Kerry on the phone with Kunich

From: "Shayne Wissler"

You're making it up or wildly distorting something you heard. The rich in
this country are soaked.

It was on tv. The rich in this country are rich.

People who own Walmart stock, some of them who own a lot, are not paying
the
price of operating a business while they are paid dividends on their stock
(snip)

More fiction you can't back up.

It isn't a fiction that they get big advantages in tax and service costs and
sometimes land purchase costs as bribes to locate their businesses in a certan
locale. Compared to "Joe's Sandwich Shop", who often has hell dealing with
inspectors and codes. You can deny this all you want; it's true and everyone
who reads it knows it is true.

It is an entity, and the "upper class" at least to some extent owns the
stock.

Grasping for straws now...

The poor are not noted for deep stock portfolios.

So if they paid 50% tax, you're still foaming at them because of how the
government decided to distribute the funds? You're a real liberal nutcase.

I didn't say anything about what taxes stockholders pay. I said they don't
truly cover the CODB, that taxpayers do. Speaking of Walmart and stadiums,
compared (again) to the "little guy".

You're still mad because I showed contempt for Ayn Rand, aren't you?

Self delusion is your specialty.

Yup, you're still mad.

Ah, there's your "proof". The fact is that *you* can't read the newspaper,
you distort everything that comes into your brain.

How come Ken Lay isn't in jail yet, Shayne? There's some special interest power
at work.
--TP, OOT but I'll be baaaack

"Tom Paterson" wrote in message
...
From: "Shayne Wissler"

You're making it up or wildly distorting something you heard. The rich in
this country are soaked.

It was on tv. The rich in this country are rich.

Which is really what's driving you nuts. You'll only be happy when we're all
squatting around an oil drum along with you.


Shayne Wissler

From: (TritonRider)

[Social Security]
I understand that the money paid in has been stolen.

It has been used in other places, not stolen, by the people who are
responsible for providing it as needed. The government has not failed to pay
anyones check yet, so nothing has been "stolen".

The missing money is being used as "proof" that the system is broken.

How do you propose to deal with the aging population, shrinking labor pool
contributing, and increasing costs? Raise our kids taxes out of sight?

How about we nuke the HMO's?

So, everyone who has been successful has "used the system" and are crooked?

Everyone who is successful has used the system, I never said they were all
crooked. You know me better than that, Bill. But I'm less and less surprised to
find "fiscal irregularities" in formerly lily-white institutions
..
You have no problem with penalizing people for success.

I don't see it that way at all. Successful folks have a lot more left over
after the basics are covered.

Couldn't have been a lot of hard, smart work?

Often a good dose of luck, too.

Depends on whether you hate anyone who has been successful and you believe
that they should have to give up increasingly large portions of what they
worked for to people who weren't as successful.

I didn't say that. Not the hate for honest gain, and not the "transfer of
wealth". Nope.

None of this answers the fundamental problem of the aging population and
stagnant workforce. Europe was trying to offset this, and the negative
birthrates, by bringing in guest workers and immigrants and attempting to
continue to expand the economies. The only problem with that theory is that
when you keep increasing the fiscal burden on companies beyond the advantages
of where they are located they go to another country that will give them a
better deal. Now you not only haven't gained anything, you've driven the jobs
to developing nations, which in the long run will be a good thing for the
planet, but very painful for those countries that don't wake up and find
niches
that can't be filled cheaper somewhere else.
my opinion

It will be a good day, if it ever comes, when US factories are making watches,
radios, and blue jeans again. I'm not holding my breath. OOT for a few days.
--TP

From: (Phillip)

TP your social security benefits are in now way p[aid for.

According to some, they were paid for.
Maybe I'll google when I get back from study time.

The comment amount giving the rich more of what THEY have already
displays your petty envy and socialist tendencies. It was already
theirs.

"You don't know me very well" do you? (background or present econ. status)

Note that the "socialist" lable applies very well to the wealthy who use tax
breaks and farm subsidies, gov't contracts. You call it envy, I call it a sense
of justice.

OOT, I'll be back in a week or so.

In article ,
(Phillip) wrote:


Well damn, when "reforming" Social Security means taking away (stealing)
benefits that have been paid for, and "simplifying" the tax codes means
giving
the rich even more than they have already, "it's real believable" to me
that
we're seeing a difference of opinion. --TP

TP your social security benefits are in now way p[aid for. That would
imply the money has been put away on your behalf. It hasn't. Current
benefits are paid by current contributions made by the existing
workforce. Some reasons benefits must decline in the future are the
declining work force population and the expansion of social security
benefits to cover more people and situations than originally intended
and masters fatties living longer than Henry thinks they should.


David Cay Johnston, author of "Perfectly Legal" says:
"The promise was that we would use the excess taxes (from the 1983
payroll tax increase) to pay off the federal debt which was then about a
trillion dollars. We have now paid 1.8 trillion dollars in excess Social
Security taxes. This year the government will collect -- if you make
$50,000, about $7,500 from you. It only needs 5,000 to pay current
benefits. That other $2,500 wasn't used to pay off the federal debt, which
is now 7 trillion dollars, instead it is being used to finance tax cuts for
the super rich."

--
tanx,
Howard

A billion + 2 followups...

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

In article ,
(TritonRider) wrote:

From: ospam (Tom Paterson)

You don't understand how SS works. It's a pyramid scheme.

I understand that the money paid in has been stolen.

It has been used in other places, not stolen, by the people who are
responsible for providing it as needed. The government has not failed to pay
anyones check yet, so nothing has been "stolen".
How do you propose to deal with the aging population, shrinking labor pool
contributing, and increasing costs? Raise our kids taxes out of sight?

In the early '80s, there was a bunch of talk about how Social Security
was in trouble, and wouldn't be able to pay what it had promised. Alan
Greenspan co-chaired a commission (in '83) to find ways to ensure its
solvency. His final solution was to raise the payroll tax, which is a
regressive tax: it falls much more heavily on middle- and lower-income
families than it does on the rich. Congressional Budget Office estimates
show that you will pay almost twice as much payroll tax as income tax if
you fall in the middle of the income distribution.

At the outset of the Bush administration, Greenspan gave his blessing to
the big tax cuts - which did disproportionately benefit the wealthy. As you
know, we are now facing monumental defecits. There has been claims by
people who ought to know better that the defecits are due to the war, but
the CBO showed figures recently that had about 30% of the defecits are
actually because of that. The rest is because of the loss of money coming
because of the tax cuts.

Where it gets to being an issue of "money paid in has been stolen" is
that Greenspan has been advocating the cutting of benefits. People agreed
to a regressive tax 20 years ago to ensure that they would continue to get
what SS promised, and now he wants to use that money to pay down the debt
he helped create. This stunt was described by Kevin Drum as three card
monte. Seems accurate to me.

--
tanx,
Howard

A billion + 2 followups...

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

In article ,
gwhite wrote:

Tom Paterson wrote:

From: gwhite

On that score, I cannot vote for socialist John
Kerry. To do so would be anti-thetical to the very foundations of our
country,
which is all about individualism. We've strayed.

Yeah, now we have socialism for the upper classes (and of course the Post
Office thing).

Don't paint it like I might favor special breaks for the rich or large
corporations. I don't. I am as fully opposed to "corporate welfare" as
Ralph
Nader is.

Kerry is more antithetical to the very foundations of our country than
Bush?

Without question. Listen to what they say. Watch what they do. Kerry is
for government solving all our problems, and actually believing that it can
actually achieve that goal as if he could actually know and thus design the
purpose of civilisation!!! Bush is less so. There can't be a serious
argument about this.

That said, Bush (or really anyone) stands no chance of getting elected if he
doesn't provide some measure of socialist handouts (basically pandering).
That stinks. The Democrats act as if reformation of social security and
simplifying tax code (both pushed by Bush) are "bad things." It is
unbelievable.

I don't suppose you saw the "tax code simplification" that happened a
couple of days ago?

--
tanx,
Howard

A billion + 2 followups...

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

h squared wrote:

Tim Lines wrote:

gwhite wrote:


"Hi, I'm John Kerry. All your problems are GWB's fault. Presidents control the
economy and jobs.

This line was STOLEN from Ronald Reagan! It's exactly what he said
about Carter! I KNEW Kerry sounded familiar!


in a strange coincidence, the day you wrote this post, earlier in the
day i was reading a book with the following paragraph:

"burns finished his term in february 1978, and jimmy carter
incomprehensibly appointed as his successor g. william miller, ceo of
the conglomerate textron, a corporate lawyer from providence, rhode
island, unversed in central banking.
the white house was going to run the fed." ("the fed", by martin mayer)

Oh man! You've got a book? I'm having to rely on my memory and you've
got real facts. Not fair. As I recall, G. William only lasted till July
of '79 before he went to Treasury and Paul Volker replaced him. The
administration sure as hell didn't run him! Volker decided to finally
kill inflation so he cut the money supply, pumped up interest rates, and
caused rampant unemployment. He saw unemployment as a short time
problem while inflation stretched back to Nixon. I don't know if the
Carter administration needed additional nails in their coffin or not,
but Volker sure supplied them. For the first couple years of the Reagan
administration, they tried to pressure Volker into relenting. He
wouldn't. There was talk of finding a mechanism to fire him. I
remember stories about 25% unemployment in Michigan in those days. Then
inflation got better, he cut interest rates, and we had the economic
boom frequently attributed to Reagan.

I was once an econ. major. While other guys were talking about Terry
Bradshaw, I was saying "Volker kicks ASS!" Got some seriously strange
looks.

And I may have fractured the facts horribly there. Oh well. Attribute
any errors of fact to senility, I suppose.


first the seattle marathon. now, the fed. i'm worried what else we will
have "in common".
heather

No idea. You mention things that you've read from time to time that are
interesting too. On the other hand, my general impression is that
you're younger and more intelligent than I am. Seriously. Certainly
better read. Don't ask me to explain what I mean by "intelligent"
because I don't know. Pretty much everyone I've ever met is more
intelligent than I am in some ways and less in others.

I do own a pair of roller blades I train on sometimes. Not especially
gracefully but I manage to stay upright.

--

--------------------

Remove CLOTHES to reply

Carl Sundquist wrote:

"h squared" wrote in message

first the seattle marathon. now, the fed. i'm worried what else we will
have "in common".
heather


Tim only bathes periodically.



Have we met?
--

--------------------

Remove CLOTHES to reply

Tim Lines wrote:

Oh man! You've got a book? I'm having to rely on my memory and you've
got real facts. Not fair. As I recall, G. William only lasted till July
of '79 before he went to Treasury and Paul Volker replaced him. The
administration sure as hell didn't run him! Volker decided to finally
kill inflation so he cut the money supply, pumped up interest rates, and
caused rampant unemployment. He saw unemployment as a short time
problem while inflation stretched back to Nixon. I don't know if the
Carter administration needed additional nails in their coffin or not,
but Volker sure supplied them. For the first couple years of the Reagan
administration, they tried to pressure Volker into relenting. He
wouldn't. There was talk of finding a mechanism to fire him. I
remember stories about 25% unemployment in Michigan in those days. Then
inflation got better, he cut interest rates, and we had the economic
boom frequently attributed to Reagan.

And I may have fractured the facts horribly there. Oh well. Attribute
any errors of fact to senility, I suppose.

Well, not horribly fractured, although Volcker is spelled with a "c."

http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/...yment68-88.png