Geeto67

Think of it like this...you just told a bunch of short people that they need to grow taller to clear a bar that taller people can already clear. this country spent hundreds of years denying a class of our own citizens things the constitution promised them. It's time the country made good on those promises. you realize this literally translates to let the poor die in the streets, right? you keep trying to paint me as this guy that is trying to say the rich are evil and nobody should be rich, but no...I love money the same as anybody and sure people should strive to be rich, just pay your damn taxes so we can pay for soldiers, f22s, schools, and programs to help the poor. Can't pay a soldier's salary with your apple stock. Sorry. Don't try to reframe this here by expanding the type of social "good" we are talking about.

he may (and probably does since he is a physician) but that is not related to his accumulation of wealth parked in an account or an investment somewhere making him more money. When he donates to charity, or pays taxes, or uses it to actively do something to benefit others it's a different story.

Apparently it is because you are not rich enough (LOL). A flat tax just pushes your tax burden down to those who can afford it less. The intrinsic value of a dollar is on a curve, meaning a dollar has a greater intrinsic value to the lifestyle of someone at the poverty line than it does to you in the largest tax bracket. So in other words if you pay physically more into the system, you feel it less than someone who makes a 1/3 or less of what you make. Or to put it plainly because you can afford it. It's almost 40% for you because the money that normally would come from those who make more than you isn't materializing because a majority of those people aren't paying into a system because they have enough money to not to. Let's take Mr. Trump for example. He hasn't really paid income tax since 1995 (it's unclear because he hasn't been transparent about his tax filings either) because he took a $900 Million loss in 1995 that has allowed him to keep a floating deduction so that even in good years he doesn't have to pay. there is a lot of skepticism that his treatment of this loss is kosher within the tax code, but he has the money to keep this going indefinitely even if he is audited because he has more money to spend on fighting this than the IRS has in it's budget to call him on it. So he may be getting away with something illegal because the government doesn't have enough money to call him on it. What's that Conservatives say about personal responsibility? I guess it only applies when you aren't trying to cheat the government and the citizens of America.

No, but I have never said that it would. Most of the "redistribution" plans that are being put forth are talking about getting those in the higher strata to pay what the rest of us pay in taxes so we can ease the tax burden on the middle class. I think you will find very few people who thing you should just seize physical assets from the wealthy on the whole and give them directly to the people. Socialism as a derogatory term is a problematic thing. Pure socialism as a political and economic theory is that all the means of production, distribution, and markets should be equally owned by the community . It's very rare. Conservatives like to use socialism for anything that creates a benefit to the public as a whole like Social Security but politically or economically they are more like regulated or augmented capitalism or socially democratic programs. Labeling something "socialist" is more for conservative marketing purposes because it lets them take advantage of the now 60 year old "red scare" left over from the cold war to fight against government sponsored programs. Socialism and Libertarianism as economic theories that work well in very small measures in very limited circumstances inside larger systems and rarely occur. As political theories in their purest forms they are complete losers and I highly doubt we would ever see them in practice in our lifetimes. the larger question is, what is it you want the US government to do? Is it to protect it's people on the whole and attend to the basic needs of the citizens? or just to provide basic rules and leave it up to smaller communities to self regulate? Keep in mind, history has a lot to teach us about how a lot of these political theories in smaller government work because the natural progression through out the ages has been to progress from small government to big government, then revolution and start over.

By the way, can we talk about how much of a collander and fucked for credibility the FBI is for a moment? http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-fbi-leaks-idUSKBN12Y2QD There is a lot of speculation that the leaks are politically motivated, which actually presents a concern for our national security. Think about it for a second...FBI agents have actually comprised our national security to leak confidential investigation information regarding a national security investigation because they don't agree with their Boss and the DOJ. It's kind of a mind fuck.

yes, because I don't believe in economic theories that are so bogus that were debunked twice when put into action. This concept that you hold some special nature in being a "performer" is garbage. It only benefits you. An not one trace of irony that you are literally exhibiting your own sense of entitlement that somehow you get to not contribute to society because you make more money and don't agree with the programs. Hopes and dreams!!!! that's exactly what this country needs more hopes and dreams. Not actual economic based solutions to real problems but more positive thinking!!!! get real. The examples and things you complain about are such small parts of the puzzle some of them don't even exist at all and the larger ones you dismiss as small despite evidence to the contrary, which you won't accept because you believe all sources except opinion blogs are biased (another bit of irony). Tim at some point you have to admit you've built yourself a house of cards here that's largely driven by your own fantasy than statistics that support it.

At that point you are running a business. Anybody else doing what you do would have to pay taxes on their profits. Why do you get a pass and they don't? Because of some loophole with how debt obligations are structured? I get you see it as an investment and not a business and honestly I am really disappointed with your justification for why you should t be taxed. Instead of saying "I shouldn't be taxed because I am taking a higher risk exposure in taking a lump sum that I then reinvest in other areas and pay taxes on this profits which benefit anybody all around" you take the "trickle down" theory that you are some sort of performer and you having an accumulation of money is somehow benefiting society. I mean I even set up up with a softball for that response so we could discuss the merits of those loopholes and I just get disappointment. "Pay the performers", what nonsense.

How much what?

You cited an OP Ed piece on someone's right wing pundit blog and called it a news source. And then dug in and tried to defend it as credible journalism. You got exactly what you diserved. It's not like we are talking about the difference between Fox News and CNN but more like the difference between Sean Hannity's show and CNN. Sure I post editorial stuff from time to time too but I usually identify it as humor, not news. Yes it is the norm and it increases in frequency the larger a city you are in. In a place like NYC it happens many times a day every day.

come on...who isn't sexually attacted to cheetos? esp when drunk? And one that can walk and talk? I mean come on...I can only get so hard...:dumb: I think the 1% marker is a pretty good starting place, which currently puts it at about $1.2million a year of individual income. I think the public has already made that decision considering how the 1% seems to have taken a life of it's own in popular culture. And fair share, how about just starting with the top tier tax rate already in place: $120,529.75 plus 39.6% of the amount over $415,050 and just putting tighter restrictions and enforcement on tax havens, shell companies, equity swaps, borrowing against capital gains, trust funds (esp those to avoid estate tax), corp entities, payment in kind via securities, and borrowing against multiple assets like real estate and life insurance policies. That last one is actually my favorite - if you own a rental home outright you can take a mortgage out and pull out all the equity. As long as the rent covers your expenses the property will pay itself over time and you will pocket the remaining equity tax free. You won't pay any taxes on the rent received because the rent (gross income) is covering expenses at a break even rate and if for whatever reason your expenses go up, one year you can claim a loss and receive a deduction on your income taxes. Unfortunately, we aren't going to see any of this change with Clinton or Trump no matter who wins, so it's a moot point. So since I am a dad with a daughter I will just vote for the guy who isn't out in the public saying he "grabs women by the pussy" so I can sleep at night knowing my kid doesn't think her dad is a misogynist.

If he wasn't it certainly would make all that "grab by the pussy" stuff way more palatable.

Can we just stop this and agree both are needed in equal measure? o rly? http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/03/31/ohio-colleges-attracting-fewer-education-majors-who-avoid-teaching-specialties-needed-most.html http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/08/17/filling-all-the-gaps.html seems like Ohio has a teacher shortage. There are hundreds of recent articles in many local papers about schools not having books, teachers, facilities, etc...But you checked so apparently it's ok and the rest of the world is making this up. Affordable to me, not affordable to someone at or near the poverty line. Again you prove my point though - money makes the difference. Tim, I don't expect you to understand this since I doubt you have had much experience in it, but police are not always in the right and often they hassle young kids for nothing at all. Teenage kids in urban environments often have run ins with the law for nothing more than being teenage kids (and for not always having the complexion for the protection). I saw it constantly in Brooklyn, constantly in New Orleans, and constantly in Boston. I haven't seen it in ohio because I don't really live in a diverse neighborhood in ohio and ohio neighborhoods tend to be pretty segregated. . Because all you want to do is victim shame so that is all you see in people. I keep telling you it needs both the programs to counteract and the people willing to interact with them to improve themselves, but you want to argue we don't need the programs. I know the willingness is there because every time a city or state does one of these social experiments people show up in surprising numbers and they have excellent success rates. Whether you feel society is against you or not really has no bearing when society is actually working against you and the hard numbers show society is against them. You think it can all be changed with attitude and smiles but it just isn't that way.

Got it. You Goal is to fuck over the upper middle class once you are no longer part of it. Well, at least you are consistent. If you are so concerned with paying less in taxes, taxing those richer than you, who already aren't paying their share, would remove some of that burden, not making the poor pay more. You can't get orange juice from a stone but you can get it from a big fat rich orange that smugly refuses to give up it's juice

Parenting alone will not put a book in the kids hand or a qualified teacher in the classroom. Money to buy those supplies will. Yes I agree, if you have kids you should parent. Even orphans should get good parenting but who is gonna do it? Still isn't going to put a book in the kids hand if the school and the parent can't afford it. Thinking the system is actively working against people of particular backgrounds doesn't mean you forgo personal responsibility. A person can still be very responsible and still get fucked over by everything from the system of education to the system of public transportation. Really I am pretty sure the Dublin School board would have something to say if my kid just showed up at a Dublin school considering I currently live in a Columbus city school district. Fortunately I have the money to move, others do not. Great, so you are going to support funding and building out public transportation then so they don't have that as an excuse anymore? I mean come on Tim, there is a threshold of reasonableness and you are getting pretty close to crossing it just for the sake of argument, or do you really as a benevolent boss not cut people slack for life getting in the way? Actually, maybe they do and maybe they don't, but I suspect if they did the number would be lower. Somehow you are ok with the community picking up the slack but refuse to see the nation as one community when it tries to pick up the slack? now who is exercising a double standard. Great, so I expect you to support police transparency reform so that we can make sure those fines were levied fairly and accurately in the first place. if they had the ID, which is unlikely because they might be minors. Think about it at 15 years old how many documents did you have that had your name on it and your address back then? The system is working against them you just refuse to see it. Yeah but your track coach isn't hitting him in the shin and no one else before each meet either, right? A race official isn't coming in and inspecting his gear and no-one else's and then told he is ineligible before a race and has to obtain new gear, is he? Your kids track program isn't telling him he has to share his uniform with another kid who isn't his size because there wasn't enough money to go around. No he shows up to the program and get's the same advantage to fail or succeed on his merit. Well the American school system doesn't work like that and it should.

There is a difference between "telling it straight" and just saying offensive shit to keep people entertained. Is it "telling it straight" when he says the majority of illegal immigrants are rapists? no. Is it offensive and entertaining? yes. Just because something is different from anything we have had before doesn't mean it's better, it just means it is different. I think a lot of Trump's message gets lost in the fact that he's wildly entertaining to watch. Joe, the sad thing is the same thing can be said for those holding out for the republican party. It used to be the main battle between the parties was individual liberty vs Societal Liberty. But that left the GOP sometime around the 1970's when they started excising financial conservatives and taking money from religious organizations seeking to continue moral suppression. The Republicans aren't about individual liberty anymore, they are about telling you how to live but in a way that disadvantages women and minorities and lets you keep your guns. Yet there are still people here clinging to the GOP like it still means smaller government and individual freedoms based on two things out of a much larger platform. If you are not a White Christian Male making over $400K a year, the GOP has literally left you behind, but don't worry, they'll still let you keep your guns.

Did you think the rich do not lobby? These things don't get passed in a vaccuum - someone paid for it to be there. Do I blame the rich for this? well I don't think those that supported it are "good people" but I can't blame them for being self interested. I can blame people who vote for politicians who are absolutely against campaign reform, like Mike Pence, so that politicians can continue to be bought through lobbying. The Bush administration cut so much out of education that we have yet to undo the damage it has done, and will probably still be feeling the effects for 20 more years to come. The last 8 years, esp with a republican congress, hasn't been able to catch up to how damaged our educational funding is. In a school district that can afford books and supplies and qualified teachers because you pay high taxes. And you can afford tutoring if for some reason your kids fall behind, and SAT prep, and extracurricular activities. And none of your kids have to work to support your family structure. Come on Tim, at least recognize that you have some advantages that can't be overcome by good parenting. It's easy to say garbage like that if you don't believe in institutionalized racisim and the system is setup to continually fuck the poor over. But just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it isn't true. They don't have a baseless victim mindset, they are actually victims. They are victims of the Blue Wall that blocks police transparency, they are victims of the wealthy who don't want them in the same schools and so they block school redistribution, they are victims of conservative mindset that doesn't understand why the government has to pay for education. And you know what? if you got to know them most of them don't have a victim mindset, and they work hard, even though just based on the empirical odds of society the chance of making out of poverty are akin to winning the actual lottery. 11% of Americans don't have Government issued ID in this country for reasons ranging from unable to produce the proper documents to having fines levied against them. Most of them Poor, elderly, or a minority. That's a big problem unless you are a republican and you don't want them voting, then it's an opportunity. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html I belevie ohio does, but this is based off watching someone get denied at the bmv while I was waiting to register a vehicle, not idea if the BMV was wrong or not. But yes Sometimes it is, esp if your summons is being sent to the wrong address because you didn't have ID when you got stopped and now the fees and interest have turned $50 or $90 into several hundred. I want all people to get some kind of opportunity and not have the system work harder against them the poorer they are. I am not saying everyone needs an equal playing field but it should not be more likely you end up in jail or dead the poorer you start out from. Every member is a participant of society, and those that have barriers removed become less of a social draw and more of a contributor to society the more they grow. Society is like a giant whack a mole game, either you pay a little early, or a lot more later, or even more if you left them out entirely - but if you are part of it you always have to pay.

ok, how about we make them free then. And also how about we don't refuse to give one if the person owes outstanding fines. At least three of those groups are disproprotionatly are affected by the lack of transparency in police enforcement and heavily penalized by the justice system.

Because it has historically been used as a precedent to suppress groups of people like the poor, blacks, native Americans, old people, etc. Voter fraud may be a red herring issue in this country but voter suppression is very real.

I agree, education has failed America in general and at most of the economic levels. So let's vote for someone whose platform is education. Oh wait...education hasn't been a republican platform since the space race.

The answer is, because you can afford it. Why does that keep you up at night it's a pretty simple concept. At a flat tax rate, the minimum flat percentage from everybody would be significant and sometimes crippling to those at the lower end at the economic scale (say everybody under $100k), and would be a reduction in the actual amount for you. Again not everybody has had the opportunities you have had and there are people who those opportunities are actually supressed by the very nature of society. As a participant in society the cost of society providing you those opportunities is that you have to pay in to benefit the society as a whole, and the more you have pulled out the more is expected of you. If you want to be really pissed, the very wealthy have set up exemptions for them and don't pay their fair share into the system causing the people in the middle like you to carry the biggest burden. If you want to be pissed at a particular group, don't be pissed at the poor for whom you have to cover for because they can't, be pissed at the very rich you cover for who could cover for them selves and have just chosen not to for selfish reasons. You know like trump. You are voting for the guy who fucks you over, wants to do it more, and you give him a pass for fucking you over because he has a lot of money and you kinda want to aspire to that. Seems pretty simple to me.

Yes, or did you not think that Federal school Financial Aid, Medicare/ Medicaid, social Security, and the VA is not government "assistance". There are people that actually pay taxes and receive government assistance programs because they care for someone else who isn't able to care for themselves. And What do you do about those cheats that are working and paying taxes and still get government assistance in some form anyway? One could write a book on how bad an idea this is, particularly how politically it comes close to governments of regency, esp the rule of Louis XVIi in France (you know, the last king before the French Revolution). However I'll just say this: You can't draw any voting rights in America along economic lines without it having the effect of disproportionately disadvantaging racial minorities. You think slavery is institutionalized now, think about how much more it will feel like when they don't have representation on the government. Full stop this will suppress those groups, not force them to "work harder" but actually kill off a majority of the opportunities they once had. What the problem you are trying to solve by this? So people don't vote for social programs and you save money? Is it worth the moral cost? And yes, it supposed to be that Buzz Aldrin's or Neil Armstrong's vote is equal to yours, mine, or even drug addicted prostitutes. That's how this government is supposed to work.

by the way to put this perspective why it is pretty amazing, it only took 1100hp for Keith Turk's 2nd gen camaro to so the same number due to aerodynamics. It took 900hp more just because the Land Crusier is that much of a brick. The article takes some liberties saying it is faster than a ferrari F40. In LSR weight is less of a penalty so it may be able to hit 200mph and beyond, but it may take twice the room or more to do it because of the weight. Either way, It's an amazing truck.

The unemployment rate just went back up slightly to 5 percent but it is low. I don't know where you have gotten this "four decades" part because it was lower around 2000 and was right about the same amount (4-5%) from 1997 to 2007. It's the lowest it has been since the financial crisis. The Labor Force Participation number is again low, but it's usually low in this time of year because it also counts kids returning to school. If you look at 2014 the number is similarly low. The discourage worker number (which doesn't count school children) hasn't really changed much. If you look at it by the numbers a 5% unemployment is 7.9 million people, but discouraged workers are 553,000, and the 62.9% participation rate indicates about 94 million people. So what does it tell me? it tells me that there are people exiting the workforce to do things like return to school, or become housewives, and the baby boomers are retiring, that are having an effect on the rate. And yes some are also becoming homeless but we don't actually have a breakdown on how much of each is happening. But we do have a number on the "fuck it" group - that's the discouraged workers number and it is no where near the same number as the participation rate. What you are highlighting is some of the problems with the data, is that it is not always translatable across metrics and often requires further research and more work to understand it's true nature. Honestly, low participation in the job market is not great, but there have been a lot of discussions about how the retirement of the baby boomers were going to have an effect on this since there is so damn many of them.

It's the government's term for unemployed people who aren't actively seeking employment, excluding the chronic homeless. And is tracked by the Department of Labor. It is meant to be a supplemental figure to the unemployment rate which tracks individuals who are unemployed and actively looking for work to give a true look at the unemployment picture. Unfortunately it is not super accurate, but it is data and does have some value to looking at the picture as a whole. Or to put it in other words: it is what conservatives think all of the unemployed look like when they think of the unemployed. LOL.:dumb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discouraged_worker#cite_note-bls6-18 http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils74.pdf

I think you meant to say "Not ACTIVELY seeking employment because the actively seeking employment is the number that the BOL measures (the 5%). The "discouraged worker" is something harder to measure and while I am happy to see that it is at a low point, you do realize it kind of supports my earlier point don't you think? We have talked before about the flaws in the BOL's system, which is why the Dept of Labor tracks discouraged workers, but then again there is some controversy as to how to count a discouraged worker, particularly whether to include the homeless or not (the Dept of Labor does not). But all this further illustrates my point that even accounting for it is complex and there is no such thing as a simple solution as people on here seem to say. We can't even account for it easily. So in your rage you actually agreed with me twice. Maybe that's why your head hurts. And yes I consider that a victory coming from you.