(08-19-2010 02:26 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  WHY am I so adamant about 2?? Because the current tax structure allows the VERY wealthy to avoid many taxes specifically intended for them... the natural results are that the rich get richer while the revenue from the tax is less than it should be or could be.... so the poor get poorer (because we don't collect enough to "do" for them) OR we run a bigger deficit... which must be funded by taxpayers.

Do you itemize your tax return? I do, and it's not because I am rich. I am trying to get back the hard earned dollars that I was paid to do my job. I am not getting richer, I am simply getting the money back that I was told I would earn.

Why would the poor get poorer because someone else does what I do? I am not taking money from them. It was mine and I want it back.

As an aside thought, why, or what, do you believe the government must "do" for the poor?

A perhaps irrelevant gripe, but how can you call an article well written when it contains this:

FT.com / Reportage - The crisis of middle-class America

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1a8a5cb2-9ab2-...ab49a.html Wrote:Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of early America, was once misquoted as having said: “America is the best country in the world to be poor.”

WTF? You explicitly cite someone for a quote they never made?

In other news, Generalisimo Ferdinand Franco is still dead. At least that gambit was funny. And true (I think).

(08-19-2010 09:54 PM)BEARCATDALE Wrote:  

(08-19-2010 02:26 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  WHY am I so adamant about 2?? Because the current tax structure allows the VERY wealthy to avoid many taxes specifically intended for them... the natural results are that the rich get richer while the revenue from the tax is less than it should be or could be.... so the poor get poorer (because we don't collect enough to "do" for them) OR we run a bigger deficit... which must be funded by taxpayers.

Do you itemize your tax return? I do, and it's not because I am rich. I am trying to get back the hard earned dollars that I was paid to do my job. I am not getting richer, I am simply getting the money back that I was told I would earn.

Why would the poor get poorer because someone else does what I do? I am not taking money from them. It was mine and I want it back.

You are misunderstanding my point. Of course I do. I am SPECIFICALLY talking about people in the top bracket. In every other bracket, there isn't a significant difference between their income and their ability to avoid "income". In the TOP bracket, which includes incomes from about 150k to 100mm, there is. Without going onto the minutia... and using a slightly related example... but one that demonstrates what I'm talking about... Do you think the tax law that John Kerry was recently able to avoid paying 500k in sales taxes and 70k/yr in property taxes on a $7mm boat was DESIGNED to allow him to avoid a tax that someone buying a 700k boat couldn't?? and I say that because by mooring out of state, he took the sales tax exemption, and avoided property taxes... but needs to now hire someone to captain it (which he was probably going to do anyway) to bring it to him when he needs it or to travel to it to use it. The amount of his boat makes this possible... but the 700k boat wouldn't. That's how it works, but I'm confident that's not how it was designed to work. Would you have the ability to take this years salary in stock alone?? Earning NOTHING on your w-2, but living off the sale of other stocks... which would generally be taxed at 15% and not 36% and/or your municipal portfolio?? People who want to "tax the rich" USUALLY DO tax those who earn between (guessing) 150k and $1mm... but the people who earn more like 20mm often pay less (as a percentage) This... the TRULY rich get richer... and the "working wealthy" bear the tax brunt.

Quote:As an aside thought, why, or what, do you believe the government must "do" for the poor?

as little as necessary.... as much as they need to be able to start doing it themselves

I know, I know. How about we start with getting as much of what we PLAN on getting to them TO them.

BG.... Thanks for the post...... We have had 40+ years of BS. The FED is still there trying to keep the party going.. Its over. Hopefully the FED doesn;'t collapse the system.