Somebody has made a comment that I have said that I pay impressive amounts of state and federal income taxes.
Astute observation.
A wise person once said that "a government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul"
How accurate. The problem is that SOOO many members of the Democrat party are slurping at the public teat (Look it up Doug).
SO, the reality is, that if your life is dependent on taxpayer funds- your opinion means little- you have a conflict of interest- if you had any morals- you would abstain from expressing your meaningless opinion on tax cuts. Earn some money- pay taxes and then your opinion on tax cuts have meaning.
Your happy pal,
John Galt (Don't worry I will be working tomorrow, so the government can depend on me to keep funding your very existence)
Thanks would be appreciated but not necessary.
Why paying taxes is important to me.
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Dardedar
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Re: Why paying taxes is important to me.
DARJohn Galt wrote:Somebody has made a comment that I have said that I pay impressive amounts of state and federal income taxes.
Astute observation.
Let's see. Someone comments, that you claim to pay a lot of taxes (zero evidence provided), and this qualifies as an "astute observation?"
Good grief, would it be possible for Galt to be more full of himself?
Look, around here what counts is evidence, what can be shown. I assure you, even if you had the balls to back up your claim, and you don't, no one cares. Your claim means nothing even if it is true and we have zero reason to believe it is true. For all I know or care you may think you are wealthy because you chose the bay window option in your mobile home. Don't care.
D.
ps Really really don't care.
pps You said:
"The problem is that SOOO many members of the Democrat party are slurping at the public teat (Look it up Doug)."
Here's an idea. You made the claim. You back it up.
Then I'll roast you. Again.
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Dardedar
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DAR
Galt always runs from backing up his claims so I will begin the roast. This is a common republican myth I had been intending to get around to knocking down anyway.
There is a new book I was reading about that covers this but I can't find it right now. This article lays it all out nicely:
Income Redistribution, GOP-Style
The House takes money from the poor and spends it on the rich.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2002
When Chatterbox worked in the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal, he had an editor who liked to say that the United States had only two political parties: the Ins and the Outs. Fresh evidence to support this blunt maxim can be found in a computer-assisted analysis of congressional spending since 1995, conducted by David Pace of the Associated Press. Although the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in November 1994 was widely heralded as a conservative revolution against Big Government, from 1995 to 2001, the amount of taxpayer money going to the average congressional district increased 30 percent (discounting for inflation). What changed, the AP reveals, was the party whose congressional districts received the most largesse on average. Prior to 1995, it was the Democrats. After 1995, it was the Republicans. Interestingly, the discrepancy between money lavished on Democratic and Republican congressional districts is now 15 times greater (again, discounting for inflation) than it was under the Democrats:
After six years of GOP control, the average Republican district in 2000 was getting $612 million more in federal money than the average Democratic district, the computer analysis found. In 1995, the last year Democrats controlled the budget process in the House, the average Democratic district got $35 million more.
In 1995, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman's Los Angeles district ranked 291st among congressional districts in terms of federal spending. Today, it's dropped to 350th. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Lindsay Graham's South Carolina district, which ranked 279 th in 1995, has now climbed to 265 th. (To make your own district-by-district calculations, click here.)
How has this shift been achieved? By switching spending from programs that benefit Democratic constituencies to programs that benefit Republican ones. Thus, the AP reports,
spending on child care food programs was slashed 80 percent; public and Indian housing grants were virtually eliminated; rental housing loans for rural areas and special benefits for disabled coal miners were cut by two-thirds; and the food stamp program was cut by a third.
At the same time,
Direct payments to farmers increased sevenfold during the six years of GOP rule; business and industrial loans quadrupled; home mortgage insurance went up 150 percent; and crop insurance assistance jumped by two-thirds.
What the AP is describing, then, appears to represent not only a spending shift from Democratic congressional districts to Republican ones, but also, and more significant, a spending shift from low-income people to middle- and upper-income people. The GOP, it seems, is every bit as bent as the Democrats on redistributing income; the only difference is that while Democrats want to redistribute income downward, to the poor, Republicans want to redistribute it upward, to the rich. This impulse is particularly offensive when you consider that even before the Republicans recaptured the House, entitlement spending tended (improbable as it sounds) to favor the wealthy. Here is how Neil Howe and Phillip Longman put it in a 1992 article for the Atlantic Monthly (their source was the Congressional Budget Office):
[T]he most affluent Americans actually collect slightly more from the welfare state than do the poorest Americans. … [In 1991,] U.S. households with incomes over $100,000 received, on average, $5,690 worth of federal cash and in-kind benefits, while the corresponding figure for U.S. households with incomes under $10,000 was $5,560. Quite simply, if the federal government wanted to flatten the nation's income distribution, it would do better to mail all its checks to random addresses. The problem is not that poverty programs don't target the poor. More than 85 percent of the benefits from AFDC, SSI, and food stamps do indeed go to households with incomes under $20,000. But their impact is neutralized by all the other programs, which tilt the other way and are, of course, much greater in size.
Slate
DAR
So we see Galt's claim that:
"The problem is that SOOO many members of the Democrat party are slurping at the public teat (Look it up Doug)."
is refuted by the fact that SOOO many more members of the republic party are in fact sucking, and sucking hard, on the public teat.
D.
Galt always runs from backing up his claims so I will begin the roast. This is a common republican myth I had been intending to get around to knocking down anyway.
There is a new book I was reading about that covers this but I can't find it right now. This article lays it all out nicely:
Income Redistribution, GOP-Style
The House takes money from the poor and spends it on the rich.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2002
When Chatterbox worked in the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal, he had an editor who liked to say that the United States had only two political parties: the Ins and the Outs. Fresh evidence to support this blunt maxim can be found in a computer-assisted analysis of congressional spending since 1995, conducted by David Pace of the Associated Press. Although the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in November 1994 was widely heralded as a conservative revolution against Big Government, from 1995 to 2001, the amount of taxpayer money going to the average congressional district increased 30 percent (discounting for inflation). What changed, the AP reveals, was the party whose congressional districts received the most largesse on average. Prior to 1995, it was the Democrats. After 1995, it was the Republicans. Interestingly, the discrepancy between money lavished on Democratic and Republican congressional districts is now 15 times greater (again, discounting for inflation) than it was under the Democrats:
After six years of GOP control, the average Republican district in 2000 was getting $612 million more in federal money than the average Democratic district, the computer analysis found. In 1995, the last year Democrats controlled the budget process in the House, the average Democratic district got $35 million more.
In 1995, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman's Los Angeles district ranked 291st among congressional districts in terms of federal spending. Today, it's dropped to 350th. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Lindsay Graham's South Carolina district, which ranked 279 th in 1995, has now climbed to 265 th. (To make your own district-by-district calculations, click here.)
How has this shift been achieved? By switching spending from programs that benefit Democratic constituencies to programs that benefit Republican ones. Thus, the AP reports,
spending on child care food programs was slashed 80 percent; public and Indian housing grants were virtually eliminated; rental housing loans for rural areas and special benefits for disabled coal miners were cut by two-thirds; and the food stamp program was cut by a third.
At the same time,
Direct payments to farmers increased sevenfold during the six years of GOP rule; business and industrial loans quadrupled; home mortgage insurance went up 150 percent; and crop insurance assistance jumped by two-thirds.
What the AP is describing, then, appears to represent not only a spending shift from Democratic congressional districts to Republican ones, but also, and more significant, a spending shift from low-income people to middle- and upper-income people. The GOP, it seems, is every bit as bent as the Democrats on redistributing income; the only difference is that while Democrats want to redistribute income downward, to the poor, Republicans want to redistribute it upward, to the rich. This impulse is particularly offensive when you consider that even before the Republicans recaptured the House, entitlement spending tended (improbable as it sounds) to favor the wealthy. Here is how Neil Howe and Phillip Longman put it in a 1992 article for the Atlantic Monthly (their source was the Congressional Budget Office):
[T]he most affluent Americans actually collect slightly more from the welfare state than do the poorest Americans. … [In 1991,] U.S. households with incomes over $100,000 received, on average, $5,690 worth of federal cash and in-kind benefits, while the corresponding figure for U.S. households with incomes under $10,000 was $5,560. Quite simply, if the federal government wanted to flatten the nation's income distribution, it would do better to mail all its checks to random addresses. The problem is not that poverty programs don't target the poor. More than 85 percent of the benefits from AFDC, SSI, and food stamps do indeed go to households with incomes under $20,000. But their impact is neutralized by all the other programs, which tilt the other way and are, of course, much greater in size.
Slate
DAR
So we see Galt's claim that:
"The problem is that SOOO many members of the Democrat party are slurping at the public teat (Look it up Doug)."
is refuted by the fact that SOOO many more members of the republic party are in fact sucking, and sucking hard, on the public teat.
D.
Last edited by Dardedar on Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Doug
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DOUGDarrel wrote: DAR
So we see Galt's claim that:
"The problem is that SOOO many members of the Democrat party are slurping at the public teat (Look it up Doug)."
is refuted by the fact that SOOO many more members of the republic party are in fact sucking on the public teat.
Darrel looked it up for me, Galt. And it turns out you are once again sore in the ass from having it whipped by the facts.
Are you ever going to learn, Galt, that among freethinkers it is the evidence that counts? You seem to think that we are like you and your GOP cronies. But we are not. We have our beliefs based on evidence. You have yours based on stupidity, ignorance, and bias.
Our way is much better, leads to the truth, and results in fewer sore asses.
Galt Logs On