I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
But that sort of tax cut would give money to middle and lower class people, sheesh, we can't do that and build a caste system.
Norquist was on WNYC with Robert Reich this past Thursday. (You can probably list on the station’s audio archives. It was Bian Leher’s Show) Norquist repeatedly compared any Democratic tax plan to ideas from East Germany or Bulgaria in the 1960’s. He was unable to get involved in any substantive discussion. Talk about a knee-jerk conservative. Reich was good though.
Why should we pay? The Government went into debt. It's not our debt.
Ah Grover -- too closeted to even join the Log Cabinettes.
Norquist is definitely one of the more kooky konservatives out there. He's also just a sick person. I suspect that he's against a reduction in the payroll tax for the reason Tugent mentions. We wouldn't want any Lucky Duckies would we?
There is a damn good reason Grover hates this. Conservatives and wingers like Grover have been using tax cuts as a hammer for two decades. If Progressives discover that they can play the same game (by reducing or eliminating regressive taxes) the game is over. Get on it, Howard. It would be fun to hear the republicans explain why they oppose tax cuts.
The estate tax is like the Holocaust, but payroll tax is like the killing fields of Cambodia. See.
Speaking of "estates" and "SS"...
am I the only one who sees Bushitler's interest in bankrolling NASA as an attempt to refill the Operation Papercilp coffers?
(Argenitna refugee retirees need spending money!)
Damn...
I gotta get this foil yarmaluke looked at.
I hate to post twice to say the same thing, but I don't think it's possible to overstate what a good idea this is. Politics is all about controlling the flow of money. Tax cuts have worked for Republicans because they have been used to control the flow of money to their constituency. It's time for progressives to use the same methods to reward their constituents. Trust me, if Grover is warning us about the bankruptcy of social security, (does anybody think he gives a crap?) you can damn well bet he's nervous. And social security is the last thing that he's nervous about.
Tugent has this one right off -- the rightwing knows that government does need some money to run, and they have choices to make. Do they want this money to come from all people in approximately equal measure, according to wealth and income, or do they want the rich to pay proportionately less?
Personally, I'd be all for Bush's personal savings plan.. if it would keep the government for spending my Social Security funds on bullshit religious wars.
My good friend Matt D. sent over some delicious smelling hand cream. I think that after I take by bath tonigh I'm going to put some on my winkle.
I think it was Norquist who made comments about wanting the low income citizen to develop the same hatred of government that he has. He wants low income folks to pay more so he can feed their resentment.
Also, isn't it the Social Security funds that are actually paying for the rich folk's tax cuts? Another good reason not to cut back on payroll taxes. From his point of view.
The Norquistas don't want to lower taxes, they want to destroy the middle class. They're cheap labor conservatives. They use the tax stuff as a distraction. If we ignore Norquist, we're in big trouble because his agenda is storming through.
The effect of the employer contribution is in fact quite simple to state. It is as if the employee paid the whole amount. Equlibrium wages are reduced by an amount equal to the employer tax contrubution. This is a trivial economic insight from freshman economics.
If Democrats want to propose a popular tax cut, how about lifting the income tax on unemployment benefits? I mean, really. Does that make sense? This tax was sold by Ronald Reagan as giving people "incentive" to find jobs, but it was really to fund his tax cut for the rich.
What could be more popular among those hardest hit by this economy?
Actually, payroll taxes are considerably steeper than that 6.25% figure suggests. If you're self-employed, or ever have been, you won't have been able to avoid noticing that the full rate is 15.3%. Since the expenses of employing someone are, in economic substance, slices of their salaries, everybody who's employed is paying that full 15.3% -- it's just that you only see it if you're filling out the self-employment tax forms, or if you're a tax geek. And unlike the income tax, there are no deductions/setoffs: you're paying the full rate on the first dollar of your income, regardless of things like health insurance costs, personal exemptions, whatever. It's a big, ugly, regressive mess of a tax.
Naturally the Norquists of the world support it. What's not to love, right? And if we got rid of it, people like them might have to pick up some of the slack.
Norqist has no principals. His ideology is fluid. The anti tax thing is just a means to an end. He wants power for himself and his friends.
You will note that Norquist is behind any idea that would allow diversion of SS taxes into individual accounts, which will just a surely 'bankrupt' SS.
Why. Because that will boost stocks and give even more wealth and power to his friends.
Is it Paul Krugman who has the theory that Bush is spending enormous amounts of money so that he can bankrupt Social Security, a program the right hates?
So if this is true, and currently the bulk of the taxes are being given to the rich, doesn't the Social Security tax end up being a pyramid scheme? If Howard lowers this tax he'd be breaking the chain and lowering the payoffs to the rich. Nordquist sees this and is pissed.
bulk of taxes = bulk of tax breaks
Grover's interview with Terry Gross had me screaming at my radio at this point, well, also the point about "it's the government's debt, not ours," and, "the estate tax is analogous to the Nazi genocides," but this one, too: that taxation is bad because the government uses its police powers to confiscate, effectively, your property. However, he admits that there is a certain level of taxation required to support a state that will defend the nation and defend property rights, so taxing to that point is okay. But, of course, if you disagree with Grover, and believe that even less government is required, then the injustice of taxation is no less onerous. Therefore, taxation is okay, as long as Grover agrees with the social services supported by taxation. Above that level, it's public theft, below it, it's treasonable resistance. But, Grover decides. Not you, me, or our representatives in Congress.
He's a little emperor, only Napoleon had real intelligence and real courage.
Yeeeeeeeek! There's lotion on my foot massager!!!
Keeping the onus of taxes on wages earners as high as it can possibly be is of a peice with Norquist's goals. The objective really is to get the masses hating the government so much that they will rise up in open rebellion, thus ended all those accursed taxes forever.
Mind you, if you take all of Grover's public statements and string them together, what you find is a man who truly and deeply despises the United States, and who is working tirelessly to bring down the government. Now, some might say that someone working to destroy our government and end our way of life is a traitor.
I am one of those people: Grover Norquist is a traitor to the United States.
regressive taxes are good
progressive taxes are bad
someone's got to pay for the government programs norqist wants... and you can bet he doesn't want it to be him or class.
r's have been v. good at framing (lakey) this as tax relief.
Woulnd't a decrease in FICA also decrease the amount employers have to pay as well. So all companys from small mom and pop operations to large corporations would get a taxcut. This could actually stimulate hiring and pay for itself. How much more conservatve can you get. It will never pass.
I'm self-employed and the payroll tax is a fucking killer. Honest to God, I feel like I've been mugged every quarter.
Mind you, if you take all of Grover's public statements and string them together, what you find is a man who truly and deeply despises the United States, and who is working tirelessly to bring down the government.
Norquist is like the PolPot in Cambodia - he hates the "liberal establishment" and so is doing whatever he can to destroy them. A taxcut on FICA would not help accomplish this goal.
His manner is charming, though bitterness creeps into his voice when he talks about classmates at Harvard, where he attended college ('7
and business school ('81). As a Republican, Norquist felt isolated among the students, whom he calls "Bolsheviks." At a reunion in the early 1990s, he said, he told a classmate: "For 40 years we fought a two-front war against the Soviet Union and state-ism. Now we can turn all our time and energy to crushing you. With the Soviet Union, it was just business. With you, it's personal."
General question: Why are SS taxes capped? Is there any good reason? Also, how much would you have to lower total SS tax rates while uncapping them to keep it revenue-neutral?
To Another Bruce I say, yes, yes and again yes. Democrats for tax cuts! So sweet the sound.
"Get on it, Howard," or any of the others. And while they're at it, why can't Dean and Gephardt bring up the point (made by TNR) that the so-called "middle-class" Bush tax cuts that Kerry and Clark want to keep are for people making up to $200,000. How does someone making more than 95% of American households qualify as "middle class"? Why doesn't at least one of the candidates propose retaining the Bush tax cuts only for households making up to, say, $45,000 (60% of all households according to TNR)? Or even 80,000?
My only disappointment in Grover is that he hasn't yet managed to kill himself, either by accident or design.
in his mind only the litle ungodly people pay taxes.
let them eat 'cake'.
Part of the Bush plan seems to be recreating the labor conditions of the 19th century. Hitting the reset button on the progressive gains of the early and mid 20th century. Nice.
You must recall the recent WSJ article that praised raising taxes on low income wage earners. This idea was to get these people to hate taxes too. When you keep this in mind, his position is logical. He wants to get as many people as possible to hate taxes.
This idea was to get these people to hate taxes too.
Wow. Maybe they have something here. I'm now going to go cut my legs off because shorts are cheaper than trousers. Even better, I'll being saving precious raw materials for those more deserving of long pants.
Thanks Grover, I just needed to know what I can all do to make your patch of earth more pleasant.
Sorry to nitpick but the rate is 6.2%, not 6.25%.
Uncap payroll taxes.
Cut the rates to lower the taxes on the true middle class.
Balance the budget.
Win in a landslide.
To Anonymous: the full rate is 15.3% because (to quote SS page):
"The 7.65% tax rate is the combined rate for Social Security and Medicare. The Social Security portion (OASDI) is 6.20% on earnings up to the applicable taxable maximum amount (see below). The Medicare portion (HI) is 1.45% on all earnings."
The medicare tax is not capped; it extends forever. Truly a flat tax.
The logic behind capping SS tax is that SS benefits are also capped.
As far as Grover's reasoning, here's my take:
Republicans have succeeded in training the public that all taxes they see on their paycheck are income taxes. If we were to lower the payroll tax, I doubt we could extend the cap, not without taking the House & Senate. Therefore, with the payroll taxes cut, the SS crisis would come more quickly. Being a nation that only fixes the roof once it's raining, the public will only demand a raise in taxes once money runs out. And since "raising taxes" and "cutting taxes" only means income tax to the well-trained populace, we'd have to raise income taxes to fund SS out of general revenue (i.e. the opposite of what's happening now).
I think it was Norquist who made comments about wanting the low income citizen to develop the same hatred of government that he has. He wants low income folks to pay more so he can feed their resentment.
No, we don't think he's one of the lucky-ducky theorists ... he has enough political sense to know that someone whose taxes have been raised tends to blame the person who raised them, not the government that it's raised for (Or else his entire career is an incredible streak of luck).
What this is is the camel's nose of an argument we'll likely see emerging, in all seriousness, as Republican control becomes more cemented ... that the poor should be heavily taxed, and the rich lightly, so that the poor will have a greater economic incentive to become rich.
We guarantee this makes the WSJ’s ed page within five years.
economist wrote, The effect of the employer contribution is in fact quite simple to state. It is as if the employee paid the whole amount. Equlibrium wages are reduced by an amount equal to the employer tax contrubution. This is a trivial economic insight from freshman economics.
Hmm...that's not the whole story. Under typical labor market elasticities, what you're saying is true, but it does require some assumptions and it's therefore not thoroughly trivial.
From what I understand the assumptions are reasonable, so overall you're right.
Mark McKenna wrote, Woulnd't a decrease in FICA also decrease the amount employers have to pay as well. So all companys from small mom and pop operations to large corporations would get a taxcut.
As economist pointed out, under reasonable assumptions, you can view both halves as falling on the employee. So, no, while the employer on paper might think she's getting a tax cut, she's not really getting one. (This is the issue of so-called tax-incidence.
My goal is to get my sense of shame and consistence small enough that I can drown it in the toilet in the ladies' room.
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