[TheWolf]

Originally Posted by ineedone

So slavery was good? Right... sounds like you grew up in the David Duke school of hating blacks. Cool story bro... I am sure that will work out great for you.

Look at you. Get all huffy and play the race card right out of the box. No I said back then it was good. If you want to sit down and judge how a president did, like the articles you site, you must judge them with what they had, and the values of the time period they were in.

"X guy was the worst president ever because slavery expanded the most under him" is only a valid argument if you feel that slavery is the worst thing to have ever happened in US history. "X guy was the worst president ever because he killed more indians than anyone else" is also just as valid.

You still need to make him worse than Nixon... I mean if slavery is not going to sway you I doubt you have the mental capacity to deal with how terrible Nixon was.

Nixon was pretty bad. No one is arguing that point. Carter was just as bad in my opinion. Nixon at least never told anyone turn your heat off and put on a sweater for the good of the country. Basic services and basic financial services. He took a poor situation and made it worse. Nixon atleast got people out of vietnam.

Well sure there is the poor... but you are forgetting the working poor, the elderly, families making less than 60k, families making 100k with kids or a farm etc, the military, oh yeah and the top 1%. All of these groups generally pay no federal income tax. The one thing you do forget to add in your argument is payroll taxes, but hey I guess those are not real.

See. Federal programs are paid with federal monies. Many state programs are backed with federal monies. When 47% of the country does not pay any federal income taxes. That's a problem.

If you take the nations payouts, to protect each man, woman and child, and all the social programs, education, highways, etc. It is approximately $17,000 per family member. The only problem is 47% of the country is paying nothing and that tiny bit at the end, is paying for a whole lot.

I can't believe you want to bring payroll taxes into this. It's the one thing the rich pay more of than anyone and rarely get anything back. He contributed the max into the system longer than most. Again he's a bad guy.

So working poor or non working poor. Still want $17k in services, still chip in ZERO.
That zero is important in that, people talk a big game, people debate how rich should pay more. It's for the betterment of society. In reality, it's so they can continue to pay nothing. They want to tax someone elses income, take someone elses money, take someone elses production and utilize that to make their lives "better". What is better? 2 tv's instead of one? an extra car? a computer? The poor are the richest they've ever been over the past 25 years in terms of possessions.

The whole point of living in a civilized society is that you sort of have to accept some level of a social pact that requires those that make more help continue to improve the situations of those who make less. That is everything from roads, to schools, to basic social services like food stamps so that some people can barely get by without dying of starvation in the streets.

No one is dying of starvation on the streets. Sorry to burst your bubble. In fact quite the opposite is happening. Children in households receiving foodstamps are the largest ballooning segment of the population that is suffering with childhood obesity. Now this social contract also only works one way. It's for me to take responsibility for the poor around me. Not for the poor to ever take responsibility for themselves or for me. If there's no food on your table tonight, the fault of that solely rests on your shoulders. This is america. there's more opportunity here than anywhere else.

I am not sure how saying rich people pay more makes your point at all. You are essentially making the case for progressive taxation. Because as you rightly state, 10% for a millionaire has no where near the same hit as 10% for someone making minimum wage would. I am not sure how taxing people who can barely afford to live into oblivion will help anything... The government could raise $700 billion by either taking half of everything earned by the bottom 50% or by raising the marginal tax rate on the top two percent. What makes more sense?

"What makes more sense" should be rephrased to "What polls better for my election campaign". I'm not saying taxing everything they own into oblivion but someone who makes 20k a year can afford $100 a month in taxes. The rich are tired of everyone paying nothing and them being the beasts of burden. Take responsibility for your own life, contribute to society as well. Not going to do it all ourselves.

wow... who fights your wars? who are your police? fireman? EMTs? who works for your multi-billion dollar companies? you know what happens when you stomp out the working class, you get no workers. Again... GREAAAAT Idea... lets go back to slavery!

Just because someone chooses a profession that does not pay well does not mean they are lesser of a person. Does not mean that just because they have spent every dollar they make that they have no liability to contribute towards society.

What are you talking about? So the only reason everyone is not a millionaire is because they are lazy? Hmmm...

Yes. That's what I'm saying. If you want to make a million dollars this year, you're not going to do it sitting around. You're not going to do it by making 15/hr and you're not going to do it by setting a financial goal of the year for 45k. Many people just want to exist, pay their bills, and enjoy their lives. There's nothing wrong with that. No one makes a million dollars this year by accident unless winning the lotto.
When we sit down at the beginning of the year and size up our financial targets, we decide how much we want to make this year. how hard we want to work and go at it. No one else does that for us and if we get there, we do it by hard work, planning, perseverance, and investments. We don't get there by complaining that the other guy has more chips than us and we need some. We don't by saying if the super rich would only just give us a hundred grand, we'd be there. That's the logic of the poor though. Give us more, it will help us out. All evidence points to the contrary. People worked harder when they were hungry. Crime was down and more got done.

Last time I checked you are on zilvia too. I would have to assume that you are not rolling in the dough. So... welcome to the moocher class you lazy racist welfare queen!

My personal tax liabilities will be aprox 11k in january. That's income and personal property tax. My families will be in the 60-70k. Total my family, with me as the one kid, will pay 17k into 3 counties of public school systems. I personally will never send my children to public school and I never went to public school. With this ridiculous level of funding they receive, they have pretty much made a high school diploma useless.

The fact is, when we sit down in january, set our revenue goals, we include spending large sums of money just in taxes. Property taxes alone can sap weeks worth of profit. That's just money flushed down a rat hole. If we don't sit down and figure out how to pay our taxes though, no one will and in the end, they'll come and take our warehouses, and buildings, and cars all at gunpoint all to service the "needs of the poor". It costs us $20 a day to put the key in the door at one business just in property taxes. People like you will flounder, play the race card, call us lazy welfare queens, but what you won't do is get out there and make large sums of money and contribute. Again. We must be the assholes.