Why are Republicans pushing to extend the Bush tax cuts?

[Airbeck]

Has anyone addressed the issue of why in the world would ‘stakeholders’ ever vote for anything that would help create more ‘stakeholders’, thereby diminishing their voice? What would prevent the ‘stakeholders’ from voting for measures which would create less ‘stakeholders’, thereby increasing their voice? Can you not see this leading directly to fewer and fewer ‘stakeholders’ with more and more power over time?

Can you guys really not see any possible issues with this idea? I’m really kind of disturbed how casually you are advocating stripping one of the most important rights that we have in this country away from a large portion of the citizenry just like that. I don’t think you’d feel this way if it was your rights being threatened.

[Voyager]

@Huerta88

@Voyager

Hey, look what debtors’ prisons did for 19th Century English literature. Bring them back, and another Dickens will arise. sure as shootin’.

It’s funny that those so offended by the notion that non-stakeholders might not deserve the exact same voice as stakeholders have to resort to attacking arguments that no one’s actually made (criminalizing poverty, debtor’s prision), as opposed to the actual argument – you can have a highly-progressive tax code in which a tiny minority is supporting a substantial freerider class, or universal suffrage, but both at the same time does not work well.

Hmm, maybe the need to attack strawmen suggests there’s not much there there for the group that believes the freeriders deserve an equal voice. FWIW, I’d just as soon they were paying their share and then they can have their voice.

I’m treating your arguments with all the seriousness they deserve. Your fantasies about people depending on the votes of those benefiting from government programs are going to shut them down to cut the taxes of the rich, and your apparent misunderstanding of tax rates don’t encourage me to dig deeper.
If anyone can show the will to cut spending before cutting taxes (it isn’t like we don’t have a big debt already) then I’ll believe you.

[Voyager]

@Airbeck

Has anyone addressed the issue of why in the world would ‘stakeholders’ ever vote for anything that would help create more ‘stakeholders’, thereby diminishing their voice?

Beat you by four minutes.

[Sam_Stone]

Well, I can argue with some of your specifics, but in general I agree with you. There are a whole lot of inequities in democracy. As you say, the rich and powerful don’t just get votes - they get access to the corridors of power. They get to select the candidates.

And of course, plenty of rich people vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury as well. Even if a rich farmer making $200,000 a year in income pays 35% of it in tax, it may still be to his benefit to vote for a farm subsidy, even if his taxes go up. The tax will go up far less than what he gets from his subsidy, because the tax is spread across the population but the subsidy is directed to him.

And corporations are worse. The downside to a government active in corporate management and regulatory control is that corporations will twist those regulations to their own benefit. So Mattel manages to get 200 million dollars worth of competitor’s toys destroyed, Goldman Sachs turns a financial collapse into a cash cow, and Archer-Daniels-Midland and General Electric twist green initiatives and stimulus money into billions of dollars of cash for their companies.

So of course you get the result, which is that modern Democracies tend to spend more and more, and tax more and more, until a crisis point is reached. This is the argument many of us on the libertarian side use to advocate that we simply take off the table the government’s ability to do many of these things. Farm subsidies can’t be distorted by voters if farm subsidies are declared to be an invalid use of government power. Reduce the ability of government to shape the direction of the economy, and you reduce the ability of powerful players to shape it in their favor.

[yorick73]

@jsgoddess

@yorick73

That’s a lot of typing to not even respond to my post. It really is simple.

One Sunday at mass we sang the old Shaker song “Simple Gifts.” My father, after mass was over, went fuming to the car. “It’s no gift to be ‘simple,’” he said. “It means stupid. There’s nothing admirable about it.”

That’s a lot of typing to say yeah, your idea really is simple, with a side order of meanness and elitism–exactly what we want in a country.

I wasn’t responding to your post. Nonetheless, your response is typical of those devoid of ideas. Resort to insult when you cannot argue.

[Airbeck]

Man you’re really good with the insults. Not so good on responding to legitimate questions though …

Do you always view those with whom you don’t agree with such contempt?

[yorick73]

@Jas09

And maybe those that contribute more can vote more? Maybe one vote per 100k in income? If this is your goal, let’s just move to an aristocracy and be done with it.

Oh, the slippery slope argument.

@Jas09

Everyone who works does “pay something into the system”. They provide the labor that makes the economy run. They buy the goods and services that make the economy run. They fight our wars. The idea that the poor are somehow “sub-American” is rather revolting to me.

You can stop with the ridiculous “sub-American” nonsense. Typical ploy to avoid the issue. At any rate your definition of “paying into the system” is incorrect. Those Americans who work and do not have a dime taken from their check for federal taxes are not paying into the federal tax system. Why would you think it a good idea to let them vote for how much of your salary they are entitled?

[yorick73]

@Robot_Arm

@yorick73

…then I have no choice but to oppose voting by those that don’t contribute.

An excellent job of dodging responsibility there. Not only do you wish to take the political voice from others (and thereby magnify your own), but it’s someone else’s fault that’s brought you to this conclusion. Yes, you’ve simply no choice.

Did you bother reading the rest of my post before typing this nonsense? Here…I’ll post it here again.

@yorick73

Alternatively, make everyone who works pay something into the system. This makes a lot more sense then denying people the right to vote.

[yorick73]

@Squink

@Sam_Stone

we should attempt to avoid situations where a voting citizen is completely disconnected from the consequences of their vote.

We could always raise the minimum wage to the point where people who work at McJobs earn enough to pay taxes. Of course, that’d cut down on the profits raked in by the owners, but maybe that’s a small price to pay for a more vibrant democracy?

Great idea! Hey, how about everybody at McJobs makes a million dollars an hour?

[Airbeck]

So you don’t think that someone working at McDonalds should be able to vote? Jeez.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Huerta88

That’s what I’m not doing. I’m protesting moving it to 39.6%. See me on record upthread as saying I can grudgingly live with 35% (all I’ve pointed out is that the current regime is hardly one in which “the poor” are subsidizing “the rich”).

I guess the proper response to that is that you have had a 4.6% tax holiday on your top marginal dollars for 9 years and the tax holiday is about to expire (that was part of the deal when they passed the tax cut. 35% is not the baseline, 39.6% is the baseline).

[Squink]

@Sam_Stone

So of course you get the result, which is that modern Democracies tend to spend more and more, and tax more and more, until a crisis point is reached.

Cue the slide showing personal income tax rates in the US since the 1980’s…

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Voyager

Unless you were asleep for the last ten years, you know tax cuts do not cause spending cuts - they cause deficits. (While the Clinton tax increase caused a surplus, indirectly.) It would be nice to talk about real and practical politics, not your fantasy of what would happen in a world where the Laffer curve works for moderate tax rates.

The notion that you can starve the beast implies that you maintain the PAYGO rules passed by a Democratic congress under George H.W. Bush. The really big tax cuts came in 2003 right after the PAYGO rules expired. THAT is why I say BULLSHIT whenever anyone tries to pretend that Republicans are fiscally repsonsible. They took the first chance they had to institute tax cuts without paying for them. This wasn’t designed to force spending cuts or even spending freezes, it was designed to gratuitously cut taxes.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@yorick73

Do you even understand the concept of rights? Judging from the nonsense you posted I am assuming you do not.

Rights

Do you? I’m not saying taqht I view everything the poster lists as rights but you seem to have a very specific definition of rights to the exclusion of all other definitions and that doesn;'t seem supportable based on common perceptions of what constitutes rights.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@yorick73

That’s a lot of typing to not even respond to my post. It really is simple. People who do not contribute any money to the system should not be able to have a say in how the money of those who do contribute is distributed. This would apply to someone down on their luck for a while or those who live their entire lives without contributing.

That runs counter to a lot of the core values that have developed in this country. the notion of limiting the franchise based on ability to pay has been floated before, they were called poll taxes and I think there is near universal concensus that they were not consistent with the constitution (or any sense of American democracy).

[Airbeck]

I’ve already asked him twice to define what rights mean to him. He won’t do it. He’ll scoff at other’s ideas, but won’t post his own.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Huerta88

@Jas09

Because this idea is, to be blunt, bat-shit crazy.

One of my working definitions for what is not “bat-shit crazy” is something that has been applied in America for substantial periods of time without chaos revolution or anything other than peace and prosperity. Property/tax restrictions on the franchise certainly meet that standard.

Slavery worked during much of the same period you are talking about too. Maybe batshit crazy isn’t the right word to describe the notion of limiting the franchise to those who can pay for it. There’s probably some other term we could use.

[wonky]

@yorick73

I wasn’t responding to your post. Nonetheless, your response is typical of those devoid of ideas. Resort to insult when you cannot argue.

I haven’t seen you put out an argument. You keep asking if we really believe those who don’t pay federal income taxes should be able to vote (the couple of us who bothered to answer said yes), and then you said they shouldn’t.

What else is there to say? Your vision for America is ghastly and repulsive and, yeah, I’ll say it, unAmerican as all get out.

It’s taking a long time before the ideal of all men being created equal has even gotten as far as it has, and now you want to say that it only counts if we make over X number of dollars.

It’s shortsighted, stupid, and cruel. Mr. 88’s poll taxes also have the charming side effect of disproportionately disenfranchising African-Americans. I’m sure that’d come as an absolute shock to him.

Someone doesn’t have to make money to have things to say, to have brains and knowledge, to have a voice, to be worth something to this world.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Dangerosa

What we SHOULD do is tax MORE than needed when times are good and put it in a reserve (no spending the excess from EITHER side of the aisle). Then when times are bad, revenue goes down but you can afford a stimulus cut. We want to cut when times are good because “the government is bringing in plenty of money” and we want to cut when times are bad because we want the stimulus. Eventually, there isn’t anything to cut, and you can’t use taxes to move the economy.

I agree that the best time to save is when you have money to save. The Republicans blew all our dry powder to get an already high economy suborbital. tax cuts (without spending cuts) are basically stimulative spending in almost exactly the same way that increased spending without increased taxes is stimulative.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sam_Stone

I think there is a valid point to be made that a democracy becomes unstable as you approach a situation where a majority of the population can vote on benefits but do not share in the costs. And FICA taxes do not count, because they are supposedly collected to be returned for a defined benefit, and are not used to finance new program spending (well, not any more, anyway). So even though poor people pay a tax, it’s not proportional to the cost of the programs they vote for, so it has no effect on responsible voting.

Social security taxes have been part of the general budget since LBJ. Social security has collected more than it has paid out since its inception (more or less), that surplus has been used to fund the government. Sure we incurred obligations but congress can decide to elimiante social security payments tomorrow without owing anyone a dime. Ther is also nothing close to a guarnatee that poor people will collect any benefits, in fact if we do increase the benefit start date, the people that will have their benefits reduced the most 9as a percentage) will be the poor who tend to have shorter lifespans.

I would say that the ‘fairest’ tax in this regard is one that seeks to find a level of constant utility. In other words, the ‘felt pain’ is equivalent regardless of income level. That means a progressive tax, but one which extends down to the floor of every salary. Perhaps someone making $20,000 per year only has to pay $1000 in tax to feel the same economic pain as someone who makes $100,000 being taxed $20,000. If so, fine. But we should attempt to avoid situations where a voting citizen is completely disconnected from the consequences of their vote.

I think there is general agreement on this point. I think social security taxes count but if not, I would be OK with a 5% increase in all income tax rates and a $50,000 exclusion from the social security tax (so it doesn’t kick in util your 50,001st dollar).