While I agree that we do have a spending problem, we absolutely have a revenue problem as well. It is absolutely absurd that companies like GE can find enough tax loopholes to effectively pay zero taxes. It is absolutely absurd that American companies, after shipping jobs overseas, can hide money from the IRS in offshore accounts.Originally Posted by Fartman
Expecting companies to pay their fair share isn't stealing. To suggest so is intellectually dishonest.
How's that greece thing going?
A major part of the problem is the progressive tax with thousands of deductions. If they cut if back to a simple three tier system with you paying an absolute percentage (still based on income class of course) while lowering the rates and eliminating ALL exemptions and dependent deductions we'd be far better off. First is we wouldn't need an army of bean counters to even figure out if we have a deficit and the average consumer would have a far easier time understanding the taxes.
It would also be a stealth nerf to the people who like to cry "Tax the rich" who are themselves rich and paying a 20% lower tax rate than my middle class ass. "Tax the rich" means "fuck over the well paid but most certainly not rich workers."
Greece's problem wasn't "spending too much", but "spending in stupid ways".How's that greece thing going?
If single countries can be examples... How's that Sweden going?
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
Actually, Greece's problem now is 'what happens if you try and spend too little': Massive austerity cuts were imposed on the Greeks as a condition for the various bailouts they've received from the EU. The problem has been that these cuts have exacerbated the shrinkage of the Greek economy, resulting in reduced tax receipts and the need for further bailouts and further cuts. The figures truly are frightening.
Even if you look at the UK, the economy here has been pretty much stagnant for the last couple of years because the Chancellor has used the size of the budget deficit to push through an ideologically driven smaller state agenda rather than what's right for the economy. The guy's truly unpopular now, but its more because of things like Grannytax and Pastytax than for his macro-economic incompetence. Chalk up another win for King Demos.
On a totally unrelated side : the communnists are now around 20% in the polls for the french presidential election (the leader being the socialist Hollande at around 28%).
Will hopefully do a recap of the election before sunday.
ahahaha you guys never learn, do you
ahahahahahaha
Having a balanced budget helps? http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...3iH_story.html
Greece was overspending by any measure. Any household or business that spends more than it makes can get by on credit for a while but eventually the compounding debt will catch up unless the outflow of money is lessened (and the savings applied to principal) or the income is increased. This applies to countries as well, though the problems take much longer to materialize.
That said, the way governments increase their income actually takes away from the income of other wage and profit earners. Businesses that overcharge find they lose customers. taxpayers are involuntarily a member of a monopolized market. The result of taking too much from the taxpayers is to decrease the income of the overall economy. Do this too much and the economy (and government income) shrinks.
I'm not calling for tax cuts. I think I'm paying pretty much what I ought to pay. What I am saying is there are far too many ways for either very high or low income people to get out of paying their fair share or ANY share. This is breaking the back of the middle class camel. If the middle class breaks, the whole system dies.
This can be avoided by a gradual fat trimming in the expense of government and by removing the multitude of tax dodges that are used as vote buying payola or were designed to get us through a crisis that has long since gone away (I'm looking at you, farm subsidies). I think the Dems are stupid in ignoring this problem and I think the GOP is being retarded in a call to cut everything and quickly (while inexplicably lowering taxes). Like I said earlier, politics is now a football game. Everyone cares about winning and few actually seem to realize their just fucking everything up.
What are your thoughts on the French presidential choices? From what little I've read Hollande has no solution beyond take everything fromt he rich and give more to everyone else while ignoring the core problems.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
this sounds strangely familiar
And by rich I think I read that he wants a 100% tax on all income above $375k?
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
France wants to return to the Reign of Terror. It'll put the rich back in their place.
So there are a quite a lot of candidates, starting at extreme-right to extreme-left :
Marine Lepen : the daughter of JM Lepen and leader of the Front National, who lost the 2002 election against Chirac (chirac won with nearly 85%). She based her campain on immigration, hallal food and whatever. Credited 12-13% in polls
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan : He his a souverainiste, wanting to get out of the euro. Says he his Gaullist, but politically closer of the Front than of the traditional right. Around 1% in polls
Nicolas Sarkosy : actual president. Poor results in 5 years of power, but his international posture deserves him. 24-26 % in polls
François Bayrou : centrist, based his campain on reindustrialisation and greater focus on education. Around 10 % in polls.
Eva Joly : ecologist, she wants France to get out of nuclear power (France's electricity is mainly nuclear, around 80%). Around 2%
François Hollande : Socialist, the favorite for the moment. Main propositions are taxation at 75% of each euro gained after 1 million per year, and reforms in the over-complicated french
taxes. credited around 28% for the first round and 60% for the second one.
Jean-Luc Mélanchon : He is the surprise of the campain. Barely known since a few months, he created the Front de Gauche, regrouping a dozen of political parties of the left, from the communists (and resistants of the WWII) of the PCF to the center-left ecologists. Based his campain on greater taxation of the capital, a maximum wage (around 30k euros per month), and the creation of a new Assemblée Constituante to create the VIéme République (this mesure was what probably boosted him so much). He his EXTREMELY charismatic and get to have various meeting in open air, having more than 120k people attending. Really fun stuff. Currently as hight as 20% in polls, making him the third man in the election.
P. Poutou : Communist of the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, he his an automobile worker and not a politician. He his the ''mr. Nice Guy'' of the campain. Very funny, but people listen to him more for his jokes than for his program : make pay the crisis of the richs by the richs, more social justice and so on. around 1%.
Nathalie Arthaud : Communist of the Lutte Ouvrière, wanting to forbid firing people and so on. Quite batshit crazy. Around 1%.
BONUS CANDIDATE : Jacque Cheminade, candidate of the Solidarité et Progrès party, disciple of LaRoux, wants to create an elevator to the moon, colonize mars and create chorus classes at school amongst other things. Currently at 0.2% on polls.
unlike the rest of them
Whats the over under on France being conquered in the next 20 years?
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
It seems to me that nobody does. From the americans calling for "smaller government" to Frenchies wanting communists to run a country.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
I'm amazed that anyone still thinks communism is a good idea.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
In the case of a Hollande victory, the UK will happily take the fleeing French professionals who will move here permanently with their families or semi-permenantly during the week and commuting back to France for the weekend.
tia
communism as an idea is pretty sound, but just like every other movement it is subject to human greed. The soviet "communism" portrayed as a bogeyman during the cold war was essentially just far-left totalitarianism. Capitalism is equally vulnerable to the destroying power of greed, best example would be the boom and bust cycles of the last few decades and the entrenched nepotist elites who have run it while the unwashed masses were lead to think they can actually change things.
i believe i have detected a flaw in your plans
Exactly this. Communism, on paper, is a great idea... but it's doomed to fail due to human nature, just like anarchy, democracy and other utopias. Control freaks, greedy leaders, stupidity and unintended consecuences screw even the best laid out plan.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
there are 200,000 of them living in inner London alone. Hollande and Sarkozy made a campaign stop here because overseas votes make a big difference to the final result.
It also ignores basic human wants and desires. Maybe you don't want to be what the state needs you to be for the system to properly work. Communism owns on paper, if you ignore the hopes and dreams of man, hope, and dreams however, find a way to not be ignored, and most communist countries end up suffering in some way because of it.
China is probably the most functional Communist nation, and even they've had to do some seriously morphing of the idea behind communism to get it to function with mans most base instincts. And as pointed out its like mega fucking corrupt, but considering I'm an American citizen I'm not judging the corruption of another nation.
Pretty sure Webster redefined the word corruption to include the United States Government.
Communism works on a micro level (a commune) when everyone has the same goals and are working for survival. On a macro level it falls apart because why would I work hard when I get the same reward regardless of output.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
I'd bunch that up with "unintended consecuences", because communist tend to wave it off with a "but in a TRUE communist society you'll love to do what is needed!". Keep in mind that as long as there's state involvement, they call it "Socialism". Communism is supposed to come after the state, when it's not needed anymore.
As if that could ever happen.
Just like democracy.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
Only absolute monarchy scales correctly
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
getting just a tad off topic btw. foreigners get out.
Fortify the borders of this thread with miniguns and watchdogs. That'll keep us out and fix every problem.
getting just a tad off topic btw. foreigners get out.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
lazors would be better, dont have to keep buying ammo
Well, we have all these landmines lying around, and it would be a shame to have to just throw them away...
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
kind of like this, just pretend that uav is a mexican
btw broham what are the penalties for illegally entering colombia? just curious~
Montezuma's Revenge.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
Depending on your nationality, it ranges from deportation to fines and paperwork. In practice, most of the time they force you to go back to the border and do the paperwork with an officer glaring at you. Hell, some of the borders are even treated as a mere formality, with cities like Leticia/Tabatinga/Santa Rosa de Yavari just sitting square in the middle of 3 borders, a bit sitting in Brazil, another in Colombia, and another in Peru.
We're pretty lax with our immigration policies so doing it illegally isn't really worth the effort. If you want to come here and stay, all you have to do is renew a small paper every 90 days (that will be renewed unless you have a standing warrant or some huge red flag screaming "criminal without connections") and you are set to go. If you want to stick around for good, without the paperwork, all you have to do is request the nationality and it will likely be given to you.
Besides, our borders are mostly maritime or rainforests... so there's really no way to enforce any immigration law when your borders are god forsaken places not even google bothers to map. It means that unless you are a highly sought (and careless) criminal, nobody is going to bother asking you how you entered the country.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
Only if you take back your retired people comming to france for the quality of life, they are messing up the immobiliary prices
No takesies backsiesOnly if you take back your retired people comming to france for the quality of life, they are messing up the immobiliary prices
Although I do find our contingent of overseas angry old people who complain about all the immigrants in the UK not bothering to learn the language quite hilarious in their irony.
Communism's big problem is that it scales worse than pretty much anything else. formerly, Family/tribal groups have managed a form of communism and they dis well enough but once you get beyond the small village, things get complicated.
Except maybe Iratus:
In the Marxist view of history, Communism is supposed to happen after Capitalism has run its course: Whent he good things about Capitalism (the ability to improve the overall sum wealth of everybody) are outweighed by the bad things (the increasing gap between rich and poor and the tendency to make a complete mess of everything every few decades). The logic being that changing the underlying socio-political system that underpins civilisation will allow progress to continue. Marx was just a little naive about how long that would take.
Your right Mira, most of us see Communism as what they have/had in the USSR, China, Cuba, etc. And in thos cases it has always been "I AM NOW IN CHARGE, YOU ARE ALL FREE, KILL THE UNBELIEVERS AND CARRY OUT MY BIDDING" which isnt really true communism. All the true communists are the first to die after a succesful revolution.
If you kill enough of them they stop fighting - Gen. Curtis Lemay
Fear the KKM
Yeah pretty much. Socialism is supposed to be the middle ground, where the revolutionary proletariat creates a popular state that ensures progress continues towards Communism, via taking over each and every mean of production available... something that really isn't viable, stable, or ethical beyond a local sphere.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/hChYV.png[/IMG]
"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
And his students were fairly impatient, leading to Five Year Plans and gulags. There is a natural course to communism which hasn't been seen yet on a national scale.
did you even read my post?
I'll be honest with you, I was just looking for an excuse to link a bit of the Princess Bride.
Ah yes. No thread about the future of America, its Liberty and voice of Freedom would be complete without some French-bashing.
You know, the people who gave us the idea for democracy and the Statue of Liberty.
Also - no philosophical ideal makes for a perfect government. Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism are all poison when used by themselves. In the United States, we have a little bit of capitalism in the form of our "free" market, a little bit of socialism in the form of social security and Medicare, and a little bit of Communism in the ultra-rabid propaganda that the dumbest and most ignorant of our society spew on a daily basis. (Also, the UAW)
Edit: the troglodytes in this country that base every decision on fear and greed will ruin any political system, good or bad.
ThreadRelevant:
Quoth Jon Huntsman (the only sane, clear choice the GOP had)
Speaking at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Sunday, Huntsman recalled that he had been disinvited to a Republican fundraiser in Florida because he called for "some sort of third party movement," according to Buzzfeed.
"This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script," President Barack Obama's former ambassador to China explained.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/...-party-if-your
Jon, I was really looking forward to you running.
http://news.yahoo.com/romney-campaig...155543646.html
I am starting to wonder if Marco will do it after all. This would be a big boost to Romney. FL is an important state and Rubio is popular there. He's also popular enough in the GOP as a whole to turn out more votes.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...ive-primaries/
Hopefully Newt got the message this time. It's Romney.
It's funny that they count CT and RI in a "5-state sweep." I mean, yeah, it's true, but come on. Connecticut? We get 7 electoral votes. Rhode Island gets 4.
Not even 20% of CT's Republicans (I think that's about 8 people) turned out.
Personally, I see that as a total waste. If Gingrich could've turned out even 1000 people to vote for him, headlines would show GINGRICH BREAKS SWEEP. I wish it'd happened, just to throw a little discordia into the proceedings, which are a joke at this point anyway.
Seriously. Nobody cares about CT and RI. A) We'll vote blue, and B) we don't have enough electoral votes to matter anyway.
So, Romney's got an openly gay spokesman.
Thoughts? Is it that he thinks the Republican party's ready for it, is it a grab for the middle, did he maybe just not know?
I'd love to see that conversation.
"Wait, you're WHAT? Seriously?"
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpoli...-gay-spokesman
http://www.logcabin.org ?
It's not the gay Republicans that are interesting to me, it's what the reaction will be in a party known for being anti-gay. Personally, I'd love it if Romney said, "Yeah, he's gay, get over it." If the Republican party could suddenly handle it, we'd be a better nation for it IMHO. But I don't see that happening.
Not alongside shit like this:
http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/state/m...missouri-house
soz mate based on your usual clueless posting i assumed you were expressing amazement that there was such a thing as a "gay republican" v0v
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