Keep your money, planet; taxing the income of the top thirteen hedge fund managers in the country as income rather than capital gains would pay for a few hundred thousand teachers. —What's the order of magnitude spread on that, again?Call me cynical, but somehow I think any actual increase would fall on wage-earning schmucks like me.
Why just oppose higher taxes, then? By your logic, why not oppose taxes altogether?Yeah, having lower taxes would be nice, but I'm trying to be pragmatic. Right now, I keep about 55% of my paycheck, and if that slips below 50%, it would be a bit of a psychological hurdle I guess.
Planet: It's not your money. It's your debt to the public for services rendered.Thank you, but this perspective does not interest me and repetition will not change my mind in the least.
Wow, then just stick to Fox News and leave your blinders on. I, too, make it a point never to consider perspectives that challenge my preexisting beliefs in any way.Considering that I've never watched Fox News, I find it easy to believe you make a point never to consider perspectives that challenge your preexisting beliefs.
In contrast, the government is the issuer of its currency. It is not like a household. It doesn’t have to raise money by borrowing or collecting taxes in order to spend. Those of us in the private sector have to earn or borrow dollars before we can spend. The government must spend first. And we say this, and sometimes people have a hard time understanding that. How can the government spend first? How can it not spend first? How could the government collect taxes, in dollars, first? It first had to have spent those dollars into existence. The spending has to come before the payment or the collection of taxes. The government must spend first. Government spending is not (we use this term a lot) operationally constrained by revenues. It doesn’t need tax payments and bond sales in order to fund itself. It is not operationally constrained. The only relevant constraints are self-imposed constraints. We talked a little bit about this earlier, things like debt ceilings. That’s a self-imposed constraint. Rules that prevent the Treasury from running an overdraft in its account at the Fed. That’s a self-imposed constraint. It is a constraint that is imposed by Congress. Rules that prevent the Fed from buying Treasury bonds directly from the Treasury, so-called monetizing the debt, is a self-imposed constraint.For more on this, check out the Corrente Modern Monetary Theory archive.
Also, I have no idea why Lakoff and his ilk act surprised about Donkeys accepting the Elephants' frame. The same ringmasters are writing thier campaign checks after all.Even that makes it sound surprising (and a bit paranoid). It's much simpler: it's not a Republican frame, it's the frame that's been openly accepted by both parties for decades.
P.J. O'Rourke had it right 20 years ago, when he wrote that since taxes were collected under threat of lawful force, you have to look at every expenditure through the lens of a simple question: "Would you imprison your grandmother for it?"That's very muddled thinking. Its like saying theft shouldn't be illegal because you would have to put grandma in jail if she stole something. We put people in jail for tax evasion, not, I don't even know what we would be hypothetically putting people in jail for in your example. The correct example is whether or not you'd throw your mother in jail for using fraud to prevent those things from happening. Would you? Most people wouldn't. But then again, most people wouldn't rat out their family members unless the straight up murdered someone or something like that. So how is that even a valid thought exercise?
Because if grandma doesn't pay her taxes, that's what's supposed to happen right? So, you better have a good reason to ask for tax money, since the only to get it is to threaten to throw grandma in jail.
Palin’s tours around the country are supported by a network of organizations that are not always what they claim to be. The Winning America Back conference was organized by a Missouri political-action committee called Preserving American Liberty (PAL-PAC). The group’s Web site states that “Members of Preserving American Liberty are from the Kansas City metropolitan area and are all unpaid volunteers who want to make a positive difference in the community.” Yet when I asked local politicians (including state representatives, a Senate candidate, and a congressional candidate) and local journalists about who had organized the event, I found that they knew nothing about the sponsors—“maybe because they’re Tea Partiers,” one reporter guessed, “and they’re all new to politics.”posted by skoosh at 11:10 PM on February 21, 2011 [4 favorites]
PAL-PAC seems to have been created for a single purpose: to pay Sarah Palin to give a speech. PAL-PAC announced the Palin event at the same time that it announced its own formation. After the Palin event was over, most of the information on PAL-PAC’s Web site disappeared. In effect, PAL-PAC was a disposable entertainment company, set up to put on a one-day show that collected the contact information of thousands of people who came to see Palin in the flesh, and to give her their money. The organization has not been mentioned again anywhere online or in local newspapers. The group’s financial statements are curious. PAL-PAC was registered in Missouri last November; as of April 15, 2010, when it made its second quarterly disclosure report to the Missouri Ethics Commission, two weeks before Palin arrived in Independence, PAL-PAC had only $3,202 in the bank. This was not nearly enough money to reserve the venue, much less cover security, printing, advertising, or any of the other expenses associated with throwing an event for 4,000 people. PAL-PAC’s third disclosure report, filed on July 14, reveals large payments to Wayne Graves, a Kansas City physician, whose wife, Karladine, also a doctor, is the president of PAL-PAC. Wayne Graves performed a key service for Winning America Back: he personally paid the speakers’ fees and travel expenses. On June 23, according to the report, he was reimbursed for these outlays: $15,134.83 for “Reimburse Speak[er],” and $126,000, also for “Reimburse Speak[er].” By fronting the money for these expenses, Graves made it possible for PAL-PAC to keep details such as Palin’s precise fee under wraps. But the lion’s share of that $126,000, it seems safe to assume, went to Palin—that would tally with verified reports of what Palin has been paid elsewhere. When reached by phone, Karladine Graves refused to answer any questions about PAL-PAC: “I’m—we’re just a tiny little group, and we’re not really anything, I just, oh, no, I can’t talk about this.” (Palin is on track to earn well over $3 million in speaking fees for events this year. Washington Speakers Bureau did not respond to an interview request.
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