Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Liberal Democrats: Higher rates for wealthy 'just the beginning'
The Hill ^ | 11-30

Posted on 11/30/2012 6:42:51 PM PST by Arthurio

A group of House Democrats has formed its own “Gang of Six” to push for progressive tax reform — in which the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates for the wealthiest Americans is “just the beginning.”

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140141-153 next last
To: muawiyah

That’s interesting, but changing the lender isn’t going to fix the USPS’s largest structural problems: a rapacious labor union and an obsolete business model.

The proper fix at this point is to revoke the USPS monopoly on letter carriage, revoke all their taxpayer funding facilities, and cut ‘em loose to sink or swim. If they go bankrupt, TFB.


121 posted on 12/02/2012 5:07:48 AM PST by dinodino
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 118 | View Replies]

To: dinodino
i have a plan to privatize USPS. You wouldn't like it and neither would UPS or Fed Ex ~ particularly after our leveraged buy out of their airlines and ground operations supervisory crew. Everybody else gets sacked.

28,000 post offices get closed, everybody with door delivery will be moved to street delivery, and where it's feasible, everybody with street delivery will be moved to kiosk delivery.

All of the massive increases in productivity that were generated by automation equipment and computerization WILL BE REALIZED and about 300,000 personnel released ~ probably over a week or two.

This is a process you don't hear much about these days ~ RIGHT SIZING!

No, Romney's crowd won't be hired on to help do this.

122 posted on 12/02/2012 5:12:51 AM PST by muawiyah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 121 | View Replies]

To: dinodino

BTW, you’re the guy who wanted to know about private lending ~ bet you were surprised there’s an answer. Congress did it. Republican Congressmen and professional politicians associated with Ronald Reagan did it!


123 posted on 12/02/2012 5:14:06 AM PST by muawiyah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 121 | View Replies]

To: muawiyah

I really doubt that Fedex and USPS would be concerned by that plan. Does your plan involve getting rid of the fat union slobs who currently comprise the USPS workforce?

Does your plan include cutting off all Federal backstops and does it allow USPS, Fedex, et al. to compete for letter delivery? If not, it’s not much of a plan.


124 posted on 12/02/2012 5:21:12 AM PST by dinodino
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 122 | View Replies]

To: muawiyah

I’m not really surprised. I note that the current proposed changes to USPS operations, in a vain attempt to keep the thing from collapsing, are opposed by the Democrats. It is clear that the unions have a stranglehold on the USPS.

Dissolve the USPS today.


125 posted on 12/02/2012 5:22:57 AM PST by dinodino
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 123 | View Replies]

To: dinodino

You happen to have the wrong target ~ it’s the Congressional Black Caucus that’s against laying off all those people. USPS is roughly 40% black ~ and at the moment that makes black USPS employees a VERY LARGE percentage of the employed black people in America.


126 posted on 12/02/2012 5:28:55 AM PST by muawiyah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 125 | View Replies]

To: cherry

“tax the damn rich....”

Bull. That is just stupid.... the debt will increase and Obama gets credit yet again.

I say let’s do what the dems do, use the emergency to get real reform, or let Obama’s 2nd term be a disaster on diplomacy. The taxes are going up anyway. Let him blame congress for the next two years - you don’t think that narrative will get old ?

His legacy will be trash - remember congress has no legacy. We can do to Obama was the dem congress did to Reagan.

This cliff crap is just hype so people will watch the news.


127 posted on 12/02/2012 8:52:07 AM PST by mike_9958
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 110 | View Replies]

To: 9YearLurker

“If Boehner and McConnell would get out of the way for younger, less compromised and more conservative GOP leadership, we’d be better off.”

I have yet to hear any of the “younger” congressmen lobby for speakership. Canter is majority leader, and Ryan would be a no-brainer but neither have stepped up.


128 posted on 12/02/2012 8:57:30 AM PST by mike_9958
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 120 | View Replies]

To: muawiyah

I’m going to bite my tongue here. I will, however, say that the racial composition of the workforce of any firm should not be the determinant in the decision to effect a RIF.


129 posted on 12/02/2012 9:08:02 AM PST by dinodino
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 126 | View Replies]

To: Arthurio

Liberal Democrats are the wealthy.


130 posted on 12/02/2012 9:14:35 AM PST by <1/1,000,000th%
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mike_9958

Yeah, I didn’t really mean younger as much as tea party-leaning instead of tea party-corrupting and tea party-killing, which is how the current GOP leadership could be described.

It’s often not wise to shoot for the king unless you can kill him, so you may not hear much in terms of opposition until the good guys have more votes.


131 posted on 12/02/2012 10:09:53 AM PST by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 128 | View Replies]

To: muawiyah

i have a plan to privatize USPS. You wouldn’t like it and neither would UPS or Fed Ex ~ particularly after our leveraged buy out of their airlines and ground operations supervisory crew. Everybody else gets sacked.
*************************************************************
Yes, very good idea. But first let them go into formal bankruptcy. They’ll need to do things such as cut the unsustainable pensions they are paying as well as the unsustainable mostly fully paid medical insurance for their retirees.


132 posted on 12/02/2012 10:20:10 AM PST by House Atreides
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 122 | View Replies]

To: Arthurio
“To maintain or strengthen progressivity, we should end one of the leading contributors to after-tax income inequality in this country, the special tax breaks for investment income,” the group said in its statement, released Thursday. “Workers who get their salaries from wages often pay a higher effective tax rate than wealthy individuals like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett who make most of their income from selling stocks and bonds or from dividends.”

There's a good reason for the lower marginal tax rates on investment income: investment in the private sector creates innovation and entire new industries which create millions of new jobs. That is why congress set the marginal tax rates on investment income lower than some of the marginal rates on ordinary income paid by workers earning more than about $50,000. The lower rates on long-term capital gains are also intended to encourage investors to make risky long-term investments which could make them big capital gains but also often result in large losses. That's a big difference between a worker who goes in to work a job and a long-term stock investor: the worker knows for sure that he's going to get paid (unless his company is in severe financial distress), but the stock investor never knows if he's going to make any money on an investment and knows he can certainly lose a lot on long-term investments. So the lower rate on long-term capital gains (investments held at least one year) is also intended to compensate investors for the high risk of many equity investments.

The Obama campaign grossly distorted Mitt Romney's private equity career and used numerous severe distortions and half-truths in their negative advertising against Romney. When Romney made money on good investments (often bold, risky, brilliantly implemented turn-around investments), the Obama campaign never mentioned all the jobs Romney created through his investment but only accused him of not paying enough taxes on his investment gains. Then when Romney lost a lot of money on a steel company that he could not turn around, the Obama campaign never mentioned that Romney took a large personal loss on that investment and only blamed Romney for being forced to lay off workers. This was some of the worst bunch of distortions and half-truths in the history of political advertising. This "gang of six" also seems to be forgetting that Romney's effective tax rate has been reduced substantially in recent years by large donations to his church.

I think there is some room to raise taxes on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains without hurting economic growth significantly. I suggest an increase in the rate on dividends from 15% to 19%, which takes the total federal rate to 23% when Obamacare taxes are added in. With state taxes added in that takes the effective total rate to about 31% in high tax states. The rate on long-term capital gains could be raised from 15% to 17%, which sets the total rate at about 21% with Obamacare taxes added in, and with state taxes a total effective rate of about 29%. I wouldn't raise the federal rate on long-term capital gains more than two points or we'll start to choke off investments in innovative new companies and slow down the amazing Silicon Valley job-creating machine, which has generated so much job growth and tax revenue for America.

133 posted on 12/02/2012 11:58:06 AM PST by socialism_stinX (Boycott all shows on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and MSNBC, and report your boycott in your Nielsen survey.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 9YearLurker

“It’s often not wise to shoot for the king unless you can kill him”

Boehner is pretty unpretentious and he ain’t that smart, but the guy has alot of heart and wants to the do right thing. I don’t think he has ever done an earmark on a bill. I think he got burned the last time, I’ll be surprised if he does it again.

He want’s to kill deductions and decrease spending. If it works it may get us closer to a flat tax. Politically it may sound like getting rid of deductions it is a tax increase, and decreasing spending is called reducing waste.... we’ll see.


134 posted on 12/02/2012 1:16:22 PM PST by mike_9958
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 131 | View Replies]

To: mike_9958

Boehner’s a complete, sniveling, sellout. He had a massive tea party congress come in in 2010, and all he did was try to neuter them, making absolutely no actual cuts to the federal budget at all.

I suspect they’ve got some pretty good stuff on him, because he couldn’t be more eager to please Barry—even though he sometimes postures in the press for us rubes.


135 posted on 12/02/2012 1:31:54 PM PST by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 134 | View Replies]

To: dinodino
just to let you know it's been a Republican idea to keep the Democrats so thoroughly gerrymanded that there are guaranteed black Congress critter districts ~ in considerable numbers!

That has a major impact on what happens with USPS.

136 posted on 12/02/2012 4:13:03 PM PST by muawiyah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 129 | View Replies]

To: 9YearLurker

“Boehner’s a complete, sniveling, sellout. He had a massive tea party congress come in in 2010, and all he did was try to neuter them, making absolutely no actual cuts to the federal budget at all.”

Your full of it... you don’t know what your talking about and your simply parroting other people.

I haven’t heard any chorus of Tea Party republicans come out against him, and even more so I haven’t heard one do it consistently after an election.

So shut the he11 up and unless you got some facts... geeze. It’s folks like you that sound like angry liberals.


137 posted on 12/02/2012 5:10:16 PM PST by mike_9958
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 135 | View Replies]

To: Arthurio

And, they are serious. It is only the beginning. Only total destruction of the economy, and the morale of America, and the descent into tyranny will satisfy their lust to drag down the decent and productive to their level.


138 posted on 12/02/2012 6:15:57 PM PST by Quickgun (I came here screaming and covered in someone else's blood. I can go out that way if I have to)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: oldtimer

You betcha, and my new Toyota Tundra is assembled right here in Texas with those parts. Toyota and Nissan are both MUCH more American now than the former “big three” and better quality, too.


139 posted on 12/02/2012 6:23:28 PM PST by Quickgun (I came here screaming and covered in someone else's blood. I can go out that way if I have to)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: mike_9958

What are you talking about? There were plenty of reports from freshman congressmen about the coercive powers of leadership trying to buy the tea party reps off.

Then there was Boehner’s fake reporting of cuts in with their noncutting budget, his secretly negotiating with Obama during the debt limit showdown, and plenty of other sellout examples.


140 posted on 12/03/2012 3:00:59 AM PST by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 137 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140141-153 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson