Originally posted by Bardock42
He always talks that way, if you think he's more abrupt with you cause you are somewhat newer that is not the case.
Then I suppose I'm lucky I never intended to debate anything with anyone -other than the topic at hand- and everything I pointed out in my post was done so rhetorically.
Originally posted by inimalist
those are [b]my 10 cents, though [/B]
But it is everyone's country. Everyone loves their country, their laptops, their car, their cheap crap at Wal-Mart and their current standart of living. Certainly it makes a huge amount of sense to levy a 10% flat tax. The problem arises when political systems convince people who pay their 10% on the dollar when they make 500 a week that they have anything in common with people who make 500 an hour and pay .7%.
Originally posted by skekUng
Everyone loves...their current standart of living.
I do not. I'm working on improving that.
Originally posted by skekUng
Certainly it makes a huge amount of sense to levy a 10% flat tax. The problem arises when political systems convince people who pay their 10% on the dollar when they make 500 a week that they have anything in common with people who make 500 an hour and pay .7%.
Your example actually makes the "real world" prospect look REALLY good. I do not think you were trying to convince us that the flat tax of 10% was a good idea, though.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4545124/ron-paul-on-benefits-of-flat-tax/
That means that those poor are not paying Medicare, social security, less in federal taxes, and so forth IF they opt out. Guess what? Those all add up to greater than 10% IF they claim 1 (It comes to around 15%, I just looked at my own paystub), just for themselves. So, no, opting out, for most, would actually put MORE money in their pocket. So the poor would benefit more on their paychecks because: they already don't have medical insurance. However, they would lose allll of the other goodies that they rarely take advantage of, anyway (besides welfare, housing assistance, and so forth. Even then, those programs are not taken advantage of by even a forth of all those that qualify). Sure, the poor take advantage of lots of those programs, but the poor are not the primary benefactors. Numbers show that it is the middle class that mostly take advantage of those programs.
Additionally, in your example, the poor person has less being taken out of their paycheck and the rich person has a giant increase of 9.3%. That seems like a gigantic shift in the tax burden, using your example (and not the real world numbers.) Why wouldn't a poor person be all over that, based on your example? This is primarily why I said that you made a really good case for being in favor of the flat tax, unintentionally.
Also, the system is going to initially be an "opt-out", meaning, it's not something everyone does. Unlike what Paul says in the video, it WILL increase bureaucracy until enough people have opted out that scrapping the old system can be justified.
That means: the poor will not opt out. Everyone else will. Why would the poor want to opt out of a system that hands them so much?
Here are the tax brackets which clearly show the nice drop in taxes for the income group you listed:
http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm
They get to drop between 4-5% off of their taxes.
Sounds like a swell idea, eh?
Originally posted by skekUng
But it is [b]everyone's country. Everyone loves their country, their laptops, their car, their cheap crap at Wal-Mart and their current standart of living. Certainly it makes a huge amount of sense to levy a 10% flat tax. The problem arises when political systems convince people who pay their 10% on the dollar when they make 500 a week that they have anything in common with people who make 500 an hour and pay .7%. [/B]
.7% is still too high
government didn't earn that cash, I did. Sweat off my brow.
Originally posted by dadudemon
I do not. I'm working on improving that.
Then you are working towards a standard of living that will not longer exist, should Mr. Paul actually work to accomplish anything he espouses in regards to foreign relationships, lack of empire, doing away with the muscle behind the federal government, etc.
Originally posted by dadudemon
I do not think you were trying to convince us that the flat tax of 10% was a good idea, though.
That is because I wasn't.
Originally posted by dadudemon
That means that those poor are not paying Medicare, social security, less in federal taxes, and so forth IF they opt out. Guess what? Those all add up to greater than 10% IF they claim 1 (It comes to around 15%, I just looked at my own paystub), just for themselves. So, no, opting out, for most, would actually put MORE money in their pocket. So the poor would benefit more on their paychecks because: they already don't have medical insurance. However, they would lose allll of the other goodies that they rarely take advantage of, anyway (besides welfare, housing assistance, and so forth. Even then, those programs are not taken advantage of by even a forth of all those that qualify). Sure, the poor take advantage of lots of those programs, but the poor are not the primary benefactors. Numbers show that it is the middle class that mostly take advantage of those programs.Additionally, in your example, the poor person has less being taken out of their paycheck and the rich person has a giant increase of 9.3%. That seems like a gigantic shift in the tax burden, using your example (and not the real world numbers.) Why wouldn't a poor person be all over that, based on your example? This is primarily why I said that you made a really good case for being in favor of the flat tax, unintentionally.
Also, the system is going to initially be an "opt-out", meaning, it's not something everyone does. Unlike what Paul says in the video, it WILL increase bureaucracy until enough people have opted out that scrapping the old system can be justified.
That means: the poor will not opt out. Everyone else will. Why would the poor want to opt out of a system that hands them so much?
Here are the tax brackets which clearly show the nice drop in taxes for the income group you listed:
http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm
They get to drop between 4-5% off of their taxes.
Sounds like a swell idea, eh?
I was calling on Mr. Paul's 10% flat tax, as espoused in the video at the beginning of the thread. I don't think I need to point out to you that I just pulled .7% out of the air as a tounge in cheek example. I never intended for anyone to do the math and then illustrate why Mr. Paul's notion of a flat tax for every income is too unrealistic an expectation.
Originally posted by skekUng
Then you are working towards a standard of living that will not longer exist, should Mr. Paul actually work to accomplish anything he espouses in regards to foreign relationships, lack of empire, doing away with the muscle behind the federal government, etc.
😆
Also, do you program? I notice that only programmers make the mistake of "will not longer" exist and sayings like that: it's because of the "not" we speak in our heads to negate something it it accidentally comes out in our written words. Am I right?
Originally posted by skekUng
That is because I wasn't.
Originally posted by skekUng
I was calling on Mr. Paul's 10% flat tax, as espoused in the video at the beginning of the thread. I don't think I need to point out to you that I just pulled .7% out of the air as a tounge in cheek example.
That's cool and I understand. I just thought that it failed, horribly, at actually making your point and, instead, made it sound good.
Originally posted by skekUng
I never intended for anyone to do the math and then illustrate why Mr. Paul's notion of a flat tax for every income is too unrealistic an expectation.
Yeah, I understand that too.
I still do not think, even if you average out that amount of money "per unit income" shows that poor people pay less than 10% in taxes. For some (without kids, medical issues, and so forth), it would be a gigantic reduction in their tax burden. As you pointed out, some rich can afford the legal assistance and accountants to decrease their tax burden to far less than 10%.
On average, it looks like it will decrease the government's revenue.
It is really easy to calculate that out:
First, find the average household income. That's easy because it's already calculated for us at about 50,000 a year.
Then, multiply that by the number of people in the US:
310,000,000*50,000 = 15,500,000,000,000
Multiply that by 10% to find out how much flat tax revenue would generate if it applied equally, across the board:
$1,550,000,000,000
Compare that to the current tax revenue: it looked like the 2009 collections were between 850,000 and 900,000. I cannot tell, yet.
Anyway, it looks like revenues would increase.
If we go by total taxes collected, it's closer to $2,000,000,000,000. That would be a cut. So what are total revenues including? Tariffs? Weapons sales? And so forth. It could be that the 1.5 tril is actually a giant increase in revenue.
So what does a flat tax do for us? Is it bad for the government? Is it better for the poor? Is it worse for the poor?
Does it cut our revenues? Does it increase them?
Like I told you before, I'm for and against a flat tax. Convince me the only way possible: use numbers. If you can make a case, with some numbers, I may change my stance on a flat tax. I'm a flip flopper and not ashamed of it. Why should one be? If someone comes up with a better idea or tells you why an idea is bad and they are factually correct, why SHOULD you not "flip flop?"
No, I am not a programer. It was a simple typo.
That standard of living you're trying to improve will not be attainable should Mr. Paul ever get what he wants because he wants to pretend that our foreign wars aren't for oil and that since everything in our economy is based on oil prices -production of gasoline, to the paint on your walls to the pesticides we spray on our crops, the laptops we're all using to post on this forum, cell phones to twitter how he "killed it" at CPAC, practically everything- and the foreign wars and intelligence community he proposes to scrap are integral to this nation and others being able to secure that oil.
I'm sure we're all impressed by your math skills, but save them for after you've convinced anybody that Mr. Paul's position wouldn't allow for individuals and corporations to prop up huge tax shelters off shore and avoid paying their fair share. The rich have never paid their fair share. You and I would be happy to offer up 10% of our income, but will the mega rich? Nope; and getting away with it would be ten times easier than it is now without a federal government to do the mediocre job it's even doing currently and closing tax loops and following funds across the border to other nations.
So, ask yourself why these huge companies don't back him the way they do other republicans or democrats. Why do you think that is, when what I've just said would be a wet dream for them?
Originally posted by skekUng
So, ask yourself why these huge companies don't back him the way they do other republicans or democrats. Why do you think that is, when what I've just said would be a wet dream for them?
The first answer that comes to mind is that what you just said is wrong, I am sure that's not your interpretation, why do you think he is not backed then?
Originally posted by skekUng
No, I am not a programer. It was a simple typo.
AHA!
Well, it was a good enough guess. 🙁
Originally posted by skekUng
That standard of living you're trying to improve will not be attainable should Mr. Paul ever get what he wants
That's wrong in the most direct way possible.
My standard of living will explicitly increase should Mr. Paul take office if only for his tax plans of either a flat tax or as he has said numerous times, no income tax.
Obviously, you're commenting on his other policies causing the economy to go to shit. That's an unsubstantiated claim and virtually impossible to prove without showing that it could both increase in quality and decrease in quality.
Originally posted by skekUng
because he wants to pretend that our foreign wars aren't for oil and that since everything in our economy is based on oil prices -production of gasoline, to the paint on your walls to the pesticides we spray on our crops, the laptops we're all using to post on this forum, cell phones to twitter how he "killed it" at CPAC, practically everything- and the foreign wars and intelligence community he proposes to scrap are integral to this nation and others being able to secure that oil.
To me, this seems like a rant that confuses cause and effect. Granted, there are plenty of things to rant about when it comes to Paul.
What about the billions we spend in Japan? How is that "oil" at all? What about Germany? How is our military presence there related to oil? What about the very shitty conditions we created for "oil" in Iraq? We shot ourselves in the ass with that one. Afghanistan? As if oil was even there in any usable fashion. Maybe you think that we are renewing our scrapped multi-billion dollar pipeline in Afghanistan?: unsubstantiated and unsubstantiate-able. Though, it does sound like a really good motive: it's just a conspiracy theory that makes Paul look relatively sane. If that was our real goal, it would be very easy to accomplish that and on much more public and international terms.
Originally posted by skekUng
I'm sure we're all impressed by your math skills,
You mean elementary math? How is that even remotely impressive?
Originally posted by skekUng
but save them for after you've convinced anybody that Mr. Paul's position wouldn't allow for individuals and corporations to prop up huge tax shelters off shore and avoid paying their fair share.
Wah?
How is that any different than now?
Originally posted by skekUng
The rich have never paid their fair share.
I submit to you the 50s and some of the 60s; they have paid what you call "their fair-share", before.
Originally posted by skekUng
You and I would be happy to offer up 10% of our income, but will the mega rich?
Depends: the numbers say they pay, on average, much higher of a percentage of their income, than any other tax bracket.
And, according to these charts, they are paying the majority of taxes (if you consider the top quartile to be the rich🙂
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
Originally posted by skekUng
Nope; and getting away with it would be ten times easier than it is now without a federal governmehttp://www.killermovies.com/forums/newreply.php?s=&action=newreply&postid=13246495nt to do the mediocre job it's even doing currently and closing tax loops and following funds across the border to other nations.
Can you provide evidence (direct, no vague political statements, but something direct) that proves that his tax policies would make it easier to commit tax evasion and tax fraud, than it is now? I see this as another empty claim.
Originally posted by skekUng
So, ask yourself why these huge companies don't back him the way they do other republicans or democrats. Why do you think that is, when what I've just said would be a wet dream for them?
It's actually very easy to know why corporations, sometimes (not all of them hate him...in fact, I'd say that a majority don't), do not like Ron Paul: he wants to investigate the Federal Reserve Banks and Board.
Originally posted by red g jacks
i'm pretty sure ron paul actually does espouse the belief that our presence in the middle east is largely motivated by the goal to 'secure our natural resources.' it's part of his whole empire bit.
Yeah, I was pretty dang sure he accuses the "current" system of having dangerous interests in oil with the middle east. I could have sworn he was about getting rid of those corrupt interests. But he's "foreign" policies are not just about oil: it's about bringing military infrastructure back home, which is what my comments were about, earlier.
This: "because he wants to pretend that our foreign wars aren't for oil..." goes directly against Paul's positions and statements on our "foreign wars."