my insults are not random. They're very specific. You're uneducated trash who's not smart enough to understand the links you posted. :thumbsup

Icing on the Cake..

$2 billion price tag for presidential election
http://news.yahoo.com/2-billion-pric...-election.html

I disagree with that completely.

12clicks is like a precision chainsaw in a scalpel environment. He cuts faster and more accurately through the BS than anyone else that has ever posted here.

Relentless..thanks for the warning. I didn't see the picture until well after breakfast.

A nice op-ed piece by Peter Schiff this morning in the WSJ comparing 1950's taxes with todays.

"In 1958, an 81% marginal tax rate applied to incomes above $1.08 million, and the 91% rate kicked in at $3.08 million. These figures are in unadjusted 1958 dollars and correspond today to nominal income levels that are at least 10 times higher. That year, according to Internal Revenue Service records, just 236 of the nation's 45.6 million tax filers had any income that was taxed at 81% or higher.

In 1958, approximately 28,600 filers (0.06% of all taxpayers) earned the $93,168 or more needed to face marginal rates as high as 30%. These Americans?genuinely wealthy by the standards of the day?paid 5.9% of all income taxes. And now? In 2010, 3.9 million taxpayers (2.75% of all taxpayers) were subjected to rates that were 33% or higher. These Americans?many of whom would hardly call themselves wealthy?reported an adjusted gross income of $209,000 or higher, and they paid 49.7% of all income taxes.

In contrast, the share of taxes paid by the bottom two-thirds of taxpayers has fallen dramatically over the same period. In 1958, these Americans accounted for 41.3% of adjusted gross income and paid 29% of all federal taxes. By 2010, their share of adjusted gross income had fallen to 22.5%. But their share of taxes paid fell far more dramatically?to 6.7%. The 77% decline represents the single biggest difference in the way the tax burden is shared in this country since the late 1950s.

In 1958, even the lowest-tier filers, which included everyone making up to $5,000 annually, were subjected to an effective 20% rate. Today, almost half of all tax filers have no income-tax liability whatsoever, and many "taxpayers" actually get a net refund from the government. Those nostalgic for 1950s-era "tax fairness" should bear this in mind."


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...554982808.html

was there a lot of offshore investments back in the 50s?

exactly right. The politicians have bread an ugly underbelly of noncontributing voters. never a good thing for a society.

Guess you didn't even read it huh?

"The tax code of the 1950s allowed upper-income Americans to take exemptions and deductions that are unheard of today. Tax shelters were widespread, and not just for the superrich. The working wealthy?including doctors, lawyers, business owners and executives?were versed in the art of creating losses to lower their tax exposure.

For instance, a doctor who earned $50,000 through his medical practice could reduce his taxable income to zero with $50,000 in paper losses or depreciation from property he owned through a real-estate investment partnership. Huge numbers of professionals signed up for all kinds of money-losing schemes. Today, a corresponding doctor earning $500,000 can deduct a maximum of $3,000 from his taxable income, no matter how large the loss.

Those 1950s gambits lowered tax liabilities but dissuaded individuals from engaging in the more beneficial activities of increasing their incomes and expanding their businesses. As a result, they were a net drag on the economy. When Ronald Reagan finally lowered rates in the 1980s, he did so in exchange for scrapping uneconomical deductions. When business owners stopped trying to figure out how to lose money, the economy boomed."

i read what you posted here. considering that was the only thing that was posted, i thought it was what you were thinking was important.

however, since we're going ot play this game:

and around the time you're quoting 'tax shelters' like it's offshore investments:

means that it's about this time that offshore investments/banks seem to really get started.

So how is a tax rate supposed to be effectively applied, if the 'worth' of the individual or company is kept offshore?

how does your article have any basis of relevancy, if it's trying to explain how the 'increased taxes won't do much good', if the real problems are even worse today than they were in the 1950s?

do business and live in north america? pay north american taxes.

if not, go move to Libya. potentially take it over.

Richard has this habit of painting a large red circle on his chest. Then he loads the gun for us and is stunned when people pull the trigger.

Look Righties - It's Your Hero Ronald Reagan!



https://youtube.com/watch?v=clyq0ZdHubM

what are you talking about? the article talks about 'tax shelters' and not offshore investments

You, didn't read it, huh?

edit: fuck, right, i forgot, you need this

Look Righties - It's Your Hero Ronald Reagan!



https://youtube.com/watch?v=KTBt5APga7Q

What? This is still a debate? Why isn't everyone busy filling all the jobs that the tax cuts have created? Get busy people, these are the times.

No matter what facts your rub in the bottom's nose, they'll never get it. That's why they're the bottom

In the 1950s and pre-computers, audits were nearly meaningless unless you were Al Capone. The amount of resources needed to actually audit a large company was absurd compared to the resources needed to hide assets. That has changed significantly in the digital age. If you watch Boardwalk Empire and find yourself understanding how much easier violent crimes were in an age before forensic science evolved, the age before forensic accounting was similar for tax evaders. Anyone asking to 'go back' to the 1950s hasn't studied history much. The 1950s are not a good goal, if they were we would have kept things status quo since then. The question is not what part of the past would you prefer to live in, the question is what will the future be like and how can we best steer our nation toward prosperity.

Again, anyone who thinks 2 or 3 points of one bracket of a single type of tax will have a profound impact on job creation or our debt is missing the big picture completely. Closing loopholes is a matter of fairness as much as finance, but the things that will determine our fate in this century have much more to do with large scale changes to the way productivity is measured and rewarded.

People worry about how much money illegal aliens earn at $1/hour off the books jobs by standing around in a home depot parking lot because they ship their income home to their families... and ignore the fact that massive corporations are doing the same thing with many billions of dollars annually. People ignore the fact that brick and mortar businesses can't compete with online merchants in part because of a tax advantage and also ignore the fact that the result is many fewer people needed to handle all of the retail business that used to employ a lot of what are now 'extra people.'

We will not have enough jobs for everyone who is willing to work because we can produce all we need with many fewer workers than at any time in history - and that will only continue to accelerate. Even competent people who work hard and put in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay will be unable to find a worthwhile job. Not because billionaires make money. Not because China is evil. Not because people are lazy and unwilling to be retrained. It will happen because we have become more advanced and our technological advancement is accelerating at an incredible pace. That MUST be addressed on a global level and on a national one.

In the meantime we have a short term problem of robber barons, who are not tied to any nation, raping the economies of entire countries the exact same way they have been raping states (by demanding insane tax incentives and gifts). We idiotically treat a company like Goldman Sachs as if it is somehow similar to a company that is tied to a community and provides jobs while generating equity for our economy. In fact, we get them a much better deal than we give most of the companies that actually do provide lasting benefits to our society. The days of guys like Hershey building entire towns and bringing them to prosperity are not done... but the companies doing that important work for our country have NOTHING to do with the multinational robber barons who are siphoning wealth into clandestine bank accounts in Luxembourg. The real battle is not between rich and poor, employer and employee, one tax bracket vs another.... the real battle is between parasites (at the high and low end) and producers.

The first step to fixing things is accurately defining those groups and deciding what to do with the growing segment of society comprised of people who are willing but unable to produce. Dealing with people who abuse the food stamp should be easy. Dealing with people who flood the gulf with oil should be easy. Figuring out what to do with everyone else is the hard part... but we are so busy acting like those first two groups are complicated that we never reach step two of the solution. Wealthy people aren't going to 'create jobs' because they get a tax break. We also aren't going to balance the tax base by moving 2 or 3 points around on one marginal tax rate. It's time to actually start addressing the problems and stop allowing asshats to direct our attention to meaningless symptoms instead.

And naturally you make another typical ___richard___quote about offshore investments.
If you are going to continue to fill the role of GFY jestor, at least try and be funny.

And BTW..did you ever figure out whether I was rich or just reasonable comfortable. I read your reply and like normal it made no sense.

care to explain what a 'typical' quote is?

i don't care if you're rich or just comfortable. you sit on an adult message board telling everyone how rich you are

that's all i need to know about you.

Based on Chris Rock's analysis you are 'rich' but you aren't 'wealthy.'
As he once said: Shaquille O'Neil is 'rich'... the white guy who signs his paychecks is 'wealthy' hahaha :winkwink:

Houdini presented FACTS, if you guys want to argue, you should do the same...
saying there are more "offshore investments" now is just an opinion, as is the statement: "audits were nearly meaningless"

those statements may be true, but without facts, statistics and/or sources it's nothing more than just an opinion...

It's a lack of confidence in the administration. Not knowing if Obamacare would stick, but knowing that this president spends like a drunken sailor has absolutely been the reason business is sitting on the sidelines keeping a close eye on the daily cash balances.

Now that we know we are stuck with this person, and will have to pony up more for healthcare and more than likely higher taxes we can make plans for it. I predict the economy will get a bit stronger in 2013...but the cost for that will be higher consumer prices across the board.

typical...is loose cannon..bordering on incomprehensible.

And you do care Richard. You entered this thread by attacking me,because I have a different perspective on things than you do. Keep that in mind.

I don't know your age... Ask anyone who was in business before computers were commonplace. Ask any accountant old enough to recall that era. Keeping two sets of books, shuffling money out of a cash business (even massive cash businesses like casinos) was much simpler before the IRS had computers. It's hard to get you a url about information regarding IRS audits in the 1950s and 1960s precisely because computers didn't exist then and tracking that data was just as hard as doing the audits. :1orglaugh

Now the IRS can target specific segments of society for audits and do pattern analysis. For example, see what percentage of income 'waitresses' reported as 'tips' nationwide, in one specific state, in one specific town, or from one specific restaurant chain if they want. Then they can see if one waitress is reporting much lower than in prior years or as compared to her industry. They don't have a guy sitting around doing that, they can run the whole analysis digitally and use the data to determine which segments of society to audit more aggressively. Add in the erosion of privacy laws with things like the Patriot Act and gathering data about a business being investigated becomes tremendously easier than in the era before computers existed.

These days people are not 'hiding' their income to avoid taxes, they are proudly reporting that they don't have to pay the tax on it because they have bought the politicians and had the tax code changed. Romney paid 13% and said so right on his return. The government likely knows what his actual income was... and has no problem with him paying 13% because he did so legally (by using a broken set of tax rules carefully made impotent by wealthy people for exactly that purpose). Illegal tax evasion is much less of a problem now than it was in the 1950s, legal obfuscation has replaced it.

Btw Woj, as a coder... are you unable to see why having computers and scripts would make it easier to audit a pool of 200+ Million tax filers? If computers are not useful for handling that kind of massive data, what exactly do you do for a living and why don't you try doing it without a computer? :pimp

Another lie from the rabble.

So small business leaders would feel "much more confident" if Bush was still in office? You know, right before he ran the economy into the ground and caused millions of Americans to loose their houses and jobs?

Or maybe small business leaders would feel "much more confident" if a former state governor who left office with a 34% approval rating would lead the country. LOL.

so you are claiming that tax evasion was rampant before computers? How bad was it exactly? High income earners were reporting 100k income, but really were making millions? how do you know? how does it compare to tax evasion now? It's all just speculation...

If it was more difficult to audit, then why wouldn't that effect lower income earners too? Like the example you pointed out, waitresses were able to cheat on taxes more easily? How can you be so sure that tax evasion wasn't actually more rampant among lower income groups?

without any statistics/facts to back things up, like I said, you are just stating an opinion...

i attacked you?

I stated you believe that you're rich. you tried insulting me using a reality that is solely based on the time we have had on this planet. who attacked who?

you can't understand what i am saying doesn't mean i am being incomprehensible

that just means you can't, or won't, understand.

do you.. understand.. what i am saying here old man?

What on earth does Bush have to do with any of this?

We may as well start talking about Teddy Roosevelt while we're at it.

Woj,

It was more prevalent with high income and low income earners. I didn't say it was rampant. I said it was much harder for anyone to do meaningful audits. If you want to be a waitress and under-report your tips, you'd be better off trying to do that in 1951 than in 2013 as far as the ability of the IRS to conduct an audit goes... You also would have had a much easier time killing a man with a bar stool and getting away with it in 1951 than in 2013 for much the same reasons. :2 cents:

Is this STUPID day at GFY? Seriously, who is even talking about George Bush besides you?

Let me be clear..


THIS ADMINISTRATION... Barack Hussein Obama, has spent more money than any other president in history. He has enacted a healthcare plan that will cost business people a fortune,no one is really even sure how much.

Is there any part of this that is not a fact?

This is my last response to you Richard. No where in the history of the world have I ever stated I am rich. I made a comparison... Bill Gates is rich.

I do well enough in life,where I don't need to spend more than 10 seconds talking with people in your league. Put me on ignore. I will do the same with you.

it is:

http://i.imgur.com/MHUs4.jpg

you go ahead and read this:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/90...ory-yes-and-no

since you have nothing better to do.

Ill be waiting.

really? you have been behaving like a child with me for years now

wanna act like an adult?

we can talk about the overall point of this thread and my last response to you calling people stupid.

And there we go AGAIN.

This is just fucking STUPID.

Why do you people keep repeating that when you KNOW it was the housing market collapse and subsequent banking collapse cause by CONGRESS from bills passed in the 1990's that caused a housing bubble that resulted in the economy collapsing during the last few MONTHS of Bush's presidency?

And that came after the economy was roaring for most of Bush's presidency.

STOP LYING!!!!

The only relevance Bush has to any of this is as a starting point. Saying the "economy was roaring for most of his presidency" is false. He made a terrible mess over 8 years domestically and internationally... that doesn't change the fact that Obama has had 4+ years to fix it and made very little progress.... but it it laughable when you say things were 'roaring for most of his presidency.' Other than funding space exploration of Mars it is difficult to name much positive from the W years. That being said, the fact that it is being raised as part of a 'fiscal cliff' discussion in 2012 is silly. :2 cents:

No it's not false.

He came in with a recession happening at the end of Clinton's term when the tech bubble burst.
Then he got nailed by 9-11 during his first few months in office.

But the economy ROARED after that. Unemployment was down under 5% (which according to the US govt is NO unemployment when you account for people moving in and out of the workforce).

Not saying that Bush caused the economy to do well. But I do think that like Clinton, he stayed out of the way enough to allow the private sector to work. Until the end of Sept. of 2008 when the housing market completely crashed

I really have no interest in rehashing the Bush years because I don't see how they are relevant to the 2012 fiscal cliff discussion. However, I am sure 100 years from now when historians write the final analysis of what went on they will come to the conclusion that Bill Clinton getting a blowjob from an intern was a major tipping point in the fall of the West. The W years were horrifically bad economically, diplomatically, domestically and militarily. None of that excuses the slow cleanup or gives Obama amnesty if things still suck in 2016 when his term ends... but on the long list of Presidents we have ever had, it seems fairly safe to say that both Bush and Obama will be ranked in the bottom 5th and other than Grant I can't recall anyone historically who was worse than W while in office.

If you really want to do yet another Bush Presidency Postmortem we ought to do it in another thread... because it has zero to do with the fiscal cliff. :2 cents:

You are just completely wrong about that. I don't know what planet you were on...but the economy COLLAPSED in 2008.

The word "collapsed" means it was starting from a higher point.

It's frustrating to talk to some of y'all about this. It's like your memories have been wiped out by the media.

NO, I don't think Bush is "responsible" for the economy doing well during his term. I think the country itself was doing well (the private sector).

But I can guarantee you that all the people who are suffering in 2012 would LOVE to go back to the economy of 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007.

And we'd all love it even more if we could go back to the economy of 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 when the tech bubble was kicking up.

Neither had anything to do with who the President was.

The govt. can create an environment (mostly by NOT fucking with stuff) that is conducive to business. Or they can fuck it up. That's about it.

Clinton's presidency ended on a mild recession...the tech bubble burst.

But nothing like what happened at the end of Bush's term when the housing market collapsed.
I KNOW (painfully so), because I closed on the house I live at in Vegas on Sept. 20th 2008. Paid $720,000 for it. It's worth about $400,000 now. :(

And I'm just one person.

The housing market was booming. Everyone was buying in. Flipping didn't mean burgers any more. A big part of my metals business was in door and window hardware at the time and we honestly could not keep up with demand. In 2008 when it crashed we saw half of our door and window customers consolidate or go under. Even today, we still sell in that industry and the best of the best is back to around 50% of where they were in 2007.

So I agree with Robbie. 2000-2007 were fabulous years for a whole lot of people, In spite of President Bush.

Why not, we are also talking about Ronald Reagan too.

Minte seems to be believe that only a Republican president will give small business owners the "confidence" required to invest in our future. I am trying to explain to him that the past Republican president is the one who allowed this to happen, and I am also trying to explain that Romney, as the Republican candidate, only had a business plan that was less than a page long with four bullet points. You know, nothing gives business leaders more confidence than a Presidential business plan made up of only four bullet points.

You need to vote for the right candidate, not by your political party. Romney was the perfect example of everything that is wrong with our economy.

That's saying the bubble was terrific short term. Yes, if we give mortgages to people who can't afford them it will feel like we are doing much better until the bubble pops. That isn't a 'roaring economy.' We can print money, make new bubbles and spike things in the short term... but I wouldn't say that's a good thing. They are trying to do it again right now with student loan debt being repackaged as safer derivative instruments because the amount of debt is massive, government backed, and can't be discharged by bankruptcy. If they succeed, that will not be a 'roaring economy' either.... it will be 'investors' begging to be bailed out by government insurances when many thousands of students default on billions of dollars of debt that they can't repay because it's easier to get a masters degree than a job. :2 cents:

Exactly right. It's tax cuts for the LITTLE GUY that get the economy going again. Demand needs to be stimulated.

...Because the last Republican president left everything all peachy. We need to unfuck what just happened, and the only way to do that is spend.

Which is the nearly exactly the same healthcare plan as Romney enacted when he was governor.

Pearls before swine, Minte

LOL of course they were fabulous years for anybody connected to one of the great heists in US history and that includes guys like you who made doorknobs or window latches or whatever you do, and it brought the entire US and world economy to the brink of disaster.

600...........Trillion off the Cliff :Graucho

But they weren't "printing money" (that didn't happen until the end of 2008 with Bush's bailout, and now Obama's bailout)

And of COURSE "bubbles" are a roaring economy.

That's the way it's always been throughout history.

Clinton's years were at tech "bubble" that ROARED.
Bush's years were a housing market bubble that ROARED.

Go back in history to the "Roaring 20's" and there was a bubble.

The economy JUMPS when a new sector is created or an existing one has a "bubble".

I'm unaware that it ever roars when nothing special is happening.
Were some of you guys in business during the last 20 years or were you working for somebody else?

As a guy who was in THIS business (porn) and owned my own company...I am well aware that EVERYONE was doing much better during the tech and housing market "bubbles" simply because it fired up the whole economy.

Just like the years of the "Gold Rush" and "Oil Booms" (they were what we now call "bubbles")
And even the economic industrial "bubble" created by WW2.

In between "bubbles" the economy first has to come back from the inevitable crash. Then it flat lines for a long time until the next big thing ("bubble") happens.

I've seen 2 of them now with the 1990's and 2000's. I'd love to see another one SOON.

We should of course worry about the problems in front of us, but brushing away the past is a great mistake. While many of the posts you have made recently in this topic make sense one thing I always notice is Republicans are always very fast to brush away the past when it's something to do with their mistakes meanwhile they will trumpet til the end if it's someone else mistake.

Obama didn't create the problems he faces today and while he might not have done everything prefect, he sure as hell hasn't had any help at all from the right wing in trying top fix the problems this country faces. Meaning blaming him for this is a bunch of bullshit because the Senate & House are the real problems because of their inability to get anything done.

Trying to say Obama hasn't done much in his first 4 years is really not looking at the whole picture. I mean seriously he is dealing with House & Senate Republicans that will do anything to block everything no matter what it is. Doesn't matter if it's good or bad for the country they try to obstruct it.

Just yesterday, Mitch McConnell the Republican Senate minority leader filibustered his own fucking bill. He proposed a bill the democrats agreed to pass it and he instead filibustered it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...-feint/266035/

The bill was of course bullshit so the Senate Dem's called him on his bullshit and left him with mud on his face.

If you guys want to bitch about Obama by all means do so, but I don't know how anyone can say with a straight face he is the one hurting this country, when he has to deal with a House & Senate's Republican members that don't appear to care if this country fails or not.

Nicely said.

No. Bubbles are bubbles. A roaring economy is sustained economic growth.

There was definitely a tech bubble, but the computer and internet industries were real growth aside from the bubble. The computer/tech industry is now responsible for millions of jobs, some of the most successful companies on the planet and a tremendous leap forward by society. The fact that asshats ran up the stock market by day trading and momentum trading stocks of those companies (and companies that should never have been bet on) does not change the fact that it has been an enormous area of growth for decades.

Now take a look at the housing bubble. It was not growth of anything. Nobody innovated a new way to have people afford homes. It was a gigantic ponzi scheme where companies packaged worthless paper and resold it to others eager to run up the fictional price of home loans that had no actual value. Decades from now, there won't be mortgage companies and a housing sector created that employs millions of new people and spurs innovation the way computers did. There will only be massive amounts of debt and millions of people who were busted out by the scheme. We don't need a student loan bubble... we need a sustainable and significant area of growth that creates a new sector of employment, real investment and innovation. Something on the scale of 'computers' or 'electricity' or 'iron' which will likely have an investor bubble of some sort along with it but will also produce real economic growth.

Hydrogen power would help, very cheap power from pebble bed reactors would help, a better understanding of quantum locking or quantum teleportation or quantum computing would help, a full understanding of mass from the LHC and Higgs Boson research would help. Those are the kinds of things that lead to a 'roaring economy' and they require real research. We are funding a Mars rover and we finally managed to complete the genome of our closest evolutionary ancestors recently, but we ought to be funding a lot more than that. If you have the time to read a book... read http://www.amazon.com/Regenesis-Synt.../dp/0465021751 - the things they are doing with genetics in terms of everything from data storage to organisms that produce desirable resources is truly mind-blowing. Those sorts of things may be home runs eventually.

What sucks is it's the bottom of the 9th, with 2 outs and nobody on base... and we are losing by two runs. We don't just need a home run, we need a few home runs to climb out of all this.