posted
I am all for a national sales tax. I just don't think it will ever happen.
To me it makes sense. Those that buy more or higher ticket items will pay more in taxes, while those that do not buy as much will be taxed less.
The problem is there will always be the argument that it would be a huge tax increase on the poor, who right now do not pay any taxes.
It would be a tax increase, but if we want to be fair to everyone, I think this is the best way to do it.
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quote:The problem is there will always be the argument that it would be a huge tax increase on the poor, who right now do not pay any taxes.
The poor pay sales taxes, property taxes, and social security and medicare taxes. You know this. Please stop lying.
Luckily, a VAT (doing a sales tax, which is a huge pain to enforce, though they produce nearly identical consumer-facing results, is a bad idea) is easy to make less regressive.
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posted
Geraine, I have to ask (well I don't have to, of course, but I'm deeply curious): those are all thoroughly conservative talking points about a proposed national sales tax, and they're also very well-known and easily rejected points. As fugu says, the poor do pay taxes. Remember your first job when you were just a teenager or so? Taxes on that-and that's before you even arrive at other things, taxes that are simply a fact of living.
I don't say you're lying, but I do say that your idea here is...well, badly, factually wrong and it's not at all difficult to have known that beforehand. It makes it difficult to take you seriously in a given political discussion, when you toe such an easily disproven party line.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: The problem is there will always be the argument that it would be a huge tax increase on the poor, who right now do not pay any taxes.
Myth. Income tax is not the only tax.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: The problem is there will always be the argument that it would be a huge tax increase on the poor, who right now do not pay any taxes.
They wish.
I'm kind of with Rakeesh here — are you getting your pointers and facts from some kind of talking point bulletin list, or from conservative mailings and push polls, or from saturation in heavily conservative online communities? Because you are seemingly always, always, saturated with the season's paper-thin party line agitprop, and I would think you would want to be fundamentally concerned about that.
Because, well, again what Rakeesh said. Your signal-to-"Facts" ratio is redlining over time.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Lemme take a look at my paycheck... Oh my, where did that 60 dollars go? They list axnumber of the taxes I paid right there on my paycheck!
Then, I go to the store. To buy gas. Etc. Oh look, a not-inconsiderable amount goes to taxes!
I had to get my tabs, necessary to not get pulled over by the cops, renewed. Oh look. More taxes...
And that's just a single day! Well over a hundred dollars, easily 20% if that paycheck... Gone in taxes.
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posted
Yeah, but see, the rich have to pay those taxes too, so it's fair. It's fair that this is 20% of your paycheck and 0.1 percent of mine. We all have to pay the same, so it's totally fair. You should pay income taxes too, because I have to do it. That's fair. Fairness is easily defined in purely numerical terms, and has nothing to do with the exigencies of equitable living and economic forces that keep our society in peace and prosperity. Fairness is a number I am more comfortable with.
Also, minimum fine for a red light violation should be 800 dollars. 100% of your paycheck and 1% of mine. Also fair. Fair and square. And if you don't have the cash handy right this second, just double it next month. Because fair's fair's fair.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Yeah, but see, the rich have to pay those taxes too, so it's fair. It's fair that this is 20% of your paycheck and 0.1 percent of mine. We all have to pay the same, so it's totally fair. You should pay income taxes too, because I have to do it. That's fair. Fairness is easily defined in purely numerical terms, and has nothing to do with the exigencies of equitable living and economic forces that keep our society in peace and prosperity. Fairness is a number I am more comfortable with.
Fairness is also a word I am more comfortable with so I am going to vote in favor of using a system people call "Fairtax." It has fair right in the name. How do you get any more fair than that?
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posted
I'm fascinated by the recent language coming out of Boehner and Cantor about how "paying their fair share" necessitates a tax hike on the POOR. Boehner especially has been pushing the concept that poor people don't pay taxes, and that everyone should "have skin in the game." Apparently being poor means you aren't invested in the country. That's rich. At the moment it's just rhetoric, but I'd love don't really see how he can reconcile even the rhetoric with his "no tax hikes EVER" rhetoric from over this past year. After almost derailing the country's economy to protect the wealthy from tax hikes, will he actually have the balls to propose a tax hike on the poor? I gleefully await the results.
Interestingly, the Fair Tax DID come up at the debate this past Monday. Someone asked if they supported it, and I think Herman Cain took the answer. He actually said no, because it was too regressive. That was a tiny bit of a surprise, because every description of the Fair Tax I've ever heard has included a pretty generous payment system to reimburse lower income folks. But I appreciated that he recognized that a FLAT tax is regressive.
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posted
Oh but I do blame the democrats for even countenancing the idea that tax rates are based on ideas of "fairness." The actual consequences of a progressive tax system are too far removed from any given taxpayer for anyone to be really comfortable with the idea that they *owe* more even though they *earn* more. The idea that they are able to earn as a consequence of good governance, well, the Republicans have thrown that idea right out the window- so it's no wonder they don't get it.
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posted
I recently had a friend (and I actually do like this woman) complain that she was paying over $8,000 a year for her kids to go to public school, while all of those other people who just move in and out and RENT all the time don't pay anything. It's a very common misconception around here that property taxes only impact the wealthy.
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posted
Yeah, well, see, the renters pay the owners, and then the owners pay their own money for the taxes. It's totally different money. They even keep it in separate pockets.
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quote:"Bachmann: It's ok to spread lies about vaccines because I never said I'm a doctor After claiming that the life-saving HPV vaccine causes "mental retardation," the candidate declines to apologize."
"I didn't make any statements that would indicate I'm a doctor, I'm a scientist, or making any conclusions about the drug one way or the other," she said, adding she was merely relating the concerns of a woman who was "very distraught" and who supported her view that Perry's actions were wrong.
Asked specifically if she would apologize for the HPV comments, Bachmann said, "I'm not going to answer that question."
this is even better than 'FDR wrecked the economy with the Hoot-Smalley tariffs.'
posted
Boehner in recent days has drawn a "line in the sand" with the Super Committee. He warned them that any tax increases would be unacceptable.
This has worked for him in the past, but I think he's running into troublesome territory. What will be do if they are included? Vote it down and deal with billions in defense cuts? No, so long as it isn't heinous, he'll have to go along with it.
Democrats should have the upper hand in these negotiations.
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Lyrhawn: You'd think that, but the "No increase in taxes!" Line is extremely compelling for some reason. As if they are really fighting to keep all our money in our pockets, and away from government thieves.
Despite all the screwed up crises that were immenent when default was a real possibility, I don't think the Republicans were hurt, rather that entire Congress was perceived as being unable to get anything done, and that wasn't really Republicans fault even primarily. The other sentiment, "They are all screwed" up is also pervasive enough to make specific criticisms of a party almost meaningless. The only thing that seems to matter to voters by and large is which party is in the presidency and the majority in Congress when the economy is doing well or poorly.
If a Republican were to defeat Obama in 2012, and they held on to their majorities in the Congress, and the economy continued to tank, that is the only scenario, short of the Republicans becoming the legitimate "secessionist party" where I could see Democrats getting votes in any serious number. Otherwise, it's the pendulum, and neither party will make sweeping gains for any long period of time.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Democrats should have the upper hand in these negotiations.
Democrats rarely have the upper hand in negotiations where republicans stand to gain from filibustering the country into complete dysfunction.
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posted
Yeah but this time they don't have that advantage. If they shoot down the deal, then massive automatic cuts to defense kick in. Those cuts are anathema to Republicans, and Republicans can hardly point the finger at Democrats when the Dems will be pushing a balanced compromise that polls show most people agree with.
The key is Democrats being willing to stand up to them. If they cave, GOP is handed a gift. If they hang on, the GOP stands to lose from a political and a policy standpoint. Plus, the Bush tax cuts are due to expire soon, and all Democrats have to do is sit back and let it happen. Doing nothing in these cases hurts the GOP, so their plan of dysfunction backfires for once.
This one is the Democrats' to lose.
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posted
I await with horrified curiosity to see how they'll snatch defeat or stalemate from the jaws of victory *this* time. I wish I weren't so cynical, but when it comes to directly standing up to GOP/TP garbage like this-especially when Republicans can rally around their favorite sound bite-well:(
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: If a Republican were to defeat Obama in 2012, and they held on to their majorities in the Congress, and the economy continued to tank, that is the only scenario, short of the Republicans becoming the legitimate "secessionist party" where I could see Democrats getting votes in any serious number. Otherwise, it's the pendulum, and neither party will make sweeping gains for any long period of time.
Yet, sadly, Republicans continue to pursue vastly different Economic agendas when in power as compared to when out of power. That's how they managed to position the nation at the edge of a debt spiral while in power, and then *use* tht debt as a campaign issue when they were ousted. There is nothing fiscally conservative about GOP policy when they control spending.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I await with horrified curiosity to see how they'll snatch defeat or stalemate from the jaws of victory *this* time. I wish I weren't so cynical, but when it comes to directly standing up to GOP/TP garbage like this-especially when Republicans can rally around their favorite sound bite-well:(
It only takes one Democrat in the Super Committee to cave and a unified GOP bloc can pass their bill. For the most part Pelosi and Reid sent some backbones to the Committee, but both sides also sent a couple people willing to compromise. It's really a coin flip.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Democrats should have the upper hand in these negotiations.
Democrats rarely have the upper hand in negotiations where republicans stand to gain from filibustering the country into complete dysfunction.
I think the saving grace of the situation may be that reality is slowly catching up with the GOP strategy. People realize, slowly, that they have essentially no interest in stability or responsible governance. The trick is for the dems to continue pursuing a balanced approach until the GOP has revealed that *no* scenario exists in which they are willing to adopt a sound economic plan, because they don't want a sound economy- they want to loot the nation of every last dollar they can.
I do wonder how many times the dems can prove that the GOP is not interested in stability over political and personal gain before their base starts to get wise- those in the base who actually care.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I await with horrified curiosity to see how they'll snatch defeat or stalemate from the jaws of victory *this* time. I wish I weren't so cynical, but when it comes to directly standing up to GOP/TP garbage like this-especially when Republicans can rally around their favorite sound bite-well:(
It only takes one Democrat in the Super Committee to cave and a unified GOP bloc can pass their bill. For the most part Pelosi and Reid sent some backbones to the Committee, but both sides also sent a couple people willing to compromise. It's really a coin flip.
Dems have proved incapable of hanging on thus far against GOP brinkmanship. There's no reason to expect this will be any different.
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posted
Well, one advantage is that these are private negotiations.
Another is that the cuts largely will come to defense if this falls through, and Dems can sell that to their liberal base a lot more easily than the GOP can to their conservative base.
Those two things might give them some backbone.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Yeah but this time they don't have that advantage. If they shoot down the deal, then massive automatic cuts to defense kick in. Those cuts are anathema to Republicans, and Republicans can hardly point the finger at Democrats when the Dems will be pushing a balanced compromise that polls show most people agree with.
The key is Democrats being willing to stand up to them. If they cave, GOP is handed a gift. If they hang on, the GOP stands to lose from a political and a policy standpoint. Plus, the Bush tax cuts are due to expire soon, and all Democrats have to do is sit back and let it happen. Doing nothing in these cases hurts the GOP, so their plan of dysfunction backfires for once.
This one is the Democrats' to lose.
Cuts to defense are not nearly as anathema after ten years of fighting two expensive wars. There are many periods in American history where we've allowed our military to stagnate, and crumble, and then when the next conflict comes, spending twice as much money building everything again.
As for the Bush tax cuts expiring, et al, well what's to stop the Republicans from insisting on more cuts, demanding the Bush tax cuts be extended (for the good of all Americans they will say.) and simply playing chicken again with the Democrats? They'll continue to propose smoke screen counter plans, and say the Democrats refuse to play ball, when in reality everybody knows how it's really going. It worked once, and there's no reason to suspect it can't again. I'm sure they believe it will, and unless something convinces them it can't, why wouldn't they go that route?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Doesn't much matter. It's still a political defeat, twice over. Republicans have said no defense cuts, because it'll weaken America's ability to defend itself from our future Martian overlords. You're making a reasonable argument, but what does that have to do with anything? They've said no tax cuts, over their dead bodies.
And yet, despite their protestations, both things could possibly go through. It's the sort of thing that will piss off their base and energize the Democratic base. These are morale boosters. And so what if Republicans do demand more cuts? The debt ceiling issue has been pushed off for more than a year. If Democrats put forward a couple of genuine plans that have major cuts, and no tax hikes even, the GOP will continue to marginalize themselves before the election.
Some of it depends on the Dems having a backbone...but most of this depends on the Dems simply playing the same game of dimwitted defense they always have.
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posted
I think you are underestimating the fallacious notion that something that worked once will surely work again. Political strategies are only abandoned when a more effective strategy is found, or more commonly when it fails utterly.
Brinksmanship seems to hurt the entire system, rather than the Republican party, and with Obama in the presidency that's perceived as a net plus for Republicans.
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posted
Brinkmanship hurts the entire system, which helps Republicans in the short term, because they are encouraging dysfunctional government and profit from dysfunctional government. In the short term.
In the long term, it's continuing to turn them into a zombie dinosaur ethical black hole. Eventually, and perhaps in quite a long time, they will be completely off the political map. Their goal is to do as much damage while they are on it as they possible can do.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I'm not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate? What fallacious notion?
We shouldn't forget that even as Republicans seem to be actively pursuing dysfunction, they are also simultaneously pursuing their policy initiatives AND getting them passed, which is why their constituents are so fired up. So what happens when half that equation falls apart?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Lyrhawn: Like I said earlier, political strategies, changes in two ways. A better one is found, or the current one fails completely. But it is also true that stupid policies that are perceived to have worked, even in the short term, can become almost religiously adhered to.
Mitch McConnell, after the debt ceiling fiasco said something to effect of, "the debt ceiling has redefined the playbook, and raising the debt ceiling will never be routine procedure again." It's no different in that regard to trying to get legislation passed in exchange for not obstructing a presidential cabinet appointment. Who got burned in the debt ceiling talks? No one person really, the entire Congress took the heat, and as a bonus they made Obama look ineffectual. Sure the newspapers you and I read all rightly pointed out the Republicans as villain in a room of bad guys, but that narrative hasn't appeared to gain any traction with voters, the presidential election will in part say something about it. But the Republicans were able to spin their stupid game into a brave cause, where they refused to raise taxes, and demanded spending cuts no matter what the Democrats said.
When the time limit arrives, they'll (I'm predicting) get Bush tax cut extensions, and cuts in spending, even in defense if that is the casualty this time (and by casualty I mean the unwitting victim, not that defense cutting or cutting in general is always an offense).
A near disaster is just not even close to changing behavior than an actual disaster. When somebody texts on their cellphone and nearly slams into a car because they aren't looking, they get a bit of a jolt, and for some people they say, "Hell with that, never again." But most people think about it for a day or two, and then it's right back to doing it until they actually suffer some personal loss for the behavior.
Nobody in Congress lost anything tangible to them with their behavior, so they will by and large act just as they have been acting for the foreseeable future. What makes it worse is for much of the Republican party they will see it as, "We played chicken and the Democrats blinked, Democrats will always lose at chicken."
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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posted
Blayne, you need a better understanding of US history. Well, you don't actually unless you want to participate in conversations like this. There is a reason that part of our representation is not proportional and why that suggestion (that you keep making) is foolish.
posted
Proportional representation is the only fair and democratic way to govern. The only "disadvantage" I've seen cited is that it puts the balance of power in the hands of fringe parties who can now finally get seats. I do not consider this a disadvantage.
It doesn't matter what the history of it was, it's clearly stupid to have now.
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Blayne, you need to understand that the US is a group of states as well as a country. Purely proportional representation disadvantages small states. So not really fair at all.
Nor do you say how proportional representation would solve the problems we are discussing. Right now, as far as I am concerned, the House is a worse problem than the Senate.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
But the states shouldn't matter, demote to provinces or something. They have way too much clout. Your no longer a collection of "sovereign" states, your a singular nation now, act like it.
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Blayne: Perhaps you should see about fitting fifty states into Canada. We are after all the superpower here.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Sorry if this is a retread, but when did Rick Perry say he was chosen by God to be president?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Blayne, you need to understand that the US is a group of states as well as a country. Purely proportional representation disadvantages small states. So not really fair at all.
Nor do you say how proportional representation would solve the problems we are discussing. Right now, as far as I am concerned, the House is a worse problem than the Senate.
How so? The Senate is a body where a single person can (and does!) literally derail the entire Federal government.
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posted
That mostly manifests with appointments. The House is the more common holdup for productive forms of most legislation in recent history.
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posted
Again, how so? Legislation dies in the Senate after passing the House far more often than the other way around.
Perhaps that is simply because everyone in the House KNOWS that it won't go anywhere in the Senate.
Regardless, the appointments process alone is enough to consider the Senate a prime source of dysfunction. The sheer number of empty positions in the government is staggering.
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posted
The problem in the senate is the now ironclad filibuster. They did away with that decades go in the house.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Is Canada's Electoral System Institutionally Racist?
It is erroneously believed by some that the original U.S. constitution had a clause decreeing that a black man was "worth" only 60% of a white man. The three-fifths compromise, rather, was a mechanism for determining how slaves (not blacks, though in the 1770s only 8% of the black population were 'free', so there was little difference) should be counted in determining how many representatives each state received in the House.
Canada's electoral system, however, does inadvertently make the votes from voters of some races worth less than others.
quote:There are 13 ridings where 10% of the population is "Black" There are 13 ridings where 20% of the population is "Chinese" There are 13 ridings where 20% of the population is "West Asian"
quote:Value of a Vote in a "Black" Riding vs. a "Non-Black" Riding: 90% ... Value of a Vote in a "Chinese" Riding vs. a "Non-Chinese" Riding: 82% ... Value of a Vote in a "West Asian" Riding vs. a "Non-West Asian" Riding: 80%
(most minorities and/or immigrants generally tend to cluster in urban areas, away from Quebec, and away from "legacy" provinces which have lower bounds on the number of ridings they can have)
I wonder how you would go about calculating it for the US equivalents. Would you need to calculate it separately for the senate, president, and congress?
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
It seems to me that the design of the electoral college was meant that larger states wouldnt be unduly more influencial on the federal level back when they had far more effective sovereign powers than they do nowadays. In the civil war kentucky was neutral, states can't do that nowadays.
As such, since the power and role of states has been so eclipsed by the federal government that I would find it nessasary, just and practical to do away with it altogether and institute proportional representation.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: As such, since the power and role of states has been so eclipsed by the federal government
A) Not really true. B) To the degree that it is true, many people are against the erosion of states' rights/powers, and would fight hard against anything that increased that erosion or enshrined it in law.
As Kate said, you don't know/understand enough US history to be making these arguments and expect to be taken seriously. You can't just dismiss hundreds of years of history because they are inconvenient.
Mucus, can you please define "riding" in this context? (And I assume that when you said "congress" you meant the House?)
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
A riding is a region that contains roughly 100,000 people (the number goes up or down depending on population shifts, but riding distribution is lagged, which is what causes the disparities in values). A riding elects one MP to Parliament (and one to the provincial legislature, but the above calculation is for federal). Based on the party system, the leader of the party with a plurality often becomes the Prime Minister.
So the disparity basically ends up devaluing certain votes in choosing a PM (and the Senate eventually, since those are appointed by the PM).
I was just musing that one could calculate the same thing for the States, but I'm not familiar enough with the mechanics to detail how.
(Guess: The calculation would have to be done three times, once for riding ~= state for electoral college, once for riding ~= congressional district for congresspeople, and once for however senators are elected(?))
(House, I think, but there are no housemen or housewomen, so I'm confused)
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: It seems to me that the design of the electoral college was meant that larger states wouldnt be unduly more influencial on the federal level back when they had far more effective sovereign powers than they do nowadays. In the civil war kentucky was neutral, states can't do that nowadays.
As such, since the power and role of states has been so eclipsed by the federal government that I would find it nessasary, just and practical to do away with it altogether and institute proportional representation.
The electoral college had far less to to with the big state/little state thing than with the Founders not trusting regular voters. Back then, when you actually voted for an elector and not a candidate, it was assumed that the elector was just plain smarter and more capable than the average voter, and THAT was a guy you could trust to vote intelligently. Originally, we didn't directly elect US senators either, they were chosen by state legislatures. The early election system was clearly designed with a wary eye toward the common citizen. It took a good century or more for us to really start moving past that to direct elections, which is why the electoral college is an anachronism.
You often hear now that the electoral college protects little states who would otherwise be ignored by candidates, but I have to ask, how many campaign stops did Obama and McCain make in Montana? in Alaska? in Wyoming? The electoral college DID give them more power per person in voting than those states would have otherwise had, but it does almost nothing for them in terms of modern campaign strategy. And frankly, I don't think they should get even that protection. The point is supposed to be to make sure they don't get trampled, but it ends up being that their votes are technically worth MORE than a vote in California or Texas. Time to switch to the popular vote.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Time to switch to the popular vote.
Pretty sure I disagree. And I live in one of those vote-devalued states. While I support some changes, I am unconvinced that a straight popular vote is the way to go.
Mucus, thanks. Members of the House of Representatives are called representatives. Members of the Senate are senators. Both are called congressmen/-women/-critters, but the former more often than the latter, so I can understand your confusion.
Representatives each have a district that elects them. Senators are elected by the entire state, by straight popular vote.
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While I support some changes, I am unconvinced that a straight popular vote is the way to go.
