GOP offers ‘no-tax’ pledge, DFL cries foul

Right, so where’s their budget? Who and what are they cutting?

C’mon, GOP. Time to put up or shut up.

Come on. We can’t raise taxes on the wealthy. Their financial burden of passing a camel through the eye of a needle alone are staggering. Save the rich!

Praise Jebus, God hates poor people, Amen.

If we had an envy tax in this society the state coffers would be overflowing.

Republicans can’t understand the difference between campaigning and governing. In one you can sometimes get by spewing nonsense until the date the voters have to decide. In governing, you actually have to do something. I know Republicans are used to getting bailed out after the screw up, but there comes a point to face responsibility. Republicans, you’re at that point.

Cutting Local Government Aid and limiting property taxes is not fiscal Lapband, it is Chinese foot binding.

If we taxed greed and insanity, we would have balanced budgets and a health economy.

http://www.kyklosproductions.com/articles/wages.html

A simple analogy is 10 people are playing poker. Eventually one person has won all of the money. That person loans money to other players to keep the game going because it’s still early and they are having fun.

When that person stops lending money the game is over. If there is no redistribution of wealth the game is over and when people get hungry it gets ugly real fast.

Review the article listed above if you like more complicated versions. Its several years old but is still accurate.

Yeah, they are handling the budget just like the typical family facing hard times. Tighten your belt. Cut spending. At the same time refuse to do anything that will bring in some much needed money. Don’t look for an additional job. Don’t sell anything you no longer need. Don’t let the kids make money baby-sitting or shoveling snow. Don’t accept any help from relatives. The more income you refuse the faster you will recover. Just keep cutting until people start dying. Then your expenses will go down!

These Republican need to spend a month living on nothing before they figure it out. Oh forget it, they’re hopeless.

An envy tax? Who envies the shallow, self-centered lives of the wealthy seeking shelter from their newly purchased politicians? There’d be no money in that.

How about a greed tax at the top?

“Cut spending. At the same time refuse to do anything that will bring in some much needed money. Don’t look for an additional job. Don’t sell anything you no longer need. Don’t let the kids make money baby-sitting or shoveling snow. Don’t accept any help from relatives.”

You forgot to add the most relevant analogy, “don’t hold up a convenience store.”

Greed is defined by the left as refusal to give up your money to the thief.

Dennis, you set yourself so high above others. What’s the word for that?

Ah, the right-wing insistence that taxation equals theft.

If you don’t want to pay taxes, renounce your citizenship and go somewhere that has none. I suggest Somalia.

The gambling analogy is incorrect. You should only be gambling with what you can afford to lose. If you are losing your rent and food money you should not be gambling. That would be a bad choice. Some people want to reward bad choices by redistributing the wealth and allowing the gambler to continue to make poor copices. . This type of philosophy will only cause more damage to the individual in the long term by enabling their vice.

Here is the better analogy. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

Then going upwards in salary, the fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the wealthiest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.

Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men – the paying customers?
How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.

But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before.

And the first four continued to drink for free.

But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man.

‘I only saved a dollar, too.
It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’
‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man.

‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two?
The wealthy get all the breaks!’
‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison.

‘We didn’t get anything at all.
The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him.

But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.

They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible

My thanks to the original author whom I do not know.

Tax-paid government services are not beer.

Therefore the analogy breaks down.

I reject your reality, and substitute my own.

Beer makes some people happy. Beer makes other people sad. If you don’t have beer, you sometimes get upset. You can get beer almost anywhere. Yes, Beer is just like government “services”.

Poor analogy since not everyone drinks beer or use the same government services – for example, a childless adult paying property taxes towards K-12 education.

Let’s take this beer analogy a step further.

The profit margin at the bar is already razor-thin with no opportunity to cut expenses or raise prices. By extending the $20 discount, the manager (politicians) causes the balance sheet to go in the red eventually forcing the bar to shut down. Neither the owner (taxpayers) nor the customers (taxpayers) are happy after this fact.

Hmmm.

The logical missteps here (and in much of conservative talk about taxation) are (1) the assumption that the wealth of all men are mutually independent, (2) the assumption that both poor and rich mean make equal use of public resources, (3) the assumption that by paying low taxes the poor men are the only one getting a good deal. None of this, of course, is true.

1. The rich men have become rich in part because they have talent, but also because they had access to the poor men’s labor and the middle class’ purchasing power. Likewise the poor men and middle class are poorer than the rich men because the latter tightly control their market value with economic and political means, as a mean to increase profits on their activities.

2. The rich men, by definition, make more use of public resources. Their activities require more land, more energy, more natural resources, more public infrastructure. They monopolize more government workers, require more military resources, and generate more environmental damages and so forth.

3. The poor men don’t pay taxes because they are dirt poor. All of their disposable income go towards getting a roof and feeding their family an dealing with the stress of being poor. Were they to pay more taxes they would become a burden for society which would be good for no one.

The taxation system that you are ranting against is used widely throughout the world and is built to mitigate the negative effect of factors 1, 2 and 3 on society. It has been the source of political and economic stability for decades, and has allowed the poor to survive, the middle class to thrive, and the rich to get richer.

So my point is be really careful about what you wish for because you might get it.

1. The rich men have become rich in part because they have talent, but also because they had access to the poor men’s labor and the middle class’ purchasing power.

Nonsense. My wealth comes from my labor alone and the purchasing power of corporate America, who gets it’s purchasing power from all Americans. How many unskilled laborers does Bill Gates employ?

2. The rich men, by definition, make more use of public resources. Their activities require more land, more energy, more natural resources, more public infrastructure.

Nonsense. The poor use more police, fire, emergency medical service and the courts system than the rest of the population combined. The middleclass come in second due to their reliance on government schools. The rich use very little of police, fire, and emergency medical service due to their lifestyle choices. They don’t smoke, so their houses don’t catch fire, they don’t drink and drive as much as the other classes so they cost the taxpayers a fraction for police, the courts, jail, prison, emergency rooms, etc. as the poor.

If we all had to run a tab that reflected what we’ve contributed to this society balanced against what we’ve taken, I figure you people still owe me a ton o’ money.

3. The poor men don’t pay taxes because they are dirt poor. All of their disposable income go towards getting a roof and feeding their family an dealing with the stress of being poor. Were they to pay more taxes they would become a burden for society which would be good for no one.

Nonsense. Because the poor pay no taxes they don’t have any skin in the game. They don’t appreciate the costs to society for going to the emergency room for a hangnail, or for drinking and driving, or for wasting their time in government schools, not bothering to learn because they have nothing invested in the community other than in providing jobs for the army of police, lawyers, judges, jailers, school teachers, in far greater numbers than would otherwise be necessary if they were only made to pull their own weight.

I don’t know which left-wing source you cut and pasted this obsolete societal drivel from, Katie, but it doesn’t reflect the 21 century … kind of like the whole progressive movement.

Walking Eagle’s rebuttal is but nonsense.

“The rich use very little of police, fire, and emergency medical service due to their lifestyle choices. They don’t smoke, so their houses don’t catch fire, they don’t drink and drive as much as the other classes so they cost the taxpayers a fraction for police, the courts, jail, prison, emergency rooms, etc. as the poor.”

As an actual EMT-B whose ambulance was assigned to the Hollywood district, I can personally testify to the fact that the lifestyle choices of the rich and famous involve a lot MORE drinking and driving than the poor and also involve massive amounts of illegal substance use. It’s the rich scions of the upper class who end up in the back of my ambulance more than anyone else.

“Walking Eagle’s rebuttal is but nonsense.”

And Lane’s rebuttal is but pure emotion supported by no facts. FAIL

That’s rather hilarious coming from someone whose “proof” was a copy-and-paste of a ludicrously oversimplified conservaspam that started with the substitution for a necessary function of a civilized society (the taxes and duties that come with belonging to a state) of a recreational activity (night on the town drinking).

In an honest and fair comparison, conservative politics lose because they center around the most of us giving our money to the richest few to make them even richer.

“It’s the rich scions of the upper class who end up in the back of my ambulance more than anyone else.”

That would make sense since you were working the rich neighborhood. duh.

“In an honest and fair comparison, conservative politics lose because they center around the most of us giving our money to the richest few to make them even richer.”

No they don’t. Conservative politics don’t involve anyone giving money to anyone.

What you’re referring to is free market capitalism. The idea that people offer products and services for sale and other people buy those products and services in a competitive environment where whoever can offer the best product/service for the best price gains the most business. This system can also be called a “meritocracy” where those who perform the best reap the greatest reward … some to the point of getting “rich.”

It’s sad yet instructive that a man has to explain that fundamental concept to adults in America.

Dennis, go lie to someone who cares.

Oh pffft, nospam. The only emotion I felt towards Walking Eagle’s rant was a mere shaking of my head while rolling my eyes simply because most of what he said was pure nonsense – i.e. not grounded in reality or based on proven facts. The exasperation I felt is a fact, too. Meh.

The system we are working with now is on the verge of the same kind of collapse that the Soviets suffered in the 1980s. Insufficient accountability to the people combined with massive conservative cronyism is producing the same kind of instability, and will likely result in the same fate – economically if not politically.

One of the MANY negative effects of the Cold War was that our whole economy was on an effective war footing for fifty years. We’ve spent the last 20 years scrabbling for ever more threadbare excuses to keep it that way.

I suppose you believe that one of the worst negative affects of the Cold War was that your side lost.

When the public unions are defeated around the country, it’ll evoke the same feeling of euphoria as when the soviet union collapsed. And it’ll be for the same reason. The collectivist system went bankrupt.

Ignorant fascist is ignorant.

It would be interesting to find out how much of Walking Eagle’s wealth is due to his minority business status and how much is due to his merit. You’d think from many of his comments, he’d eschew the advantages and opportunities that MBE identification opens up. But then, it is always about him, him and him.

http://www.dennistester.com

“Dennis Tester Online Learning Systems is a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE)”

“That would make sense since you were working the rich neighborhood. duh.”

Contrary to popular belief, Hollywood is *not* actually a rich neighborhood; the stars generally live in Beverly Hills or Westside, which is where most of the movie studios actually are these days. Hollywood is actually a pretty bad neighborhood, although some areas are now undergoing gentrification and revitalization.

@Lane – This is Katie’s complete lack of surprise. “Deny that I ever got help and pull the ladder up after me” is a standard MO for minority conservatives.

That designation is only there for gullible white liberals who would hire me for that reason alone.

I didn’t know I set up a website, much less one dealing in porn, but then there is so much of that out there. Walking Eagle, kindly post that link to help me find it. Thanks.

Also, if I were you, I’d be more careful what you post online. After all, dollars from “those gullible white liberals” are just as green as anybody else’s. Not very smart, really.

Those of you gentle readers who are puzzled over my porn website comment, this was in response to Walking Eagle’s (aka Dennis) rather juvenile and snippy remark that got deleted just after I posted the above comment. OY.

Compared to this troll, I find that the past Janu-weary and Febru-weary weren’t so bad after all!

But thanks for the free advertising anyway.

So, Dennis, your website has a fraudulent and false statement on it? You admit you are llying?

Great way to promote your business. What else are you lying about?

Any time a tax increase may be necessary, conservatives howl “Tax and spend!” – But it’s NOT the taxing and spending that has driven us to the edge of bankruptcy – it’s spending ANYWAY while giving gigantic tax breaks to gigantic corporations and billionaires.