Farms, wells, bodies of water, mines–the land. Under somebody’s sovereignty, unless it’s an ocean fishery or something.
Factories, processing plants, rendering plants, kitchens, restaurants–still on land somewhere, not many on ships. Some could be moved, but at some expense.
Airports, stadia, convention centers–location dependent, not moving.
Warehouses, hangars–still on land for the most part. Movable, but the resources to maintain aren’t everywhere & Third World low-tax countries are known for crime.
Proles are by definition not bound to land. That’s what makes them not serfs. They go where the jobs are, but don’t pay for the property & infrastructure.
And if you want to make stuff in one country and sell it in another, that probably means shipping. Who provides the weather forecast to keep ships from sailing into storms? Who rescues sailors, goes after pirates, dredges harbors,…
A friend of mine owns a small business in Canada, and has always been very enamored of the United States. Years ago (just after the tax cuts were put in place as a matter of fact), he looked into moving his business south of the border. Thought he’d take advantage of the lower taxes, and lead a better life.
Once he looked into it and crunched the numbers, he saw that it was pointless. His personal taxes would have been less, yes… but not that much lower. He particularly worried about the cost of healthcare coverage, both for his family and for any workers that he’d hire. The cost to get his family covered would haver pretty much wiped out any tax advantage for him personally. He felt that he’d need to cover his workers in order to get good people - that additional cost would have meant that he’d be paying his workers much more in the US than in Canada.
The median household income is 50K, the AGI will be a lot lower but lets just assume the AGI is also 50K.
Their tax bill will be $1675 (10% of their first $16,750) plus $5988 (15% of ($50,000-$16750)) for a grand total of $6663.
In 2011 the rate will just be 15% on the entire thing or $7500. About an $837 difference. I guess my $500 guess was $337 low but your guess is $914 too high.
Then what do you mean by saying that the Democrats tried to extend it. IF the Democrats tried to extend it before the summer recess, then why the fuck didn’t it pass?
Their ability to generate income is bound to the land. The Fabrice Tourre’s of the world would never make that sort of money anywhere else in the world.
Geithner was a mistake. Obama should have asked him to step down.
So the Republicans torpedoed the extension of the tax cuts for 98% of Americans because the bill left out the extension for the top 2%. Well at least they know which side their bread is buttered on.
Also, I guess to be perfectly honest with myself, I don’t mind paying taxes (for some things) and abhor paying them for others but we have got to get the government’s mindset away from ‘oh look we have a deficit, raise taxes’
We need to be of the mindset (like so many of you have pointed out) of figuring out a cost effective way of paying for something before we spend the money.
We had such a law when Clinton balanced the budget. Republicans got rid of PAYGO as part of the scheme to cut taxes without balancing the budget, and look what happened.
Thank goodness that Democrats have reinstated the law, right?
Erhm, I’m not really sensing that you are giving Democrats any credit for restoring the law that you advocate.
And although I am a Democrat, I have no problem defending Republicans against purely political attacks. For example, I have consistently opposed the liberal talking point that Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. However, in this case, Republicans have no claim whatsoever to fiscal responsibility. Why anyone would think that putting Republicans in charge of Congress would improve things is beyond explanation to me.
Ravenman, I haven’t said a thing about putting any particular party in charge of anything and that is where our disconnect is.
About Pay-go, I would definitely need more time to see how it directly affects the outcome of certain bills.
For example, would it have affected the ‘war on terror’ funding? How about the health care bill?
How about ALL of the biggies? Afghanistan war funding? etc
The OP of this thread explicitly asked about the Tea Party which makes it a decidedly political/partisan thread. You may not care but that does not change the gist of this thread.
What is clear is that the republicans have a near zero track record in balancing the budget and reducing the deficit. Indeed they have done quite the opposite (as shown earlier). Democrats are not what I would call stellar in this area but they are the only party to actually achieve what the Tea Party is railing about.
The Tea Party is long on rhetoric and stunningly short on actual proposals and ideas of how they will do what they claim to want to do. Given the history of the conservatives we have every reason to think they will make things worse in this respect and not better.
So yeah, in the end it is a partisan issue and with elections looming particularly so.
Yep. If there’s a surplus that means they can budget the money better. That was done without actually going after the little stuff. Nobody knows what the perfect tax rate is but the concept of operating within a budget and spending money wisely should be politically universal if not a legal requirement.