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#1077 Jun 05 2015 at 9:56 AM Rating: Excellent
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But then we'll never do it because some other nation found it useful so we can't ever learn from it but have to show how awesome we are by doing something different. American Exceptionalism!
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#1078 Jun 05 2015 at 10:12 AM Rating: Good
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Allegory wrote:
I'm largely ignorant Timelord.
As am I, but there is something I'm curious about.

Smasharoo wrote:
Some assets have nebulous value until they are sold

Meh. Price finding mechanisms for that sort of thing, while not perfect, are certainly sophisticated enough to approximate value for tax purposes, particularly when a mistake can be recovered when an asset is made liquid. Doesn't seem to be much of a hurdle, honestly.

That said, it's psychologically close to impossible to sell wealth taxation in the US. See also: the history of inheritance taxation.
How does inheritance taxation fit into the flat tax picture? Is it subsumed? I've always found it curious how well the "death tax" propaganda is swallowed by the average person. The inheritance tax seems a good way to avoid having landed gentry, and is clearly a benefit only to people in a much higher tax bracket than the people who seem to be the most vocal opponents of it.

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#1079 Jun 05 2015 at 12:16 PM Rating: Good
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Timelordwho wrote:
What's your analysis of using the inflationary back door?...you can't really utilize this without them splitting that tap at some point.
Edited, Jun 5th 2015 11:13am by Timelordwho


It depends on how drunk she is.
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#1080 Jun 05 2015 at 12:58 PM Rating: Decent
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How does inheritance taxation fit into the flat tax picture?

It doesn't. It is a failed attempt to tax wealth, however, which is what I was responding to. Inheritance is obviously the primary means of generational wealth transfer.
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#1081 Jun 05 2015 at 4:25 PM Rating: Good
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Smasharoo wrote:
How does inheritance taxation fit into the flat tax picture?

It doesn't. It is a failed attempt to tax wealth, however, which is what I was responding to. Inheritance is obviously the primary means of generational wealth transfer.
Yeah, I got that, I just didn't state my question clearly. I was wondering if any of the flat tax ideas incorporated something to make an allowance for an inheritance tax also. It appears that it would be simple, just tax the inheritance as income.

Eh, forget it, I'm going in circles. If we did that then since corporations are people everyone with an estate would leave it to a corporation since they'll surely be exempt from a flat tax. I mean, why should a shareholder be taxed on capital gains? "Capital gains should not be taxed at all. The capital was already taxed when I earned it the first time," right?

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#1082 Jun 05 2015 at 4:30 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
Um... They are. WTF? Did you read the link I provided? It's a bill proposal that includes nearly all of the ideas they argued for back in 2009, but were ignored by the Dems. I'm not sure what magical process you think removes all the steps between having a plan and passing a law, but there are quite a few of them.

I literally watch the news all day and I have not once heard of this "bill" that you're talking about. So instead of spending all of this time trying to convince me of this "plan", why don't you just present the bill number/name and current location?


The bill number is in the link I already provided. You obviously didn't actually read it, as I've asked you to do several times. And it's just one of a number they've proposed. You get that not all bills become law, right? These are "ideas", and "proposals". Another word for that is "plans". They don't always come to fruition, for a host of reasons.

My point is that you can't just sit there and say "The GOP doesn't have any alternative to Obamacare". That's simply not true.
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#1083 Jun 05 2015 at 4:37 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
I still trying to figure out why gbaji just can't accept that there are people in the world willing to be taxed a bit more if it means help for people who need the help. I can't help but to think he thinks we're making these people up.


I didn't say that such people don't exist. I'm saying that they represent only a small percentage of those who support such tax plans. And even among those willing to pay more taxes to help people only want to do so if they can force others in the same or higher income range to do so as well. The alternative is lower taxes, and let people donate to charitable organizations to help those in need (as I've mentioned before). And a much larger percentage of people with higher incomes support that sort of approach, both because they think that private charities are more efficient means of disseminating assistance *and* it gives them each greater control over how their money is spent.

Once government has the tax dollars, it has a tendency to do whatever it wants, and not what those who's money it took want. Which is kinda part of the problem.
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#1084 Jun 05 2015 at 5:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
I still trying to figure out why gbaji just can't accept that there are people in the world willing to be taxed a bit more if it means help for people who need the help. I can't help but to think he thinks we're making these people up.


I didn't say that such people don't exist. I'm saying that they represent only a small percentage of those who support such tax plans. And even among those willing to pay more taxes to help people only want to do so if they can force others in the same or higher income range to do so as well. The alternative is lower taxes, and let people donate to charitable organizations to help those in need (as I've mentioned before)..
Well, here's me, still waiting for a charitable organization to fork over the $11,000 I need for the eye surgery.

Hey, gbaji, I'll bet you have $11,000 your not using. Can I have it?
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#1085 Jun 05 2015 at 5:38 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
My point is that you can't just sit there and say "The GOP doesn't have any alternative to Obamacare". That's simply not true.

The GOP doesn't have any alternatives to the ACA that they're willing to put to a vote in the House and Senate?
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#1086 Jun 05 2015 at 5:53 PM Rating: Decent
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My point is that you can't just sit there and say "The GOP doesn't have any alternative to Obamacare". That's simply not true.

We can say "let people die" is the alternative, though, right? Because that's just a factual statement that categorically can't be argued.
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#1087 Jun 05 2015 at 5:58 PM Rating: Decent
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Allegory wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Are you assuming this would only hurt rich people? Because you'd also be taxing 3% of your... everything.

Technically it hurts people who are drags on the economy, but yes it hurts the rich more.


No. It will most hurt those in the middle (arguably the same people who are hurt the most by our current tax plan, but that just seems to be a common factor with the Left's approach to taxation). The wealthier a person is, the higher the percentage of their net worth is tied up into value generating assets versus assets they merely own, but don't generate value over time (or may even depreciate, like cars, furniture, electronics, etc).

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Taxing 3% of my net worth would result in a significant tax decrease for me. And unless you're terrible at generating income on your assets, I suspect it'd result in a tax savings for you as well. For a median income of $52,000 one would need more than $208,000 in net worth before it would cost more in federal taxes (that's including the standard and personal deduction, it goes up much higher without those).


So less than the value of a small home where I live. Setting aside the near impossibility (and arguable privacy issues) of counting up and calculating the net worth of everything someone owns, assuming we could do this even semi-accurately, I suspect you are grossly underestimating just how much of a burden that would place on most people.

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The primary value of taxing net worth over net income is that it encourages efficient use of resources. People who acquire assets that don't generate value at punished while people who acquire assets that do generate value are rewarded.


Yes. Again, benefiting the rich far more than the poor and middle incomes. Also, I think you're missing an incentive effect. It does encourage acquiring assets that generate value, but that's only worth it if the value increases by 3% or more a year. For everything else, it has the incentive effect of simply not acquiring anything of value at all. So instead of buying something that would provide you utility for years, you'll spend money on temporary things that just benefit you today, but don't result in something that can be taxed. So instead of buying new furniture for your home, go to Disneyland. Eat out rather than buy cooking equipment. Rent instead of own.

A tax on assets tends to punish those who don't yet have much assets or who are trying to accumulate them, while not hurting much those who already have them. You'd have a massively negative effect on many people's standard of living as a result of this by forcing them to make choices that actually harm them in the long run.

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It's entirely superior to taxing income in relation to incentives. They key problem is that it's difficult to objectively assess net worth, and difficult to verify. Income requires a transaction, which both parties involved generally have incentive to document accurately. No one else is directly involved in assessing my net worth, and I have reason to lie to the state were it taxed.


Yeah. It's pretty completely unworkable as a tax scheme. As I said earlier though, even if we could figure out a way to do this, I think it's a really horrible way to go. Most people's assets don't generate value over time. They are things they use to make their lives more comfortable. That's what you'd really be taxing. One could also argue, depending on how the system is set up, that this would also create an incentive towards personal debt (even more than already exists, and it's a problem today). If my credit card debt counts as negative worth, then I could totally see people using debt as an effective tax shelter. Again, something the rich could take advantage of far more than the poor though. And having some pretty significant negative economic side effects that I think those supporting the idea just haven't thought through.


I just think it's a terrible idea all the way around. In the list of different ways we could generate tax revenue, that really ought to be placed somewhere very near the bottom.

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gbaji wrote:
For the record, I'm talking just about changing the current income tax system to a flat tax (everyone pays the same percent on every dollar earned). I'll even toss in the idea of eliminating all deductions and tax credits as well. Why not? You know, if you think you're getting a raw deal on taxes or something. Let's see who's in favor of such a thing.

You've been suckered here. A flat tax by definition is entirely, well, flat. You're throwing deductions and tax credits in because when Republicans have floated the idea of a flat tax they tend to disingenuously remove those items. They're handing out free axes, but the head and the handle will cost extra.


Um... Ok. I'm talking about what I'd be ok with and seeing what ideas other people would have discounting it because you think some other group might not like it, or might want a different variation, kinda misses the point here. I'm saying what I'd be ok with and asking you what you think about that, or what you'd want instead.

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Anyway, sure I'd support it, but Republicans would never let a flat tax pass.


Great. Do you think the Democrats would let a flat tax pass either?

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gbaji wrote:
Capital gains should not be taxed at all. The capital was already taxed when I earned it the first time. But that's honestly beside the point here.

Wrong, it's new income. When you buy $100,000 worth of stock (using capital that has already been taxed) and sell it for $150,000, the extra $50,000 above your basis is new income and consequently taxed. This is entirely consistent with our general method of taxing income. If I spend 100 dollars worth of labor and parts to build a bike, which I then sell for $150, then $50 in net income I earned is taxed.


But should it? If we want to encourage people to take $100 worth of stuff and turn it into something worth $150, shouldn't we reward them with a lower (or even zero) tax rate? The argument for low or no taxes on capital gains versus ordinary income (wages) is that a wage earner does not take a financial risk. He spends X time working and gets paid Y dollars as compensation. The guy who invests money he's already earned (and already paid taxes on), could just buy something that benefits himself directly *or* he could invest it in a way that may in time become worth more than the original investment.

The issue isn't just about generating tax revenue, but what effect the method of tax revenue generation has on people's economic choices. Encouraging people to use their earnings in ways that create future economic growth rather than just personal consumption is probably something we should consider when constructing a tax system.

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gbaji wrote:
It's easy to shout for more government benefits when you're not the one footing the bill. I'm just curious how many people would be so on board with this sort of thing if they were actually paying their fair share.

It's easy to show the wealthy pay a greater percent of the nation's taxes than the percent of revenue they collect, but that's a fundamentally flawed measurement method.


Not in terms of motivations for those supporting more government benefits though. It's easy to see how someone who pays no net taxes at all (or even just very very little taxes) will have no reason *not* to support increased government benefits (doubly so if he might also be a recipient of those benefits). The benefits outweigh the costs. So yeah, I think this is a perfectly valid argument to make in this context. But to be fair, you're correct that there are other considerations than just why people might support or oppose something.

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It's flawed to compare direct income by someone making $10k a year and someone making $10 million a year. If we taxed businesses like we did people, airports would be bankrupt. We tax net income for businesses rather than income, because some industries have high proportional expenses.

The same metric should be applied to individuals, which is really what the standard deduction is about. There is a certain cost associated with me being able to work and generate revenue. I need to eat food and sleep somewhere. These costs are the same as expenses for businesses. Net income for me is what I earn beyond basic living costs.

If you remove the standard deduction by considering it as an expense to generate income rather than a arbitrary benefit, then it becomes much more evident how regressive the tax system is.



I totally get what you're saying. And I'm not even opposed to it. What I'm trying to get people to acknowledge is that our existing tax system is already vastly beneficial to those with low incomes. I bring it up solely because of the oft repeated claim that the rich aren't "paying their fair share". As I stated earlier, they are. They're paying their own share and like 20 other people's shares as well.

I understand the rationale for a progressive tax system. Heck, I'm not even totally opposed to it as a methodology. The problem I'm pointing out is that one of the side effects of such a system is that those who are at the lowest scale of the progression have the least reason *not* to support more government spending. Even if it's really wasteful spending, they aren't impacted much (or at all). As we tilt out tax structure more and more to benefit the bottom half of the economy, we make it harder to reign in spending, which burdens us all in more taxes. Which becomes a sort of feedback loop. Worse, the taxes are being borne by those people and businesses most likely to be creating jobs (not a lot of poor people hiring these days). So the irony is that while the person who is poor today will see it in his best interest to vote for higher taxes on the rich to pay for more benefits for him, he's actually hurting his own future because he increases the odds that he'll still be poor in the future (and still "need" those benefits he's taxing the rich to pay for).

It's a pretty vicious cycle IMO, and one I try to point out as often and as loudly as possible. It's not as simple as the basic math implies. While a flat tax would represent a higher net burden on those in the lower income brackets, it would also create a disincentive across all income levels towards higher spending, which in turn keeps tax burden for all people lower, and will over time promote greater job growth and an easier upward mobility path for everyone. So the folks in the lowest quintile would pay a higher percentage of their earnings, but the tipping point is lower as well (point at which the flat tax rate is lower than the progressive tax rate would be otherwise), and it easier for them to reach that economic point as well.

Which means more productivity and more rewards for that productivity. Which is a good thing for everyone. And if, along the way we have a leaner and more efficiently spending government? That's a huge plus as well.
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#1088 Jun 05 2015 at 5:58 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:

The bill number is in the link I already provided. You obviously didn't actually read it, as I've asked you to do several times. And it's just one of a number they've proposed. You get that not all bills become law, right? These are "ideas", and "proposals". Another word for that is "plans". They don't always come to fruition, for a host of reasons.

My point is that you can't just sit there and say "The GOP doesn't have any alternative to Obamacare". That's simply not true.


Or you could cut the BS and just state the bill. There's a difference between "GOP members proposed ideas" and "The GOP as a whole has proposed an alternative to the ACA". Under your logic, I can claim that the GOP foreign policy plan is to stay out of the middle east because of Rand Paul and other Libertarians.

The bill doesn't have to be law, the bill would most definitely be vetoed by the President. That hasn't happened yet because no bill has ever reached the President's desk. Given that the GOP has is the majority of both the senate and the house, that concludes that the GOP has not agreed and/or acted on a plan.

Don't confuse "strategy" with an actual alternative. The GOP's strategy is to hope that the SCOTUS cripples the ACA. At that point, there is no "alternative", because there is no more ACA. That way, the GOP *can* implement the ideas that you are probably referring to. Their "ideas" is equivalent to "securing the boarder first". It's rhetoric pretending to address the problem.
#1089 Jun 05 2015 at 6:03 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
I still trying to figure out why gbaji just can't accept that there are people in the world willing to be taxed a bit more if it means help for people who need the help. I can't help but to think he thinks we're making these people up.


I didn't say that such people don't exist. I'm saying that they represent only a small percentage of those who support such tax plans. And even among those willing to pay more taxes to help people only want to do so if they can force others in the same or higher income range to do so as well. The alternative is lower taxes, and let people donate to charitable organizations to help those in need (as I've mentioned before)..
Well, here's me, still waiting for a charitable organization to fork over the $11,000 I need for the eye surgery.


Have you looked into charitable organizations?

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[Hey, gbaji, I'll bet you have $11,000 your not using. Can I have it?


Sadly, that much money and 4 or 5 times more were taken from me by the government last year. Maybe you could do something to help reduce that tax burden?
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#1090 Jun 05 2015 at 6:05 PM Rating: Decent
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Smasharoo wrote:
My point is that you can't just sit there and say "The GOP doesn't have any alternative to Obamacare". That's simply not true.

We can say "let people die" is the alternative, though, right? Because that's just a factual statement that categorically can't be argued.


Simply repealing Obamacare is also an alternative. Anything that's not the same thing we're doing today is an alternative. No need to go all the way to the extreme, right?
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#1091 Jun 05 2015 at 6:09 PM Rating: Good
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Friar Bijou wrote:
Well, here's me, still waiting for a charitable organization to fork over the $11,000 I need for the eye surgery.

Hey, gbaji, I'll bet you have $11,000 your not using. Can I have it?
All I need to do is schedule the surgery and wait 3 years for the date. Poof, magically free.
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#1092 Jun 05 2015 at 6:23 PM Rating: Decent
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Oh. Allegory, another point about capital gains, especially as it relates to things like stock held in publicly traded companies. The argument for zero capital gains taxes on these is that the "gain" has really already been taxed. Assuming that gains in stock value for a company are related to total valuation of the company itself (and its assets, growth projections, etc), the gain generally comes as a result of an increase in value, which itself is the result of net profits, which themselves are taxed. While not a perfect valuation (since stock price does include a speculative component, although less so in company stock versus say commodities), it's a reasonable base assumption to make when looking at the system as a whole.

Put another way, lets say there's a company worth $10B. Let's imagine that in our perfectly modeled world, this corporations total assets are divided up into 100M shares of stock, each worth $100. Let's imagine that over the next 5 years, the company generates 3B in net profits, which is reflected in it's valuation increasing to $13B. But wait! For the valuation to go up, the increase has to take into account taxes paid. So let's imagine that they're paying a 33% tax rate (yeah, I'm using simple numbers just to illustrate the point). The total actual valuation increase would therefore only be $2B, to $12B. Assuming that the average stock price after 5 years reflects that relative increase in valuation, then the stock increases from $100/share to $120/share.

The point is that had the taxes not been applied, the company would be worth $13B and the shares would be worth $130 each, not just $120. The shareholder effectively paid the taxes. Already. Now, you're saying that he must pay additional taxes on the 20% gain that he got, which is itself already reduced as a result of the net profits to the company already being taxed. That's a problem. The fact that I may not have filled out the taxes on my own filing to the IRS doesn't mean that I didn't already effective have my gain reduced by taxes. It's just paid by the company before their resulting valuation is calculated.


Yes. This is a simple example. But it correctly illustrates the concept of double taxation when it comes to capital gains for common stock. Yes, if the company buys goods and labor and produces a product that is valued greater than the cost, that is "profit" and is taxed as an earning. But when the company is a corporation, that relative profit gain is reflected by a similar relative stock value gain. It would be like in your bicycle example, paying taxes on the $50 profit you made on the sale of the bike, and then paying taxes again on the $50 "capital gain" in your share (100% in your case) of your bicycle building business.

That's just silly. And that's the kind of capital gains we're talking about when we say that it should not be taxed at all. If one person personally owns the company, he pays one tax on the profit he makes and pockets the rest (and can spend it as he wishes). But if 10 people each own 1/10th of the shares in the business, then the business pays taxes on the profits and then each person must sell part of his share to be able to spend the money and then must pay an additional capital gains tax on that. Which is ridiculous.


Oh, or to put the concept of dividends into the equation, the company decides to pay out dividends out of the net profit. This, of course, reduces the gain in valuation of the company (cause they paid out a bunch of cash, right? That that also comes "after tax" on the profit itself. Think of the dividend as being a dollar value you get per share of stock instead of each share of stock (probably) increasing by that same value. In our simple "10 guys own 1/10th of our bicycle making business" example, it's a way for them to actually gain revenue on their partnership without having to give up part ownership of the company. But once again, we find that it's a silly and arbitrary penalty for multiple people sharing a business rather than one person owning it outright. If one person owns it, he pays taxes on the profit and pockets the remainder. If multiple people own shares in the same business as a corporation, they pay the same taxes on the profit, and if they choose to disburse that profit as dividends, they then must pay additional taxes on that as well.

Which is silly and arbitrary. And really really bad tax policy.

Edited, Jun 5th 2015 6:18pm by gbaji
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#1093 Jun 05 2015 at 6:59 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Or you could cut the BS and just state the bill.


It's in the link. Go read it.

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There's a difference between "GOP members proposed ideas" and "The GOP as a whole has proposed an alternative to the ACA". Under your logic, I can claim that the GOP foreign policy plan is to stay out of the middle east because of Rand Paul and other Libertarians.


A party is made up of members. Again, I'm not sure what criteria you're trying to use here (aside from changing it as needed to ensure that anything I provide doesn't meet it). If you asked for "GOP plans for foreign policy", I'd include Paul's ideas in any list I'd present you. Because it's an idea that someone in the GOP has floated. Whether it's likely to be implemented is a different question. It's still "a plan".

If you asked a classroom full of kids for ideas on themes for a school dance, and 20 kids raised their hands with 20 different ideas, would you conclude that "this class has no ideas for themes for the school dance", and walk away? No. You'd think "they have lots of ideas, now we just need to get them to narrow them down, agree on one, and move forward". The point is that there's a process to this. The GOP has tons of different alternatives to the ACA. That they don't all agree on all of them isn't a bad thing at all. It means that they're considering lots of different ideas and working towards the best one.

You're trying to insist that since they don't uniformly agree on a single solution from day one that they don't have any thing at all and can be ignored. Which is an incredibly high bar to raise here. As I said, it took over a year for the Dems to agree on the ACA, and frankly they still didn't agree with it when it was passed. IMO, that's more a sign of the Dems willingness to ignore massive flaws in the proposed plan than anything else. Which I don't personally see as a good thing.

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The bill doesn't have to be law, the bill would most definitely be vetoed by the President. That hasn't happened yet because no bill has ever reached the President's desk. Given that the GOP has is the majority of both the senate and the house, that concludes that the GOP has not agreed and/or acted on a plan.


Again though, the criteria for simply 'having a plan' doesn't require passing a bill and sending it to the president. That's absurd. Let me also point out that most of the ideas the GOP is discussing today are the same ones they proposed back in 2009, when they didn't have the numbers to even propose something, much less pass anything. Yet the exact same "GOP doesn't have any alternative plan" language was used back then. So clearly, ability to pass a bill wasn't the criteria being used.

It was rhetoric then, and it's rhetoric today. Nothing more.

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Don't confuse "strategy" with an actual alternative. The GOP's strategy is to hope that the SCOTUS cripples the ACA. At that point, there is no "alternative", because there is no more ACA. That way, the GOP *can* implement the ideas that you are probably referring to. Their "ideas" is equivalent to "securing the boarder first". It's rhetoric pretending to address the problem.



Again though, I think you're confusing a party that's more interested in discussing things and figuring out the best solution *first* and then moving forward with "not having a plan". The Dems rushed forward with a half baked law, not because it was a good law, and not because it solved the core problem, and certainly not because it didn't introduce more problems than it did solve, but because they could call it "health care reform" and wear it like a feather in their cap. And they didn't seem too concerned about the longer term consequences of doing so.

If taking your time to make sure you're doing the right thing is "not having a plan", then I'll take "not having a plan" every single day. I'd rather our government do nothing than to do something that makes things worse. And the ACA is definitely worse than what we had before it passed. Was the previous system perfect? Of course not. But the ACA has even more problems. It has more holes. It has a boatload of side effects, and legal problems. And the result has been that more people (at lot more) have been negatively impacted by its passage than helped. There were maybe 5M people in the range between where they could qualify for existing medicare/medicaid and having sufficient earnings to purchase insurance or having employer provided health insurance. A relatively small number.

As of this date, the number of people who've lost their health insurance as a direct result of the ACA exceeds that number. And it's growing every day. As I mentioned earlier, a number of the worse provisions on the ACA haven't yet taken effect because they are so bad and so harmful that Obama has basically been ordering HHS not to implement them (technically delaying their implementation). Which is actually technically illegal as well. The ACA was and still is a terrible law. It should never have passed. And the fact that the Democrats used procedural tricks to make it pass, in the face of a host of problems they knew were going to happen, speaks volumes about how little they cared about actually producing good health care reform versus how desperately they wanted to have an on-paper success.

I'll take the GOPs more cautious approach every time.
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#1094 Jun 05 2015 at 7:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Maybe you could do something to help reduce that tax burden?

Have you tried just not filing your taxes? I hear that's all the rage.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#1095 Jun 05 2015 at 10:59 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
Hey, gbaji, I'll bet you have $11,000 your not using. Can I have it?


Sadly, that much money and 4 or 5 times more were taken from me by the government last year. Maybe you could do something to help reduce that tax burden?
Your excuse for not helping me in exactly the way you stated people would be helped (charitable donations) is that you have to pay taxes? If your personal tax load is that high then you clearly have a shit-ton of money sitting in the bank you could just give me anyway. You can afford it, right?

Thanks for a shining example of how the "haves" will not help the "have nots". Because they don't fucking have to.
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#1096 Jun 06 2015 at 9:41 AM Rating: Good
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Well, I see that you still belong to the Gish gallop school of conversation. I'll get to your posts eventually, but you do notice that the more you feel the need to inflate the size of your posts, the more they require a thorough enema, right?

Really, filter?

Edited, Jun 6th 2015 11:43am by Timelordwho
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#1097 Jun 06 2015 at 12:52 PM Rating: Good
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I'll get to your posts eventually


On the other hand, why bother?
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#1098 Jun 06 2015 at 6:22 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
It's in the link. Go read it.
You say what I'm looking for is in the link, yet you spend the majority of your time trying to convince me that I what I'm looking for is irrelevant. So either you're wasting your time in combating what is in the link or it isn't in the link.

Gbaji wrote:
You're trying to insist that since they don't uniformly agree on a single solution from day one that they don't have any thing at all and can be ignored
Day one? No. 5+ years later? Yes.

Gbaji wrote:
Again though, the criteria for simply 'having a plan' doesn't require passing a bill and sending it to the president. That's absurd
You're intentionally distorting my comments in attempt to make a valid point. Every GOP member doesn't have to agree on a bill. That bill doesn't have to be on the President's desk. It doesn't even have to pass both chambers of Congress. However, after 5+ years, there needs to be a plan with a general consensus that is placed up for a vote, especially when you control both chambers.

Gbaji wrote:
Again though, I think you're confusing a party that's more interested in discussing things and figuring out the best solution *first* and then moving forward with "not having a plan".
I'm all about measuring twice and cutting once, but you have a terrible habit of only pointing out flaws in the DEM party and not the GOP party. The DEMS have admitted that they rushed the law, but that was because the GOP wasn't going to have ANY piece of it, regardless of what it says. This is admitted when the GOP says that they will "repeal EVERY WORD" of the ACA. This is why the GOP doesn't have a plan, because if they presented an alternative that kept the things that people like in the ACA, they would be presenting a slightly watered down version of the ACA. Doing so, would be admitting success for the DEMs.

The end state isn't health care, it's not to give the DEM party any credit going into the 2016 election.
#1099 Jun 07 2015 at 9:52 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
The wealthier a person is, the higher the percentage of their net worth is tied up into value generating assets versus assets they merely own, but don't generate value over time (or may even depreciate, like cars, furniture, electronics, etc).

Not true. Anecdotally, it's highly likely I've seen the personal financial statements and tax returns of more high net worth individuals than you.

Wealthier individuals have a larger portion of the nation's wealth than they do the nation's income, see page 9. They are proportionally a bigger drain on the economy than the lower 90%.
gbaji wrote:
Setting aside the near impossibility (and arguable privacy issues) of counting up and calculating the net worth of everything someone owns, assuming we could do this even semi-accurately, I suspect you are grossly underestimating just how much of a burden that would place on most people.

Timelord offered a pretty clever solution I had not yet heard of, which I'd like to discuss with him more later. But I'm not underestimating. The math works out for me personally. I've also shown earlier that the wealthy are better at having than they are at earning. A net worth tax would shift taxation upwards, not downwards. If you have eveidence to the contrary, please present it.
gbaji wrote:
It does encourage acquiring assets that generate value, but that's only worth it if the value increases by 3% or more a year. For everything else, it has the incentive effect of simply not acquiring anything of value at all. So instead of buying something that would provide you utility for years, you'll spend money on temporary things that just benefit you today, but don't result in something that can be taxed. So instead of buying new furniture for your home, go to Disneyland. Eat out rather than buy cooking equipment. Rent instead of own.

This is incorrect. It doesn't discourage owning assets. If I gave a rational person $100 with the condition that she had to hold it in a 0% interest checking account, she wouldn't say "No I refuse that $100, because I'd have to pay $3 in taxes at the end of the year." Having more assets ALWAYS behooves you under this taxation system, but not all assets are equal.
gbaji wrote:
A tax on assets tends to punish those who don't yet have much assets or who are trying to accumulate them, while not hurting much those who already have them.

Almost literally the opposite of what happens. The system rewards people who start with nothing, but have high potential. It punishes people who start with everything, but are incompetent at managing it.
gbaji wrote:
Great. Do you think the Democrats would let a flat tax pass either?

If they didn't think they could do any better, yes.
gbaji wrote:
But should it?

Yes, already answered that.
gbaji wrote:
If we want to encourage people to take $100 worth of stuff and turn it into something worth $150, shouldn't we reward them with a lower (or even zero) tax rate?

That's not what an exception for capital gains achieves though.
gbaji wrote:
The argument for low or no taxes on capital gains versus ordinary income (wages) is that a wage earner does not take a financial risk. He spends X time working and gets paid Y dollars as compensation. The guy who invests money he's already earned (and already paid taxes on), could just buy something that benefits himself directly *or* he could invest it in a way that may in time become worth more than the original investment.

Wrong. Everyone takes risks. Workers also risk being fired, or cheated, or exploited.

Also the system is silly in that it rewards people based on how they receive income rather than how that income is generated. A business owner who draws a regular salary/distribution fromm his business is taxed at the normal rate and then sells his business after, while if that same business owner were to avoid compensating himself and then later sell for the exact same total income is taxed at a lower rate.

Same business, same risk, same owner, same income, different tax. The only difference is how the income was received. People are rewarded not for the decisions or risks they take, but for their ability to control how that income is received.
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Just a quick 1-2 on the other large post directed to me by gbaji.
gbaji wrote:
It would be like in your bicycle example, paying taxes on the $50 profit you made on the sale of the bike, and then paying taxes again on the $50 "capital gain" in your share (100% in your case) of your bicycle building business.

Double taxation of a c corp has nothing to do with capital gains. It has to do with c corps being legally separate entities, you know "corporations" are people.
gbaji wrote:
But once again, we find that it's a silly and arbitrary penalty for multiple people sharing a business rather than one person owning it outright. If one person owns it, he pays taxes on the profit and pockets the remainder. If multiple people own shares in the same business as a corporation, they pay the same taxes on the profit, and if they choose to disburse that profit as dividends, they then must pay additional taxes on that as well.

Wrong. Distributions are not taxed as capital gains. Distributions are affected by the tax structure of the company (s corp versus c corp, etc.). More owners does not incur a tax penalty.

Edited, Jun 7th 2015 11:14pm by Allegory
#1100 Jun 08 2015 at 7:33 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
I'll take the GOPs more cautious approach every time.
I, for one, am shocked at this revelation. Shocked I say. Shocked.
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#1101 Jun 08 2015 at 4:55 PM Rating: Excellent
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
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