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If it is unfair to tax corporate derived capital gains, as they "have already been taxed" as part of corporate income, then why should my wages be taxed since they were derived from the same revenue source?
What a load of hooey. This idea that somehow any taxes theoretically paid by the source of your paycheck should count as taxes you pay is simply crap, and has no basis in reality economics. The same source as the "double taxation" garbage.
Let's see, I pay federal and state income taxes, social security and medicare taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, tolls, licensing fees, sales taxes, hotel taxes. That's taxing my income 10 times so far...I'm sure there are more. Add in, by his logic, any taxes paid by my employer and the employer share of FICA and unemployment taxes. I'm taxed at least 13 times on my income.
In short, it's a straw-man arguement, a shell game, that sounds logical, but is simply a deception to protect the wealth of the top 1%. Completely rediculous. And fell completely apart when Thom described dividends and gains from corporations that pay no income taxes at all, and long-term, not just short-term.
Hum, um, uh. Curtis DuBay doesn't really know where to get to, does he? LOL
Then he says that's ancient history and doesn't apply to today. Liar!
Curtis DuBay slipped in a fallacy. Capital is not used to pay wages; revenue is where wages come from once a company gets going.
The strategically timed resignation of Supreme Court justices is another reason to support the idea I had of how to appoint them. You could get another situation like we had from 1969 to 1993. Jimmy Carter never got to nominate anyone, and he was preceded by 2 Republican terms and followed by 3. So for 6 Presidential terms (24 years) all Supreme Court justices were nominated by Republican Presidents.
So the plan is this. At the beginning of each Presidential term, the President gets a freebie nomination.To make up for the increase in the size of the court that this would cause, the President doesn't get to replace the third vacancy that arises during each term.
In order to encourage the Senate to hold a vote as soon as possible, this spontaneous vacancy would count as a seat for determining a majority in court decisions. Another encouragement would be to make nominations be automatically confirmed if the Senate doesn't bother to vote on them within 75 days. (I chose that span of time to match the delay between the election and the inauguration.) I think that rule would do us some good right now if applied to all Presidential nominations.
The Supreme Court would not stay the same size, and would occasionally have an even number, but the Congress can regulate (!) the court to say things like "a split decision leads to not overturning a lower court's ruling", etc.
Mitt Romney may as well have sung George Carlin's lyrics:
O beautiful for smoggy skies
Insecticided grain
For strip-mined mountain's majesty
Above the asphalt plain
America, America,
Man sheds his waste on thee
And hides the pines with billboard signs
From sea to oily sea
Some Perspective:
Recently, the political world has been all abuzz about the billionaire,Sheldon Adelson, donating $10 million dollars to fund Newt Gingrich's run for the Presidency. Just to put this in perspective, imagine that instead of Sheldon being worth $21 billion he was instead worth just $21 thousand. That would be like him donating $10 to Newt ... or basically the cost of a modest lunch for one.
People keep arguing that "they have already paid taxes on that money". Please straighten me out. They haven't paid taxes on the gains. ? They have only paid taxes on the original earnings from wages. ? Isn't the capital gains tax on the gains over the investment?
Overall, the income disparity is still an issue of the wealth having power. They only have that wealth because the 99% buys into what they are selling.
Seems to me the "simplest" answer is for all of the 99% to stop wanting to be rich, start living in simplicity. Cut out diamonds, gold, excess technical crutches, stop shopping at Wallymart, start personal and community gardens, start helping each other with time instead of money.
too naive?
Re: Are Libertarians real conservatives?
It seems to me that Libertarians are more progressive than the democratic party. Both Democratic and Republican parties are Hamiltonian big government parties. Both parties are pro Wall Street Bailouts, Pro War, and anti civil liberties.
Re: Free Markets
Under the Libertarian free market, there would not have been any Wall Street Bailouts.
BTW, I am not a Libertarian. I am a progressive who has lost faith in the Democratic party. Unending, perpetual war, and the loss of my civil liberties are what matters most to me.
I just thought the civil war probably was a mistake and instead we should have said: "Who else wants to go?" Because it never seems to end -- we're still in the cold civil war, since the end of the hot one.
To think of all the distress in Florida............ I'd love to rather concentrate on Detroit and help economy and people there.Maybe within a United States with two federations -- still cooperating, but pretty much following different ideas?
Actually it's silly (and this goes for me too) if we focus on president Obama so much. As we all know, any Democracy is based on a parliament -- this country on Congress, which actually is a parliament as well. And if people utter, they hate Congress, they literally hate their own guts. So if I started amateur-campaigning for the Democratic Party team, I tended to focus on Obama, for you can hardly sell any Congress team to common people.
Referring to Obama, a few psychological human attitudes are to consider. Disappointed friends, lovers, or fans often develop unjustified hate. People are able to hate an ex-lover or ex-friend more than their worst enemy. Especially if people feel betrayed -- justified or not -- they can act senselessly destructive, even self-destructive.
People are often talking as if Barack Obama was an absolute ruler, like the sunking, and that's crazy. Even average kings hadn't that much power in the past; they were pretty much depending on a parliament and above all jealously watched by their 'state rulers'. Obama just signs, he can veto, he has some options to start something against Congress, but after all Congress can refuse the money he depends on to dare something like that.
But of course the president represents as popular face, communicating to the people. Countless times Obama asked the American people to help him. I heard this as call to revolt against Congress and renew democracy. But democracy is not absolute -- there isn't any absolute Democracy in the world. We call this system Democracy, but it's not working. Because the majority is not informed and not even interested enough in politics.
Working in this system is checks & balances -- division and separation of power(s). This actually is the most important thing in this system, called "democracy". Why? Because any human is not to trust. We know that, the Bible says it and is right in this point. You can call it sinful, or just selfish. Mitt Romney calls it: "Greed is good!" That's why checks & balances is the most important aspect in our system.
This checks & balances system, called democracy, is threatened by corporate greed. And that is the threat. In Europe they watch, prevent and fight monopolies much more effectively. Because monopolies are very dangerous.
Clarissa: Depressed why? What about my post depresses you? The call to arms?
These people will NEVER listen to reason. And they have low dupes who uphold and worship at their feet--like the PAID jerks who enter blog discussions with no reasoned or thoughtful replies or solutions--just conservative (close-minded--I think the term "conservative intellectual" is an oxymoron, myself, because intellect is not static, but a growing, living, expanding thing--something the word conservative does not stand for) schoolyard bully taunts meant to shut up and close down thoughtful discourse.
The man who makes peaceful protest impossible, makes violent revolution possible.
John F. Kennedy
I started on Blogspot, surrounded by Ginger Roger fans. The intellectual message of Ginger, as actress, is no message at all. Those Ginger fans are in a way nice, but their sharing "Gingery" photos is simply superficial. These folks are shockingly apolitical and uncritical. My best pals were southern Baptists. These people really taught me to hate images.
I happen to be a tap dancer, so Ginger meant something to me. But today she's a stranger to me. My blog had always focused on the progressive actress Jean Arthur and some of those Ginger fans liked that, because they felt Jean was very beautiful as well. It was useless to stress Jean's political and highly intellectual aspects -- they mainly admired her pretty and cute faces I added via DVD screen shots. My best pals encouraged me to post more images and I constantly reminded them I felt more like a newspaper than a picture book. Today I find these 'nice' people disgusting. I scared them away with politics, by occupying my own blog.
And it is really so, that the masses of googlers look for images. My most popular image was this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QoZoEcxXdnU/Thck3ZZWGmI/AAAAAAAABI0/W6xEmyCRfUU/s1600/BaroqueAngel.JPG
The headline was "Bunch of Hooey", the caption "Baroque angel — how much nudity can our civilization take?" and the issue "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934). My take was very critical, so I felt abused by those probably unpolitical angel-googlers. They really made me mad, so finally I spoiled their pretty angel with a political parole.
To show my above musical instruments makes sense indeed, after recording music for the blog -- at first each single wind instrument, my original camera shots in high resolution. Soon googlers were especially after my cornet. There I was again an unpolitical institution for sharing unpolitical images. That's why I combined them all in one collage and again added paroles.
I am actually trying to educate people. I take away whatever they tend to use in unpolitical ways and add more message instead. And I'm less generous in things high resolution. I agree, a cornet looks very pretty -- but if it's all about neatness.... please count me out.
Big Mac Index is published by
The Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power
parity (PPP) between two currencies and provides a test of the extent
to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in
different countries.Index used to measure the purchasing power between
two currencies by evaluating the prices of McDonald's famous Big Mac
sandwich in its restaurants across the world. The data is published
every spring by The Economist.
Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from private organizations (as is the case in Canada) or may own and employ healthcare resources and personnel (as is the case in the UK). The term "single-payer" thus only describes the funding mechanism—referring to health care financed by a single public body from a single fund—and does not specify the type of delivery, or for whom doctors work. Although the fund holder is usually the state, some forms of single-payer use a mixed public-private system..
verdura a domicilio
*Friendship isn't about whom you have known the longest..it's about who came,and never left your side..*
An Alternative to Capitalism (if the people knew about it, they would demand it)
Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed: "There is no alternative". She was referring to capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still persists.
I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism for the American people to consider. Please click on the following link. It will take you to an essay titled: "Home of the Brave?" which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."~Albert Einstein
They need to pick a side.. 6 months ago I was leading the charge to **not** vote for blue dogs.. But I will vote for obama again (I think the ofc of the president is the exception)..
I think we should focus our resources, and work hard in the primaries to get real democrats on the ballot in the first place.. And then not vote for house/senate or governer blue dogs..
Hard choices, because we very likely end up with a extreme right winger in the blue dogs place.. And this will not wake up the voters (they have too much propaganda, fake news, etc in place).. But, the other side of the coin is that if we keep voting for blue dogs, it will be business as usual..
It frightens me on this issue when someone has a clear idea what to do.. I feel this is a critical strategy point, and we should think hard on it..
Wow-is this ever unacceptable BS!!! The über rich invester class have always benefitted from a tax rate that is half of the payroll tax, plus exemption from paying into social security on any income over $100,000 a yr.We the poor are being squezed to the point of bursting!!!
Wonderful college town, Ft. Collins! I wonder if they are still pickin' and pluckin' at that bar on the corner. I have forgotten the name of the bar but it was very pleasurable to hear so many gifted musicians that just showed up and joined in. That local brew was very memorable as well. And believe it or not I was just thinking about Ft. Collins even before I read your piece. Must be psychic! I went from thinking about the Arabic lady I assisted in a laundromat in Grenoble to the banjos and fiddles I heard in Ft Collins. Now...that's "off topic"! The other thoughts in my head have been encrypted...sorry!
Too many voters are single issue thinkers - which is another way of saying they are thinking only of themselves and not evaluating what are the needs of the country. Very sad and very childish. If we want to survive and become a mature nation we need a grown-up at the helm and an educated population - neither of which the GOP is invested in.
CS: merci beaucoup! I'm in good company. We all really want the same thing and are all, bottom line, fighting for the same things although we may have differing views on the means to get there. Ron Paul scares me too! He's got some good ideas but also some very bad ideas. And even what we think may be good ideas...may just be political lies but that holds for all politicians.
I have felt for many years now that this country was headed for a full revolution. I pray that will not be necessary, but the oligarchs are pushing very hard these days and are not even subtle about it like they once were. I find it very sad indeed that people on this planet are forced time and time again to fight for basic human rights.
It's sad that most of their supporters aren't even aware of this fact.
I hope my comment above is on topic. I do not know who pays for Ron Pauls adds but they are very different from his speech.
I went and saw Ron Paul speak this morning in Ft. Collins Co. There were some campaign adds screened right before he came on . These adds were all about taxes,spending,and the debt. I was all set to walk out during his speech when he went in this direction.....but he didn't. It was very good and very populist. He spoke mostly of cutting "military spending" (not defense) and how we shouldn't be policing the entire world. (this got a big,loud,standing ovation). He spoke of personal liberties and how bad the patriot act is but, only hinted at lowering taxes.
I really noticed the difference between his speech and the campaign adds