guys keep talking like medicaid and these other programs are optional. They're not if we want a functioning society without abject ghetto-ized poverty. As an example; Fully 9.5% of all medicaid spending goes to Mental Health assistance.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/22/1/101.full

You can't just hand them cash and $11,000 doesn't get them out of poverty, it just maintains it.

[wormcsa]

I'm going to try this one more time, just in case someone still doesn't get it...

I forgot she had two kids instead of one. Either way my points the same.

I'm not sure what your point was. But I know my point is the same- when you read something written by Claeyt you don't learn anything except what is explicitly not true.

Keep trolling jackass. I clearly read the graph right,

Real Median Income is down now to pre-Reagan numbers

You included this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
Does not say what you say it says, full stop. Median income in the graph you posted while making this claim never drops to pre-Reagan numbers. You clearly did not "read the graph right."

and I knew the difference between median and mean.

Talking about median:

When you adjust for the massive income growth for the richest tax percentiles and take them out you can see the fall of middle class wages to pre-Reagan amounts.

The median is the 50th percentile. If you take out the top 1% (no idea why you would do that to a median,) the new median becomes the 49.5th percentile. Do you have some specific evidence that the 49.5th percentile has done much worse than the 50th percentile? Please share with us then.

Average household income, median income levels or average wages. Whatever you use they're down since the Bush Tax cuts and at or below their levels in the 80's.

When you remove the top 1% of income earners you see that everyone else is down to pre-Reagan numbers. True this wouldn't be the median income. I should have said average income or average wages.

You'd take out the richest 1% to show the massive distortion the rise in their incomes has on the median income.

Again, I'll use average income this time instead of median income. When you factor the average income without the top 1% of income earners, the adjusted average income has fallen to pre-Reagan levels.

The third statement just does not make sense if you know what a "median" is. If this applied to averages, then the statement could possibly be true, it just so happens it isn't. If you take the average income, something no one really uses, and take away the top 1% you get the following graph, which also does not support your assertion that "average income" is down to pre-Reagan levels. And this one isn't even close:
http://www.the-crises.com/income-inequa ... -the-us-3/
You are simply not competent to even talk about the generalities of the argument, let alone the specifics.

You misunderstood the argument and jumped in for no reason other than to argue about nothing.

I misunderstood nothing. You made factual claims that I showed not to be true. I did not enter your argument.

The Sandinistas were not allowed to campaign throughout the country and the election was influenced by the Contras saying that if the Sandinistas won that they'd start the war again.

The first part is false. The Sandinistas were allowed to campaign in the country they were at the time running. Have you ever posted a source to support this ludicrous claim (which by the way was preceded by two other equally nonsensical claims about the situation in 1980s Nicaragua.) Here, I will spend two seconds on google looking....done, I found only this:
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1989-0 ... atest-poll
Contemporary article says the exact opposite of your claim.
The second part is did the threat of the war continuing persuade some people to vote for the opposition? I am sure it did, but it is the first time you mentioned it, and it is irrelevant to the factual claim you made that the Sandinistas were not allowed to campaign, while in control of the country's media, police and army. In fact, if anything, it was the opposition who was not allowed to campaign freely.

Jorgen is running around killing noobs with chief and the tribe according to several people who listened in on their vent.

After all the trolling Chief has done, the fact that you believed this speaks volumes of your capacity for critical thinking.

As for giving poor people money to get out of poverty, would you rather direct it to health care and food or just hand them the cash. It seems like spending it on medicaid, food stamps and HuD is a much better use of our taxes while being the same amount.

There are a variety of ideas, if you really want to know one, click on the youtube link. You seem to fancy yourself an expert on the topic, shouldn't you be at least aware of other ideas?

You can't just hand them cash and $11,000 doesn't get them out of poverty, it just maintains it.

The point is they can use the money as they see fit, not as Claeyt does. Sure, the government could force them to use $3,000 on medical insurance, if that would make the lefties agree. But how would you feel if person A gave person B some money to spend on you? And what if person B was Claeyt? I suggest that, on average, they make better decisions for themselves than some bureaucrat will for them. And if they don't at least it will be their own fault.
Most European countries actually do give cash, instead of stuff, as is done in the US. So families who are considered too poor to afford food are given money to buy food as opposed to food stamps, because it's more cost effective. But you wouldn't know this because you are a charlatan- You pretend to be an expert on something about which you know next to nothing.