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The Ice Cream Man |
By “rich”, I mean non-cronies who can afford a decent house and a newer car. One of my friends is self-made, and European. He would love to live in the U.S., but cannot understand why we tolerate the taxes burden. Why do we? Why did we start accepting asking bureaucrats permission, and being the )$@ of the crony class? | ||
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Banned |
Ask him why he tolerates much higher tax burden in Europe. | |||
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blame canada |
Taxes in most conservative states aren't really that bad, aside from the whole "taxation is theft" perspective. Compared to other countries around the globe, which is ridiculous, because no one else is comparable to us...compared to them, our tax burden is considerably less. We certainly have a lot of room for improvement, and outside of military spending...nearly every other facet of the federal budget should be cut 90%. Our country would prosper wildly if we got rid of Federal overreach. Taxes are really just a part of it. Our largest problem are the bloated incompetent, unelected federal employees who only ever push political ideology while milking the public tit. I have a sister who's a GS12 for BLM. She literally hires 3 people at the GS 8-10 level for every 1 position she needs, because it takes 3 or more to get the work she needs accomplished. She finds them napping at their desks, completely ignoring all completion deadlines, and constantly milking the system for some scam. I have to admit I've had similar experiences with federal employees at USDA, FSA, USACE and other departments I've contracted with. Incoherent, misspelled communications. Utter ignorance of the task to be accomplished, and complete disregard for excellence in anything. The only thing most federal employees care about is making their job easier, and no one finding out just how much they DON'T know how to do the job they were hired to do. Most were hired for political reasons anyway... If we want to fix anything, we need a MASSIVE purge of Federal employees. I've found similar characteristics in dealing with the various state employees where I live also. The gross incompetence and lack of qualifications for the position they hold is astounding. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The trouble with our Liberal friends...is not that they're ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so." Ronald Reagan, 1964 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Arguing with some people is like playing chess with a pigeon. It doesn't matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon will just take a shit on the board, strut around knocking over all the pieces and act like it won.. and in some cases it will insult you at the same time." DevlDogs55, 2014 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ www.rikrlandvs.com | |||
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Still finding my way |
No tax until the national debt is paid. | |||
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No More Mr. Nice Guy |
Two main reasons imho for accepting the tax system. 1) The system has consistently been molded to put more and more people into a low or no tax situation. Freebies like the child care credit, etc. It is to the point where about half of all earners pay zero federal income tax! Even worse, many people get a net payment from the fedgov. 2) People are generally ignorant about taxation, federal spending, the federal debt, etc. They truly do not understand where wealth comes from (hint: it isn't from printed dollars) nor that there is no such thing as "government money". Those who are go-getters will strive to succeed even in the face of the tax system. I guess people can be optimists even when the system is against them. As more and more of the lower earners pay essentially no income tax, there is less voter outcry. "Tax the rich bastards" is a winning slogan. I also think that the system just ran out of control when we weren't watching. There's a big lag between what the government does and when we perceive it. In good economic times we tend to ignore federal deficits. When there isn't much federal debt we didn't get too worried about deficits because we expected "them" to "do the right thing" before too long and fix it. The storm has been brewing for decades but the effects were not felt for much of that time. My prediction is that the younger generations will repudiate the national debt. They may cut off entitlements. They may go for a total reset. We old folks got something for all those taxes in the way of new interstate highways, astronauts walking on the moon, ever sweeter Social Security and Medicare, and National Parks. My kids and grandkids are just paying the interest on the debt and watching infrastructure rot. | |||
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blame canada |
Agreed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The trouble with our Liberal friends...is not that they're ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so." Ronald Reagan, 1964 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Arguing with some people is like playing chess with a pigeon. It doesn't matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon will just take a shit on the board, strut around knocking over all the pieces and act like it won.. and in some cases it will insult you at the same time." DevlDogs55, 2014 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ www.rikrlandvs.com | |||
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If you see me running try to keep up |
Whee does he live in Europe where they are less than here? | |||
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The Ice Cream Man |
They aren’t higher in Europe. At least, not in France and Switzerland. | |||
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Fighting the good fight |
... Read that back again, slowly. I think I get what you're going for, in that the government should reallocate more of their tax income towards paying off debt over much of the unnecessary spending, but what you literally said is effectively: "You won't get any of the money needed to pay your debts until you pay off your debts first." The only other alternative if tax revenue gets completely shut off is to just print 34 trillion new dollars. Which would immediately tank the dollar, resulting in other countries not accepting dollars to pay off the debt. Thus using tax dollars to pay the debt is the only actual solution. It's just a matter of using that tax money correctly. The US government takes in about $4.5 trillion each year in tax revenue. (And they currently spend about $6 trillion per year, so they're in the hole about $1.5T at square one each year.) Let's say hypothetically all the politicians magically get on the same page to cut all nonessential federal spending and put all remaining tax revenue towards paying off debt. Most people agree that the federal government's responsibility at its base level is roads and defense, so military and highway spending together currently account for ~$0.8 trillion each year. We'll call it a nice round $1T needed, even if we cut back on some less important military and highway spending, because we have to account for other additional unavoidable stuff like needing to have some means to collect the taxes, needing to have at least a base level of foreign diplomacy, needing to continue having functioning courts, needing to continue to have intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities, etc. This means that there could theoretically be roughly $3.5T in leftover tax income each year, if government spending was slashed nearly completely. With $34T in national debt, that's a minimum of 10 years before that amount could be paid. But keep in mind, we pay ~$0.5T in interest alone each year, roughly 1/10th of the tax revenue. So even while paying down the principal, that additional interest pushes the debt payoff well past the 10 year range. That's over a decade to pay off the national debt, at current tax revenue rates, assuming zero nonessential spending and going full tilt at paying off debt.* (And because we'll never see a government that was willing to truly cut itself down to the bone, it will surely take many decades of moderate debt paydown if we are to ever significantly reduce the national debt. But a balanced budget would be a logical place to start, reducing the debt accumulation by $1.5T a year right there.) Now, let's see what happens when the government's tax revenue is suddenly $0... Oh, yeah. That debt never gets paid. Ever. Because the government has no money coming in with which to pay it off, or even to make the base interest payments. *Granted, this glosses over a ton of other nuance, namely that government spending has an big effect on driving business growth in the private sector, and the government is one of the largest employers in the nation, and thus a drop in government spending and government employment would also cause a large drop in private sector revenue and personal income, and thus the government's tax income itself would drop significantly, etc. We're just talking in extremely broad strokes, round numbers, and simple concepts here.This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK, | |||
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Get my pies outta the oven! |
I think you are very misinformed. Europeans pay a SHITLOAD of taxes, it's not just income taxes remember; VAT, fuel taxes, vehicle taxes, and so on are all a part of their tax burden. Didn't France just repeal a "millionaires tax" that would tax everyone over a certain amount at like 85%? | |||
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Still finding my way |
Do you really think the gov uses the revenue they take from us to pay anything? They have the monopoly on printing money and do so with impunity. Keeping us in debt to them is all it's about. There's no way this ever changes without the People getting pissed and taking back the control. (Like that will ever happen) | |||
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The Ice Cream Man |
@PASIG, that was reviewing my tax situation with a French tax accountant and a Swiss lawyer. The ultra high French income tax was on incomes over €1MM. The wealth tax is an issue, but there are structures around that. | |||
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Member |
Not only do Europeans pay way higher taxes, way more of them pay the taxes than do people in the US. Just about half of Americans pay any federal income taxes. That's not how it works in Europe. And with the average VAT being around 19%, there's a much greater sense of everyone having skin in the game. Some states in the US have no sales tax and even the highest sales tax states are far cheaper than the lowest VAT countries in Europe. I've lived and worked in Germany and, while I thought the taxes and cost of most things were ridiculous, they get far more for their taxes than we get here. And that's another reason people there put up with it. They see the fruits of those taxes every day. Here we drive on horrible roads, still pay lots of tolls for those roads, there is complete lawlessness and chaos on the roads, tons of slums, street crime, etc. Doesn't feel like that in a lot of Europe. Though they certainly have their problems too. | |||
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would not care to elaborate |
Tax the rich and rob the poor...wonderful world | |||
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