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Message |
    
sportsnut
Citizen
Username: Sportsnut
Post Number: 1741
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 11, 2005 - 4:30 pm: | 
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I knew what he meant. But even the use of the word loophole is a misnomer. It has a negative connotation when in reality the corporations are just using the laws as written.
As for who pays the fines that is one of the largest shams in this country. Again the topic of another thread but on that I agree.
Bush may suck but he sucks less than many of the Democratic candidates. |
Mark Fuhrman
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 1287
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 11, 2005 - 5:13 pm: |
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I am a corporate CFO (I don't play one on TV), and I spend enough time dealing with the arcana of tax deferral and avoidance to know from what I speak. I hire teams of lawyers and accountants to help me find them. Call it tax deferral if you prefer (a dollar paid in taxes tomorrow is worth less than one paid today) or tax avoidance; all I know is that everytime a law is passed, smart people like me and Sportsnut are paid a lot of money to find a way around paying taxes, and the larger the company, the more smart people they can hire to find the loopholes, and the more lobbyists they can hire to create the loopholes, and the less taxes the company pays.
Some of the most egregious tax dodges have been crafted under the guise of helping businesses grow. Yes, a well-thought out tax incentive policy can help a nascent business, or one beset by a natural disaster. But too often tax policy revolves around single payer issues and is not part of a well thought out plan, and then everyone else tries to dive into the loophole.
It is all very legal and above-board, but it is bad policy and businesses sometimes make economic decisions because of the distortion of tax issues rather than because of sound business reasons. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5448
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 11, 2005 - 5:23 pm: |
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Mark, I guess one right-wing rationale is that there is abuse of the system. They focus on the abuse and figure that the system is so badly broken that it should be scrapped, rather than focusing on the good that it does. In other words, if welfare (or food stamps, or whatever) is not perfect, let's have no welfare at all.
And I guess that's what gets the right winger's ire. He's doing fine, I presume, but he could be doing a little bit better because someone must be abusing the system. The fact that taking away the program could make more people starve isn't a big concern. The abuse feels like robbery to him. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 3114
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 11, 2005 - 9:52 pm: |
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So have a flat tax. NOPE. Can't have that. Congress can't socially engineer things and have winners and losers that way. The right isn't the sticking point against a flat tax, far as I've read.
Individuals do legally avoid taxes and it's their right to do so. I'd venture you too, Mark, do the same. Or are you like most of the rich leftists in this country who (DON'T) pay over and above what the law allows them to avoid because of their principles? Let's toss in sports atheletes in there too along with Barbara Streisand.
And you're right, Tom. Us rich people don't really care about the utter starvation that occurs in this country, though for some reason the swollen bellies of this country never makes it on the news. No, we get 'food challenged' but we don't get starvation here. That's such a line of BS, especially with the obesity numbers in this country.
I'm not saying some aren't genuinely really, REALLY hurting here, and sure they must be helped -- not just day to day, but with a real fix to their circumstance rather than having them show up for a pittance every week or month. But again, we're talking about government programs extending past the poor into the middle class and the middle class asked to righteously pull the lever for their own benefit at the tax revenue trough because they foolishly think someone else is paying for it. It's called entitlements -- what people are owed to them simply because they draw breath. Must be how they were raised. |
Cynicalgirl
Citizen
Username: Cynicalgirl
Post Number: 1123
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 6:39 am: |
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I suspect that we'll see this "class warfare" play out in families, and then people will pay attention.
Being a boomer who fears job loss at 50+, reduction in social security benefits, reduction in Medicare all while trying to save for my kid's college and pay taxes in M'hood NJ -- I anticipate a future where today's Bush-style Republican yuppies are stuck with looking after their parents in a really big way. Agree with Mark that these are not the Republicans of old. I think they're amoral, freakish Ayn Rand wannabees.
What goes around comes around... |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5450
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 8:01 am: |
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The political climate has told the people that it is OK -- in fact, praiseworthy -- to be utterly self-centered. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 3118
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 2:17 pm: |
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Is someone considered self-centered when they think looking after and caring for their parents in old age is 'stuck'? |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 3119
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 2:19 pm: |
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Perhaps if our parents were availed of some of the changes currently under consideration, they wouldn't burden the more virtuous Boomers on this board. |
Bobkat
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 7574
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 2:26 pm: |
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Cjc, read the article in the business section of yesterday's Time's on the effect of personal accounts and reindexing SS to the cost of living. It ain't going to improve anyones retirement income. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 3121
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 2:35 pm: |
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Sorry -- can't find it. Bobkat |
Cynicalgirl
Citizen
Username: Cynicalgirl
Post Number: 1126
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 2:52 pm: |
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Yes, cjc, I think it would be considered self-centered to call taking care of one's parents "stuck." I've already been through it, and my parents are now deceased. Lower middle class, and my father was both careful and thought he had planned adequately (within his means) for what might come. Guess again.
By the end, social security and medicare was what they had left. Living on those is a pretty dicey proposition on a good day,under the current plan. Risk any significant portion of those, and you have big potential problems. Even modest medical expenditures, crises, medical assistance and nursing homes clean the elderly out, or worse. Given the increasing unreliability of companies to their retirees (if they keep you that long), the whole picture is scarey.
I think more Americans fit my parents' scenario than do some ideal of well-educated, middle-class self-actualized folks with stock portfolios, making perfect financial decisions at every turn.
So, from where I sit, we live with alleged market forces in the world of work that screw long-time employees, and now they want more of the same in SSI? Yeah, I find that scarey. |
Bobkat
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 7576
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 2:58 pm: |
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Cjc, I couldn't either. It was in yesterday's, Friday's, paper. |
mjc
Citizen
Username: Mjc
Post Number: 235
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 4:27 pm: |
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I think more Americans fit my parents' scenario than do some ideal of well-educated, middle-class self-actualized folks with stock portfolios, making perfect financial decisions at every turn.
Bingo, Cgirl. It seems to me that a lot of the current discussion is either based on a VERY naive and uninformed view of what's out there in the real world of real people (outside the beltway, outside M/SO, or just outside one's own experience), or is bound by ideology to ignore the facts.
Once you've seen your thrifty and prudent parents' life savings wiped out by medical and care expenses in a matter of weeks or months, it looks different.
(been there, done that too)
happy weekend!
MC |
Cynicalgirl
Citizen
Username: Cynicalgirl
Post Number: 1127
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 4:59 pm: |
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Let's add "young" to naive and uninformed (along with callous and divorced from reality via personal wealth). Sometimes, plans/policies that look good when you're 25-35 start looking different over 40, or when you see your parents go through it.
When I hear of the "hard luck" stories of the wealthy here and elsewhere I want to scream. How ignorant and ill-informed can you be? A great many people work very hard, with significant dedication, are educated, are not obese, and are still completely f*cked by the direction things are going. Some things are just not completely attributable to your dear little intellect and habits. Sometimes, luck, timing and association come into play -- in fact, often.
On this, I am neither liberal nor conservative. This has nothing to do with either party, both of which seem typified by moronic ideologues these days.
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5453
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 6:35 pm: |
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I can respect the fact that conservatives want to put a limit on "giving a man a fish" in favor of "teaching a man to fish." What I can't fathom is that the proposed cuts are to programs that teach a man to fish. This is going to come back to bite everyone in society, and even if it weren't it is a horrible breakdown in morality, in my view. There isn't a traditional religion or ethical system that would condone this new brand of so-called conservatism. This isn't conservatism, it's radical selfishness. |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 2920
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 7:13 pm: |
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Tom,
It isn't selfishness. It's tough love. True compassionate conservatives such as Bush know that we have been coddling the poor, the weak, the disadvantaged for far too long and they are growing soft. Once these people understand, as does Bush, what it means to grow up in an environment where you have to work hard to get ahead, the whole nation will be better off. Face it, until you are born rich and white in America, you don't know what tough is. |
Innisowen
Citizen
Username: Innisowen
Post Number: 403
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2005 - 7:27 pm: |
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Reingold,
The neocons may want to "teach a man to fish," but at the same time, they are blocking access to the stream because they've bought it up and are diverting the water to the pharmaceutical industry labs so the pharmas can make and market all those drugs that the President's drug prescription plan at $720 BN and counting, is going to pay for. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5459
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 10:32 am: |
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Innis, no, I see no remaining evidence that the neocons want to teach a man to fish, and I see plenty of evidence to the contrary. |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 3131
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 10:10 pm: |
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They're actually touting their cuts to student loan programs. Apparently learning to fish is only going to be for those who can afford to enjoy it as a leisure pursuit. |
Southerner
Citizen
Username: Southerner
Post Number: 88
Registered: 2-2004
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 2:54 pm: |
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The beast just missed lunch. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 1073
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 3:10 pm: |
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The Bush Administration philosophy is not "teach a man to fish" - it's "teach a man to accuse the fish of having WMD, and after the military invasion of the lake, he can scoop up thousands of dead fish." |
ina
Citizen
Username: Ina
Post Number: 170
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 5:21 pm: |
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Is anybody addressing what will happen to those people who don't invest wisely, or save any money at all? Is this country prepared to see old folks begging on the streets? |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5483
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 5:34 pm: |
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To answer your first question, no, of course not. I'm not sure how to answer your second question. It depends on who has to step over the poor on the streets. It seems that some are ready and willing to do it. Maybe it will make them feel superior. Of course, others feel that it is society's failure if people are starving in the streets. |
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