"What a day for the Tea Party people. Did you see that? America's parks and fairgrounds were lost in a sea of man-boobs. They were venting their anger and rage against taxes, which, of course, in most cases for them went down. Protesting their taxes went down — but you know, why let the truth spoil a perfectly good Klan rally." —Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher
"Well, tomorrow in Nashville, Sarah Palin will speak at the Tea Party Convention. Tickets are $550 apiece. Where are they getting this tea, Starbucks?" —Jay Leno, The Tonight Show
"The Tea Party nation announced last week that Sarah Palin will headline what is being called the first national Tea Party convention in February. It is expected to be the nation's largest ever gathering of misspelled signs." —Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live
"At a Tea Party rally in Boston yesterday, Sarah Palin praised the crowd for winning that Senate race in Massachusetts. She said: 'Shoot, look at what you did in January. You shook up the United States Senate.' Unfortunately, no one heard the Senate thing, because after she said 'shoot,' 300 guns went off." —Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
"Federal taxes last year when down for 98 percent of people, but when asked about this, only 12 percent of the Teabaggers thought this was the case. 88 percent of them had it wrong. And a spokesman for the Teabaggers said, 'We don't want to just be taxed less. We want to be taxed less by a white guy." —Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher
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http://politicalhumor.about.com/b/2010/05/19/tea-party-jokes.htm
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16 comments:
From Sevesteen:
How much I personally am paying in taxes is only a small part of this--I want the government spending less, even if all the extra is out of someone else's pocket.
There's also the Laffer curve to consider. At zero percent taxation, zero taxes are collected--but at 100% taxation, zero taxes are also collected, maximum tax income is somewhere between, and taxing too much reduces tax revenue and productivity. I don't see how anyone can dispute the concept--the only logical argument can be where the peak is. I think we are pretty close to Laffer Peak for the richest people, and further increases will reduce revenue, and in some cases productivity and investment.
Truth be told, I'm all for cutting both the size of government and what we spend and let me repeat--you know I'm a big ol', lefty, leftist, left-leaning Liberal with a capital L.
And we can start cutting spending by reducing what we spend on defense by half, at least, but that's another story. Then we cut what we give to Corrections and plow that into schools.
And I have to ask, did you notice I referred to them as the "Tea Party"?
mr
All that said about the Laffer Curve, I absolutely contend that we take back that tax cut that "W" gave all his people (the richest 1%).
Absolutely.
mr
oh, and good to have you back.
I've missed you.
lol
mr
Where do you think the approximate Laffer Curve tax rate is? I'm not looking for an exact number, just a ballpark.
I would agree with cutting the military budget, and getting them out of foreign entanglements. We should be out of Afghanistan by now, and shouldn't have gone back to Iraq. On the other hand, if we are going to send them places, we have to spend enough to treat the soldiers right and give them the equipment they need for reasonable safety--they are pawns, and don't deserve to be treated badly for politics.
I didn't notice you calling the Tea Party anything, just whatever the quoted people called them. I don't get all that worked up about childish names, I just take it as evidence that the actual argument against them is weak.
No one--least of all me--is saying to not take care of the soldiers.
But why are we still in Germany?
And Italy?
We have 11 bases in Japan.
Yeah, cut the DoD budget.
Slash and burn, baby.
You mentioned the name a couple weeks ago. It bothered you then.
And the arguments against them are not only strong, they're intelligent, too.
And correct.
Peace.
mr
You ignored the main question I was interested in, your opinion of the optimum revenue generating tax rate.
We probably should close or scale back some of our overseas bases, but not all of them--We're going to get involved overseas, and it is likely cheaper to do it from established bases. From a cynical military readiness standpoint we should get in a brief practice war every 10 years or so--pick the right side, but our goals should be training and testing as much as supporting that side. A demonstrably effective military makes it less likely we will really NEED to use it, and we need at least a few military members with more than theoretical knowledge of battle.
Kind of like the difference between US burglary and English home invasion...
I have no idea where the approximate Laffer Curve tax rate is but clearly the most affluent can afford to lese the boost they got during the last administration.
mr
That would put a lower bound of 40% for your Laffer Peak.
Should we go back to the pre-Regan 90% marginal rate?
are you saying you think the tax rate for the wealthy, before Ronald Reagan was a maximum of 90 percent?
surely not.
I looked it up, and I was a bit off. The last time we had a marginal rate over 90% was 1963, the top marginal rate was 70% pre-Reagan, and dropped to 50%.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html
Apparently the drop from 70 to 50% meant an INCREASE in revenue, although government spending increased by even more. Kind of makes sense--The cut meant that people in the highest income brackets got to keep almost twice as much for themselves, a lot more incentive to be more productive or invest.
I think the max Laffer rate is somewhere between 25 and 50%, including state taxes. There's a psychological issue when you are financially secure and don't NEED the money to survive, and someone else gets to keep more of it than you do.
You're making the very common, conservative mistake of confusing percentage of take home or held wages with actual income but the people in the lower income levels could NO WAY keep more money, after taxes, in either quantity or percentage, than the wealthy.
You're always fighting for the wealthiest Americans. Were you born to great wealth or did you earn millions of dollars?
There are two somewhat separate issues here.
One issue is what a fair share is for the rich to pay.
The Laffer Curve indicates the maximum it is POSSIBLE to soak them for. Go above the Laffer peak, and you wind up with less--at that point, it isn't about fair share, but about punishing people for making too much money. I suppose if you think that wealth is zero sum, and their earnings are taking away from a poor person that could be sensible. That isn't what I think though--Wealth is created by work and risk, and we should encourage both, within reason.
Even your terminology bespeaks a clear favor for supporting the rich and wealthy. It's not taxing them or asking them to pay their fair share with you--it's "soaking them."
I don't assume what you think, please don't assume what I think. I don't think "wealth is zero sum", whatever you mean by that.
I do agree, of course and however, that wealth is, in fact, created by work and risk and we should encourage both.
I also think that wealthy people, no matter the country, can assist other less fortunate people and not be harmed without asking them to give up too much of that wealth.
You dodged my main and very direct question, earlier, as you said I evaded yours and that is, you seem to defend wealthy people, time and again, ad infinitum. Were you born to extremely wealthy parents or did you earn millions of dollars and are now defending them?
I'm not wealthy, nor are my parents. Dad is a retired community college teacher, Mom worked part time.
There is taxing the rich fairly. There can be sensible argument about what fair is. I think it is unfair to take more than half of someone's earnings in overall taxes, regardless of their wealth.
There is taxing the rich at the level where you'll gain maximum revenue from them. I'd consider this "soaking" them.
What I see often is the idea that the rich are a nearly infinite source of tax revenue, and merely raising their taxes will solve revenue problems. The top 1% are paying 40% of all income tax--that's not enough?
There's also the problem that spending keeps increasing faster than revenue--we can't tax our way out of that.
and if you only look at how much taxes the wealthy pay, it seems unbalanced and unfair, sure.
If, instead, you also look at how much wealth the wealthy take from our economy and how much they own--and that is disproportionate--then you realize that 40% of all taxes paid by them is not, in fact, imbalanced or unfair, by any stretch of anyone's imagination.
What amazes me is the middle- and lower- classes voting and supporting things that benefit and effect only the wealthy and their voting against their own best interests. You see it time and again in America, as though these people merely hope, one day, to be able to be one of the wealthy and so, benefit from these programs. It's mind-boggling and sad and frustrtating and patently, really, stupid but they keep doing it.
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