Federal Tax Reform is SEXY

[Greg_W]

quote:

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Originally posted by iain:

quote:

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Originally posted by MtnGoat:

And yet these same people are the ones who demand the most services. What we have is people who do not generate enough resources for themselves, demanding someone *else* work to serve them.

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so much for "give me your huddled masses".

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The "huddled masses" you refer to are immigrants and why should immigrants be expected to get a free handout just for coming here? They should work just like everyone else.

[sk]

quote:

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Originally posted by chucK:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jim:

There are many more ways to dodge it at the upper levels. You need to do some more research if you doubt that.

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But you need to dodge a lot more too, if you're making more. I find it hard to believe that

individuals

bringing home > 100K$/year could legally shield > 20% of their income. But I'm interested in being educated if I'm wrong. What methods do these wealthy tax dodgers use? Maybe it's a dumb question, with an obvious answer, but I am clueless. Do you even have a quick off the cuff/out your ass/hypothetical/Goatlandish example to offer?

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money market account.... childs savings account... A Trust... IRA... I am just guessing. I don't have money so I don't realy know

[chucK]

quote:

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Originally posted by Muffy The Wanker Sprayer:

frankly this is all a mute subject.

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So I take it this implies you will now be mute on this subject?

[sk]

quote:

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Originally posted by chucK:

quote:

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Originally posted by Muffy The Wanker Sprayer:

frankly this is all a mute subject.

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So I take it this implies you will now be mute on this subject?

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Jeez, you don't know me at all do you?

 

I ment MOOT deprived of practical significance

[iain]

quote:

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Originally posted by Greg W:

The "huddled masses" you refer to are immigrants and why should immigrants be expected to get a free handout just for coming here? They should work just like everyone else.

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Why indeed? They should follow "the American Way" through hard work, and if that's not enough to get by, than they are lazy. And when the parents want something better for their kid i.e. college but they can't quite make it financially, screw them they can suffer like the miserable shits that they are. My money can be better spent on lift tickets and new skis each year. Fuk the poor.

[sk]

quote:

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Originally posted by iain:

quote:

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Originally posted by Greg W:

The "huddled masses" you refer to are immigrants and why should immigrants be expected to get a free handout just for coming here? They should work just like everyone else.

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Why indeed? They should follow "the American Way" through hard work, and if that's not enough to get by, than they are lazy. And when the parents want something better for their kid i.e. college but they can't quite make it financially, screw them they can suffer like the miserable shits that they are. My money can be better spent on lift tickets and new skis each year. Fuk the poor.

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RIGHT ON IAIN!!! you are gettimg im touch with your inner republican... beautiful man

[rbw1966]

Eat the rich!

[allison]

You people are making me so proud.

 

I expect you to have worked out this whole tax code problem by the time I get home from work tonight.

[Greg_W]

quote:

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Originally posted by iain:

quote:

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Originally posted by Greg W:

The "huddled masses" you refer to are immigrants and why should immigrants be expected to get a free handout just for coming here? They should work just like everyone else.

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Why indeed? They should follow "the American Way" through hard work, and if that's not enough to get by, than they are lazy. And when the parents want something better for their kid i.e. college but they can't quite make it financially, screw them they can suffer like the miserable shits that they are. My money can be better spent on lift tickets and new skis each year. Fuk the poor.

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Huh...Gee...That's what my Dad did. That's what my grandfather did; and my great-grandfather before that. That's what I'm doing. As far as college goes, there are plenty of financing vehicles available for those who can't afford it.

 

By buying skis every year (if you're ditching old AT gear let me know ) and buying lift tickets you are injecting money back into the economy and that helps everyone.

 

Greg W

[Off_White]

[RobBob]

Off, your cartoon is painful for a moderate Republican to look at. GW's environmental policies are a little on the extreme right. But then, I consider again what life with Al "Earth In The Balance" Gore would have been like...and then I feel better again.

[Off_White]

The cartoon is actually apropos of nothing, I just thought it was funny and needed a political thread to drop it into. The snowmobile piece ties into lots of other discussions around here too. I know Rob, the truth is much more complex than stereotypes, neither left nor right is really monolithic, and the choice is not just heartless land raper or fuzzy thinking hippy. But where's the joke in that?

[RobBob]

No joke in that, Off. I'm just happy-er that Bush won, because the "extreme" environmentalism of the other side would have cost dearly, I believe.

 

But I'm disappointed in the dumb pro-business stances, like caving into the ski-doo lobby. A good politician knows when to hold the line--- when there's an opportunity to graphically stop something you've been accused of allowing to run rampant. If Bush had taken a stance against snowmobiles in the parks, he would have appeared slightly more thoughtful to us, and it would have cost him relatively little. Instead, he was dumb.

[pope]

quote:

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Originally posted by RobBob:

But I'm disappointed in the dumb pro-business stances, like caving into the ski-doo lobby.

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I guess you get what you vote for, to adapt an old truism.

[gregm]

quote:

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Originally posted by RobBob:

But I'm disappointed in the dumb pro-business stances, like caving into the ski-doo lobby.

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did bush cave into a business lobby or did he cave into the rural demographic? the electoral college and u.s. senate give sparsely populated states like montana and wyoming a lot of voting power. the rural vote put bush in the white house in the first place why should he turn his back on it? snowmobiles and the like are big with billybobs, most environmentalists live in the suburbs.

[Peter_Puget]

Chuck -

I am by no means against all taxation. In general I am suspicious of sumptorory taxation, taxation designed to channel economic growth or reward certain behaviors. I have become very scared of 'user fees.' User fees are odd in that they appear so reasonable yet I believe ultimately have a terrible impact. Years ago I was very pro user fees but after too many conversations on the way to crags especially after the Forest Service Fee was set up I was convinced by an occasional poster here that they were most often in his words:"the embodiment of evil. What I find unfair about the death tax is that it penalizes those who save and rewards those who spend. It is truly double taxation. In my example a hard working guy gets screwed because he and his wife chose to save and invest their money in a house. Besides the patent unfairness of this I also think it causes distortions in behavior that are not to the country's benefit.

[chucK]

I think we could make Greg W happy with 100% inheritance tax for everyone! That would mean only the hard-working people who earned their way would get ahead! NO HANDOUTS!!

[allison]

[RobBob]

gregm,

 

I think on that issue, Bush should have pushed for common sense, rather than based it on lobbyists OR demographics. If you take a stance that is not your normal one, and you take that stance based on common sense, then people will believe that you are capable of free thought and independent analysis. Not always a party line.

 

I think that a no-snowmobile policy is a forward-looking one for the parks.

[MtnGoat]

"If Bush had taken a stance against snowmobiles in the parks, he would have appeared slightly more thoughtful to us, and it would have cost him relatively little."

 

That's the problem, it would cost him little, and you little, and everyone who owns a snowmobile buisness there their buisness, and their customers the opportunity to take a snowmobile trip into the park.

 

If all it takes to "appear" thoughtful is to agree with someone else stance regardless of the reasons they don't agree to begin with, it's not really worth doing IMO. Maybe *all* sides should "appear" thoughtful by taking into account the fact that substance actually matters on issues.

[MtnGoat]

"I think on that issue, Bush should have pushed for common sense, rather than based it on lobbyists OR demographics."

 

Common sense tells us no snowmobiles should be allowed in a park the public pays for? and we should ignore demographics? For someone constantly telling us about the value of democracy, ignoring demographics doesn't seem like a real supportable tack to take.

 

Further, there are plenty of lobbyists pushing for exclusion of snowmobiles so it appears what is desired is not ignoring lobbyists, just listening to the ones some parties support.

 

[ 11-15-2002, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: MtnGoat ]

[chucK]

Rob,

MtnGoat is right the problem would be that it would cost him a little. Going anti-environmental cost him nothing because everyone knows he is antienvironmental, and he still got enough votes. People like you perhaps are put off by his trash-the-environment stance, but not enough to actually take a stand. So either suck it up and stop whining about the guy you voted for, or do something about it.

[MtnGoat]

"That would mean only the hard-working people who earned their way would get ahead!"

 

If we intend to eliminate inheritances, it should apply to *everyone*, not just one demographic or another.

[MtnGoat]

"MtnGoat is right the problem would be that it would cost him a little."

 

no, the problem is it would cost customers and owners and others something and this doesn't appear to be a consideration. They get to pay the costs of this "public good" while having their right to use public facilities removed.

 

"Going anti-environmental cost him nothing because everyone knows he is antienvironmental, and he still got enough votes."

 

Not following every single tenet of radical enviros scarecly means one is antienvironmental.

 

"People like you perhaps are put off by his trash-the-environment stance, but not enough to actually take a stand."

 

I'm put off by your trash the environment actions, and your refusal to actually live up to your own standards. You don't need to visit mountains or travel, it's all a selfish desire you can live without, enabled by your trashing of the environment with mines, wells, farms, etc.

 

"So either suck it up and stop whining about the guy you voted for, or do something about it."

 

Either suck it up and *prove* your intense commitment to not destorying the environment, or get reasonable about the fact that everyone uses reasources and not everyone need to comply with your views on how it's acceptable to do so.

[slothrop]

Who should own something like Mount Rainier? Is it reasonable to say that whoever lived there first and drew a little line around it on a map should own it? Or perhaps it is the original human settlers of the area who own it (since they had a name for the place many hundreds of years ago), and we should defer to them (or really, their descendants). Since the US government stole the land from those "indigenous" people, should the National Park even exist?

 

I'm curious about this question of ownership, since in theory the owner of a piece of property should get to determine how the land is used, whether snowmobiles can run on the property, etc.

 

The reason for the existence of National Parks seems to be a combination of public ownership and a collective desire to protect an area of beautiful land as if there were *no* ownership. Ownership means selfish use, and no need to consider the desires of others. It seems like a Good Thing (in a vague, unverifiable way... sorry, MtnGoat) to preserve places of beauty for public (confidential to MtnGoat: read 'selfish and coercive') use.