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#1 Aug 15 2011 at 7:27 AM Rating: Good
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Maybe too many words, but I'm sure it's right up to par with his skill set.

Cite
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#2 Aug 15 2011 at 8:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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GAH!

The problem not being dumbed down, but flat out wrong in places:

Tea Party colouring book wrote:
In 1773 we had a Tea Party and this led to freedom from high taxes. Today we are having another Tea Party and this will lead to freedom from high taxes again!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the 1773 Tea Party about Americans paying taxes that were then spent in Britain, and not returned to America?

Wasn't it even MORE about American merchant trading ships being forced by British Law to sail to and stop in London before they went anywhere else in the world?
#3 Aug 15 2011 at 8:37 AM Rating: Excellent
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Ask your friends what this means. Are you going to have your own tea party?"

Apparently this authors wants conservative raised little boys to get the **** punched out of them for being *****.
#4 Aug 15 2011 at 8:50 AM Rating: Good
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Yeah, my sister didn't think it'd harm the toddler boys she babysat to paint their fingernails and toenails when she painted hers, while they played dress up.

Then they grew up, went to school, apparently mentioned the fun of nailpolish, and got themselves beaten up. Australian schools not perfect yet. Smiley: frown
#5 Aug 15 2011 at 8:52 AM Rating: Excellent
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Aripyanfar wrote:
Then they grew up, went to school, apparently mentioned the fun of nailpolish, and got themselves beaten up by a wallaby. Australian schools not perfect yet. Smiley: frown

That's a sad story.
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#6 Aug 15 2011 at 9:15 AM Rating: Good
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Aripyanfar wrote:
Then they grew up, went to school, apparently mentioned the fun of nailpolish, and got themselves beaten up. Australian schools not perfect yet. Smiley: frown

Kids will be kids, will be kids, will be kids. It's always the same, it's human nature to hate what's different.

When we grow up we're supposed to teach ourselves that this behaviour is wrong. Some people don't quite manage that, though.
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#7 Aug 15 2011 at 9:42 AM Rating: Good
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Quote:
Ask your friends what this means. Are you going to have your own tea party?"

Apparently this authors wants conservative raised little boys to get the sh*t punched out of them for being *****.
Thanks, I love having to wipe beer off of my monitor. I really didn't see that one coming.
#8 Aug 15 2011 at 10:02 AM Rating: Good
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ITT we learn wallabies are homophobic gaybashers.

Not bad for a Monday morning.
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#9 Aug 15 2011 at 10:13 AM Rating: Good
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Elinda wrote:
ITT we learn wallabies are homophobic gaybashers.

Not bad for a Monday morning.

Their purse pouch is a handy place to keep their denial.
#10 Aug 15 2011 at 11:29 AM Rating: Good
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Aripyanfar wrote:
GAH!

The problem not being dumbed down, but flat out wrong in places:

Tea Party colouring book wrote:
In 1773 we had a Tea Party and this led to freedom from high taxes. Today we are having another Tea Party and this will lead to freedom from high taxes again!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the 1773 Tea Party about Americans paying taxes that were then spent in Britain, and not returned to America?

Wasn't it even MORE about American merchant trading ships being forced by British Law to sail to and stop in London before they went anywhere else in the world?


Don't forget about the part where our taxes today cannot in any sense be considered high.
#11 Aug 15 2011 at 12:15 PM Rating: Good
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What Kachi said x1'000
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#12 Aug 15 2011 at 12:38 PM Rating: Excellent
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Quote:
Are you going to have your own tea party?


Smiley: lol
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#13 Aug 15 2011 at 12:39 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Quote:
Are you going to have your own tea party?


Smiley: lol

Misinformation Is Fun!

Smiley: schooled
#14 Aug 15 2011 at 12:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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Aripyanfar wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
Quote:
Are you going to have your own tea party?


Smiley: lol

Misinformation Is Outright lies are Fun!

Smiley: schooled

FTFY
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#15 Aug 15 2011 at 3:27 PM Rating: Decent
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Aripyanfar wrote:
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the 1773 Tea Party about Americans paying taxes that were then spent in Britain, and not returned to America?

Wasn't it even MORE about American merchant trading ships being forced by British Law to sail to and stop in London before they went anywhere else in the world?


It was a combination of factors. Not the least of which was that the later reduction of massive amounts of taxes paid in England for tea bound for the colonies intended to allow the East India Company to undercut the smuggled tea still contained the Townshend Act tax. It wasn't about the price of tea, but about the use of taxes as a means of control over those who paid the taxes, while ensuring those those same taxed people couldn't exert any control over themselves.

Britain was willing to sell tea essentially at a loss of tax revenue as long as it could continue to collect the one tax that allowed them to directly control the magistrates and governors of the colonies. That's why it was a big deal. And it's paralleled today in the growing reality that the percentage of people paying the largest share of taxes is shrinking, while the government collecting those taxes uses the money collected to buy votes among the population not being taxed.


It's still about using taxes to control the people. Same basic issue, even if the specifics vary.


Kachi wrote:
Don't forget about the part where our taxes today cannot in any sense be considered high.


Care to defend this statement? High relative to what and when? Remember, it's not necessarily about the amount being paid, but about why the taxes are being collected, and what is being done with the tax dollars. It's also not just about revenue (which is obviously down right at this moment). Don't confuse revenue with tax rates. They're not the same thing.
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#16 Aug 15 2011 at 3:37 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Kachi wrote:
Don't forget about the part where our taxes today cannot in any sense be considered high.


Care to defend this statement? High relative to what and when? Remember, it's not necessarily about the amount being paid, but about why the taxes are being collected, and what is being done with the tax dollars. It's also not just about revenue (which is obviously down right at this moment). Don't confuse revenue with tax rates. They're not the same thing.

Compared to the rest of the world today, and compared to tax rates in US history?
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#17 Aug 15 2011 at 4:30 PM Rating: Decent
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Nilatai wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Kachi wrote:
Don't forget about the part where our taxes today cannot in any sense be considered high.


Care to defend this statement? High relative to what and when? Remember, it's not necessarily about the amount being paid, but about why the taxes are being collected, and what is being done with the tax dollars. It's also not just about revenue (which is obviously down right at this moment). Don't confuse revenue with tax rates. They're not the same thing.

Compared to the rest of the world today, and compared to tax rates in US history?


Again, tax rates and tax revenues are not the same thing. The concern driving the anti-tax argument isn't so much that tax rates right now are too high, but that tax rates (overall) will have to increase to match the increase in spending.

Specific tax rates change over time, but historically the US has for a long time generated tax revenue in the 17-19% of GDP range, while spending in the 18-20% range (so running manageable deficits). Under the Obama administration, spending has jumped to 24-25% range. Absent legislative action to get that spending back under control, the only alternative is to increase taxes in some way (many ways most likely) to bring tax revenue up to match.

The precise tax rates, what is taxed, who is taxed, etc is subject to debate, but the fact is that unless spending is reduced, some combination of new taxes will have to be levied to increase the revenue. And that is revenue levels which we have not seen in the US since WW2. So, when folks on the right complain about high taxes and argue that we need to cut spending and *not* raise taxes, this is what they are basing their arguments on.


What is your position based on? Anything?
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#18 Aug 15 2011 at 4:33 PM Rating: Good
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I searched the interwebs and I found this:


"The top marginal tax rate was reduced to 58% in 1922, to 25% in 1925, and finally to 24% in 1929. In 1932 the top marginal tax rate was increased to 63% during the Great Depression and steadily increased, reaching 94% (on all income over $200,000) in 1945. During World War II, Congress introduced payroll withholding and quarterly tax payments. Top marginal tax rates stayed near or above 90% until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% in 1982 and eventually to 28% in 1988. However, in the intervening years Congress subsequently increased the top marginal tax rate to 35% (the top marginal tax rate as of 2007)."


Edit: also I found this. Seems like tax RATES were higher in the past.

Also, you pay a lot less than other countries in the world do. Quit whining.



Edited, Aug 15th 2011 6:36pm by Nilatai
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#19 Aug 15 2011 at 4:43 PM Rating: Decent
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Nilatai wrote:
I searched the interwebs and I found this:


"The top marginal tax rate was reduced to 58% in 1922, to 25% in 1925, and finally to 24% in 1929. In 1932 the top marginal tax rate was increased to 63% during the Great Depression and steadily increased, reaching 94% (on all income over $200,000) in 1945. During World War II, Congress introduced payroll withholding and quarterly tax payments. Top marginal tax rates stayed near or above 90% until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% in 1982 and eventually to 28% in 1988. However, in the intervening years Congress subsequently increased the top marginal tax rate to 35% (the top marginal tax rate as of 2007)."


Edit: also I found this. Seems like tax RATES were higher in the past.


You're missing a key ingredient. How many people actually met that "top marginal rate" (and how many actually paid it). Back when that rate was 90% and then 70%, there were only a few hundred people who paid it. It was not significant in terms of generating total tax revenue, but that's what the liberal sources talk about all the time.


What has happened isn't that the rich got richer, but that more people got rich. Over time, we've increased the number of people making large amounts of money and reduced the rate that they pay at those income levels. The result? We collect about the same total revenue as a percentage of GDP today (ok, prior to this current recessionary period), as we did 20 years ago, and 30 years ago, and 40 years ago, and 50 years ago, etc.


The point is that regardless of what the top rates were over time, the total portion of the economic pie the federal government has consumed in the US has historically been just under 20% of GDP. If Obama and the Dems have their way, this will change. If you buy the whole "We have to raise taxes to pay our bills" argument, then they will have succeeded in increasing both total spending and total taxes as a percentage of GDP to levels higher than they have been in 70 years.


That's what is meant by "high taxes".

Quote:
Also, you pay a lot less than other countries in the world do. Quit whining.


I'm not interested in duplicating the anemic economic growth, technological development, upward mobility, and employment levels those countries typically have. That's not really a winning argument.
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#20 Aug 15 2011 at 4:53 PM Rating: Good
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You're playing semantics gbaji. Taxation is based on percentages of income. You said you weren't interested in revenue.


The % of income taxed in the US today is less than it has been. The % taxed in Europe, which more than competes with the USA in "technological development, upward mobility, and employment levels". Perhaps not economic growth, because of issues with Greece and such.

Either way, you're not paying a lot of tax, at all. On anything. Especially not fuel. That US citizens complain about fuel prices is laughable at best.
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#21 Aug 15 2011 at 5:26 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
historically the US has for a long time generated tax revenue in the 17-19% of GDP range, while spending in the 18-20% range (so running manageable deficits). Under the Obama administration, spending has jumped to 24-25% range. Absent legislative action to get that spending back under control, the only alternative is to increase taxes in some way (many ways most likely) to bring tax revenue up to match.

The precise tax rates, what is taxed, who is taxed, etc is subject to debate, but the fact is that unless spending is reduced, some combination of new taxes will have to be levied to increase the revenue. And that is revenue levels which we have not seen in the US since WW2. So, when folks on the right complain about high taxes and argue that we need to cut spending and *not* raise taxes, this is what they are basing their arguments on.

Ok, so long term tax revenue has been generated at 17-19% of GDP and spending has been at a rate of 18-20% GDP. This means that overall the US has been either undertaxing or overspending by one percent of GDP if it wants to average a balanced budget.

Now, raising taxes or cutting spending would be interchangeable if they had equal costs and benefits. This is where a majority of the developed world disagrees with a seeming majority of US citizens. From an international perspective US spending on the commonwealth of America is ridiculously low: not high enough, or spent in the right places to maintain a civil society.

Every other developed, wealthy nation spent the 20th century consolidating oversight and spending at the Federal level, to try their best at smoothing out ghettos, and making sure every person in the nation going through a poor part of their economic cycle has equal minimal life-support, and opportunity to better their education, work and business.

I CANNOT think of a single nation that has been a working, largely-corruption-free democracy for more than 50 years, apart from America, that has "dough-nut" cities, abandoned cities, or abandoned suburbs. Even when their Housing Bubbles have popped, and their markets have crashed. No other democracy but America has urban decay on that scale. And my guess is that the US community is not there for individuals when they have transitions in their lives. Lose your health in America? Bankruptcy. Lose your job in America? Shortly your business is lost from your local supermarket and retailers because you can't buy groceries or new clothes. Your local businesses can't afford so many staff, and lay some off. A downward spiral of increasing community poverty commences, with no help from comfortable communities further afield to arrest the negative feedback.

A couple of plants shut down with 10s of thousands of jobs lost to the city? An economic and social hurricane lays wastes to suburbs, which in turn take down hundreds of thousands of jobs; dozens, hundreds of suburbs.

Everywhere else in the developed world there are failsafe mechanisms. Interrupts and redirects from freefalls to the economic bottom of homelessness, bankruptcy, and guaranteed lifelong welfare dependency. There's a social contract that says that there are TWO things required for personal success and contentment. One is personal effort and work. The other is organised, equally available community assistance when you need it, if you need it. Get laid off? You can afford rent, groceries, bills, healthcare and some clothes, as long as you prove you are looking for work each week. You may lose your house if you have a mortgage when you lose your job, but you don't have to lose everything. Your community isn't going to go go down with you.

The poorest, worst run American schools are poorer and worse than the worst in any other Democracy. The worst educated of the US citizens seem to be more ill informed than the worst in any other democracy, and a boatload of non democracies. You seem to have no universal system for financing tertiary education. So many Americans can't better themselves because they can't gain education that reaches up to their intellectual or skills potential. Undereducating and undermedicating your workforce and business owners impoverishes both the private and public sectors of your nation.
#22 Aug 15 2011 at 5:39 PM Rating: Decent
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Nilatai wrote:
You're playing semantics gbaji. Taxation is based on percentages of income. You said you weren't interested in revenue.


No. I'm clarifying the semantics being used. Tax "rates" (specific ones anyway) are not the same as revenue. "Taxation" or "high taxes" could mean either of those (or some combination of both). When people say they are concerned about "rising taxes" or that "taxes are too high", they are usually looking at the share of total GDP being consumed by the government. That's our "total tax" if you will. That tax is generated via a whole set of different tax rates on different things. Pointing at one single tax rate for one bracket and attempting to make some broad statement about taxes in general is fallacious.


Quote:
The % of income taxed in the US today is less than it has been.


What do you mean by "% of income" though? The percentage someone in the top bracket pays? The percentage the person in the bottom bracket pays? Some average? Or the total amount paid as a percentage of the total income earned by everyone? I'm being very very clear. You are being very vague (or are repeating other's vague statements).

It doesn't matter which tax rates we're talking about. Spending as a percentage of GDP has increased from around 20% of GDP to 25% of GDP over the last few years. If we do not act to bring spending back down, we must increase total revenue to match. That will require tax rate increases. I can't say exactly where or what or who, but the end result will be that the government will consume a higher percentage of our total economic output than it has since WW2.


That is a fact. That is the "higher taxes" that the conservatives and Tea Party folks are talking about. That is why they are so steadfast against raising taxes as a solution to our current deficit problem. That solution does not bring us back to a balance, but has the net effect of increasing both spending and taxation across the board. It is not fair, nor does it bring us to some kind of parity with past economic conditions.

Quote:
The % taxed in Europe, which more than competes with the USA in "technological development, upward mobility, and employment levels". Perhaps not economic growth, because of issues with Greece and such.


Was there a point in there?

Quote:
Either way, you're not paying a lot of tax, at all. On anything. Especially not fuel. That US citizens complain about fuel prices is laughable at best.



You're missing the forest for the trees. Stop looking at individual rates. Look at the whole picture. Absent spending decreases to bring spending down as a percentage of GDP, our total tax burden will increase. Which exact things suffer increases in tax rates to accomplish this is subject to debate, but that is what is on the table. To pretend that there's no real tax increase at risk here until it's here and unavoidable is duplicitous.
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#23 Aug 15 2011 at 5:44 PM Rating: Good
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Meh.
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#24 Aug 15 2011 at 5:53 PM Rating: Excellent
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List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP

Oh look! In the OECD, the USA is the second lowest taxing nation, at 24% of GDP, followed by Mexico at 17.5! The "usual" tax rate for the European countries that spring to mind as comfortable and cosmopolitan is roughly 40%. The OECD average is 34.8% But hey, you don't want to hear about foreign nations. Nothing to learn there!

Country 	HF     OECD    Eurostat 
 
		 
 Australia 	30.8 	27.1 	 
 Austria 	43.4 	42.8 	42.8 
 Belgium 	46.8 	43.2 	44.3	 
 Canada 	32.2 	31.1 			 
 Czech Republic 36.3 	34.8 	36.1 
 Denmark 	49.0 	48.2 	48.2	 
 Finland 	43.6 	43.1 	43.1 
 France 	46.1 	41.9 	42.8	 
 Germany 	40.6 	37.0 	39.3 
 Greece 	33.5 	29.4 	32.6 
 Hungary 	37.3 	39.1 	40.4 
 Iceland 	40.4 	41.4 	36.7 
 Ireland 	30.8 	27.8 	29.3 
 Israel 	36.8 	31.4 	 
 Italy 	        42.6 	43.5 	42.8	 
 Korea, South 	26.8 	25.6 	 
 Luxembourg 	36.5 	37.5 	35.6 
 Mexico 	09.7 	17.5 	 
 Netherlands 	39.8 	39.1  	39.1 
 New Zealand 	34.5 	31.0 	 
 Norway 	43.6 	41.0 	42.2 
 OECD  		        34.8 	 
 Poland 	33.8 	34.3 	34.3 
 Portugal 	37.0 	35.2  	36.7	 
 Slovakia 	29.5 	29.3 	29.1 
 Slovenia 	39.3 	37.9 	37.3 
 Spain 	37.3 	30.7 	33.1 
 Sweden 	47.9 	46.4 	47.1 
 Switzerland 	29.4 	30.3 		 
 Turkey 	32.5 	24.6 		 
 United Kingdom 39.0 	34.3 	37.3 
 United States 	26.9 	24.0 	 
 
#25 Aug 15 2011 at 5:54 PM Rating: Decent
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Aripyanfar wrote:
gbaji wrote:
historically the US has for a long time generated tax revenue in the 17-19% of GDP range, while spending in the 18-20% range (so running manageable deficits). Under the Obama administration, spending has jumped to 24-25% range. Absent legislative action to get that spending back under control, the only alternative is to increase taxes in some way (many ways most likely) to bring tax revenue up to match.

The precise tax rates, what is taxed, who is taxed, etc is subject to debate, but the fact is that unless spending is reduced, some combination of new taxes will have to be levied to increase the revenue. And that is revenue levels which we have not seen in the US since WW2. So, when folks on the right complain about high taxes and argue that we need to cut spending and *not* raise taxes, this is what they are basing their arguments on.

Ok, so long term tax revenue has been generated at 17-19% of GDP and spending has been at a rate of 18-20% GDP. This means that overall the US has been either undertaxing or overspending by one percent of GDP if it wants to average a balanced budget.


That was the least significant thing to get out of that btw. What is significant is that spending has increased to historically high levels relative to GDP. The Dems want to increase total tax revenue to match, while the GOP wants to decrease spending back to "normal" levels. That's what is important.

Quote:
Now, raising taxes or cutting spending would be interchangeable if they had equal costs and benefits.


Which they don't. Increasing taxes hurts the US economy in the long run. Cutting spending simply returns us to the same status quo we were at just a few years ago. One is a good idea, the other a really really bad idea.

Quote:
This is where a majority of the developed world disagrees with a seeming majority of US citizens. From an international perspective US spending on the commonwealth of America is ridiculously low: not high enough, or spent in the right places to maintain a civil society.


And yet, somehow the US has still managed to remain the country everyone else in the world looks up to economically (well, until very recently). I don't see a lack of people wanting to come to the US, nor the general perception that the US is the land of opportunity (again, except very recently). Again, I don't see why the US should be seeking to emulate nations which are less prosperous and less desired as a place to live than the US is.

Quote:
Every other developed, wealthy nation spent the 20th century consolidating oversight and spending at the Federal level, to try their best at smoothing out ghettos, and making sure every person in the nation going through a poor part of their economic cycle has equal minimal life-support, and opportunity to better their education, work and business.


And they failed miserably. For the very reasons us silly conservatives have told you over and over the whole time. Social spending doesn't work. It "solves" the immediate symptoms of a problem, but makes the actual problem worse over time. This is why those other countries have steadily increased the percentage of their own economies they spend on those programs. Still haven't licked poverty yet though, have they? And along the way, they've made themselves poorer as well.


What Europe is doing economically is completely unsustainable. Surely you can see this? And while I know that misery loves company, insisting that the US should copy them just seems to me to be like the drug addict trying to get all his friends to join him in his addiction so that he doesn't feel so bad about the poor choices he's made.

Quote:
I CANNOT think of a single nation that has been a working, largely-corruption-free democracy for more than 50 years, apart from America, that has "dough-nut" cities, abandoned cities, or abandoned suburbs. Even when their Housing Bubbles have popped, and their markets have crashed. No other democracy but America has urban decay on that scale.


Decay takes many forms though. Ever taken a train past the miles and miles of rows of council housing around London? Every person from the US I've spoken to has commented on this and how you simply don't see anything like that in the US anywhere. Now that's some urban decay! They aren't fixing the problem. They're just spending massive amounts of money to hide the symptoms. We could spend trillions of dollars to put all our poor into communities full of government housing as far as the eye can see too. We just don't think that's a good solution.


Quote:
And my guess is that the US community is not there for individuals when they have transitions in their lives. Lose your health in America? Bankruptcy. Lose your job in America? Shortly your business is lost from your local supermarket and retailers because you can't buy groceries or new clothes. Your local businesses can't afford so many staff, and lay some off. A downward spiral of increasing community poverty commences, with no help from comfortable communities further afield to arrest the negative feedback.


And yet, a stunning number of people in the US manage to succeed anyway. They work harder because they know both that they are responsible for themselves *and* that they'll get to keep a larger portion of the fruits of their own labor. Well, unless the left has its way, of course.


Look. My point here isn't to argue with you about whether the US *should* spend more money, but merely to get you to acknowledge that if we do, that money will have to be paid for via "higher taxes". So, when conservatives point at the increased spending commitments and equate them to higher taxes down the road, they are absolutely 100% correct to do so.

Right?

Edited, Aug 15th 2011 4:58pm by gbaji
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#26 Aug 15 2011 at 5:56 PM Rating: Decent
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Aripyanfar wrote:
List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP

Oh look! In the OECD, the USA is the second lowest taxing nation, at 24% of GDP, followed by Mexico at 17.5! The "usual" tax rate for the European countries that spring to mind as comfortable and cosmopolitan is roughly 40%. The OECD average is 34.8% But hey, you don't want to hear about foreign nations. Nothing to learn there!



And? Can we agree that if the spending the Dems have created is left the way it is, that the taxes as a percentage of GDP in the US will have to increase? Ergo, we will have "higher taxes", right?

Your own opinions that we *should* have higher taxes are a separate issue entirely.
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