Metal Reviews

Fiscally conservative isn't the issue. No politician these days is trying to cut spending. Whether it be war-mongering Republicans or clunky healthcare proposals by democrats. Oh, and before the Ron Paul bit, that guy double charges his expenses. Fucking corrupt bastard. The problem with Obama for is that he is ideologically conservative. He isn't the socialist folks claim he is; his actions contradict it in every way as he fucks over workers and bolsters capitalism.

No he isn't a "socialist", per se, he is a statist.

Well, we'll never know whether or not Dr. Paul would have made a difference, now, will we?

Things are going to get rough, and likely we will be in another war in the ME. Good job America.

Off topic, but interesting nonetheless; have you heard about some of the southern states petitioning for secession? they are getting signatures.

Wait, doesn't this show how the top one percent get off free? And don't you know by now the argument against these percentages? Ten percent of my income when I make only a thousand dollars a month qualitatively affects me much more than when you take a hundred thousand dollars from a millionaire. The former results in me not having money for groceries while the latter equates to them not being able to buy a luxury car. They still have $900,000 of income in which to buy a home, buy all the food they could ever eat, and do whatever the fuck they want. Say you taxed a guy who brings in a million a year 50% of that, he still has $500,000 to blow which is completely different than taking $6,000 of a $12,000 salary or $12,000 of a $24,000 salary. This isn't a moral claim either.

And plus your charts are income tax related. Most wealthy people don't make their money on wages, but on financial markets which I don't think counts as income but as gains.

Not really. They pay about the same % as the lower 40-50 percentile... don't see how that is "free".
And if you are referring to capital gains taxes, that is effectively a second tax, since the money invested was already taxed.
What those numbers are exactly, I would have to look up, but the whole capital gains tax is like a double tax.

On what grounds do you base taking another mans money that he earned fair and square, beyond what everybody else is paying?
That is blatant wealth redistribution, and has no place in the US, nor does class warfare.

Taxes payed adds up to 120% on that graph but income adds up to 100...

edit: I see why now. They decided to label the axises in a confusing way.

Using trendy leftist jargon doesn't help your argument, the chart clearly shows the bulk of taxation from the state and pales in comparison to what a nominally (wealthy)individual who makes 250,000$ or more loses due to theft by the state. Companies lose even more as a result

Another strawman argument, how do you know what they plan on using their income for? Better yet and I repeat, what gives you the authority to determine what they should or how they should spend their income. Simple solution lower taxes for everyone, eliminate state services, and make poor pieces of shit that adamantly refuse to work recite pauper oaths and ostracize them from the community



The state has no moral authority and yes its a moral argument your making, as I assert all taxation is theft and you have made no refutation on why you wish to steal their income to redistritube to whatever unstated cause. You've gone into figures without even citing why you want to steal their income, once again if you want to become affluent work hard at it, develop your skills, and take the requisite chances in the market to stake your claim.



It really doesn't matter at this point you throw out bullshit figures, yet its the same thing you want to steal the income of others to give to those who haven't earned it. It literally is all the same gains are still property of those who earn them or have them coming into their overall pool of income.

You're ignoring my second to last post. The narrative that the rich are risk takers and earned their wealth via ingenuity and chance only works so far. We're approaching these at opposite ends of the spectrum and you're missing the fundamental point.

At some point, wealth arises out of production and production implies labor and unless this entrepreneurial upstart is sewing soccer balls in their own garage then they are hiring workers. Workers, each week, provide a loan to the wealthy. They work with the promise that they will be repaid later. The creation of wealth implies that the worker creates more which he will not be compensated for. I earn $100 a day, but if I only made products equal to $100 then how would the materials be paid for so the worker creates value more than $100 worth. He also creates enough value that the owner of the company gets a cut. The worker creates $300 worth of value in one day. He gets a $100 (his food, clothing, shelter), he created enough value to pay for the upkeep of production (material, machines, rent etc.) equal to say $100, where does that last third go? Straight to the owner's pocket. How is the owner not stealing from the laborer? Wealth is always already theft.

Any kind of moral argument I might be making is that everyone deserves food. I'm not up for murder by omission just quite yet like you seem to be, Steve. Not to mention quite often, jobless folks can't find jobs. This notion that all jobless people are lazy fucks is stupid and asinine.

Uhm, no. The Eurocrisis was caused by neoliberalism- deregulations and tax cuts. The stablest countries in Europe? The ones unaffected by the crisis? Scandinavia, with the highest taxes and the highest levels of welfare and social spending. What "job creators" is France losing? They just elected a socialist president BECAUSE they were fed up with right-wing austerity bullshit.

Yeah, extending Bush's tax cuts is the complete opposite of fiscal conservatism!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 08166.html

Politics, who'd of thunk it?

Also it was tied in with raising the debt ceiling, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, so? He extended neoliberal tax cuts. Doing that was neoliberal.

Thought it was "right wing"?

Anyway, it's called re-election politics; now that is out of the way, watch taxes go up.
And being pressured into extending a tax break already in place in a win all / lose all situation without the votes needed, is not "right wing" economics. Especially considering everything else, especially obamacare.
And raising the debt ceiling...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

In economic terms, "neoliberal" means right-wing. Free market, deregulation, all that jazz.

None of which applies to Obama.
I dislike renaming things, neo-this, neo-that. It is usually nothing more than an attempt at sounding intellectual; I'm for speaking plainly and economically.

Also, the comparison of the US and Scandinavia is the classic apples and oranges comparison.
We have cities with more people than the entire country of Norway, and that is not the only difference.

Red herring.

My mention of Scandinavia was as an example of Europe crisis NOT being due to socialism.

Neoliberalism is effectively a different theoretical approach to liberalism, hence the different name.

Same logic applies to Euro countries; Paris, has what, 3 million people alone?

It's still apples and oranges.

Scandinavia is tiny, homogenous and doesn't have a military (to speak of).

a fairer comparison may be Australia to the US (yes I know our nations populations differ by hundreds of millions but economically we are similar) we have all but recovered from the GFC down here, or had before our government did a couple of extremely stupid things, which saw the Australian dollar exceed the us dollar and make serious ground on the sterling and euro, now however thanks to an enormous carbon tax with no refunds for companies who actually take steps to reduce their cabon footprint or begin a process of transfer into "clean" energy and a "super tax" on our chief industry of mining our economy has gone to shit, or is rapidly heading that way anyway, because it is rapidly becoming impossible to sustain these big businesses with the taxes involved, using mining as the example they are taxed for using carbon at a rate which increases every month, then they are charged between fifty and sixty percent of the profits from the sale of minerals extracted through mining, it's as if the government is actually trying to eradicate mining in Australia leaving us with no significant national export

do I count as one of these new people with their heads on straight? because it seems for the most part my observations on similarities between your discussion of the US and my knowledge of Australia are being ignored completely

also regarding taxation, in Australia we have income thresholds which dictate taxes, so people earning less then the minimum threshold do not get taxed on their earnings, that's set out so that basically if you're earning minimum wage you won't be taxed, with each earning threshold the taxation percentage increases so that high income earners pay the bulk of taxes, I imagine this is the way it works in the US?