Someone with an economics background tell me why we can’t do this with the IRS tax code:
Category: Politics
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Taxes, taxes
Food for thought. When I mention that Sweden has a very high personal income tax rate, the nationalistic American response is, “Ha! In America, it’s the land of opportunity. Low taxes, capitalism, and opportunity for everyone!” (chances are, if you read this blog, you’re not the typical American, so I’m not counting your responses in this)
I just got my pay stub for this month. Out of every dollar earned, I pay 43 cents to Uncle Sam in the form of Federal and state taxes, Medicare, and Social Security. That gives me 57 cents on the dollar to spend. Then add in
- property tax
- sales tax
- meal tax
- utility tax for electricity
- home energy tax for heating and cooking
- water tax (they call it a fee for service, but face it, it’s a tax)
- sewage tax
- telephone tax
- 911 mobile tax
- excise tax on the car I drive
- gasoline tax for the gas I put in the car…
… and I figure that I get to *use* about 14 cents on the dollar on a good day. I’m grateful to my fantastic employer, the Student Loan Network, for providing 100% healthcare coverage, or I’d be dropping another 300 –600 per month for healthcare.
How, exactly, is this low taxation?
As for opportunities, several people made the statement that America is still the best place for opportunities, to which I’d say in the 20th century, that may well have been true, but with Internet connectivity approaching near ubiquity in some countries (Europe’s 3G network puts the US to shame, and South Korea’s gigabit to the house is just frighteningly fast) opportunities are increasingly portable. In order to maintain its competitiveness in the 21st century, America has a lot of work to do to reduce government waste and invest in its citizens as other countries are doing.
Food for thought: $447 billion spent so far in Iraq. Regardless of your politics, that would pay for every college student in America to go to a four year public university for free for all four years. It’s not that we don’t have the resources in America – it’s just that we lack the will to do what is necessary to ensure our continued prosperity and to hold those we elect to office accountable for their choices.
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Truth hurts.
Close your eyes when you don’t want to see
Stay at home when you don’t want to go
Only speak to those who will agree
Yeah, and close your mind when you don’t want to know– Billy Joel, “Everybody Loves You Now”
This is a picture of the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, captured by Europa in 2007. Despite nearly 2 years since Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, little progress is being made in fairly large sections of New Orleans.
For perspective, how large is this region of the city? About 1.6 miles by 1.2 miles, or just under two square miles. If it were Manhattan, it’d be the same area from West 53rd to 19th and from 10th Avenue to Lexington Avenue – or most of midtown. If it were Boston, it’d be from Government Center to Kenmore Square and from the Charles River to Jamaica Plain – most of the western part of the city. Know San Francisco? The Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans is almost identical in size to all of Golden Gate National Park. Know DC? It’s the same area as the Lincoln Memorial to the Smithsonian by the Lincoln to Dupont Circle. Been to Disney World? The Lower 9th is the same size as the Magic Kingdom – plus Epcot, MGM, and the Animal Kingdom.
This is a large chunk of a major American city that has not been rebuilt.
Think about it.
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41% of Americans believe Saddam = 9/11, 6 years later
Warning: political post ahead. If you don’t enjoy politics (I was a PoliSci major for my undergraduate degree), skip this post!
At his press conference Thursday, the president characterized the current state of war in Iraq as a showdown with Al Qaeda and warned that withdrawal would risk “mass killings on a horrific scale.” Critics have called his assertions that the organization is responsible for both the violence in Iraq and the 2001 attacks on the U.S. an oversimplification. Last month’s poll found that 41 percent of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection.) The NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted June 18-19, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for questions based on Census Current Population Survey parameters for gender, age, education, race and population density. In conducting the poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed 1,001 adults aged 18 and older. – MSNBC
Someone ring the proctologist, because 41% of the Americans that MSNBC polls have their heads stuck in their recta.
Even President Bush himself has said that there’s no connection whatsoever.
“No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.” – President Bush, September 13, 2003.
No matter your political persuasion, please, someone find this 41% – or at least the 411 people selected by Princeton Survey Research Associates – and slap some reality into them.
Of course, this is the same country that produces these dazzling results:
After more than three years of combat and nearly 2,400 U.S. military deaths in Iraq, nearly two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 still cannot find Iraq on a map, a study released Tuesday showed.
The study found that less than six months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, 33 percent could not point out Louisiana on a U.S. map.
Inside the United States, “half or fewer of young men and women 18-24 can identify the states of New York or Ohio on a map [50 percent and 43 percent, respectively],” the study said.
When the poll was conducted in 2002, “Americans scored second to last on overall geographic knowledge, trailing Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Sweden,” the report said.
The National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs 2006 Geographic Literacy Study paints a dismal picture of the geographic knowledge of the most recent graduates of the U.S. education system. – CNN
Whatever we decide to do as a nation with inexpensive laptops for students, someone please install Google Earth on every single one of them, and a quiz module, too.
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Power and morality, gas and steering
I was talking last night with a good friend about something that popped up in Google Earth. There’s a layer that automatically got added – the crisis in Darfur, all the flashpoints in the conflict, and the topic drifted to – how do you make a difference? Ultimately, how do you effect real, lasting change? Will donating? Writing your Congressman?
Ultimately, the ability to effect change is power. Without power, you cannot effect change, you cannot make a difference. If you have a little bit of power, you can make a little bit of change. If you have a lot, then you can singlehandedly change entire countries or continents. Consider at his apex just how powerful Alan Greenspan was – a single sentence could rocket or sink the economy for days, and create or destroy billions of dollars in wealth.
That tangent led us to the discussion of power vs. morality. They’re not the same thing, and in the drive in this morning, it finally occurred to me what they were. Morality is the direction you go – the way you steer. Morality is the gas and the engine that takes you there. No power means that you can steer as straight and true as you like, but you won’t get anywhere. No morality means that you can head off the road really, really fast.
You need both. Ideally, morality and moral guidance for most people is more or less in place; the trick then is to stay on target, stay on the road while you learn how to build power. That’s the harder part of the equation. We live in a society that actively encourages the bulk of citizens to NOT become more powerful, to forfeit their power to government, business, leaders, demagogues, zealots, religion, and so forth. You hear the pleas for the surrender of your power every day:
– Buy this product and you’ll be happy.
– Elect me to office and I’ll fix your problems.
– Worship this deity and you’ll go to heaven.
– Trust me with this decision and I’ll reward you.The powers that be don’t want to steer you off the road. They want you to stop driving entirely.
How do you resist giving up what power and steering you have?
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This is why I have a personal blog…
… because even though this post is loan-related, it definitely doesn’t belong on the company’s web site.
Senator Charles Schumer, you’re an idiot. Specifically, you’re an idiot for proposing legislation that will provide a bailout for homeowners facing foreclosure, according to the Washington Post.
“We will be proposing significant amounts of dollars,” Schumer told reporters after being asked if a large federal bailout may be needed.
More from your colleagues:
“We’ve heard one heartbreaking story after another of borrowers with limited incomes being sold mortgages they could not afford,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said at a briefing on Capitol Hill.
Full stop. Reality would like to have a word with you, then possibly bitchslap you. Unless a mortgage broker forged a signature on a loan document, the borrower signed for the mortgage. If they didn’t sign for it, then that’s fraud and they’re not liable for a penny of the debt. If they did sign it, but didn’t understand what they were signing, that’s not fraud, that’s stupidity.
Lesson the first: never sign something you don’t understand. Ever.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn, said he would call for a summit on Capitol Hill soon “to try to work out a process for providing relief to homeowners.”
Senator Dodd, you’re added to the list of idiots.
Why? Because when you execute a bailout on bad debts, guess who gets the money? Not the homeowner. Not the poor grandmother and the other sob stories you’re trotting out. The banks get the money. You’re essentially proposing to funnel a billion or so dollars straight to the loan portfolios of Citibank, Wells Fargo, Chase Manhattan, and other lenders, and I’m sure they’re very happy with your idea. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that they’ll repay the favor with some campaign funds.
Wait, let’s go check.
CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY) Top Industries The top industries supporting Charles E. Schumer are: 1 Securities & Investment 2,507,200 2 Lawyers/Law Firms2,009,721 3 Real Estate 1,529,498 4 Commercial Banks549,249 5 Misc Finance $534,248
And for some names…
CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY) Top Contributors 1 JP Morgan Chase & Co 129,800 2 Merrill Lynch127,000 3 Bear Stearns 126,400 4 Citigroup Inc111,550 5 Morgan Stanley $109,500
I call bullshit on you and your bailout of your financiers. This is payola, plain and simple, disguised as an appeal to a middle class who won’t see a dollar of your proposed aid to them – but they’ll pay it out in higher taxes. What about you, Senator Dodd?
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT) Top Industries The top industries supporting Christopher J. Dodd are: 1 Securities & Investment 1,552,013 2 Lawyers/Law Firms749,472 3 Insurance 697,458 4 Real Estate504,941 5 Commercial Banks $403,700
Again, I call bullshit, but let’s dig once more…
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT) Top Contributors 1 Citigroup Inc 196,550 2 Bear Stearns186,350 3 United Technologies 157,950 4 American International Group121,378 5 St Paul Travelers Companies $105,800
Nice to see your legislation will fatten the profits of your supporters at the expense of my wallet.
Go take a long walk off a short pier. If you ever wondered why America doesn’t trust you, this is why. Payola sucks, no matter how you slice it. I swear, I’m going to find that C-SPAN video of your speech on the Senate floor and put a big-ass “This appeal for more government misuse of tax dollars is brought you you by these fine banks which would like some free money…”
Disgusting.
