“When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.”
"• Paycaps eased. Many top civil servants are prohibited from making more than an agency’s leader. But if Congress lifts the boss’ salary, others get raises, too. When the Federal Aviation Administration chief’s salary rose, nearly 1,700 employees’ had their salaries lifted above $170,000, too. "
Wow!!!
I didn’t even think that was legally possible unless you worked at the SEC or one of the financial regulatory agencies. The only other way that I can think of that this might be possible is if these guys are scientists. Scientists are on a different pay scale.
Of course that is not and should not be the objective. the objective shold be to pay for what we spend. The reason the whole laffer curve idiocy was so important to the conservaticves was so that they could cut taxes without having to cut spending.
If the Republicans had manned up and said “fuck this we’re cutting taxes and here are the programs we are going to cut to pay for these tax cuts” then I wouldn’t have lost as much respect for them. If they were willing to deal with the political consequences of cutting taxes by cutting the same (or more) spending, then I would’nt have problem with their fiscal policy (I might have a problem with the stuff they want to cut but I wouldn’t call them fiscally irresponsible).
Instead they cut taxes and said “we don’t HAVE to cut spending because these tax cuts will actually INCREASE government revenue so we can afford even MORE tax cuts (and an energy bill)”
Nothing has been made up except possibly by you, putting words in my mouth (on a day when I ridiculed the birthers in another thread no less – points for retarded style, I suppose).
Clinton raised my tax rate. Prove he didn’t. My top tax rate was 36%, then he raised it through what he explicitly called a “millionaire surtax” predicated on the belief that “millionaires” (defined by that idiot as people earning $200,000) could afford to pay an extra tax on top of (that’s where “sur” comes in for you language buffs) the GHWB-era base rate of 36%. This penalty-for-earning tax was based on a ten percent extra exaction (how’d you think we got to a weird top rate like 39.6%? It’s 36% plus 3.6%).
For a number of years, I paid that raised tax. Then GWB removed the surtax.
Now Obama wants to allow the surtax to go back into effect. My taxes would thus go up. For the second time. On a Democratic watch. Which is the English definition of “again.”
Neither is having less than 50% of the population paying 100% of the taxes. All you need is a touch of common sense to see where that will lead.
…in order to protect you FROM the government. What part of that don’t you understand? The government is providing you with an attorney to prevent the government from denying you a fair trial, which is your right, IF you cannot afford one. If you can afford an attorney but choose not to get one the government provides you with nothing. In a civil case the government does not provide you with an attorney. If I sue you the government does not provide you with an attorney. Do you get it?
So everyone under the age of 18 is being denied a right? Or, the right magically springs into existence as soon as you turn 18? There is, in fact, NO federal right to vote. In fact, it is a privilege extended by the states.
Sigh…what property rights are the government protecting? The right to own property does not eminate from the government. And, as I stated, the 4th amendment prohibits the government from taking your property without due process and compensation. Yes, the only property right you have is to NOT have it taken by your government. By your definition the government should be providing us with property…since it is our right.
My statement has nothing to do with your comment. I believe this is a deliberate misdirection on your part. My statement was clear.
I don’t see what one has to do with the other. The very mention of something in the constitution does not magically make it a right. Slavery was a fact at the time and was legal. That does not constitute a right.
Oh, so only YOU have the FACTS. The ONLY thing the country is worried about is the economy? Maybe people believe that the idiotic ideas of this president and congress are making the economy worse. I suppose, in that case, you would be half right.
Oh, people love ideas in the abstract but, when they see the process and backroom deals, they will turn their backs on the ideas. Health care reform is the perfect example. People were disgusted with many aspects of the bill and opposition to it increased even after it was passed. My guess is that when people get a good look at the the effects opposition will increase again.
Allowing? What is the meaning of that? The nation’s wealth is not finite. Also, nobody is forcing you to shop at Walmart or buy Coca-Cola products. These companies amass wealth by giving YOU products that you want to purchase.
I will answer that by saying that my fundamental concern is opposition to feeding vastly more money into a system that is already so poorly run that it has money to throw around on useless agencies and princely salaries for thousands of their their mini-mandarins. Deficits are just another symptom of a broken, mismanaged system. Tax raisers often like to talk about taxes as “investments in the system/nation.” If the current federal government were a business, would you “invest” more money in it on the grounds that it was too difficult to downsize it so your investment was necessary to keep them from being in the red? I’d say, come back to me for more incremental investment when you can show you know how to run a business with my already-substantial past and ongoing investment commitment.
This isn’t partisan, as I thought GWB was an idiot and the GOP is as guilty (not more guilty) of irresponsible spending as the Dems.
As for deficit, I hold out little hope of anyone showing the discipline to cut spending until T-bills are in serious danger of losing AAA status, which would up the ante a lot and might get someone to act like a grown up and start passing balanced budgets that involve real cuts. I don’t like that, but honestly, if the federal government were evaluated as an investment right now (they’re not because people keep assuming the power to print money with no negative consequences is limitless), it might not rise above junk bond status. I don’t want anymore exposure to junk investments than I already have . . . .
I’m talking people, not companies. You realize there is a difference? Concentration of wealth to this great an extent looks more like an aristocracy than a democracy, especially when people start advocating voting rights only for ‘stakeholders’.
Are you saying that Republicans want new tax cuts for the wealthy because they support an aristocratic model for American society rather than a democratic model? Has the party utterly abandoned the middle class?
Exactly. We the people decide whether we want to allow banksters, drug dealers, slumlords and the like to control most of the wealth of the nation.
My WTF exactly. It’s unreal and obscene in the current environment, and it completely saps my ability to trust the federal government with any incremental bit of my money. I am sure it is the case that there are areas of the government you could identify that are criminally underfunded just as these bureaucrats are criminally overpaid, but the psychological impact on taxpayers, on people who have been laid off, etc. of news like this is to reinforce (esp. as to the current Administration) the idea that the federal government is out of touch with, and no friend of, real America.
I don’t know where any of you guys live or what your experience of the last two years has been, but try this experiment if you haven’t already. Assuming you don’t live in D.C. or the Capital region, talk to some friends or former classmates who do. If you’re anything like me, watercooler talk over the past two years has involved a lot of depressing talk about the staff we’ve had to lay off, about the laid off friends who have been out of work for eight, ten, fourteen months, about salary and hiring freezes, about people facing foreclosure, about massive hikes in local/property taxes, about real uncertainty as to my own job security and compensation level – most of you have probably had similar discussions and these issues come up at cocktail parties, etc.
Then – see if your D.C. friend, particularly if they work for the government, doesn’t give you a kind of oddball look as you’re relating those stories. Ask them how many people in their world have been laid off or faced salary cuts. Ask how many, on the other hand, have marched right on up the pay grades with healthy COLAs, etc. They have experienced this recession quite differently than most of the rest of us. That alone tells me the federal government needs less, not more, money into its maw.
The rhetorical value of the hateful references to “the wealthy” and “the rich” must be very high indeed because tax raisers can’t help themselves from using it even when they know that the $200k annual salary that triggers the “millionaire tax” corellates with a comfortable but not much more than middle class family existence in many or most cities on the East and West coast, and that the GWB tax cuts lowered the proportion of the taxes paid by the lower bands of what we’d all agree is the middle class.
This type of talk is exactly why many folks don’t think the Republican Party gets it. $200k salary is not middle class. The median household income in 2007 was around $50k. Four times the median is no longer in “the middle”. 96.5% of the households in American made less than 200k in 2006.
Right, I’m not asking anyone to weep tears of pity for someone making $200k, I’m just saying that epithets like “rich” (and it is hurled as an epithet) and gonzo’s inability to restrain himself from portraying anyone in the 36% bracket as literally swimming around in pools of money like Scrooge McDuck are unhelpful but seem to be all too attractive to tax raisers. Slumlords, drug dealers, junk bond cheaters, etc. Right. That’s who mainly occupies the 36% bracket.
When you said “again” it sounded like your taxes had been raised recently and now you were looking at another tax increase. I didn’t realize you were talking about the tax increase you got 18 fucking years ago (that somehow didn’t drive everyone to move to Argentina), that was MORE than reversed by the Bush tax cuts.
I do agree with you that earned income should not suffer such a disadvantage over investment income. The 15% capital gains rate is bullshit.
So, has anyone come up with a valid reason that congress should incur another $800 billion in debt so as to give the economic upper class a big new tax break?
I’d think that after 8 pages, someone would’ve posted one, if there was a good reason.
So can anyone come up with a valid reason that Congress should pass a budget that requires $800 billion more than recent historic tax revenues can fund?
What is the difference? Companies are made up of people…some of whom are extremely wealthy. People start companies. You are aware of this, are you not? Concentration of wealth is not the result of the rich having at the expense of the poor. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. This is exactly the problem with the mindset of those on the left.
As opposed to allowing 535 dimwits in DC to both control wealth and spend the wealth of your children? As opposed to having the government take your wealth by threat of force to give to someone who has not earned it? I am utterly amazed at the amount of faith that you on the left place in your government and how much you trust them to take from you what they will and give it to who they want.
We the people currently decide where we want to spend most of our money. That’s how those banksters and drug dealers get so rich. They provide something we want.
