47% of Americans do not Pay Federal Income Tax?

[Red Arrow]

I'm guessing it also rubs you the wrong way that all those people are retiring on your dime.  That damn Social Security thing was all designed to take from your pocket and spread the wealth.

My employer and I are paying in now for the right to have your children support me, just like I am now supporting my mom and possibly your parents or some older relatives.  I plan to live a long time so some of you young folks better have some more children or each one of them will have a difficult time supporting me and my generation.

[Red Arrow]

And not a small amount of help from society, I'm sure. Add a dash of luck, and presto!

Seriously, those four things are absolutely required for business success. Sometimes you can get there with no hard work or sacrifice, but that generally requires a heaping dollop of luck rather than a mere dash.

Every business has some help from society. If there were no society, there wouldn't be anyone to trade your goods or services with.  Some people need/deserve/get more help than others.   Some people think they deserve more than they need.

[YoungTulsan]

My employer and I are paying in now for the right to have your children support me, just like I am now supporting my mom and possibly your parents or some older relatives.  I plan to live a long time so some of you young folks better have some more children or each one of them will have a difficult time supporting me and my generation.

Actually the way I look at it, with nearly $13 trillion in national debt, you and your employer are paying for the services the government was providing approximately 10 years ago, which for me would mean I'm paying for my own high school right now   I wonder if anyone has done a reverse version of the debt clock based on how much actual revenue the federal government has taken in to see what day & year we are actually paying for with taxes we pay in the present.  That would be a neat statistic to have.

[nathanm]

We have fought on several occasions on many issues, but do not insult what I went through to get to where I am with that bs.

Funny how you parse words like an attorney when it suits you, but ignore half a post when you're trying to play the victim.

I'll restate, in case I was unclear the first time: Hard work and sacrifice are usually prerequisites to success. I congratulate you for having the fortitude to get where you want to be in life. However, without society, your hard work would most likely be for naught, as you would lack roads to drive on, and be too busy raising crops to eat to go to law school.

Without society, you wouldn't have (probably, I'm speculating here) had your schooling paid for by the government in exchange for your service in the armed forces. (Thank you!) Without society, there would be no Court in which to practice.

I could continue enumerating, but there's no purpose in that.

Without luck, your hard work could also be for naught. Pick the wrong time to get into a business and you're not going to be successful no matter what. You were lucky enough to be born here in the US where society provides a great infrastructure to build upon and prolific opportunity for success. Luck of birth aside, there are plenty of people equally as smart and driven as you who are not as successful, through no fault of their own.

I'm not belittling your hard work. Unless you were a trust fund baby, it was an essential ingredient in your success.

[Red Arrow]

Actually the way I look at it, with nearly $13 trillion in national debt, you and your employer are paying for the services the government was providing approximately 10 years ago, which for me would mean I'm paying for my own high school right now   I wonder if anyone has done a reverse version of the debt clock based on how much actual revenue the federal government has taken in to see what day & year we are actually paying for with taxes we pay in the present.  That would be a neat statistic to have.

We could indeed be paying for 10 years ago.  You youngins better have a bunch of kids quick.  I only have a few more years to pay for their education so they can support me in a manner to which I would like to become accustomed in my retirement.  You will need to forego the new TV, car, ipod etc for a few years to raise them.

[YoungTulsan]

The debt monster requires exponential growth to continue into infinity.  On the other side, the greenies are calling people irresponsible for having kids, much less living life to the fullest.

Instead of telling people how to live their lives, taxing carbon, and other such anti-liberty ideas, the best way to slow down over consumption is to kill the debt monster dead.  When you look at the national debt you'd think we are spending money on purpose just so the banks reap ever increasing debt service payments.  We are enticed to consume crap we don't need so that we continue to borrow and be slaves to the banks.  /Tyler Durden

[JeffM]

Well okay.
If our biggest problem is the federal debt, I guess we should be behaving more like Russia and Libya and less like Japan and Canada.....



Just sayin'

[YoungTulsan]

Well okay.
If our biggest problem is the federal debt, I guess we should be behaving more like Russia and Libya and less like Japan and Canada.....

Just sayin'

Debt is good because Libya isn't in debt?   Strong logic.

[guido911]

Funny how you parse words like an attorney when it suits you, but ignore half a post when you're trying to play the victim.

Play a victim? Where have I played a victim? I just don't want someone who has no clue about the hard work both I and my wife went through to get to where we are by excusing it as luck. You know, we didn't feel lucky passing up having a family while we went to graduate school (oh, while I worked as well) or that we lived as paupers for years in undergrad or that I commuted over 210 miles per day to work to make money for the family.

If your point is that society helped me get to where we are, then I guess those 47% are just darned unlucky, and not underachievers or failures or  just ran into hard times. Luck is BS. Here's a thought, get off your tangential "neighbors got you where you are" riff and talk about real issues. If not, tell me why I should thank you and others with similar positions for my lot in life

[Conan71]

We obviously haven't taken enough from the rich.  We need to bring them down to the middle class level.  Then we can lower the middle class to the lower economic levels.  One step at a time.  You can't hurry it.  Don't be so impatient.

Worked well for the Soviets, eh Komrade?

[JeffM]

Debt is good because Libya isn't in debt?   Strong logic.

Actually it IS strong logic.  
I remember hearing the same national debt hand-wringing and fear-mongering decades ago.
And I get tired of it being used as a political football... especially when it's used to intimidate the younger generation....
I've always felt reducing the debt is a major issue.
But not at the expense of everything else.
Reaganomics should be sentenced to the dustbin of history.



Just a little perspective.

[Red Arrow]

It was your good buddy Reagan that advocated and signed changes to pension law that allowed companies to get out of them by substituting company stock for real money contributions.  REAL pensions were good for employees AND the companies.  It was a win-win.  

Now there is the 401k, IRA's, etc.

401ks, IRAs are the result of a demand for portability.  As the workforce became more mobile and moved among several employers during a career, a method was needed to allow your retirement to follow the employee.  Kind of like the desire to make health care less dependent on employers now.

So we have taken the investment and planning out of the hands of the professional pension managers and put it into YOUR hands.  And the catastrophe that is in the works WILL be what causes the financial collapse.

There are big, dark clouds on the horizon that are just very recently being reported on about the total failure of the whole "self retirement" thing.  The average 401k plan balance is about $65,000 (Fidelity news).  That is the reality of retirement in this country.  You have had smoke blown up your backside about "how to" save so much at 10% for so many years and you too can be a millionaire.

The smoke was in the expectation that interest income could be maintained at 10%.  Otherwise the financial formulas are correct.  Inflation that accompanied the 10% rates on CDs etc ate up that "income" as you note below.  Even as I hoped to become a millionaire when I started my career in the early 80s, I knew a loaf of bread would be $100.00 when I retired.  Not saving was "not an option" as has been said.

Except at the same time, the currency is being inflated at about 6% average.  So you are making about what a savings account would nominally pay...if it paid anything at all.

If you are around 30, you may actually have a chance, but that's counting on the big bust not happening before end of century.  Older?  You are screwed.

And someone has been listening to the Cheney/Rove/Murdoch AM radio lies about poor people not paying taxes.  I will refer you to Warren Buffet for the in depth analysis, but suffice it to say that those same poor people who "don't pay taxes" actually pay a much bigger percentage of their pay in taxes than you likely do.  And if you are one of those blessed who make over $250,000 per year, then you get the biggest break of all.  Want the details?

I have a difficult time with the concept that so many people have no responsibility to the society that supports them.  The French Revolution (should have) taught us that we cannot let those people starve in the cold and rain ... but ... if you want more than the bare necessities, you need to offer something (not necessarily just money) to society more than the bare minimum.  One of the rewards of having more to offer, whether it be a skill, more hours worked to get ahead, etc, is the ability to have some money left over for goodies. Some generations have used that money to make life easier for their descendants.  I fall into the easier but still have to get an education/work for a living group.  Thank you Grandpop (deceased long ago now) for getting an education and a skilled job in your adopted country.   I know that not everyone on this forum believes in that principle.

[Red Arrow]

Worked well for the Soviets, eh Komrade?

Da!

[YoungTulsan]

Actually it IS strong logic.  
I remember hearing the same national debt hand-wringing and fear-mongering decades ago.
And I get tired of it being used as a political football... especially when it's used to intimidate the younger generation....
I've always felt reducing the debt is a major issue.
But not at the expense of everything else.
Reaganomics should be sentenced to the dustbin of history.



Just a little perspective.

It has worked for us during times of unfettered growth.  I fail to see how the debt is sustainable if any sort of plateau is reached in population or economic production.

[Red Arrow]

The problem isn't that the rich aren't taxed enough.  The problem is how government money is spent.  Wealth is redistributed, but the lions share is redistributed upward, not downward.  The amount of welfare and handouts to the poor that exist today cause outrage, while the amount of money being awarded corporations that have lobbyists and bought-off congressmen doesn't cause nearly the same amount of hatred.

Look at various components of government spending and tell me how a majority of it was a redistribution DOWNWARD and not Upward or just pure waste.

Social Security:

Social security isn't a handout, it is a pyramid scheme that had its surpluses raided in the past Bernie Madoff style, and is now about to go bankrupt - but the people who are now receiving benefits DID pay into it, so it is hard to flatly call it a "handout".  The possibility looms that full payment of benefits previously promised will not occur, which means poor and middle class Americans actually had wealth taken away, not given to them - especially considering the interest or investment potential of what was paid in to the system over past decades.

I occasionally hear of the prospect of means testing (are you too rich to receive benefits) for SS distributions.  This would be a case of upper and most likely middle class Americans having wealth taken from them for the benefit of the poor.  The concept of SS being a safety net and supplement to one's own retirement savings is long gone.

Defense Spending:

At over $1 trillion per year, defense spending is the largest chunk of spending we currently have.  It does not go to the poor unless you count poor folks who join the military because there is no opportunity for them in the economy.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

Military Personnel    $154.2 billion
Total Spending    $1.003–$1.223 trillion

That means about 1/8th of defense spending goes to the people in the service (redistribution to the lower and middle class), and the other 7/8ths are being spent in lucrative contracts that lobbyists earn their special interests (redistribution to the super wealthy).

I'm sure that the thousands of civilian defense workers are donating their time for the good of the country.  A good chunk of that 7/8ths goes to workers salaries and other supporting industries.  It keeps a lot of people from being poor while providing one of the few things actually required of the Federal Government.  The amount of $ is always a topic for disagreement.

Debt Service

When we accumulate national debt, we have to pay interest to the parties who fronted us the dough.

Look at this real quick: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm

All of that money is going to private banks, foreign governments, or individuals who had enough spare cash to make the investment.  Redistribution:  Upward

You expect those groups to lend the money for free?  These groups have offered the use of an asset (their money) much the same as a laborer offers his/her muscles or a skilled person offers the use of their skills and all three expect a return in exchange.