I do not believe that your statement that
I doubt it. I do not believe it is true. I do not believe that you can provide a cite for it to show that your statement is a factual representation of reality.
Is that clear?
Cite, please.
Why don’t both of you listen to the OP and take your conversation elsewhere?
ETA: That’s speaking as someone who’s trying to discuss the subject at hand, not trying to Junior Mod.
I wasn’t aware that I had been asked to take my conversation elsewhere. In any case, the conversation would already be over if brazil84 would have just posted a cite for his statement. That’s all I have asked for (a couple of times now).
Count me as another who is having difficulty seeing how unfettered capitalism and feudalism are much different.
What areas of my life are off-limits to an employer, legally speaking?*
*This might be better off with it’s own thread, eh. So here it is.
Of course they do . . . if you don’t follow my rules, I won’t engage with you. Just as you are perfectly free to make your own rules about who you will and won’t engage with.
High Risk Sexual Behavior: Interventions with Vulberable Populations, E. Becker et al, Plenum Publishing (1998) at page 2.
That’s not what I have argued here, but anyway, your OP asked a specific question: In essence, you asked, since socialism works in Canada, why would Americans fear it? I proposed an answer and am prepared to defend it.
So there was no hijack, just normal debate. If you find my answer “repulsive,” you are free to ignore it. I would point out, however, that there is no guarantee in life that the truth won’t be “repulsive.”
I can appreciate your point of view (and Sam’s), but if this board is anywhere near as left-leaning as is claimed, then I’m not alone in disagreeing fundamentally in what constitutes a reasonable re-allocation of wealth and what doesn’t. Because, unless we’re–ahh–stupid we all accept that some re-allocation is essential. Nobody gripes about the city taking their money to build traffic signals or fund the police department. In some ways our system does not work, or does not work well, the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans being, IMO, the great shame of our country.
Another thing that everyone seems to be missing, although Obama did touch on it today, is that it isn’t all about the entrepreneur, or the homeowner. (Or even about the middle class, actually, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish.) Someone’s got to punch the clock, and we can’t all be entrepreneurs. Homeownership doesn’t necessarily fit into everyone’s life or budget either, not even well-educated professionals with advanced degrees.
Your point about the starting salary of engineers compared with lawyers is a good one, and a perfect example of when the system goes awry. The people who design things, and the people who actually make them, go begging for jobs. The litigious, on the other hand, make out like bandits. In saying this I’m not trying to condemn the legal profession. We need lawyers. But we also need to encourage technology in this country. We need manufacturing capacity and engineering know-how, and the current economic climate doesn’t encourage these things.
Please explain this statement – Obama’s proposals would let the Bush tax cuts expire on the top two tax brackets, which would return to 36% and 39.6%, Clinton era rates. Where do you get 50% from? Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your use of “effective” tax rates.
From the Tax Foundation Tax Policy Blog
As he says, this will be the highest marginal rate the U.S. has had since 1986.
Again, when you have an imbalance like this, where it seems we have might have a glut of lawyers and financiers and a shortage of engineers and scientists and doctors and such, you have to look at the incentives. You go through the tax code, you compare your industries to other countries, and you figure out what the forces are causing this. For one thing, if you have a highly regulated society, the net result of that is that you’re going to have a lot of demand for lawyers. You’re going to have a lot of accountants. Sarbanes-Oxley could have been called the accountant full employement act. And a lot of bureaucrats. And this puts upwards pressure on wages in these industries as players in the market bid up the value of the finite supply of lawyers and accountants. This makes lawyering and accounting more attractive, and it grows at the expense of other fields.
It may also be that the legal system is over-rewarding lawyers. Perhaps tort reform would help cull the herd a bit, so to speak.
It may also be that high corporate taxes push manufacturing jobs out of the country, resulting in less demand in the technical and industrial career paths.
It could be many other things too, some cause by government, or some caused by societal pressure (i.e. the citizens of the country live lives complex enough that there’s just a lot of need for a lot of financial people, lawyers, accountants, etc).
South Africa is a developing nation/third world country by most metrics. Not an industrialised nation by any means.
And what makes you think that capitalism has anything to do with it, and not the research done at universities ? Or otherwise funded by the government ? Corporations are more interested in pouring money into advertising campaigns, and repackaging old drugs under new names.
And America isn’t especially productive either; just large and full of workaholics who make up for lower productivity with longer work hours.
The drug issue was just an example. Earlier in the thread it was proposed that the US output of producitivity and innovation was higher than more socialized nations and that seemed to go unchallenged. I was raising the point with that as an assumption.
These numbers only add up if the cap on payroll taxes were eliminated; to my best knowledge, Obama has not proposed doing so, but supports raising the cap. Isn’t this a pretty important distinction for the Tax Foundation to have left out? Without this hand-waving, the 48-50% “top tax rate” is far lower, in the range of the tax rates during the Clinton presidency.
If the cap on SS is only raised, but the height of the cap is higher than the start of the top marginal tax rate, then it still holds that the marginal rate will increase to 50%. All you’re adding with a cap is saying that it comes back down again by 2-4 points at whatever magical income point Obama chooses for the new ceiling.
It seems to me that your 39.6% number is the true hand-waving value, since it ignores the removal of deductions and changes to the basic personal exemption. With just those two factors added in, you’re already at 45%. Add in the 2.9% for the Medicare tax, and you’re at 47.9% - far closer to the 50% I quoted than to the 39.6% you’re claiming. And in any event, even at 45%, the U.S. will have a higher effective marginal rate than will Canada.
As a Canadian, I suppose I should welcome all this. Finally, we’re about to have some serious competitive advantages against the United States when it comes to tax policy and social incentives, after years of seeing Americans earn more and have higher standards of living. Go Obama!
One of my rules is that I don’t do your research for you, nor do I go hunting for your cites.
No link so your cite is rejected. You fail.
:shrug: I did the research. You asked for a cite, and I gave you a cite. All you have to do is check on google books. I’ll even try to give you a link if you ask nicely.
But somehow I doubt you are interested in actually reading the cite I provided.
You provided nothing.
No link, so no cite. That’s one of my rules.
You fail.
Haha. Looks like your “rules” are conveniently set up so that you can avoid looking at evidence which might contradict your position.
But my offer still stands: Ask for a link and I will try to give one to you.
Somehow I doubt you will ask, though.
Done with you. You have nothing.
Bye. And by the way, if anyone else in this thread cares to request a link to my cite, I will be happy to provide it.