US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

(xpost) Yeah, I'm no student of tax code history, but I look at the top bracket going from about 70% (since 1965) to 50% and then 28% under Reagan. I know there's a lot of gross simplification in that chart, but here's my gross simplification: historically, the richest have paid far more than 35% in taxes and this country prospered. We can't cut our way out of the deficit by gutting entitlements alone. The rich can pay more than 35%. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

commie

Haha, actually to the contrary that chart makes it appear that during times of trouble in this country taxes were raised to pay for a solution (look at the WWII years.) I'm patriotic!

via sully, how have i never seen this

From the ADN, April 3, 1993:

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana. And there, at J.C. Penney's cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.

''We want to see Ivana,'' said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ''because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.''

I suspect you've never seen it because no one but Sully cares

boy he sure does hate that woman!

that should increase incrementally all the way up to $1 billion. then there wouldn't be as much of a deficit. if that's what people really care about, that is.

xpost Isn't this what it was like in the UK for a while? Why the Stones, Beatles, et al. - "Taxman" - decamped to other countries, to avoid paying the 98% tax or whatever on their earnings?

thing is aren't most of those multi-millionaire/billionaires at this point basically living off dividends or otherwise working it so they're probably only paying like 15% at the capital gains rate?

damn yall i just thought it was funny

they're probably only paying like 15% at the capital gains rate?

Bingo!

My mom is all about capital gains tax butthurtedness right now because she feels she's already been taxed to Hell and back on all the money she managed to save to spend on her business premises. She is selling this now because she's heading for 67 - I suspect one of the reasons that grassroots conservative types baulk at cap gains tax increases and further income tax burdens on 'the rich' (and why this reticence is so useful to every stripe of Republican) is that they see the biggest one-off tax bill they'll ever get when they're thinking 'retirement funds' and feel entitled to keep it. My mom has never made more than 50K a year so a $200K tax bill is an idea that makes her *crazy* not to mention it's the common ground that tilts her towards Fox favourites. How do we help people like her while more effectively taxing people with big salaries and bonuses etc who are properly rich?

I love your first sentence, suzy

I saw a letter from a senior to the Washington Post also saying that he didn't want his capital gains taxed at a regular income rate. But nearly all capital gains and dividend income goes to the very wealthy. Hmmm, is there a way to tax it differently based on one's other income or the amount of capital gains and dividend income, or should it be simply that all income is taxed the same and not even these non-rich seniors should get to pay only 15%?

Basically, my mom paid $200K for her office building and will sell for around $600K. This is 2/3 its value pre-crash, but it was a canny late '90s buy - my mom doesn't invest in anything she can't see doubling in value in seven years. To be sitting on $1M worth of property when you've pinched the life out of every penny you meet and have seriously never felt well-off means she can see why someone who has access to that much money is faraway/so close to her, and she feels badly served by the system and a bit 'oh, thanks for that' re. the crash effectively cutting her retirement fund in half before the taxman arrives to take 40 per cent of the second $200K. I don't blame her for feeling like she's gotten a little bit hosed, but I don't like it when she blames her misfortune on the poor, because it takes a rich bastard or an idiot middle manager to approve that person's mortgage to truly initiate the shonkiness.

Maybe it would be helpful to be able to (around retirement age) sell something that is liable to capital gains, but in this sole instance there would be a higher threshold of $500K before the tax kicked in on any further funds. This would be good for people who have no other income save Social Security - I think there are a lot of people my mom's age that are staring this situation in the face.

speech of the year so far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZCl2bi-JDY

Man, that's a lot of paper.

Your tax money at work.

boomshackalaka

that was pretty good though.

crazy amounts of finger-licking

US POLITICS SPRING 2011: I'm surprised stunned shocked speechless

It's funny reading the Republicans get mad at those specifics on the budget cuts--just millions of dollars in specific cuts, and billions of dollars of cuts of IOUs or something.

Also, watching Paul Ryan moan cliches in response to Obama and others criticism of his plan in an ideal world would cause David Brooks and others to say oops he's not "serious" and not a brilliant mind, but that's not gonna happen.

LOL Digby:

Am I hallucinating or didn't we just go though months of caterwauling about how the health care bill was thousands of pages of words, nothing but words, too many to read, when all we need is a simple paragraph explaining everything in plain English?

Well, it looks like things have changed. I just watched GOP economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin and a bunch of faceless Republicans having a fit on Fox News because the president didn't produce a gigantic pile of paper like Paul Ryan's. It means he's "unserious."

that's bc republicans make fun of democrat seriousness + intellect + whatever bc of insecurity that they don't possess those skills themselves. if you think your opponent is killing you on the being serious front, you need to change the dialogue to something that undervalues seriousness. once they had someone who they could get some agreement around that he's serious, like ryan, now they want to compete on that front too. it's pretty much exactly like 4th graders fighting with each other.

digby seems like a dumbshit tbh

am i hallucinating?!?!?! i just don't understand!!!

I read digby a couple times a week: she's often right, but she sounds like a cranky John Adams type with none of the charm.

yeah digby drives me nuts with the fake outrage

and like, blogspot? really?

blogspot is beautiful, it's true

Do you really think she thinks she's hallucinating, goole?

Moron David Brooks in the NY Times is whining also that Obama's plan is not specific(apparently because Obama did not specify the Medicare or Defense cuts or what deductions he's getting rid of) and he wants Obama to have Ryan over for lunch. Really. He does not address the sloppy math in the Ryan plan, the naive belief in trickle-down economics in the Ryan plan, or that Ryan has not specified what tax deductions he will get rid of, and how his plan will hold down health care costs for seniors

Brooks thinks most problems can be solved over lunch.

that's not a view of the world that i'm unsympathetic to

the naive belief in trickle-down economics in the Ryan plan

i wouldn't call this naive necessarily...

I would call it a bald-faced lie

re: digby, i just can't stand this kind of surprised tone when it comes to outrage. there's no way she can be honestly surprised anymore!

obama commenting to donors without realizing he's on an open mic

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20054185-503544.html

"When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he's just being America's accountant ... This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill -- but wasn't paid for," Mr. Obama told his supporters. "So it's not on the level."

xp ppl talk in this thread with surprised outrage all the time!

re: digby, i just can't stand this kind of surprised tone when it comes to outrage. there's no way she can be honestly surprised anymore!

But she's not! Usually she affects a Perrin-esque smugness about things going to shit.

obama commenting to donors without realizing he's on an open mic

lol seems like he's mostly saying stuff that he should be commended for

Yeah, that sounds like "here's my opportunity for some slightly straighter talk by pretending I don't know the mic's on."

re: digby, i just can't stand this kind of surprised tone when it comes to outrage. there's no way she can be honestly surprised anymore!

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/rick-louie-gambling1.jpg

Lol this is what our pres says OFF the books. When right-wingers get caught off the books, it's always some racial slur or talking about their mistresses or some shit.

^^^I know rite? I was expecting this to be some silly shit about he needed a cigarette or making fun of Boner's tan or something

yeah he's getting massive pos feedback on this afaict

the great thing abt the 'oops, open mic!' thing is its a way to create a story out of 'obama just said stuff' -- immediately stands out from 'contents of a speech'

yeah the cynic in me is wondering if this is all scripted

http://troublegumm.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/thetrumanshow.jpg

yall saw the west wing right

of course not