Questions about Obama's speech and position?

[Anonymous]

We are paying taxes. We pay ALL the taxes. We're the ones fucking keeping this country afloat.

[Anonymous]

Also, we should keep in mind that both Alan Greenspan and Reagan admin alum David Stockman have both argued that extending the Bush tax cuts could prove devastating to the US financial outlook. Crazy wild-eyed hippies those guys.

Let's face it, the GOP has been taken over by a bunch of irresponsible shit-weasels who are Hell-bent on destroying the US economy. Either out of ignorance, or because they think it'll give them some short-term political advantage.

Meanwhile there are a massive number of extremely credulous Americans who want to give them the tools to do so--because the GOP has established it's Real American bona fides through culture war bullshit.

After all, who are we going to trust? Nancy Pelosi???

just so frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We are paying taxes. We pay ALL the taxes. We're the ones fucking keeping this country afloat.

Oh, right. Thanks for this. It makes it much easier to call you out on yet more disingenuous bullshit. The casual reader will want to note that the red line on that graph shows only federal income taxes. But those not the only taxes we pay. When you look at *all* taxes paid, the tax system is actually regressive. Those folks who you keep hearing "pay no taxes" actually pay more as a percentage of income than your average CEO. And way more than the hedge fund manager.

Federal taxes (non income) as a percentage of income:


And state and local taxes are actually quite regressive:


So, anyway, the "poor don't pay taxes" thing is a cynical debating point used to suppress taxes on the very wealthy. Of course, some credulous types aren't capable of distinguishing between ginned up BS, and actual facts. Anyway, I can understand the guy who's HHI is $300k who's wallowing in self-pity at the prospect of paying another $3k a year during the greatest recession since the thirties. He probably thinks he's the next Bill Gates. What I don't understand is the mulish, far-right Tea Party shock-trooper who's essentially voting himself into serfdom. Classic stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We are paying taxes. We pay ALL the taxes. We're the ones fucking keeping this country afloat.

Because you are making all the fucking money.

[Anonymous]

Millionaires and billionaires makes for a nice sound bite. But the reality is that those are the very people who create jobs ... yes, real jobs that create paychecks and livelihoods.

My husband is a business owner whose small company is growing and actively hiring. Levying more taxes on us is devastating not just to us personally but prevents his company from creating jobs.

Raising the debt ceiling is like giving a delinquent a bigger credit card that the rest of us have to pay off, with interest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Millionaires and billionaires makes for a nice sound bite. But the reality is that those are the very people who create jobs ... yes, real jobs that create paychecks and livelihoods.

My husband is a business owner whose small company is growing and actively hiring. Levying more taxes on us is devastating not just to us personally but prevents his company from creating jobs.

Raising the debt ceiling is like giving a delinquent a bigger credit card that the rest of us have to pay off, with interest.

What tax dollar amount would be "devastating" to you? People complain, but I'd like to know what dollar amount causes you to hire fewer people. It seems unlikely to me that your incremental tax bill would be the equivalent of two or more hires.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Millionaires and billionaires makes for a nice sound bite. But the reality is that those are the very people who create jobs ... yes, real jobs that create paychecks and livelihoods.

My husband is a business owner whose small company is growing and actively hiring. Levying more taxes on us is devastating not just to us personally but prevents his company from creating jobs.

Raising the debt ceiling is like giving a delinquent a bigger credit card that the rest of us have to pay off, with interest.

The debt ceiling is not what spends the money. It's what allows us to pay for what we have already spent, voted to spend, or otherwise committed ourselves to. That's where all the "common sense" arguments fall apart; families have nothing analogous to the debt ceiling. Other countries do not even have such a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Millionaires and billionaires makes for a nice sound bite. But the reality is that those are the very people who create jobs ... yes, real jobs that create paychecks and livelihoods.

My husband is a business owner whose small company is growing and actively hiring. Levying more taxes on us is devastating not just to us personally but prevents his company from creating jobs.

Raising the debt ceiling is like giving a delinquent a bigger credit card that the rest of us have to pay off, with interest.

The debt ceiling is not what spends the money. It's what allows us to pay for what we have already spent, voted to spend, or otherwise committed ourselves to. That's where all the "common sense" arguments fall apart; families have nothing analogous to the debt ceiling. Other countries do not even have such a thing.

Exactly. Raising the debt ceiling has been, up until this point, a pro forma thing. It's something that no one would even conceive of fucking with. Fighting to block raising it is the equivalent of the GOP leadership stealing the nuclear launch codes during a visit to the White House, and threatening to launch an attack on France if Social Security isn't privatized. Only in a completely deranged world is this some sort of "on the one hand GOP say, on the other Dems say". Raise the fucking debt limit--you're playing with the countries solvency.

As far as people talking about how raising personal income taxes would destroy their small business, you need to talk to a damned accountant. But putting that aside, raising taxes across the board by 30% would have less of a negative impact on the US economy than defaulting. It's treason pure and simple.

[Anonymous]

We are paying taxes. We pay ALL the taxes. We're the ones fucking keeping this country afloat.

Because you are making all the fucking money.

How dare you complain while the plutocrats fuck you!

Oh, and other PP: You said that the people who are being taxed are the people who create jobs? Not true. The people who create jobs are far and away small businesses that grow. Not giant multinational corporations. Personal income tax rates have just about nothing to do with that.

But the folks in the top 1% aren't actually all that great at creating jobs. If that money were taxed (or donated to avoid taxes) it would have a much greater job-creating effect.

It's another example of the way that Conservatives see everything as a black/white issue: these noble multi-billionaires are creating jobs out of the goodness of their hearts, and now we're going to turn around and *tax* them??? I DON'T THINK SO!!

Anyway, if your average corporate CEO could maintain profits without creating a single job, they'd jump at that in a heartbeat. Jobs are forced negative externalities, like arsenic in a river, or CO2 in the air.

[Anonymous]

All the bitching and moaning about destroying small businesses. It is such bullshit. It's like the vain threats your child makes when they aren't getting their way. And they have been making it since the 70's.

You're not the first one to make the threat. You wouldn't be the first one to bluff.

[Anonymous]

Best take on the situation yet:

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.

And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.

No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.

Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.

So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.

You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.

And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.

It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All the bitching and moaning about destroying small businesses. It is such bullshit. It's like the vain threats your child makes when they aren't getting their way. And they have been making it since the 70's.

You're not the first one to make the threat. You wouldn't be the first one to bluff.

I'd love to know your employer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the bitching and moaning about destroying small businesses. It is such bullshit. It's like the vain threats your child makes when they aren't getting their way. And they have been making it since the 70's.

You're not the first one to make the threat. You wouldn't be the first one to bluff.

I'd love to know your employer.

Me. I own a company. That's why I know it is such bitchy whining.

[Anonymous]

Report out from JP Morgan saying this whole debacle is likely to cost us $100 billion a year in higher borrowing costs.

That's a trillion dollars over 10 years we could have saved just by passing a clean debt limit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the bitching and moaning about destroying small businesses. It is such bullshit. It's like the vain threats your child makes when they aren't getting their way. And they have been making it since the 70's.

You're not the first one to make the threat. You wouldn't be the first one to bluff.

I'd love to know your employer.

Me. I own a company. That's why I know it is such bitchy whining.

Thanks for answering. That's very interesting. My dad owned a small business in the 50's and 60's. He never complained about taxes, but I honestly don't know enough about running a small business in today's world. I work for a school system.