Poll of Obama voters show split on deficit

[TheWalrus]

You want a fair tax code? Maybe you should look up the meaning of fair. Fair would be a flat 15% tax across the board, no loopholes, no deductions and no exemptions. Fair would be a national sales tax. Progressives dont want fair, they want punitive. They want those who have more to pay more. Lets start calling it what it is.

Which isn't fair how?

Put it this way. I'm a fairly well built guy. 6'2, 220 lbs. A few years back I was helping my dad rebuild his patio which had been destroyed by a hurricane. He's like 5'10, 180, and was 54 years old at the time. Are you saying it was punitive that I did a lot more of the heavy lifting than he did? GTFO.

As far as low taxes for the rich, decades of government support have not done anything for the Postal Service except string out the inevitable.....so looking to the government to to tax us back to prosperity is not going to happen either.

The Republic is dead.......this is not the government our founding fathers envisioned for us........quite the opposite

The founding fathers envisioned that the republic would change with the times, which it has. I honestly don't understand people who bemoan the 1800s as some sort of lost political paradise. It's a great example of the proverbial eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:52 PM ----------

so you think just taxing rich people and cutting defense (which i agree with), is the way we are going to tackle a 16 trillion dollar deficit? basic math would tell me that isnt possible. entitlements HAVE to be reformed.

I haven't run this "basic math" myself, so if you have perhaps you could share.

[MoFinz]

Which isn't fair how?

Put it this way. I'm a fairly well built guy. 6'2, 220 lbs. A few years back I was helping my dad rebuild his patio which had been destroyed by a hurricane. He's like 5'10, 180, and was 54 years old at the time. Are you saying it was punitive that I did a lot more of the heavy lifting than he did? GTFO.



The founding fathers envisioned that the republic would change with the times, which it has. I honestly don't understand people who bemoan the 1800s as some sort of lost political paradise. It's a great example of the proverbial eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:52 PM ----------



I haven't run this "basic math" myself, so if you have perhaps you could share.

You're comparing helping your parent, who raised and nurtured you to adult hood i'm presuming, to taking more from someone because he simply has more? Wow.....but i guess that since you're such a wonderful giving son, your father will not be collecting social security and will never go in to a nursing home, because you will be there to take care of him till the end.

Your comparisons need work grasshopper. Fair is fair.....and that means everyone should be taxed at the same rate and share the burden equally. Where you got the notion that someone that worked and made more should shoulder more is patently unfair, because it has to be unfair to the person you take from.

As far as what the founding fathers envisioned, i'm quite sure they knew times must change. But i doubt they foresaw the total apathy and disregard people hold for their own rights and government as they designed it. You refer to the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Perhaps. But do you remember how that phrase i quoted from Franklin ended?

"A republic. IF you can keep it" Well, if old Ben was an idealist, maybe i'm not in such bad company.

BTW, to save Jared the trouble, the entire dept. of defense budget for 2012 was 707.5 Billion. Even if you totally eliminate defense, which is actually the Governments most important responsibility, you won't close the deficit. The Projected Deficit in 2013 is 901 Billion.

[jared81]

I haven't run this "basic math" myself, so if you have perhaps you could share.

federal spending for year 2011 was 3.598 trillion dollars. tax receipts were 2.303 trillion dollars. defense spending accounted for 700 billion dollars. even if you cut defense spending down to 0 (which even a misguided person such as yourself wouldnt do), we would still have a budget deficit in 600 billion dollar range. that doesnt include all the extra money you would give poor people. please tell me how we get to a balanced budget by not dealing with entitlements? medicare and social security made up 43% of the spending in FY 11.


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[Spesh]

You could tax rich people into oblivion....until the idiots we seat in washington reign in spending, we will never fix our problems.

Where the idiots in Washington got the idea they had a blank check and forgot that the money actually comes from US, and not some fairy Money Mother, i will never know.
And the people that think taxing the rich will be more "fair"? Whoever told you life is fair? You go ahead and tax all those "rich" folks, and when the jobs and factories dry up, don't complain about the "rich" being at fault. Look at Hostess.....thanks to the unions inflexibility, we lose Twinkees (at least for a while). Meanwhile....how about tha Postal Service that hasn't been profitable or even able to fund its own pension for how long?

Hostess’
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of manipulating executive salaries with the aim of getting around bankruptcy compensation rules, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. In response, Rayburn announced he would cut his pay and that of other executives to $1 until Dec. 31 or whenever Hostess came out of bankruptcy.

That was after Hostess had already awarded the company's top four executives
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, even though the company had already hired restructuring lawyers, according to the WSJ

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Hostess management, which is currently
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for killing the Twinkie, awarded company execs absurdly large raises around the same time as filing for bankruptcy in January 2012 - including a 300% pay raise for
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.


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the the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union:

"As the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy earlier this year, the then CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000) and at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256."

I know this 300% pay raise has been mentioned within other diaries (e.g.
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), but I wanted to add a diary highlighting just this one data point, because it's such a striking piece of evidence undermining the myth that organized labor killed Hostess.

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The CEO of Hostess Brands is getting widely criticized for taking his full salary while cutting everyone else's pay by 8%.

Gregory Rayburn will still get his $125,000 a month, or $1.5 million a year, the company
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The Huffington Post.His logic is that because he isn't on the Hostess payroll, he doesn't have to take part in the company-wide pay cut.

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To be fair, according to the last article Gregory Rayburn did leave some money on the table. Anyways, i agree that life is unfair. When you treat your employees like crap, make bad business decisions, and try and screw the system, your business is more than likely going under. In a fair universe you could do whatever you want and have no problems. Probably didnt help that they went through 7 CEOs in 10 years either.

Anyways, agree with TheWalrus on defense spending. Say what you will about the rest, our defense spending is a cancer. Its just unsustainable, which made the Romney/Ryan budget even more laughable. Heres a chart on what weve recently spent in comparison to other countries. Im sure everyone here as seen similar ones:

The United States spends 58 percent of the total defense dollars paid out by the world's top 10 military powers, which combined for $1.19 trillion in military funding in 2011. With its unparalleled global reach, the US outspends China, the next-biggest military power, by nearly 6-to-1.

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[TheWalrus]

You're comparing helping your parent, who raised and nurtured you to adult hood i'm presuming, to taking more from someone because he simply has more? Wow.....but i guess that since you're such a wonderful giving son, your father will not be collecting social security and will never go in to a nursing home, because you will be there to take care of him till the end.

I'm talking about those who can do more being expected to do more, which is a basic -- and fair -- rule of civil society. In this same vein, we do not expect 10 year old and 70 year olds to serve in the Army. They're simply not up to it. The burden falls to those who are able.

Actually, my father has prepared financially his whole working life to never receive social security, even though he has paid into it and his company has matched it that entire time. In my view it's improper to call it an "entitlement", except in the sense that a person should feel entitled to receive something they've paid for.

As far as what the founding fathers envisioned, i'm quite sure they knew times must change. But i doubt they foresaw the total apathy and disregard people hold for their own rights and government as they designed it. You refer to the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Perhaps. But do you remember how that phrase i quoted from Franklin ended?

"A republic. IF you can keep it" Well, if old Ben was an idealist, maybe i'm not in such bad company.

If that quote supports your argument in some way, I'm not seeing it. Not that it matters, because what Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or James Madison thought about the role of government is only interesting in principle and as a historical lesson. The world has changed since the 1790s. Just a bit. It's why I don't subscribe to originalism or textualism. Perhaps you do.

So when you say "the republic", what are you even talking about? It's a concept, not a set thing, and that concept changes from person to person. Was the republic "dead" when the top tax rate was 90% after WWII?

[TheWalrus]

federal spending for year 2011 was 3.598 trillion dollars. tax receipts were 2.303 trillion dollars. defense spending accounted for 700 billion dollars. even if you cut defense spending down to 0 (which even a misguided person such as yourself wouldnt do), we would still have a budget deficit in 600 billion dollar range. that doesnt include all the extra money you would give poor people. please tell me how we get to a balanced budget by not dealing with entitlements? medicare and social security made up 43% of the spending in FY 11.


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Just repealing the Bush tax cuts is worth $100 billion a year, which is only the beginning of the argument on where tax rates should be, imo. Corporate taxes and capital gains taxes also need to increase. Even if you subscribe to the notion of the Laffer Curve, it's clear we passed the point of maximized revenues quite a ways back.

The biggest driver of the debt is health care costs. The fact that Medicare covers health care is secondary to the root of the problem. Hopefully the provisions of Obamacare will work as intended and help reduce the cost of health care, though I believe a single payer system would have been far better. As Crazy685 has posted, health insurance companies engage in outright fraud and fee manipulation and make just absurd amounts of money in the process, ripping off their customers and doctors alike.

Reigning them in is the best way to solve the problem in a non single payer environment, imo. Cutting people from the Medicare rolls or reducing their coverage is not.

[jared81]

Just repealing the Bush tax cuts is worth $100 billion a year, which is only the beginning of the argument on where tax rates should be, imo. Corporate taxes and capital gains taxes also need to increase. Even if you subscribe to the notion of the Laffer Curve, it's clear we passed the point of maximized revenues quite a ways back.

The biggest driver of the debt is health care costs. The fact that Medicare covers health care is secondary to the root of the problem. Hopefully the provisions of Obamacare will work as intended and help reduce the cost of health care, though I believe a single payer system would have been far better. As Crazy685 has posted, health insurance companies engage in outright fraud and fee manipulation and make just absurd amounts of money in the process, ripping off their customers and doctors alike.

Reigning them in is the best way to solve the problem in a non single payer environment, imo. Cutting people from the Medicare rolls or reducing their coverage is not.

ok so 100 billion dollars a year for the bush tax cuts, no military spending and lets say we can save a couple hundred billion in medical cost (i am erroring way in favor on your side), we are still 400 billion away from balancing a budget. again, my question is, how do we balance a budget without looking at entitlements????

[rob19]

You go ahead and tax all those "rich" folks, and when the jobs and factories dry up, don't complain about the "rich" being at fault. Look at Hostess.....thanks to the unions inflexibility, we lose Twinkees (at least for a while).

Hostess borrowed an estimated 50million in UNION funded pension contributions, & now that their declaring bankruptcy, all the employees that had their wages slashed over the last few years are watching their pensions evaporate. On top of that, they're dolling out 1.75 million bonuses to the executives who ran the company into the ground to begin with.


Too many witch-hunts about Unions & not enough about greedy corporate cocksuckers.

[Statler Waldorf]

Indeed. Too bad there isn't a way to change the tax code to make it more fair.

Fair? Who determines what is fair? What's the standard?

[TheWalrus]

ok so 100 billion dollars a year for the bush tax cuts, no military spending and lets say we can save a couple hundred billion in medical cost (i am erroring way in favor on your side), we are still 400 billion away from balancing a budget. again, my question is, how do we balance a budget without looking at entitlements????

Balancing the budget isn't really my goal. Deficits are not in and of themselves bad for the economy. They are certainly better than surpluses, anyway. Not everybody is a Keynesian, I get that -- and I'm no expert -- but to me the debate is how much deficit is reasonable to have.

"Looking at" entitlements is synonymous with cutting them, and that's not where I'm starting. Revenue increases have been neglected for far too long and need to be the first thing that's addressed. When we've increased revenue and cut military spending (and hopefully, medical costs have come down), then we'll look at the rest. That's how I'm approaching it.