Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
@BmoreBadBoy #34
Considering the massive debt load of many Americans, I’d say it’s a complete toss-up.
So why isn’t Ford, Carter, and G.H. Bush, shown?
and what are these percentages OF? Couldn’t be income taxes.
The gargoyle on the picture that shows 33% was a tax cut without spending cuts. That stroke of the pen cost » 1 trillion in debt + interest.
You see how well that worked out.
#6 (Zybch): I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you aren’t exactly well off, huh? Probably working a lower-middle class job?Hating everyone who’s done better than you in life? I mean, why else would you say that the rich should pay their fair share? Last time I checked it was the top 10% of earners paid 68% of the taxes. I would say that is a fair share.
So how about next time when you feel that the rich should pay more, how about you do something with your life and get in their shoes.
Mmmmkay?
Hey, here’s an idea go back to tariff and bring back some of the jobs our people and fuck China and the rest of the world. Then we might be able to afford welfare and medical care for everyone that “slips” through the society safety net.
Whatever………………………………..
Traaxx
#42–Matt==we tax the rich, because they are the ones that manipulate the laws to transfer the labor wealth of the masses to the capital accumulation of the few.
The top 10% may pay 68% of the taxes but they have 99% of the after necessities disposable income. Nothing fair about that when too many of their fellow citizens do without healthcare, adequate police protection, etc.
Stop the hating on people who only want the scraps from your table.
Oh, bobbo’s been reading Das Kapital.
A government should never be a burden on it’s own economy. Obama’s is a huge burden. Obamacare is cost AT&T over 1 billion dollars alone for one fucking company.
“okay then, please suggest a way to dig the budget out of the huge hole Bush excavated that doesn’t involve the top rich bastards finally paying their fair share in tax.”
Tarp paid Bush debt, so you can quit using that excuse. Next, add fairtax so that every illegal alien, rich person, tourist, and everyone else are paying the same percent in taxes. Last, the government needs to shrink until it can live within it’s means and stop borrowing money from China. If you cant afford it, YOU DON’T DO IT!
“You really, truly care for no one else in the country but yourself?”
Yes, idiot. I donate more to charities than the average person in this country makes. THAT is how charity works, NOT forced from mine and every single tax payers hand. The more government forces from us to hand out to those who never earned it to buy votes, the less we have to donate to charities who 100% of the time are more efficient and effective than government has EVER been.
Quit being a government whore and realize that there are other ways of helping the down trodden outside of government. Sometimes you can get off your lazy ass and help out yourself.
Government is and will always be the problem, not the solution. Government is a business that forces money from you and can never fail, only makes all of us fail. Government is a necessary evil that should never be trust and should always be limited. Idiots like you use false altruism to grow government. False altruism has always been the tool of every bastard politician to give justification to steal liberty and replace it with fake security. The day you believe that government is the only answer is the day you sign the future into slavery.
#33 Eric said “..is that’s because many of the loopholes and deductions were eliminated as well, making it harder to avoid income taxes.”
That was the brilliant part of Reagan’s tax cuts, and is the part that was immediately forgotten by both sides of the aisle.
My modest proposal, go back to a much smaller tax code with only a couple of brackets and a couple of deductions. Then allow no changes to the tax code until every member of Congress has personally copied the entire tax code in longhand. This must be repeated for every change.
@eightnote #38
The average americans’ debt is a lot less daunting than the $12 trillion dollar debt the US has. And while we’re at it, how are we considered one of the richest nations in the world with debt like that?
I have a feeling that #6 and 44 don’t do very well or grew up in a very liberal household. I believe everyone should pay their fair share. A flat tax 15% of incomes $20,000 and higher teamed up with no deductions.
This system allows producers to do what they do best which is, produce and the people who most need the help, know that they too help contribute to the nation.
“a national revenue must be obtained; but the system must be such a one, that, while it secures the object of revenue it shall not be
oppressive to our constituents.” James Madison.
@ Zybch
Fair share? Half of this country pays no Federal Income Tax. When will they pay their fair share, and not its not the rich. More than half of Californians pay no state income tax. Its disgusting the hate on here for the “rich” with so many stinking leeches in the system.
“The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes.”
Follow mywebsite link to read more.
Ive heard the greatest trick of the Devil is to get us to think he doesn’t exist. right after that, the greatest trick No 2 is that society needs rich people.
I’d go on, but its all a fight of the bumper stickers and talking points. Values, attitudes, perceived self interest.
After you have secured food, clothing, shelter==you “deserve” and in fact have earned nothing more until your fellow man is in the same circumstances. failing that, why should I not take from you by one means what you have taken from me by other means?
Why should society be based on accumulated wealth rather than wealth of arms?
As always, its morality and how you feel about other’s suffering/circumstances and any benefit within yourself to see those needs addressed.
Most of what we all think on the issue is WRONG. New ideas hard to come by though.
@11 “Let’s just call a spade a spade: a 1% tax rate is still extortion.”
Spoken like a true idiot (Republican that is). You WANT an EVER increasing military budget. You vow to “protect” social security and Medicare (when you run for re-election) and then complain about taxes. You’re just an infant, a stupid silly child that reaches for candy and has no idea that mommy and daddy has to pay for it.
The Republicans are children, they want stuff, they just don’t want to pay for it. Roads, yes. Schools, yes. Police, yes. Firemen, yes. Military, yes. Social security, yes. Medicare, yes. Taxes, no.
Children. Just dumb angry children. Give the Democrats (ie. the adults) control and like Clinton you have a balanced budget.
I think the tea baggers just hate having a black President. He increases the military budget and they accuse him of slashing the military. He cuts their taxes and they go on little childish tax rants. Dumb children. Just the anti-reality, anti-science, anti-common sense idiots. Sad. We need to ignore this kids and let the grown ups run things. Let them rant and rave and make up little signs with their crayons, but let leave running things to the grown ups.
Taxes have a way of revealing who is genuinely patriotic and who just waves a flag.
Hey glass—right on!!! Its also really cool that you doubly mock the childish “I got mine, screw you” republicans by posting a rant just as a child would do. Nice demonstration of whats wrong with their position. I do think though that you give them too much credit. They are not “for” any social program, they think such services are the unavoidable part of the natural world and arrive therefrom and not from sound social policy.
Yes, they are that dumb. “Keep your gubment hands off my MediCare!” Priceless.
I think the majority of these posters are the kids that got pick on in school. bobbo and Glass Half Full, I’m sorry you were picked last to play kickball or sat in the chairs at the school dances. My empathy goes only so far. I am not here to help those who made bad choices in their careers.
I’ll be the first to say the republican party left me in 2003, and I became an independent.
All I want for government to provide is roads, military, and basic education. I know this will never happen. I will not take a dime of medicare or S.S. Life is tough, suck it up and go ask the girl to dance.
#45–SL==yea, I almost didn’t phrase it the way I did to avoid that thought “but” it fit so well. Actually, I was thinking of the coal miners giving up their lives for a low living wage in West Virginia so that a few fat cats could continue to flout safety laws. But Marx does identify and analyze some of the competing factors in ways that the spoiled rich do not like.
#57–cloewee==are you always so boringly repetitive? We’ve got it. You earned every thing you’ve got without help from anyone else and you don’t want the gubment to steal your property and make you a slave. Check. Oh—almost forgot, your shit is ice cream because you are such a special little boy. Now STFU.
Bobbo:
Society needs the rich to provide jobs so that people have the opportunity to make something of themselves.
The only people who like taxing the mess out of the rich are the ones who don’t pay at all.
Republicans aren’t children who say “I got mine, screw you.” We are people who say “I decided one day I wouldn’t wait on the government to provide for me so I went out and did something about it.”
The rich have this country checkmated so badly we will be in economic malaise for eons with the catastrophic debt they have left us with.
And I am left with wondering if, of all things, a balanced budget amendment isn’t the sole protection that would prevent this kind of thing in the future.
A balanced budget amendment would require measuring the financial implications of special interest lobbying requiring it to be funded … and of course require the funding of wars and such.
We’d probably be a more peaceful nation and one that less catered to special interests and corporate pillaging if these things had to be funded when the decision was made.
Unless of burying us under a huge dirtpile mountain of debt so corporations and war profiteers can eat the flesh from the country’s bones.
#46 Derek:
“Government is and will always be the problem, not the solution.”
Solution: Go where there is no government! I expect to hear you have moved to Somalia by the end of next week…
@Glass Half Full #53
I love it when people confuse me for a Republican. Of course, it could be worse, they could call me a Liberal… (…shuddering uncontrollably…)
1. I want the federal government to disappear. So I want an ever decreasing military budget.
2. I want all federal social programs to slowly disappear – they have no business providing it according to their own constitution.
3. I want all individuals to pay for their own candy, and if they can’t for one reason or another, they can rely on charity.
4. I don’t want public roads, schools, police, firemen, defense. All of these things would be provided for in a free market, because where there is a demand, someone will supply. Government is failure. Even Barack Obama admitted “government is essentially a monopoly on force”.
I don’t want to give anyone control over my life. I’ll control my life and if you want, you can let Democrats like Clinton control yours while he screws your wife. Oh, and on a side note, I’m black.
47% of tax filers don’t pay taxes. I’m not talking about the unemployed who don’t file or illegals. 47% of people who make money don’t pay taxes. (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0) Don’t tell me the rich aren’t paying their fair share.
If you want an economic rebound, don’t overtax people who would be your employers and customers. I’ve never been hired by someone making minimum wage.
This is bogus. How about showing what % of the population pays the highest rate now, versus in the past. Tons more people are paying AMT and more taxes now than in the past. The filthy rich pay nothing because they can hire accountants and lawyers to hide money. The rich pay a shitload and the upper middle class pays a double shitload. Meanwhile, you can be a useless ghetto dweller and have as many kids as you want, e.g. Octomom and millions more like her.
#27 Bobbo, I thought you didn’t believe in the Laffer Curve. You called it the lie of Libertarians or something like that.
Benjamin==always possible. I do believe most things fall on that bell shaped curve including Laffer. Too often, Laffer gies lip service to his curve but ALWAYS finds/assumes we are way over to the right and need to cut taxes. So==the truth is in the power of the curve and we all can argue where we are on it.
I may have confused Laffer with supply side economics that suffers from similar application==ie Good Theory, Bad application.
But who knows? Good catch though.
How did Obama get a different number than Bill Clinton? Is he raising some tax even higher than Bill did? Bill should be at 41% because they took off the cap on the Medicare tax rate.
so 39.6 +1.45 is the real marginal tax rate.
Obama and the rest of liberals are always saying they are against the Reagan tax cuts, so that means they support a 70% tax rate. Perhaps they are also against Reagan’s indexing taxes to inflation, meaning this tax rate takes effect at a very low level.
@Derek #69
Great Point. When did people start trusting politicians anyway? Everyone knows they lie whenever their lips are moving. Heck, most of them are lawyers! And people are actually advocating trusting the government with more?