Where is the US economy headed?

You do know, don't you, that there is a difference between gross pay and net pay?

Perhaps you missed the conversation, pom? I was suggesting the first 100 grand be tax free, or very very low tax. Maybe even give a tax credit for social security being deducted, I would be willing to consider that. Anyway, the first 100 grand earned income could be your take home pay. Also to clarify, if the company provides any other compensation besides cash for the pay check, such as health care or retirement funds, that should be counted as part of the 100 grand. To adjust the take home to at least 100 grand after any very low tax rate and FICA on the first 100 grand, we could make it maybe 120 grand. I think we could work out the details.

pom, you love to accuse the rich of being greedy, so I am agreeing with you and proposing real solutions here that could work. Since nobody needs more than 100 grand to live, I think everybody that is not greedy should get on board with this idea. Any resistance can only be attributed to greed.

okie, Your solutions are not real; they're not even close to how congress determines the tax codes.

We haven't been accusing the rich people of being greedy; show us where we've claimed such a thing?

What we have said, and will stand by, is that the wealthy are willing to pay more income taxes, because they understand that the other "98%" of Americans can't.

You speak for the rich, but they don't want your advocacy for lower taxes. You think you can speak for the wealthy, but all evidence indicates you are wrong.

When are you going to come and live in the real world, okie?

Since you libs argue that the income tax system should be based upon ability to pay, I am simply pushing your principle here, don't you get it? I am supporting you guys. Since nobody needs more than a hundred grand to live comfortably, simply tax everything over that at 100%, and just like magic, our budget deficits are history! If you don't agree with that, it has to be greed that is motivating you.

Fact is, I don't think I have ever submitted an income tax return reporting a hundred grand of income. I live comfortably and I owe nothing on anything, not on my house or cars or anything.

Do you want to solve this budget crisis or not? Or would you rather see the country go down the drain?

I never knew that it could be so easy agreeing with you Okie!

Good, reasoning logic is now on board! How about it, cyclops, imposter, parados, pom, and others?

Which liberals? I'm an Independent. How many times must I repeat this before it sinks into what most call your brain?

Your primary assumption that "nobody needs more than a hundred grand to live comfortably" shows your ignorance once more. You can't live "comfortably" in Silicon Valley or in many parts of the US on $100 grand. What do you consider "comfortable?" Did you know for a fact that different areas of our country cost more than others? That $100 grand in your country town might be comfortable income, but try living in NYC on that income.

Then move out of those rip off areas, imposter. Do it for the country.

Many people live with much less in the towns that you speak of and have labored far greater than you or I!
Do you agree?

Dam it Okie You are only playing a game and you are not being sincere are you?

I am trying to find out if the libs on this forum are serious or not? I disagree with them, they don't like it. But when I agree with them, they still don't like it. What do they want anyway?

You seem to be asking a ethical question. I would like to hear this answer myself!

Why are you calling it "rip off areas?" Does your negativity prove anything other than your small mind?

Herbert sees doom and gloom, and his views seem unassailable.

Hiding From Reality
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 19, 2010

Wherever you choose to look — at the economy and jobs, the public schools, the budget deficits, the nonstop warfare overseas — you’ll see a country in sad shape. Standards of living are declining, and American parents increasingly believe that their children will inherit a very bad deal.

We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. It will likely take many years, perhaps a decade or more, to get employment back to a level at which one could fairly say the economy is thriving.

Consider this startling information from the Pew Hispanic Center: in the year following the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009, foreign-born workers in the U.S. gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million. But even as the hiring of immigrants picked up during that period, those same workers “experienced a sharp decline in earnings.”

What this shows is not that we should discriminate against foreign-born workers, but that the U.S. needs to develop a full-employment economy that provides jobs for all who want to work at pay that enables the workers and their families to enjoy a decent standard of living. In other words, a resurrection of the American dream.

Right now, nothing close to that is happening.

The human suffering in the years required to recover from the recession will continue to be immense. And that suffering will only be made worse if the nation embarks on a misguided crash program of deficit reduction that in the short term will undermine any recovery, and in the long term will make true deficit reduction that much harder to achieve.

The wreckage from the recession and the nation’s mindlessly destructive policies in the years leading up to the recession is all around us. We still don’t have the money to pay for the wars that we insist on fighting year after year. We have neither the will nor the common sense to either raise taxes to pay for the wars, or stop fighting them.

State and local governments, faced with fiscal nightmares, are reducing services, cutting their work forces, hacking away at health and pension benefits, and raising taxes and fees. So far it hasn’t been enough, so there is more carnage to come. In many cases, the austerity measures are punishing some of the most vulnerable people, including children, the sick and the disabled.

For all the talk about the need to improve the public schools and get rid of incompetent teachers, school systems around the country are being hammered with dreadful cutbacks and teachers are being let go in droves, not because they are incompetent, but strictly for budget reasons. There was a time when the United States understood the importance of educating its young people and led the way in compulsory public schooling. It also built the finest higher education system in the world. Now, although no one will admit it publicly, we’ve decided to go in another direction.

In New York City, for example, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s choice to run the public school system is Cathleen Black, a wealthy corporate executive with no background in education whose children attended expensive private schools. Mr. Bloomberg has asserted that Ms. Black’s management expertise will be a boon to the city’s public school children. But the truth is that Ms. Black, if she gets a necessary waiver for her new job, will be presiding over budget cuts that can only hurt the schools. As part of a proposed austerity budget, the mayor is planning to eliminate the jobs of thousands of public school teachers over the next two years. Take that, kids.

We’ve become a hapless, can’t-do society, and it’s, frankly, embarrassing. Public figures talk endlessly about “transformative changes” in public education, but the years go by and we see no such thing. Politicians across the spectrum insist that they are all about job creation while the employment situation in the real world remains beyond pathetic.

All we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy. No wonder the country is in such a deep slide.

We don’t even seem to realize how deep a hole we’re in. If student test scores jumped a couple of points or the jobless rate fell by a point and half, the politicians and the news media would crow as if something great had been achieved. That’s how people behave when they’re in denial.

America will never get its act together until we recognize how much trouble we’re really in, and how much effort and shared sacrifice is needed to stop the decline. Only then will we be able to begin resuscitating the dream.

NYTimes

This is precisely the reason that although many financial pundits are saying our economy will begin to grow in 2014, I say it's going to take much longer. Minimum five years, but most likely closer to ten.

This is the reason I'm keeping most of my retirement investments in bonds. The YTD earnings is +13%, and I've talked to an investment advisor from Texas who told me she knows of clients who lost a bundle in bonds. She probably doesn't understand macro-economics. Whole countries are going bankrupt, jobs are non-existent, and many more families are losing their homes.

All this while our government continues to rack up more debt, and the feds feeding $600 billing in cash to flood the market of US currency. And these are supposed to be the smart guys?

They're all crazy!

TAKING MONEY from a group that earned it and giving it to a different group that did not earn it is a power not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution of the USA, and is definitely not a way to promote the general welfare of the United States .

Taking away extra money from the wealthy leaves the wealthy with less to spend and invest. That reduces private sector jobs now and in future.

Billionaires, who have been making the vast majority of dollars, want even more. See http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Billionaires-Want-More-by-Bernie-Sanders-101119-265.html

okie has no idea how to use logic.

To okie, those areas are rip-offs because of the very reasons why people live in them: access to great art museums; fully stocked libraries; symphony orchestras, folk music and jazz clubs, as well as Early Music; a flourishing crafts scene; the ability to buy good garments.