Obama '08?

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Many developed countries have higher tax rates than the US with better employment rates - and standard of living.

You need to distinguish between personal tax rates and business or corporate tax rates. I understand we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, near the top in fact.

Also, which countries do you refer to. Many European countries have worse unemployment and worse standards of living than we do, in my opinion.

1 Reply

@Advocate,

Advocate, it didn't work with FDR, and it won't work now. You cannot spend your way out of debt.

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@okie,

okie, Here again, you misrepresent what the actual taxes are paid by businesses. CLUE: Tax rates mean very little.

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@Advocate,

Yeah, let's ignore the stimulus spending, like I said. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it's required and in the long run we'll be better off.

His 'normal' budget is irresponsible.

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@Advocate,

We've discussed this on several other threads. Please refer to them if you'd like to understand my thoughts on the stimulus matter.

I'd like to instead focus on Obama's horrible fiscal policies (outside of stimulus money). He's FAR worse than Bush is in that regard.

What pisses me off about the guy is that I voted for him in LARGE part because I believed he was serious about fixing our economic problems (which he stated during the campaign was deficit spending). So far he's proven himself to be a liar.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

okie, Here again, you misrepresent what the actual taxes are paid by businesses. CLUE: Tax rates mean very little.

How does around 30 billion grab you, ci? People talk about greedy profits. Well, they actually worked for their money. What did the government do for theirs?

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2008/2/5/exxonprofitsandtaxes.jpg

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@okie,

Clean up a bay in Alaska?

(I'll take environmental disasters for a thousand, Alex)

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So my little chain of stores employs some 20 people. Gross sales of about $1.2m.
I hear that we are the engine creating jobs. But I guess that isn't true. They must be talking about bigger small businesses then mine. Mine that hire high-school kids for the summer and folks we accept through "job placement" programs for disabled people. The cost to me for supervision is big-with no offset. But we do it.
The argument that this tax cut or that for small business strikes me as a total sham.
And every 3 months, without fail, I get surveys from the Census Bureau, the Commerce Dept and OSHA asking (requiring) me to fill out multi-page things.
I don't have a fork-lift, damn it OSHA. Stop sending me 12 pages asking me to report on fork-lift accidents.

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@okie,

You present one company out of millions in this country, and that's your example. Your ability to see the minute out of the big picture is a special skill only you have.

1 Reply

@okie,

okie wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

okie, Here again, you misrepresent what the actual taxes are paid by businesses. CLUE: Tax rates mean very little.

How does around 30 billion grab you, ci? People talk about greedy profits. Well, they actually worked for their money. What did the government do for theirs?

You do know, okie, that oil-producing countries charge companies like Exxon to dig for oil, Libya and Russia e.g. for 90%? And that EXXON an effective tax rate of 34% to the U.S. government? (Your graph shows EXXON's profit/taxes worldwide.)

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@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

If Obama chooses to continue his planned deficit spending, I will gladly vote him out of office in 2012, and vote for deficit hawks as my number 1 issue until we have a government who is willing to deal with the biggest threat to my future.

G. W. Bush was portrayed to the voters as a deficit hawk. And yet, in 8 short years, he increased the federal debt from 5 trillion to over 10 trillion. His legacy is a national infrastructure that is aging, unattended, and crumbling all around us, coast lines that are being decimated by global warming, a damaged economy and a massive loss of jobs, and two ongoing wars in foreign countries. These dire circumstances will not cure themselves without government intervention and that costs money. But it seems that you would rather have the critically ill patient die because you believe that healing the patient will somehow be a great threat to your future.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Here, okie, something you are totally ignorant about the subject of business taxation:

Quote:

More Than Half of US Companies Pay No Income Tax

August 12, 2008 · 40 comments

According to the Government Accountability Office, in any given year, at least 60% of US corporations surveyed paid no federal income tax liability for 1998 to 2005 (the years studied). That statistic includes corporations of varied sizes.

1 Reply

@Debra Law,

I'll take an unknown, possible deficit hawk OVER a known deficit spending President Obama, in a heart beat (assuming his current and foreseeable trend continues).

I'm not saying that we need to not attend to the massive challenges ahead of us, or fix our crumbling infrastructure, I just think we NEED TO PAY FOR IT.

Is that such a ******* hard concept to understand.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Businesses only pay tax on profits. Do you have any numbers that show what percentage of business who made a profit didn't pay any taxes?

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@maporsche,

determining "profit" is often a matter of creative accounting.

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@maporsche,

According to the tax code, businesses are allowed many advantages over individuals; they can carry forward losses to profitable years, and speed up the write off of assets. So, even in profitable years, they may owe no income taxes.

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@maporsche,

spending into negative cash flow is not always the wrong thing to do, for instance spending on social programs during recession/depression is the smart/fair thing to do. what I object to is the floating of trillions of dollars of cash and loan guarantees to prop up a financial establishment that drove us into the ditch. Failure to look after the collective best interest must carry stiff penalties. Failure to extract the correct penalties will unsure that others follow. Look how fast the bankers want to get back to the old normal of extracting huge amounts of wealth for themselves. They still believe that they are brilliant and deserve to be rewarded with multi million dollar annual compensation. They have been taught nothing.

Had Obama reformed the system first and then looked to capitalize the new system on the kids charge card then I would have supported him. That would have been investing in the future. What we are doing now is something else, less savory.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

According to the tax code, businesses are allowed many advantages over individuals;

How about we start by no longer letting them write off compensation? The collective, through the writing of the tax code, is complicit in the obscene pay packages.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Salaries and benefits for the top officers of companies have gone haywire; I still see stock trades by officers of a companies in Silicon Valley still making several million dollars profit in one trade. It's downright obscene!

Nobody is worth that much; nobody. And many of those same companies have laid off workers.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

I said I'm opposed to government deficit spending as a way of governing, meaning in my mind as the standard operating procedure.

In my perfect world, it would be fine if we ran deficits for a few years, assuming that we quickly paid them back. Better yet, we should build after paying the national debt that we can use to weather such stormy years.

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