jay pettitt on 31/8/2008 at 21:20

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Unless I'm reading it all wrong, despite the temporary respite of a severance package and the threat of having to pay a bit more income tax the woman is actively looking for work because she believes she will be better off. Problem? Top band income tax in the US is 35% on earnings over $350,000 dollars (in the UK it's 40% on earnings over ~$72k). How the hell do you calculate that the threat of topflight tax bands would make it prudent to not work?



I really don't know how to respond to that. Part of me wants to urge you to vote for some libertarian nutjob because that'll deny McCain a vote (please do). Part of me wants to point out that neither McCain and Obama want to increase taxes for the middle classes and part of me wants to point out that taxes aren't penalties - they are how you pay for education, infrastructure, waste collection, defence, city parks and libraries. They are why the US has national parks, so many opportunities for increasing scientific understanding and emergency services, they pay for regulations that protect your health and the environment, they pay for courts and the rule of law. Stop me if I'm wrong mr libertarianman - but you haven't a thing to say about the failure of laissez-faire market forces to recognise the existence of, let alone place value on public goods or explain libertarianism's cowardly retreat from most fundamental of economic principles - that of willingness to pay. Taxation can have a punitive element, but that's not the same thing as saying that tax = penalty stop picking on me I am only smoll boo hoo hoo I will vote for a nut leave me alone sob sob.

No idea about the advantages about flat rate tax. Generally I'd like to see tax simplified but frankly the advantages of being able to use taxation as a carrot and stick is too good to throw away and yes I think a steering mechanism is a good thing and yes I think elected government should have final say on the steering and yes I think that all the score-carding and 'ooh government is a big waste of space' arguments have been so thoroughly discredited by now that they should be retired in the interest of getting somewhere good god man you need to get to grips with global warming, energy policy for the 21st Century and god knows what else you've been putting off for the last 40 years come November. I'd swap the opportunity to influence behavior with taxation for a totalitarian state if your prefer, no? Me neither.

Generally I tend to prefer consumption taxes. In the UK we have Vehicle Excise Duty - a posh way of saying car tax. The rate of car tax increases with your car's perceived level of environmental villainy according to make, model and so on. I think that's an arbitrary (punitive for that matter) tax and I'd rather see it scrapped entirely and lost revenue shifted onto fuel duty. That way car use is taxed rather than having access to a car in the first place and you can save by using your car less or get your wrist slapped for using your car excessively. All I gotta do is get people to vote for more fuel duty. Dang. That said I hate cars so much I probably don't care if car tax is stupid and or punitive. Perhaps it isn't punitive and or stupid enough. Generally I think that excessive consumption is unsustainable bad and I'd quite like to see it taxed severely. Vote for me \o/


Heywood, I think you'll have a hard time trying to separate either politics or economics from fairness. Also the laffer curve is something that got scribbled on the back of a napkin for god's sake - it's not nearly sophisticated enough to show anything other than a highly vague approximation of an overly simplified principle and one that isn't reflected in real life anyway - rightly or wrongly Mother Russia ran a 100% flat tax and lots of people still went to work every day and aspired to achieve great things, the assumption that nobody will work with 100% tax is false. The laffer curve is to economics what the smiley is to literature.

heretic on 31/8/2008 at 22:03

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If spouting off the likes of 'libertartian=crackpot' and waxing on the shallower side of Economics 101 was the best you could do, then you should've just stopped there.

Ghostly Apparition on 1/9/2008 at 04:18

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The first problem is You're listening to Hannity who is a right wing tool.
But if the arguement is that the wealthy are paying too much in taxes,
Lets take a listen to what one of the wealthiest has to say on that shall we?

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/27/AR2007062700097.html)
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NEW YORK, June 26 -- Warren E. Buffett was his usual folksy self Tuesday night at a fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as he slammed a system that allows the very rich to pay taxes at a lower rate than the middle class.

Buffett cited himself, the third-richest person in the world, as an example. Last year, Buffett said, he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent.

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the above is a small quote from the article for those to lazy to click the link.

So I guess Hannity's reasoning is that even though the top ten percent are only taxed at 17 percent and that this still accounts for 70% of the actual tax revenue, That its too much.
But to me it only underscores the extreme difference in income between the middle class and the top 10% who are raking in money at obscene rates.

Ghostly Apparition on 2/9/2008 at 03:33

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There are sometimes instigators in protest crowds. But sometimes there's also 2 sides to every story. Police raids on homes without warrants and unlawfully arresting even media.
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/01/protests/index.html)

I especially like the video farther down showing police pepper spraying a girl holding a flower. Now that's class. (sarcasm)

heretic on 2/9/2008 at 07:14

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So she was for the bridge, before she was against it....

Are we once again shocked and appalled by a politician's tendency to be a two-faced opportunist?

This alone isn't much of an issue anyway since at the end of the day she was acting as the Alaskan state Governor. Her job was to support the interests of the state, not run Congress.

Refusing $400MIL in federal funds, after Congress approval, would have (in the least) marked the end of her Governorship.

...and her daughter got knocked up too oh lawd!