I wish I could pay my fair share; not 43.6%.

>Many of them (Marc Rich, for ex) were facing criminal charges and went to high tax Israel or France

Marc Rich? He's not a criminal.

>Gabolly, listen to yourself. You really think those are the real scammers? What about the hedge fund managers not paying taxes on their income?

Like Happyrenter and Steve Rattner?

> I have opened my eyes, ears and mind. still not understanding what you're talking about.

But yet you are still constipated. Wonder why.

>i'm neither particularly young, nor naive, and i've very much "been out there."

Yes, we know, we know. Tell us again about you and the plunger on Christmas Eve.

"5 billion of which came in a period when GWB was President for 8 years and both houses of Congress were in GOP hands for 6."

And even though GWB is gone, his policies are still increasing the national debt RIGHT NOW. Case in point: The $10 trillion of unfunded liabilities in Medicare Part D. Bush might be cutting brush in Texas, but he will be increasing the debt for decades to come!

I've asked this question before, but have yet to get answer, so here it is again?

What is an example of a cuccessful country that has low taxes AND limited government?

Last time I asked, LICC said Switzerland and somewherelese said Australia. But both have big governments. SO they are WRONG.

Gabolly : If you think "parasites" are such a big part of the problem, what portion of the budget do you think goes to food stamps, etc.? (Hint--it's not very much.)

Let's look at how amazingly generous the benefits are: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36507576/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

Yeah, $70 a week sure buys a lot of lobster. So, the reason that people are "skeptical" of the things you've observed is that they're at odds with what the data says actually happens in the real world. Maybe you're just super lucky and see all the outliers, but creating policy around them is about as useful as looking at Bernie Madoff as an example of a rich dude and assuming that all rich people are parasites as well.

Liberals make some of the most dense arguments. Now they are pointing to specific small countries in the European Union as examples of high tax successful nations. That is like pointing to Alaska or North Dakota and saying that low tax states are more successful. When looking at the EU you have to look at all of it, including the high tax, socialist-style states that have milked the other more productive states so badly that the whole EU is a mess.

Looking at the whole of the EU is silly. The variety of tax policies across Europe are considerably more varied than across the US states. Why don't we just look at Asia as a whole while we're at it?

The US is the third most populous country in the world. The other large countries are generally quite poor. You have to get to #9 (Russia) and #10 (Japan) on the list to get to reasonably developed economies. Those two together are less than the size of the US. If you exclude all countries that are smaller than the US from comparison, we're really only talking about comparisons to developing

jordyn, are you kidding? You don't believe welfare dependency becomes cyclical? Casey Mulligan at the University of Chicago did a study on this:

Mulligan said that although many factors other than a person's willingness to work ultimately determine work experience and welfare-program participation, his study simultaneously analyzes the determination of wages and work experience to show that a person's willingness to work may be one of the more important of those factors.

For his study, Mulligan used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, begun in 1968, which included 1,872 low-income families, plus 2,930 families representing the entire work force. The participants were interviewed annually until 1989.

Using the data, he measured the economic activities of parents from 1967 to 1971 and then compared their experiences with the economic status of their children as adults during the period of 1984 to 1988.

His research illustrates how income and welfare dependency of parents influence the economic lives of their children. His findings show:

_ In families that experienced unemployment in successive generations, unemployment of a father had a significant influence on his sons' future employment. For instance, if a father was unemployed for a year, his sons later experienced unemployment for several months, typically between five and nine months.

_ More hours of work by parents also increased the amount children worked as adults, particularly sons. Each hour of overtime worked by a father was associated with 12 minutes of overtime worked by sons.

_ Among families in which two generations participated in welfare, each year of welfare participation by parents correlated to between 120 and 274 days of welfare dependence for daughters.

_ Among families in which two generations collected food stamps, each year of parental dependence on food stamps was associated with between 139 and 223 days of dependence by daughters and between 113 days and 197 days for sons.

jordyn, as for economic and monetary policy, it appears you don't know enough. The EU countries use the same currency, the Euro. This links them economically in many ways. Please read up on it before you try to comment on it again.

Totally agree with Gabolly- in my area in Queens more than half the time I go to the grocery store I see people on food stamps who have fancy cell phones and are buying prepared food- if you are on welfare and/or food stamps you shouldnt be spending $8 for a sandwich from the deli counter. I see the same types of things Gabolly was mentioning in the health clinic near where I live too.

I have no problem paying taxes for entitlements for people who truly try and cant make ends meet or are disabled, etc but there is so much waste in the govt and so many abuses why should my taxes be raised to fund more of that?

Many countries have tax rates like Canada but the waste is less because they overall (including provincial) pay less taxes than us and have services we dont- such as healthcare and very low cost education. So then you have to ask yourselves, where is our money going????

http://www.ey.com/CA/en/Services/Tax/Tax-Calculators-2011-Personal-Tax

Many countries have "high" tax rates

LICC: 1) I have no idea what point you're trying to make with the welfare dependency comment. My point is that it's not very much money, either in terms of the portion of the budget or the benefits paid. Acting like welfare is "the problem" requires a serious misunderstanding of our budget. I do agree with most of the findings in your post, though. That's why the EITC (which, once again, is one of the main reasons why so many people don't pay federal income taxes) is so important--it incents work.

2) Although it's true that the countries of the EU share a currency, their tax policies are not coordinated in any way. In the US, tax burden is dominated by federal taxes, so the variance between the lowest tax state and the highest tax state is much lower than the variance between the lowest tax country and highest tax country in the EU. Also, since most government spending is allocated at the federal level, there's also significantly more overlap in how tax dollars are used. Imagine if the US, Canada and Mexico suddenly had a common currency but nothing else changed. Would you think it would be helpful to try to do analysis of "North America" and just take the mean of all three countries in figuring out what economic conditions were like?

LICcomm, many countries other than the US use the US dollar as their official or exclusive currency; others have their currency pegged to the US dollar, which amounts to the same thing.

"I have no problem paying taxes for entitlements for people who truly try and cant make ends meet or are disabled, etc but there is so much waste in the govt and so many abuses why should my taxes be raised to fund more of that?"

5thGenNYer makes a great point. Most people don't have an issue paying taxes to support those who really need it. The difference with liberals is that they think those people are the majority.

Why is the discussion always always to "raise" taxes and never to "cut" spending?? Why can't we get rid of pork-barrel projects like the "bridge-to-nowhere" ?? Because the incumbents will lose their jobs?

"Most people don't have an issue paying taxes to support those who really need it. The difference with liberals is that they think those people are the majority."

Actually, the difference in liberals is that we understand that any of us could really need it at some point in the future, and we're capable of doing math to figure out that the vast majority of people in the country aren't getting any sort of welfare in the country, it's not a big part of the budget, and (as LICC's own numbers prove) it's incredibly hard to get out of systemic poverty.

Why is the discussion always always to "raise" taxes and never to "cut" spending?? Why can't we get rid of pork-barrel projects like the "bridge-to-nowhere" ?? Because the incumbents will lose their jobs?'

Because those projects are also a tiny portion of the budget.

To get out of the mess we're in, we need to raise taxes *and* cut a lot of spending, including on entitlements and defense. Even if we got rid of *all* discretionary spending (much less the wasteful bits) we'd still have a deficit.

Here's a story about how the profit-driven free market is doing in Ohio: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/us/20drugs.html?hp=&pagewanted=all ... with no reference to Limbaugh or LICcomm

jordyn, you do realize that countries that share a currency are all subject to the the same monetary policy?

I read in the thread that the "rich" are now renting. Slap a 10% federal tax on all yearly rental over 36K. 3K a month must be rich.

And what is your factual support that there is less tax variance in the EU than there is in the U.S.?

"Why is the discussion always always to "raise" taxes and never to "cut" spending?? Why can't we get rid of pork-barrel projects like the "bridge-to-nowhere" ??

Because pork barrel spending is only 0.1% of the budget. So go ahead, let's get rid of all pork barrel spending. That's the equivalent to paying off your mortage with spare change you find in the street.

If you are SERIOUS about cutting spending, then list all of the program you would cut to balance the budget. All of the "cut spending, don't raise taxes" peopel have yet to do this, which shows me thwy are NOT serious.

Paul Ryan presented a budget that cut spending, including to entitlements. Obama did not. So who really is serious?

Paul Ryan's budget does not balance the budget until 2040. UNfortunately, all of his spending cuts are cancelled out by tax cuts. His budget would be far better if it excluded the tax cuts. For isntance, hsi budget drops the top tax rates as well as the corporate tax to 25%.

Ryan's budget also completely ignores defense spending.

And Paul Ryan's Medicare voucher program will mean that Grandpa will have to work as a stripper to pay his medical bills:

http://dccc.org/blog/entry/new_ad_republicans_voted_to_end_medicare_how_will_you_pay/

Finally, an opportunity for columbiacounty.

"Millionaire Tax Didn’t Chase the Rich From New Jersey, Study Says...

...Anti-tax advocates contend that higher taxes on the wealthy lead to millionaire flight. They say this has been seen in Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York. The rich are mobile, they say. They can take their money, taxes and jobs wherever they are treated best.

But a new study focusing on New Jersey provides some of the most detailed evidence yet that so-called millionaire taxes have little effect on the movements of millionaires as a whole..."

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/04/20/millionaire-tax-didnt-chase-the-rich-from-new-jersey-study-says/

Not exactly a left wing source.

Paul Ryan booed by his own constituents:

CONSTITUENT: The middle class is disappearing right now. During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire? And we’re fighting to not raise the Social Security cap from $87,000? I think we’re wrong.

RYAN: A couple things. I don’t disagree with the premise of what you’re saying. The question is what’s the best way to do this. Is it to redistribute… (Crosstalk)

CONSTITUENT: You have to lower spending. But it’s a matter of there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.

RYAN: We do tax the top. (Audience boos).

http://thinkprogress.org/

If Paul Ryan keeps to his plans, he could become FORMER Congressman Paul Ryan next year!

>Millionaire Tax Didn’t Chase the Rich From New Jersey, Study Says

Jason, pretty sad that you have to focus on taxing millionaires more, instead of trying to become a millionaire. What, no prospects?

I want to become a millionaire. I will borrow money from the Fed at 0.1% and lend it out at 5% interest. Any idea how I can do this?

Go start a bank.

Great idea. Then I will make toxic loans, get some TARP, and then give myself a $10 million bonus!

So if you have the answer, what are you bitching about?

$10 million bonus? That's chicken feed. How about earn several billion dollars running a hedge fund and defer ALL your taxes on those earnings until the time of your choosing (ie. when capital gains taxes are lowest)?

"jordyn, you do realize that countries that share a currency are all subject to the the same monetary policy?"

I'm sure that has something to do with the fiscal policy issues we're discussing here, but you'll need to enlighten me. (Also, not all EU countries are on the Euro, so it's not even correct to say that there's a common monetary policy across the EU.)

As for my data on tax variance between nations, the state with the highest marginal income tax rate is California at around 10%; some states have a rate as low as 0%. So the maximum variance between states is 10%. In the EU, the country with the highest marginal tax rate is Sweden with a rate of 56.6%; Bulgaria's highest rate is 10%, so that's a variance of 46.6%. 46.6% is higher than 10%, by quite a lot.

villageowner - aren't you missing the application run at dalton? you have time to take on the hedgies too. impressive.

jordyn, just looking at the high and low doesn't tell you a lot. And what about business taxes? Property taxes?

"U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression.

Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things.

But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times.

Also, an estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get at least one federal benefit, according to the Census Bureau, based on 2009 data. An estimated 46.5 million get Social Security; 42.6 million get Medicare; 42.4 million get Medicaid; 36.1 million get food stamps; 12.4 million get housing subsidies; and 3.2 million get Veterans' benefits.

And the handouts from the government have been growing. Government cash handouts account for a whopping 79% of household growth since 2007, even as household tax payments--for things like the income and payroll tax, among other taxes--have fallen by $312 billion."

Ah, the welfare state. Alinsky's dream fulfilled.

I can see the easy answer coming. Just raise taxes.

Good one Julialg.

I don't understand how this could be. When the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress passed their enormous tax cuts in 2002, the Heritage Foundation said the unemployment would be under 3% by 2012.

wow, i can't imagine why revenues have fallen during the worst post-war recession. gee. fancy that. nearly 9 percent unemployed (and that's an improvement), nearly 17 percent underemployed, and very low labor participation rates and aid has increased and tax collections have decreased.

who could have imagined such a thing?

"jordyn, just looking at the high and low doesn't tell you a lot. And what about business taxes? Property taxes?"

Since you've decided to lose the forest for the trees, you're making my point for me. In the US, total tax policy and burden is dominated by federal tax policy. In "the EU", there's highly variable tax policy between countries, so trying to understand the effects of tax policy versus results on the grouping as a whole is an exercise in futility. You'd be right in saying there's also some variance between US states, but it's much lower.

"Also, an estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get at least one federal benefit, according to the Census Bureau, based on 2009 data. An estimated 46.5 million get Social Security; 42.6 million get Medicare; 42.4 million get Medicaid; 36.1 million get food stamps; 12.4 million get housing subsidies; and 3.2 million get Veterans' benefits."

Uhh. Math fail. I'm guessing that most of the people on Social Security also get Medicare, and most of the people on food stamps also get Medicaid (and people on housing subsidies get both of the above). Just adding all of the above does not provide a count of households receiving any benefit. I'd guess the number fraction is more like 30%, about half of whom are seniors receiving benefits they've paid for through their working career.

ding, ding, ding.

http://funding-programs.idilogic.aidpage.com/

Ah the welfare state 1607 programs jordyn $1,974,042,215,000 in 2005.

It is almost double today.. The pigs want their fair share and the producers need to sacrifice.....

juliag : By far the majority of the money in the "welfare state" you're talking about is Medicare and Social Security. Maybe we should get rid of old people? Let's do a Streeteasy viewing of Logan's run.

In general: yes, we definitely need to reduce entitlement spending, but this is mostly going to require fixing our health care system to keep the costs from growing way faster than the economy. Conservatives are utterly uninterested in realistic solutions to that problem, though, so expect this to be a problem for a while.

Jordyn, you fail. Mortgage interest deduction, farm subisdy, $1,000 per child tax credit, student loan tax deduction, pell grant, subsidized stundent loan, FHA laon, Fannie/Freddie loan, SBA loan, chartible duduction....

"jordyn, you fail. Mortgage interest deduction, farm subisdy, $1,000 per child tax credit, student loan tax deduction, pell grant, subsidized stundent loan, FHA laon, Fannie/Freddie loan, SBA loan, chartible duduction...."

jasoson ...I want to eliminate all of the programs you listed... Plus all the others.. Do you?

jordyn, what is the liberal plan to reduce health care costs? Rationing determined by a government panel.
Sad.

Conservatives want to control costs through competition and litigation reform, both of which would be much more effective than rationing.

jordyn, you still have no factual support for your tax variance claims.

LICComment : I love how litigation reform gets trotted out as a meaningful way to reduce costs. Medical malpractice is <2% of health care costs. I can totally see how getting rid of that will fix everything. Even if you assume that doctors change their practices *a lot* out of fear of malpractice, that's probably a linear increase whereas the problem with health care costs is their exponential growth. You can't fix exponential growth by making linear subtractions.

On the tax issue, I've already provided variance in top tax rates, which. My whole point is that there's a high variance in tax policy, of which top tax rates are one example. Your response seems to be that there's a lot of other ways in which they're different as well. I agree. They're really different in a lot of ways. There, are we done?

jason: I have no clue what your point is.

Hmm, Streeteasy ate 2/3 of my last post. Weird. I'll maybe re-write it later to make sense.

"Hmm, Streeteasy ate 2/3 of my last post. Weird. I'll maybe re-write it later to make sense."

It's the new Streeteasy tax. Consider yourself lucky that you are allowed to type enough to be taxed at this rate.

"Hmm, Streeteasy ate 2/3 of my last post. Weird. I'll maybe re-write it later to make sense."

It's the new Streeteasy tax. Consider yourself lucky that you are allowed to type enough to be taxed at this rate.

Great point bob. It's not fair that jordyn has so many posts. Jordyn should be made to sacrifice 50% of his posts. Why is jordyn so greedy?

"jason: I have no clue what your point is."

That government helps even more people than the few programs you listed. Virtually every one gets some form of credit, subsidy, payment, or deduction for one or more likely many things.

"Conservatives want to control costs through competition and litigation reform, both of which would be much more effective than rationing."

----------------------------

"Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it?"

-- Paul Ryan, 2010

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/rep_paul_ryan_rationing_happen.html

Paul Ryan supports rationing. Yet another LICC talking point discredited by a 3 second Google search. And Ryan is not alone. There is also Mitch Daniels:

"We cannot afford in an aging society to pay for the most expensive technology every -- for every single person regardless of income to the very, very last day."

I covered this comment in another thread not that long ago:

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/25471-mitch-daniels-is-most-dangerous-man-in-us

"bottom line is that the state only has so much money and we can only provide so many optional kinds of care, and those are one of the options that we had to take”

--Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/12/08/transplant-patients-brewer-gop/

And if you think that, by "optional care" Brewer was referring to things like plastic surgery or LASIK, your wrong. She was referring to organ transplants. I did not know organ transplants are optional.

Organ transplants optional? Not in a hard-drinking state like Arizona they're not. Half of their current US Senators are funded by Budweiser brand beer magnates, and their governess is named Brewer. I'm just saying.

http://www.longislandpress.com/2011/04/20/jerrys-ink-della-femina-restaurant-is-sold/

Della Femina Restaurant Is Sold
By Long Island Press on April 20th, 2011

So why am I selling one of the most successful restaurants in East Hampton?

In 2008 I watched Barack Obama run over Hillary Clinton to become our President.

From the very first “Yes We Can” and “Change You Can Believe In,” I decided that this country was falling in love with an attractive, great-speechmaking hustler/socialist who, if he got into office, was going to pursue his agenda to destroy the best health care in the world and re-distribute wealth. Yours and mine.

I told my friends that from that moment on everything I owned—my houses, my advertising business, my newspaper and my restaurant—was for sale.

A lot of people have come around to my way of thinking, but there is no way in the world that Barack Obama won’t be reelected in 2012.

If you think that Obama’s plan for over-taxing everyone but the 46 percent who don’t pay any income tax (including his friend Jeffery Imholt and General Electric) will stop after he’s re-elected in 2012, you are naïve.

Why does this so go against my grain?

Maybe it’s because of where I’ve come from to get to where I am.

I’ve been broke, so broke with a wife and kids and no job that I had to borrow money from my parents, who didn’t have it for themselves but always managed to come up with it for me.

I got lucky and worked day and night and built a great advertising agency.

I have employed thousands of people in my lifetime. I’ve been good to them and they have been good to me.

I’m just not ready to have my wealth redistributed. I’m not ready to pay more tax money than the next guy because I provide jobs and because I work a 60-hour week and I earn more than $250,000 a year.

So why am I dropping out? Read a brilliant book by Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged, and you’ll know.

But this should not be about my politics, but about my restaurant.

what a load of crap.

Why is it that this believe that taxing the upper 20% of the income earners is going to solve this countries problems. When TARP I was passed and all the banks received the handouts with restrictive stipulations. (i.e. no more Black Car service until after 9 PM) Who did this hurt not the bankers, it hurt the black drivers. I am partners in a black car service and my business dropped over 50% due to the restrictions. Now the drivers are not wealthy, mostly hard working immigrants trying to support families. Their income dropped accordingly. The bankers and Wall Street movers just had to do with paying for their own way home. Also there was a significant drop in dining out at high end restaurants. What about shopping in high end stores? Has anyone walked up madison from the mid 60's to 70's lately. It seems that there is a mass exodus of stores. The socialist will say well the well heeled co-op owners can afford to do with out the income generated by their retail stores. But what the well heeled owners say when their maintenance goes up due to the fact that these locales remain empty. Will the Nanny state re-assess the value of the property to show the decline in value?

What about our Nanny State with more and more people on a government payroll. Receiving lucrative pensions. I know from experience in Nassau County (11,000 county employees) That 40-60% could be abolished with no detrimental effect on the county. I know you doubters will say if you eliminated 100% of the payroll the county will still be in dire straits. That is true, but it is the employees and the politicians who bestow their political patronage on them that caused the problem. Why is there a new industry that arose to fight property assessments. It was because a politician deemed that as long as a homeowner stated they believed they were being taxed incorrectly they would automatically reduce the real estate tax and issue a refund. Never mind that the county already paid the state the funds that they were due from the original tax rate. Now the county has to try to receive a refund from the state etc. As we all know that once government gets money it loathes to return it to the original tax payer. This is a microcosm of what happens all across the country. That is what is wrong. Why is it that any human will run for any office that usually pays them a minute percentage of what it cost them to get elected into that office? There is always more behind the curtain. But socialist never state the obvious.

On the same note here is Census bureau March 2009 federal government payroll

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CIVILIAN EMPLOYMENT
BY FUNCTION: March 2009



Payroll in whole dollars.
(Detail may not add to total because of rounding)

Total
Total Full-Time March
Function Employees Employees Payroll

TOTAL - ALL FUNCTIONS 2,823,777 2,527,149 15,105,511,892
Financial Administration 124,059 118,510 734,041,250
Other Government Administration 24,611 23,631 146,109,052
Judicial and Legal 62,097 59,271 426,756,193
Police 178,537 165,577 1,084,380,000
Correction 36,802 36,646 202,649,214
Highways 2,832 2,762 21,830,643
Air Transportation 47,070 46,731 417,822,429
Water Transport & Terminals 4,628 4,368 12,921,857
Public Welfare 8,127 7,902 69,072,058
Health 152,013 141,713 1,058,326,036
Hospitals 192,876 175,654 1,244,478,393
Social Insurance Administration 64,954 63,134 403,865,786
Parks and Recreation 25,464 23,637 132,091,596
Housing and Community Development 15,156 14,958 108,409,214
Natural Resources 180,800 172,671 1,101,647,000
Nat Defense/International Relations 729,222 703,615 3,099,690,886
Postal Service 703,861 575,639 3,236,016,929
Space Research & Technology 18,354 18,142 168,379,821
Other Education* 9,992 9,556 69,991,357
Libraries 3,871 3,710 27,060,786
Other and Unallocable 238,451 159,322 1,339,971,392


The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
was formed in 2003. Below we provide detail
for the largest agencies within the DHS.
U.S. Coast Guard 7,836 7,696 52,251,607
U.S. Secret Service 6,625 6,492 50,983,929
Bureau of Customs and Border Protection 55,006 54,658 258,700,536
Federal Emergency Management Agency 16,705 7,954 99,738,071
Transportation Security Agency 61,324 49,554 331,447,571
All Other 34,505 33,915 253,553,429
Total Department of Homeland Security 182,001 160,269 1,046,675,143

May not add due to rounding

* Includes Department of Education and the National
Science Foundation, plus parts of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs

Sorry about the cramming of numbers the total payroll for the month of March 2009
TOTAL - ALL FUNCTIONS 2,823,777 (full time) 2,527,149 TOTAL PAYROLL FOR THE MONTH $15,105,511,892

Here is the link

http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/

Nasua County is ALWAYS bankrupt. You can't blame govt. workers for it. Suffolk and Westchester pay just as high salaries, yet they are not bankrupt. My county in NJ, Bergen, has the highest police salaries in the country, yet we are not bankrupt.

jerry della famina is a failed restauranteur blowhard extraordinaire

the only reason he's closing his restaurant is that it's lost money for years. people learned that his restaurant was a bunch of hype just as all his ventures have been--what a focking buffoon

"The bankers and Wall Street movers just had to do with paying for their own way home." ... so they were still paying drivers, but didn't feel that your company, with which they were most familiar, was a good value.

Nassau County's entire govt. should be abolished and instead run by an emergency financial manager appointed by the governor. All Nassau politicians should be dismissed.

David Stockman wrote an op-ed in the times , saying if we're to solve the budget problems, taxes have to go up on everyone, and we will all have to accept less.

Seems as a society we're not serious as we're only willing to raise taxes on the income brackets we're not part of and to cut services on those groups we're not a part of. Big surprise!

I don't think we need to raise taxes on EVERYONE. Raising taxes on incomes over $125,000 and creating new barckets for 7 and 8 digit incomes is a good start. Plus we need to control run away defense spending, end the failed experiment known as No Child Left Behind, stop all subsidies, weld all tax loopholes shut, and control illegal immigration.

Oh, and we also need to control healthcare costs. If we don't, the deficit will just get bigger no matter how much you cut. ObamaCare and the Republican proposals all fail to do this.

I don't think we need to raise taxes on EVERYONE
of course you don't

So you support raising taxes on everyone? You think we should raise taxes on people who make minimum wage?

IT is obvious that the nation’s desperate fiscal condition requires higher taxes on the middle class, not just the richest 2 percent. Likewise, entitlement reform requires means-testing the giant Social Security and Medicare programs, not merely squeezing the far smaller safety net in areas like Medicaid and food stamps.

Unfortunately, in proposing tax increases only for the very rich, President Obama has denied the first of these fiscal truths, while Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has contradicted the second by putting the entire burden of entitlement reform on the poor. The resulting squabble is not only deepening the fiscal stalemate, but also bringing us dangerously close to class war.

In attacking the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers, the president is only incidentally addressing the deficit. The larger purpose is to assure the vast bulk of Americans left behind that they will be spared higher taxes — even though entitlements make a tax increase unavoidable. Mr. Obama is thus playing the class-war card more aggressively than any Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt — surpassing Harry S. Truman or John F. Kennedy when they attacked big business or Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter when they posed as champions of the little guy.

the Democrats are immobilized because Keynesians insist on kicking the budgetary can down the road until cyclical “demand” has in their estimation fully recovered, while Republicans sit on their hands because supply-siders insist on letting the deficit fester until tax cuts work their alleged revenue magic.

By 2014, for example, the Ryan plan does not save a dime from the $2.2 trillion baseline for Social Security, Medicare and national security spending. Then it extends all the Bush tax cuts at a cost of $350 billion while instructing the states to reduce spending for the poor by $100 billion and the Congress to slice domestic discretionary spending by 25 percent. That toxic brew is likely to find few takers — even at a Mad Hatter’s tea party.

The latest iteration of the Obama plan is little better. By 2014, it would generate $70 billion from taxing the rich and perhaps $30 billion from the president’s belated call to re-examine our over-financed military but virtually nothing from freezes on domestic programs or from Medicare reimbursement reforms.

So the Ryan plan worsens our trillion-dollar structural deficit and the Obama plan amounts to small potatoes, at best. Worse, we are about to descend into class war because the Obama plan picks on the rich when it should be pushing tax increases for all, while the Ryan plan attacks the poor when it should be addressing middle-class entitlements and defense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/opinion/24stockman.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

I think most people are willing to accept "less." It depends how much less and "less" of what? I think, for isntance, we can downsize the NYPD. There are way too many people at the top pushing papers and making $150,000. None of them are in the street fighting crime. All they do is yell at the poor beat cops when they don't make their quota.

Means testing won't save much money:

"The cost of administering a means test would add substantially to the operating cost of the program. If the means test raised the expense ratio for the retirement program to the same level as the disability program it would increase expenses by an amount equal to 1.70 percent of the program’s cost. This would eliminate most, if not all, of the savings from a plausible means test on affluent beneficiaries."

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/ss-2011-03.pdf

Or keep the cops,have them pay into their pensions and make them work a few more years...

The Progressive Caucus' People's Budget:

The CPC proposal:

• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021
• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program
• Protects the social safety net
• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)

What the proposal accomplishes:

• Primary budget balance by 2014.
• Budget surplus by 2021.
• Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.1% by 2021, down 16.5 percentage points from
a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch.
• Reduces deficits by $5.6 trillion over 2012-21, relative to this adjusted baseline.
• Outlays equal to 22.2% of GDP and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021.

http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70

The Economic Policy Institute has analyzed and scored the specific policy proposals in the People’s Budget and modeled their cumulative impact on the federal budget over the next decade. Our analysis finds that the People’s Budget would balance the federal budget within a decade and place debt held by the public on a sustainable trajectory. Specifically, the budget would move to a surplus of $30.7 billion (0.1% of gross domestic product) in 2021, and debt as a share of the economy would trend downward to 64.1% of GDP in that year. The budget would reduce deficits by $5.6 trillion over the next decade relative to the CBO baseline (adjusted for current policies regarding the “doc fix” and a patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax).

The People’s Budget would finance $1.7 trillion worth of public investment over the next decade, most of which is front-loaded over the next five years. The budget would strengthen Social Security by lifting the cap on taxable earnings. The budget also would accrue health savings of $308 billion over the next decade, primarily by creating a public option for health insurance and negotiating prescription drug prices for Medicare Part D.

The budget would reduce conventional and strategic military forces, for savings of $692 billion and end all emergency war supplemental appropriations for savings of $1.6 trillion. Finally, individual and corporate tax reform would ensure sufficient revenue to cover federal outlays by the end of the decade.

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/news_from_epi_peoples_budget_offers_sound_alternative_to_ryans_draconian_pl/

But is it ideologically sound?

>Wbottom
about 1 hour ago
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report abuse
jerry della famina is a failed restauranteur blowhard extraordinaire
the only reason he's closing his restaurant is that it's lost money for years. people learned that his restaurant was a bunch of hype just as all his ventures have been--what a focking buffoon

Better to be a failed restauranteur, than a guy under court-ordered supervision like someone we know who named himself after his ass.

>And if you think that, by "optional care" Brewer was referring to things like plastic surgery or LASIK, your wrong. She was referring to organ transplants. I did not know organ transplants are optional.

Socialist, if the organ transplant was for a Hispanic, you'd be opposed in that instance, right?

>Socialist
about 1 hour ago
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report abuse Nassau County's entire govt. should be abolished and instead run by an emergency financial manager appointed by the governor. All Nassau politicians should be dismissed.

Seriously, didn't you just state the opposite for Wisconsin?
You teabaggers are all alike, you just say what suits you at the time.

>Plus we need to control run away defense spending, end the failed experiment known as No Child Left Behind, stop all subsidies, weld all tax loopholes shut, and control illegal immigration.

For subsidies, can we stop subsdizing pensions where the value of the pensions exceeds what was put in and what was honestly earned from the fund in the time that the pensioner was invested? Can we stop subsidizing government employee wages which exceed private market wages?

And No Child Left Behind, how about some of the programs suggested by needsadvice? http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/26026-the-difference-between-democrats-republicans

>So you support raising taxes on everyone? You think we should raise taxes on people who make minimum wage?

Socialist, what if anyone who gets more than they put in doesn't gets their benefits cut by 50%. Then they can vote to get the 50% back, if they pay 25% more in taxes.

tax

socialist, you are just puking out pablam ad infinitum. give it a break. its so transparent. you have the mentality of a ten year old who hasnt learned to wipe his own arse yet but continue to scream for your next bag of candy. see, now i am holding my breath until i turn blue in the face. now i am going to roll around the floor and kick and scream and pout. now i am going to kick you in the shin. now i am going to blame you cause i am a thirty year old and still dont know how to wipe my arse. now i am going to post all day on the internet about our failure as a society and to take down all those mean spirited rich folk. now i am going to start screaming for my bag of candy. now i am forty....cycle continues....

rangersfan, I'll take that to mean that you endorse the Progressive Caucus People's Budget.

alan, give me a bit more credit. these guys have no doubt spent alot of time with sidecars and hallucinogen kickers.

"Means testing won't save much money"

It's not clear if this analysis includes retirement account disbursements. Personally, I'd rather have social security be means tested than have the payroll tax cap be raised. Social security isn't a particularly efficient way to save for retirement, so I'd rather just make sure I set up my own retirement than have to pay more into social security.

On the other hand, the "insurance" aspect of social security in case I screw up or would otherwise end up poor seems fairly useful, so I'm glad to continue paying some amount for its continuing existence.

Since we are discussing fairness and tax policy, I find it indefensible that, due to AMT, my marginal rate is actually higher than what it would be if my income were high enough to be outside of AMT. Because I can't deduct state or city tax, my marginal rate on my earned income works out to 48%. Currently my only deductions are state and city income tax and investment interest expense. If my income were higher, I would be outside of AMT and my state/city tax would be deductible, thus lowering my marginal rate.

Can we (liberal, conservative, socialist, tax party, etc.) at least agree that is ridiculous that my marginal rate would decrease if I had another $100,000 in income (or another $10,000,000 for that matter)?

And that’s why the only major budget proposal out there offering a plausible path to balancing the budget is the one that includes significant tax increases: the “People’s Budget” from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which — unlike the Ryan plan, which was just right-wing orthodoxy with an added dose of magical thinking — is genuinely courageous because it calls for shared sacrifice.

True, it increases revenue partly by imposing substantially higher taxes on the wealthy, which is popular everywhere except inside the Beltway. But it also calls for a rise in the Social Security cap, significantly raising taxes on around 6 percent of workers. And, by rescinding many of the Bush tax cuts, not just those affecting top incomes, it would modestly raise taxes even on middle-income families.

All of this, combined with spending cuts mostly focused on defense, is projected to yield a balanced budget by 2021. And the proposal achieves this without dismantling the legacy of the New Deal, which gave us Social Security, and the Great Society, which gave us Medicare and Medicaid.

But if the progressive proposal has all these virtues, why isn’t it getting anywhere near as much attention as the much less serious Ryan proposal? It’s true that it has no chance of becoming law anytime soon. But that’s equally true of the Ryan proposal.

The answer, I’m sorry to say, is the insincerity of many if not most self-proclaimed deficit hawks. To the extent that they care about the deficit at all, it takes second place to their desire to do precisely what the People’s Budget avoids doing, namely, tear up our current social contract, turning the clock back 80 years under the guise of necessity. They don’t want to be told that such a radical turn to the right is not, in fact, necessary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=2

puke, candy, rant. puke, candy, rant.

rangersfan, are you okeh? It sounds like you need some socialized medicine.

appreciate your concern, alan. se should have something akin to a pollen count when socialist and others are busily polluting the air with this crap. i feel a sneeze coming on.....