hard work bein' a republican...
keepin' the madness and stoopidity goin'
luckily... there's rush...

How 'bout we go back to the glory days of the Gipper and raise the top rate to 50%?

Nobody ever went broke betting on the stupidity of Republicans.

Steve Benen quoted Daniel Gross: "Say you're a CNBC anchor, or a Washington Post columnist with a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, or a dentist, and you managed to cobble together $350,000 a year in income."

The difference is that the CNBC anchor and the Washington Post columnist are bought-and-paid-for mouthpieces for corporate CEOs to whom $3,500,000 a year in income is peanuts, and the dentist is not.

The CNBC anchor and the Washington Post columnist probably do object to their own Federal income tax going up by $4.10 per day for the greater good and benefit of the nation as a whole. But that's not why they are paid $350,000 per year to deceive the American people with blatantly dishonest propaganda. They are paid to protect their billionaire paymasters from tax increases.

Jon Stewart and his crowd must be bored out their skulls these days; this stuff writes itself.

My example is about firing people to make up for your lost income.

The 4% rise in the marginal rate amounts to $30,000 in extra taxes for the next $750,000 in effective income.

How many people would you fire to "make up" for that loss? Chances are, if you run an efficient business productivity is high and firing one employee might save you over $30,000 in expenses, but it might cost you much more in lost productivity. Who would do this?

Give that a million dollar salary amounts to getting paid $500/hour, you would have to work an extra 75 minutes a week to cover the deficit. OTOH, if I made that much per hour, I would probably take off a little more time than that.

As Secularanimist sez , those people on the air breathing the rareified air of TEE VEE salaries are for the most part shills for the republican agenda as they are employed by big bidness for big bidness agenda. Like Jon Stewarts take down of CNBC where he carefully points out that those prognosticators of the business world have the collective financial insight of a herd of water buffalo.

"What would happen if the marginal rate on the portion of your income above $250,000 were to rise from 33 percent to 36 percent? Under the old regime, you'd pay $16,500 in federal taxes on that amount. Under the new one, you'd pay $18,000. The difference is $1,500 per year, or $4.10 per day."

Which means that a whole more than the top 2% of taxpayers will see their taxes raised by the Dems to pay for the Obamination and his "budget" plans since its all of the revenue assumptions were apparantly just pulled out of his ass.

Boo hoo hoo, the picked on rich. Cry us a freakin' river.

Unless dental coverage is included in the Obama health plan, that dentist might not have to worry to much about how to reduce her income.

I think the market for teeth whitening has topped out.

What ARE the charitable limits these days?
Can the rich give away the excess over 250,000?

The promise of private charity taking on the role of the welfare state might become plausible if they did.

Wonder how many will pony up.

I have 10 fingers. That might be adequate.

Ok, but couldn't we just bruise them a little? Make rude comments about their housepets? Something??

Shit, but that might mean my dentist might actually have to start working Fridays!

"Can she, or we, really be that stupid?"

Simple answer to simple question is YES!

They just eat what they are fed for facts!

Check this story out;

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

lynching bankers and hedge-fund managers, stringing up shopkeepers, and herding lawyers into internment camps

If they give a plea deal to Madoff, charge no one for the mortgage scam, keep threatening to go all Galt on us, block economic advisors and stimulus in Congress, and talk about class warfare, they might find themselves wishing for guillotines.

Actually, the National Review cover is much more offensive than you give it credit for being. It evokes not so much the Social Realism of the Soviet Union as the idealized Aryans of Nazi propaganda. In particular, the similarities with Hitler Youth posters is quite striking.

These people really have gone totally over the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity.

grinning cat - thanks for the link. Reminds me of my mother complaining that not all Walmart greeters are handycapped.

Chicounsel wrote: "Which means that a whole more than the top 2% of taxpayers will see their taxes raised by the Dems ..."

The 2011 expiration of the huge Bush tax cuts for the ultra-rich was written into the law by Bush and the Republicans in 2001. The "Dems" and Obama have nothing to do with it. If you want to blame someone for taxes on the ultra-rich going back to Clinton-era levels in 2011, then blame Bush and the Republicans.

And of course, under the Clinton-era income tax rates for the rich -- which were already the lowest in modern history, lower than under Ronald Reagan's administration, the AFTER-TAX incomes of the ultra-rich skyrocketed.

You really are an unbelievably ignorant, gullible dupe of scripted right-wing extremist propaganda, Chicounsel.

Fuck I keep forgetting that I am nothing more than a fucking REPIGLICAN SHIT STAIN ..nothing more than a oozing, hissing, Repiglican hemmoroid .. alls i really need is someone to put a giant tube of Preparation H on me ..now that would put me out of my misery ...

I've never visited Malkin's blog but reading the posts on her idiotic rant about a homeless guy who dare carry a cellphone it brings back the Harper's commentary I mentioned earlier in the week. That is a collection of people content to believe their own opinions instead of actual first hand experience.

Also the vileness in the comments that homeless people are fat and well fed. Anyone with any sense who have taken a cursory glance at the issue knows the reason that obesity is such and epidemic with the poor in this country.

The good news is that this is what the right wing is left with. Slagging some poor saps that are homeless because they are taking a picture of the first lady (and because they are black).

Eric Cantor was on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell this afternoon, railing against tax hikes. More than once, he misspoke and said raising taxes for the middle class. He went on to say that 50% of small businesses would be affected with the usual meme that small businesses produce most jobs. First of all, letting the tax cuts expire will affect 2% of small buisness owners. Secondly, the tax cuts won't expire until 2011. Third, those making over a quarter million dollars a year will pay a lousey 3% on income over $250,000. They will pay at the rate they paid during the Clinton administration. Cantor may be considered a rising star in the Republican Party, but he doesn't seem to know how to digress from Republican talking points. Either that, or he's simply a liar.

Fucking amazing........Bush and his corporate goons managed to totally redo the tax code so that the poor and middle class ended up subsidizing the rich. As a result 10 million more American were put into official poverty. At the same time the richest 400 hundred families DOUBLED THEIR FUCKING ANNUAL INCOME. How come corporate cum sluts like David Gregory and all the rest of the millionaire 'journalists' that have bought and paid for by their Corporate Masters were not screaming 'class warfare' then ? How come none of this corporate cum sluts were talking about a 'transfer of wealth ' then ?

First of all, the rich are probably smart enough to know this is bull, most of them anyway...except some of the wingnuts maybe. Second, the rest of us are standing in line to watch the slaughter.

thalarctos, I have a better idea: how 'bout we go back to the days of that raving socialist Ike when the top rate was over 90%? Fine by me.

I wouldn't mind bleeding the rich just a little.

just tell the rich that leeches work better than Botox. they'll gladly bleed themselves, and we wont have to.

I wouldn't mind bleeding the rich just a little.

For those not "well off" who continue to fall in line with the wingnuts, it is purely a matter of "principle". I really don't get it.

I had a client of mine (I'm in a non-finance related business) call me yesterday and start ranting about the tax hike for incomes over $250,000, going on and on about how unfair it was. Finally I pointed out that the marginal rate increase would only apply to money over $250K and he said, "Oh, really? I didn't know that." And with that he had nothing more to say on the subject. I wonder how many people are laboring under that ridiculous assumption that if you make $251K you'd take home less than if you make $249?

I wonder how many people are laboring under that ridiculous assumption that if you make $251K you'd take home less than if you make $249?

Presumably that dentist is going to get some extra free time along with that lower marginal rate, right?

Look, there's not going to be a deluge of people looking to cut their income drastically as marginal tax rates go up, but there will be some people who will decide that they'd rather spend a little more time at home, given that those extra hours are slightly less remunerative than they were before.

That's hardly a crisis, and given how much more people in the US work on average than the rest of the developed world, probably a healthy development.

But that dentist isn't necessarily making a stupid decision to work less. Free time is worth something too.

Given that Republicans like bring up JFK every time taxes are under discussion, the inevitable response should be that we would be happy to return to the taxation levels in place after the cuts JFK proposed had been implemented.

A top marginal rate of 75% starting at around $800,000 in today's money sounds just about right to me. I'd even give them a slight break by removing the cap on FICA taxes and having a top income tax rate of about 60%.

They've been bleeding the middle-class for 30 years.

Torches and pitchforks.

I pay more to the feds for the privilege of being a registered domestic partner. Four times more. On an income about a fourth of that.

They can go stuff it.

I believe all this "going Galt" etc. is a wonderful development for political honesty in this country. Since at least the time Nixon developed the Southern strategy, the conservatives in this country have hidden behind the mantle of "Joe Sixpack," NASCAR, etc. ad nauseum-- the faux populism of the right. Now, under a bit of minor economic pressure, we get right back to where that movement always has had its true heart--the protection of the interests of the better-off persons of our country, as the more short-sighted and selfish members of that group perceive those interests to be.

I am trying to bleed the rich, but have no economic or political power to do it. Plus, Madoff has ruined the chance to Ponzi scheme them in the near term.

Speaking of angry mobs, the masters of the universe that got us into this mess ought to thank their lucky stars that angry mobs don't drag them from their homes and hack them to death.

I think the argument they are pushing is that if you make all your income as capital gains, and you exceed $250k, all of your income would be now be taxed at 20% instead of 15%, and therefore you would have less money after tax making $250k than if you made $236k.

There you go, bringing up "facts" again.

Facts will only confuse these people.

The Gross piece is also on Newsweek's site. Since I've thrown plenty of darts at big media for obscuring issues, I'd like to compliment Newsweek and Gross for providing a clear debunking of this "class war" hooey.

Amazing too that all this focus goes to the increase on the very very top of the pyramid (much of which is due not directly to Obama, but the expiring of the Bush tax cuts), and so little to the tax cuts for the other 98-99% of us.

I am. I would like to bleed the rich.

No matter how much you bleed them, they'll never make kosher meat, the useless pigs.

I have to wonder if this is the same level of shrewd thought and insight that bankers and analysts had been using to evaluate mortgage-backed securities.

the National Review cover[...] evokes not so much the Social Realism of the Soviet Union as the idealized Aryans of Nazi propaganda.-- Aigin, @14:09

Obviously, you never marched in the May 1st parade in any of the following countries: Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany (DDR), Poland, Soviet Union, or Yugoslavia. The cover wrung a sentimental tear from my eye, it reminded me of my erst-while home (Poland) so much...

Would this be the same rich that invested heavily in credit default swaps and inflated the real estate market through their invention of the "nobody owns it but everybody's going to get rich off of it" mortgage?

Yeah. So they're the ones who walked off with all the money from these BS. investments and now the US government needs to pay for the damage caused by their irresponsible greed. Somehow I don't have a problem with taking money from them to pay for the bailout.

Math has a well-known liberal bias.

I think the argument they are pushing is that if you make all your income as capital gains, and you exceed $250k, all of your income would be now be taxed at 20% instead of 15%, and therefore you would have less money after tax making $250k than if you made $236k.

Of course, that then begs the question of what we value more, labor or finance? Is our goal as a society to have a lot of people living off investments without working (and therefore we should incentivize that with lower tax rates), or to have people living off their labor?

The NR cover: What's the logo on Obama's shirt? Is it supposed to be an acorn? And if so, WTF does that have to do with anything?