Economy
 

The problem, stated in 2:15.
<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JTzMqm2TwgE?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JTzMqm2TwgE?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>

Re: Economy
 

How about these two changes?

1) Treat ALL income as simple income. Long term capital gains, short term capital gains, gifts, inheritances and wages are ALL subject to the same tax rate. NO exceptions.

2) Remove the income ceiling cap on Social Security taxes instead of the current 118k$ and make ALL income subject to that tax.

Those two changes alone would generate a minimum of 250 Billion $ (and possibly more) of additional tax revenue.

But hey, maybe the government should stop OVERSPENDING for once. Get spending under control instead of burdening taxpayers with higher taxes just to pay for programs that are just a waste of freaking money.

Re: Economy
 

Solutions to the problem....:
Remove politics from equation; for example - no more campaign donations, instead every candidate from bob the homeless drunk to the super rich gets an equal amount of air time in the media.
Remove the idea that taxes are the solution; instead force all employees to have maximum wages that are based on the average wage of an employee of the company. Eg a 30 person company has average 12.4$ an hour, therefore no other employee is allowed to make more than 25$ in that company. Very simple - as the amount that the average employee gets paid goes up, so does the amount the above average employee does.

Re: Economy
 

Personally, I don't see how we can expect politicians to fundraise and NOT engage in self-dealing, fraud, etc. You cannot expect someone to spend 25-40% of their time asking people for money and then not be beholden to those people.

As it currently is, politics is for sale. Quite literally. I look at Blago and just laugh - his only problem was being honest about what politicians do.

This notion that money is speech -- it's those with money that created that -- Ta Da!! Surprise, surprise.

Everyone who can raise the required signatures to get on a ticket should be given a set amount of money to spend. No one should be allowed to solicit contributions for their campaign. You can't stop private groups from still forming to support politicians with ideas they agree with -- but stop the flow of money to and through the politicians themselves. Then it would become all about speech -- real speech, not who can pass who money under the table.

I want J. Bullworth to run for senante, I'd vote for him. Then if only Jed Bartlet could be President, lol.

Re: Economy
 

Here's a thought, and a great way to keep not so upstanding citizens from getting elected into public offices; don't pay them. They are public servants, not ruling lords. As such, they are not entitled to gross amounts of money to do a job that they professed to want to do. The only thing they should get paid is transportation. They should not be drawing a paycheck, and while I'm not sure that House and Senate reps get retirement checks, or severance pay, what ever it is that the PotUS gets at the end of their terms, if it's current policy to pay that, then stop paying it.

This will put people who want to serve the people in office to do just that, instead of serving their special interest groups. I view all politicians the same way, I don't care what side of the aisle they are on. They aren't doing their job to better my life, they are doing their job to better their own. This is all well and good, when you work at McDonald's, or Boeing, but when your job is to protect the quality of life of citizens, how much money your Insurance/Oil Company/Drug Company reps are paying you, publicly or privately...

Until something like this happens, our economy isn't going to improve, because in their eyes, the best way to improve it is to give themselves a raise, at our expense.

Re: Economy
 

I hear that in Australia, China is buying up FARMLAND everywhere to convert it into Coalmines?!?!?! Australia's Green party is getting hell for it. And no carbon taxes I bet.
China is taking advantage of ALL of our poor economies and buying up the planet.. its crazy...

China will mine coal in Australia, and sell it back to Australia... wow.

Re: Economy
 

<font color=plum>Cute video. Just a few major flaws in his presentation.

Of course, the solution is "Tax the super rich" rather than Congress actually choosing to NOT continuously overspend. The highest tax rate in 1980 was 70%. Personally, that is INSANE by any measure and I don't blame the super rich (or anyone else) for balking against it. That destroys the incentive for capitalism.

In 1980, only 10% of the population were super rich. That has grown to 20%. That means the number of super rich (and, thus the opportunities to [i]become super rich) have more than doubled. The percent is doubled, but the actual population numbers have increased, so 20% of current population is more than double 10% of 1980 population. In 70's and 80's, the status of "super rich" was reserved primarily for those that already came from money. While average Americans might become well off or even wealthy, very few had the opportunity to truly become "super rich" from humble beginnings. Bill Gates would never have reached that rank in the 70s.

Capital gains and other measures have always been tools for investors and the wealthy to use to reduce their tax burden. Laws could be changed now that our financial structures and opportunities have changed, but a tax rate of 35% on the super rich is still pretty reasonable, in my opinion.

The BIGGEST flaw in the presentation, though, is the assertion that the middle class does not have the power to borrow and spend money, which has led to an anemic recovery. That is just outright ignorance. One of the biggest reasons our economy is so bad is precisely BECAUSE the middle class was given MORE borrowing power than they could actually afford. They DID spend that money very freely and the economy boomed for awhile, UNTIL those loans started coming due and the middle class suddenly could keep up with ALL the payments they had incurred through reckless spending. THAT led to massive defaults on the bad loans which ultimately led to the gov't bailout of the banks and finance companies that made the bad loans.

No, the middle class can't afford to borrow NOW, that's because most of them still aren't able to pay for the money they borrowed in the past that led to the economic downturn.

I will concede that the super rich use their wealth to buy political favor and leverage. Of course, this has always been true in our economy, it just has become more blatant in the last few decades. Laws have been put in place to restrict and limit that influence, but there are always loopholes around those laws.

Still, it is easy for the lower and middle classes to blame all their ills on the super rich rather than accept the fact they are responsible for their own situations.</font>

Re: Economy
 

One of the first lessons I learned about finance, I learned when I was 11 or 12, and that is, you can't spend more money than you have. While the loan situation is blatantly obvious, simply levying taxes, or more taxes against the "super rich" isn't going to help. The Gov't will simply elect to spend that money too. Until they quit overextending our money to the point where they are, in a very real sense, stealing money from us to pay their debts there is no way to fix the economy.

I don't blame the super rich for the gov't cutting programs that are essential to me. I blame the gov't not being able to stop spending money they don't have, and then stealing money that I paid to them all my working life for my "retirement" to pay for highway construction that should have been paid for by gasoline taxes. That money evidently went to pay for Congressman A's lavish vacation, er, I mean international summit in Hawaii, or where-ever. Until these kinds of things are fixed, no amount of taxing will solve anything, because their vacations/summits will just become all the more expensive.

Re: Economy
 

Well, see you hear this alot especially when the tea-party types are talking about the debt they are suddenly concerned about - not lumping you in with them whackos at all btw, just made me think of them as an example.

At 11 or 12 this is a good rule of thumb for a kid to manage his pocket-money or what have you. But as we get older, we learn that finances aren't so simplistic in how they function in the world. Indeed, America is built on borrowing money to create something better. Mortgages for example. Only a very small percentage of the world has the money to purchase their house up front. The rest of us do indeed "borrow from Peter to pay Paul". Otherwise, we'd have nowhere to live. Or no cars to drive. Or credit cards. Or tabs. The list goes on. We're happy to take the risk of losing these things years down the line in exchange for the instant gratification of having them now.

I understand you make a larger point and that there's a context involved in that paragraph. There are concerns that this money may not be returned which is in some ways, a valid concern. But then, we have the same concerns when committing to a house for 25 years.

Re: Economy
 

Good point. EXCEPT that most mortgage holders are able to make their payments without additional borrowing (except for those that overextended on sub-prime mortgages). So the principal of NOT overspending applies EVEN if you ARE servicing a large debt whether it be a car, house, appliances or even credit cards. You spend what you can afford and that applies to assuming debt as well.