Grover Norquist on Lou Dobbs the other night (paraphrased): The democratic base - e.g. lawyers, and unions - are the ones who benefit from the government. Republicans - e.g. corporations and the wealthy I guess - don’t benefit and are the ones who are taxed.
(He may or may not have qualified this more but this was the gist.)
It was nice to see Lou Dobbs barely containing his amusement, but dopers what do you think? Facts and figures appreciated.
And who, pray tell, upholds their property privilege and prevent the poor simply taking what the rich have accrued?
Before this gets too far. I am a Republican and yes I benefit from the govt. To think otherwise is stupid. One guy spaeking on Lou Dobbs’ show does not speak for the rest of us.
I am sure there are better things to bash us with than this. Bush lied, the election was rigged, gay marraige, you name it. Pick your battles folks, this one is just not worth the time.
I’d say there are a lot of Republicans that have profited in a variety of way from wars and other aggressive acts. Either by keeping our oil supply open, or by profitting directly from defense contracts. Heck, defense contractors profit in times of peace as well.
I wonder if Norquist believes his own BS?
I would supsect the meant, for example, that the Byzantine tax code we have does not benefit society so much as it does tax accountants and lawyers.
Comparing the red state/blue state map to the statistics on federal spending received versus taxes paid, we see:
Of the 31 states that get more from the federal govt. than they put in, 25 voted for Bush this year. Of the 17 states that pay more than they receive, 12 voted for Kerry. (Two states paid and received equal amounts, one for each candidate.)
Put another way, two-thirds of the blue states don’t benefit from the government, but four-fifths of the red states do.
But then the system is Byzantine because of all the exceptions and tax breaks, and I would imagine the vast majority of these help the wealthy and corporations (witness the tax break for bow and arrow manufactureres in the last corporate tax bill). So you could argue this either way. I imagine thats true with any example.
And no, I doubt Norquist belives it himself.
I thought Republicans were the government! Was there a recount that nobody told me about last night?
OK let’s make it more interesting: who benefits more?
And maybe even - who pays more or who gets more for their tax dollar?
I have no problem filing taxes. It’s very easy.
Some people are… special. It is a little harder for them to do every day tasks.
Wann do mine for me? I hope you are familiar with all the details of AMT. 
But, really, what point are you trying to make-- that our tax system is ***not ***overly complex? Do you have any other evidence besides your own personal experience? There are after all about 300,000,000 other Americans involved…
Yeah, you do need to define this debate better. In fact, the OP really doesn’t contain a debatable topic. But your post, quoted above, still doesn’t serve that purpose. Are you suggesting we debate whether Democrats or Republicans benefit more from the governmnent? I wouldn’t even know how to begin to dabate that…
I’ll trade you my income for your income. That’s all it takes. Taxes are easy at my income level. Come on down!
It’s only complex for wealthy people trying to dodge taxes.
1040EZ form, check with the IRS.
And businesses. Here’s a simple mechanism for business taxes: whatever you report as profit to your shareholders or as a means of exciting people to buy shares, you have to pay taxes on as profit to the government. If you suggest the profit was made in another country, then that must also be declared to shareholders. Simple!
Oh my god some people want coddling. If you don’t know where to start dont start.
You’re right. I’ll get out of the way so that the dozens of posters who are knocking down the doors of this thread can participate in your “debate”.
Just an observation. The red and blue map clearly shows the higher percentage of federal taxes are paid by the blue states,and are located on the coastal areas as most of the heavy industrial centers were initially settled there. The map also indicates for the most part, that the red states are where most of our nation’s food is grown.
As the blue industrial states are well able to generate more revenue per capita than their red counterparts, and we all need to eat, the seemingly federal bias towards the red states might not be such an imbalance as first perceived.
I could be all wet here. Any ideas out there on this?
When was this? I did a (quick and dirty) search of the last week or so’s archives of Lou Dobbs Tonight and couldn’t find it. Does he have another show or is it further back or did CNN not get the transcript up yet?
Here’s the section I’m referring to:
DOBBS: You’ve also said that you think the Democratic Party is effectively toast, to use your word. You don’t think they can recover from this just as Republicans have recovered from down cycles in previous years?
NORQUIST: No. And the reason is the Republican Party is not dependent on owning the presidency, the House or the Senate. Republicans are made up of businessmen and women and independent businessmen and gun owners and people who want to be left alone by the government. Not people who have government jobs or, as in the case of the Democratic Party, all of the building blocks of the Democratic Party require state help. The trial lawyers couldn’t be making billions of dollars without bad tort law. The labor union leadership could not exist and have billions without government rules helping them.
DOBBS: Grover, if I may, let me suggest to you a couple areas in which that constituency you’re talking about is a little dependent upon government. One, in terms of free trade, all of the free trade policies being enacted and some of them withheld until a more politically opportune time, in point of fact, are to benefit corporate America. There are effective outsourcing agreements.
NORQUIST: Well, obviously, the importance of free trade is most important to American consumers. And that’s not a question of getting the government to do anybody a favor, it’s just the government getting out of the way and particularly getting foreign governments to stop taxing our exports.
DOBBS: Yes, but Grover, the point is we have a $600 billion trade deficit, $1 that’s in decline, and all of that because of something called free trade which you and I both know isn’t. But rather than get into a discussion on that, let’s go to some of the other issues, and that is, for example, the right turn that looks like it’s in front of us, if the president were to nominate successfully two or three justices to the Supreme Court. Do you see that as the direction that is likely?