So the Dems are telling the truth and the Repubs are lying, thus you support the Repubs out of hope? Ok, you tell me how to get out of the debt hole the GoP has gotten us into. And if the answer is “cut spending” I want actual progams and dollar amounts. Then compare said dollar amounts to the deficit.
Since both have a history of increasing spending, but one wants to cut taxes and says it wants to increase spending and the other wants to increase taxes and increase spending and is proud of it, I’ll choose the former. It sucks as a choice, but it’s the best choice I have.
If I were dictator, I’d pretty much cut everything – no Dept. of Ed, no Commerce Department, sell off public land, eliminate Medicaid and Medicare for anyone who makes over 150% FPL, phase out Social Security to totally end in twenty years, cut the Dept. of Defense in half. I don’t have dollar amounts off the top of my head, but I guarantee that doing that would cure our fiscal ills.
Of course, that ain’t gonna happen, but if you want a realistic solution I’ll need some time to put together the figures.
To the OP:
I know more people who are single-issue voters (left and right) on issues other than taxes, than I do who are single issue voters on taxes.
Just my two cents.
Yes, 5% interest rate is really killing people. :rolleyes: My parents bought their first house at 18%. We survived then, we will survive now.
As to raising taxes to get rid of the debt: also not a great idea. Again, the country is not a person. But, to use a “person” analogy to make my point: would you take out a $60k loan to go to law school? See, I would, and I make much more money now, even with my law school payments than I would have had I worked for my dad’s company starting at a third of what I make now, even starting off my career with no debt. This is what the country is doing by taking debt. Balanced budgets are misnomers. They sound nice, but is it really needed? What happens when a government takes in too much tax money? What happens to next year’s budget?
Also, a country can pay out its debt by issuing more bonds/securities/t-bills, what have you. This has been going on for quite some time and we’re still by far the largest economy in the world. Yes, there is a breaking point, but as Japan proves, even at 150% of GDP, they still manage to be a first world nation, say unlike The Philippines and most of China.
As to the OP, a lot of taxes that Obama proposes (and this I’m not too sure off as this info comes from a lunatic right winger in the office, in the tax department), falls on businesses. The US has something like the second highest tax rate in the world when it comes to corporations. Taxes are a fundamental reason to whether or not a company will expand or even keep operations open. This directly affects the $50k/yr middle class person. I have joint venture agreements on my desk waiting until the election is over to see how to proceed with operations. Our choices are San Antonio or Ireland. If taxes are high enough, we’re moving operations to Ireland, and taking a loss on all the prep work to stay in the US.
In my experience with single-issue Republicans, the single issue has been abortion. That’s probably because I grew up in the bible belt. In Manhattan, the single-issue Republicans are probably about taxes. In Nebraska, it might be guns.
Probably aren’t too many Republicans in Manhattan.
And there are single issue Dems on abortion or (you wouldn’t have to cast too far about on this board) homosexual rights.
There are 10s of thousands of Republicans in Manhattan. Even in the bluest areas of the country there are Republicans and in the reddest areas there are Democrats. People forget that but it’s true.
And the OP’s friend works (owns a company) in midtown Manhattan. (The BBQ was in Westchester County.) What strikes me as oddly ungrateful is that somehow these guys manage to earn million-dollar salaries, buy fabulous homes, have personal freedom up the wazoo yet when the time comes for them to pay for the privilege of living in a country where such things are possible, they say “What, me? No, no, tax the guys who work for me. Tax them all up the ass.”
As if they’d leave the US if they paid a little more in taxes? As if they’d ever notice? Well, maybe when they got to buy their lazy overprivileged never-did-a-day’s-work-in-their-lives kids a new Mercedes every year, it might have to be the model without the sunroof.
I don’t know about Manhattan, but I know we have a San Francisco Doper who suggests that he is a lonely conservative in a sea of liberals. I don’t want to say his name in case I’m mis-remembering. Given Manhattan’s population, there must be some Republicans there…I don’t know, maybe 10,000? 
The females in my family all vote based on the “Save The Babies/Say No To Teh Gay” issues. Taxation has nothing to do with it.
As far as I can tell, my dad votes Republican because he opposes social programs like welfare and whatnot. That and he reads Pubbie slander proganda. :smack:
Of course, none of these people are filthy rich, either.
This is sort of true for some of the GOP, but almost backwards. The GOP is an anti-tax party. That’s been for a generation the one sine qua non of being a Pubbie officeholder. They embrace, or pretend to embrace, the pro-life stance, the military-industrial complex, & so forth, to get enough votes to win elections now & then. A Republican who advocated raising taxes would lose funding if not quite be run out of the party. A sufficiently anti-tax Republican who could win votes in his district with socially liberal stances has still been useful to the one core value of the funding establishment.
The rise of the Moral Majority-derived social conservative base may be changing that, but a party with a pro-tax stance would lose a lot of its old core; big GOP donors, the small businessmen who vote GOP, etc., aren’t really all (or even very many) Falwell sympathizers.
The Democrats, on the other hand, I’m a bit less clear on, but they seem to be a coalition of people who want government to do various things. Apparently, cutting taxes isn’t an issue for them one way or another; funding the government enough to do what it is statutorily obliged to do is.
Such as the #2 Repub in the nation, the Governator of CA?
(he has advocated raising taxes, just recently)
So you’d go with the party that has the worst understanding of economics? I mean, I honestly don’t get it - if you’re going to increase spending, isn’t raising taxes the more responsible thing to do? How does that not equate to selfishness?
ONLY if you keep the spending increase inline with the tax increase, and you cut the spending when revenues drop. The Democrats do not have a great history of cutting spending EITHER.
The big revelation was that when the Republicans finally had control of it all, they spent like drunken sailors. That spending binge pissed off a lot of Republican voters who felt betrayed.
There are STILL a lot of voters that want the size of the Federal government cut. They vote for anti-taxes in hopes of starving the beast, since we have yet to find a way to put people into office who will actually cut spending.
Good point. Even so, if even some of the tax increase went toward the spending it would be better than none, no?
So the guys you know are opposed to all taxes, huh? Really? Outside of some hardcore libertarians and tax resisters, I don’t know of anyone who is opposed to the idea of paying taxes. It’s usually an opposition to paying an incredibly high level of taxes. If you think the government is confiscating too much of your money to waste on a variety of programs with which you disagree, you’d bitch, too.
Also, it seems odd to me that these people you hang out with want the taxes of other people raised. Most of the low tax crowd I hang out with wants lower taxes for everyone. Of course, Obama and the Democrats like playing the game of “we’ll lower your taxes but raise the taxes of those bastards over there,” so perhaps you were hanging out with Obama supporters.
Who cares if they burn the money? They earned it so they should determine how it’s spent. Why do you think you get a say in how they spend it?
Your attitude seems pretty typical of someone who has little idea of actually running a business or creating wealth. Of course, your views are pretty prevalent among many people who think that the wealth created by others should be theres to spend on whatever they want.
I definatly see them voting with their pocketbooks, but they hate to admit it.
Some friends of mine who are rakeing it in are just like the friend of the OP. They say “You know I’d like to vote for Obama but I just don’t trust him…and you know I’m really a democrate at heart.” Further investigation reveals they have some left of center preferences (like health care for example) but they just can’t vote for someone who MIGHT cost them more money.
The right wing message isn’t really all that appealing for the middle class…that’s why they have to wrap themselves in religion, abortion, gays, ect. It gets the middle class (especially the older ones) out to vote for them even though what they’re proposing isn’t middle class “friendly” at all.
Depends on the total deficit created (which then leads to even more debt).
They earned it in a country that gave them an opportunity to it, and since (as you admit) they don’t object to paying taxes, I think they should pony up for the infrastructure that underlies such a country, and for the schools that try to educate their workers better, and for universal health care so that their neighbors can afford to see a doctor when they need to, and for federal agencies to try to prevent them from using the environment as an all-purpose toilet bowl and source of free resources. You seem to think that this money should come from anywhere other than from those who wouldn’t miss it if they did burn it.
You probably think Obama’s a communist, too, don’t you? I know my friend who claims that is certainly too smart to believe it (he took college classes, I know, in poolitical economy, and did quite well explaining subtle ideas about various political theories) but that’s what he says these days. Tell me, these taxes you’re playing now, under George Bush for the last eight years–are they too high? Is there anything about them you can support? What percentage of your present taxes would you rather not be paying, because it’s a waste of your hard-earned money?
Good question, I think.
Frankly, I don’t trust people who say they are going to lower my taxes unless they also are acknowledging that the money has to come from somewhere. (Obama, for example, doesn’t seem to be promising a realistic tax cut, though I was reading somewhere that the numbers might be in the realm of feasible under certain circumstances).
No one likes paying taxes. I grouse just as much as the next person when it comes time to send mine in, and always double check everything (“Oh, maybe I missed some great deduction that means they’ll send it all back!”). But in the end, when I can reengage my rational brain, I see that my tax burden is hardly crippling, especially when compared with what I expect of the government.
I will pay more in prescription drug costs this year than in federal income taxes. Any way I look at that, it’s messed up.