Ask Me Help Desk - The forerunner of things to come

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Taxes are not the totality of revenues. Just HALF so where does the rest come from and more importantly who holds the wealth and who pays the bills?

Well, it's not hard to find out. Most fed revenue for non Social Security expenses comes from personal and corporate income taxes. A much smaller amount comes from other taxes such as inheritance and excise taxes. A good chunk comes from SS taxes which we voting citizens very stupidly have allowed the crooks (dems and repubs) in the fed govt to use for non Social Security purposes with the result that the SS non-Trust Fund has nothing in it other than IOU's. Still, the wealthy pay most of the federal taxes in this country. It is just simply true.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy...nues-come-from

If you have loopholes, deductions, and tax havens, then paying taxes isn't such a big deal since you only pay on a portion of your income. That is also simply true.

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then paying taxes isn't such a big deal since you only pay on a portion of your income. That is also simply true.

You do realize that you're only supposed to pay "a portion of your income" into income tax? Do you want the feds to take all of it?

As to deductions, everyone gets deductions. Deductions for charitable donations, children and excessive med expenses, for instance. But you would be able to talk me into a flat tax with very few allowable deductions.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

You do realize that you're only supposed to pay "a portion of your income" into income tax? Do you want the feds to take all of it?

That would solve the deficit lol, but the wealthy can shield half if not more of their income from ANY taxation and have deductions for the rest. You realize that such tax havens exist for them and have always existed for them and is that paying a fair share even if according to you they do pay the most on taxes? Logically those with the most income should pay the most in taxes.

You still have not articulated my other peeve about cutting taxes when the economy is so great. That is illogical to me just as a matter of fiscal policy. Logically you should be raising revenue, paying your debts, and spending less and preparing for the next recession (Refer to provided link in last post).

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As to deductions, everyone gets deductions. Deductions for charitable donations, children and excessive med expenses, for instance. But you would be able to talk me into a flat tax with very few allowable deductions.

Some deductions for some people are worth a lot more than others in my humble opinion. I cannot afford a flat tax on top of my states SALES tax. What a great way to diminish my buying power. You trying to make me live on cat food? I still bristle at the thought that Mitt Romney pays less taxes than his secretary. I guess being able to afford those lawyers and accountants really pays off.

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That would solve the deficit lol, but the wealthy can shield half if not more of their income from ANY taxation and have deductions for the rest. You realize that such tax havens exist for them and have always existed for them and is that paying a fair share even if according to you they do pay the most on taxes? Logically those with the most income should pay the most in taxes.

Your first statement is just laughable. To listen to you, they pay no taxes which is plainly ludicrous. As to the second statement, it is not according to me. I have given you a boatload of links so you're just being intentionally ignorant. And for the third statement, THEY ARE PAYING THE MOST NOW SO WHAT ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT???!!!

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You still have not articulated my other peeve about cutting taxes when the economy is so great. That is illogical to me just as a matter of fiscal policy. Logically you should be raising revenue, paying your debts, and spending less and preparing for the next recession (Refer to provided link in last post).

When Trump cut taxes, the economy was still the tepid Obama economy. He cut taxes and the economy took off. Income tax revenue has actually increased, not decreased, and is considerably higher than during the Obama years. But I do get your point. We should have balanced the budget first, but no one is really interested in that.

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I cannot afford a flat tax on top of my states SALES tax. What a great way to diminish my buying power. You trying to make me live on cat food?

The liberal battle cry. RAISE TAXES BUT RAISE THEM ON SOMEONE ELSE OTHER THAN ME!! My friend, there is not enough available tax revenue from the wealthy to take without destroying the economy. Spending will have to be cut and I don't mean a little, and you, I, and the rest of the middle class is going to be hit. Just a matter of time. Think Greece.

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Just a matter of time. Think Greece.

Think Venezuela, Argentina, when the economy collapses everything goes, there isn't enough money in the world to bail you out

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there isn't enough money in the world to bail you out

I heard on the news today that world-wide debt is over 200 trillion. If that's true, then no one gets out unscathed when it all goes down.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

I heard on the news today that world-wide debt is over 200 trillion. If that's true, then no one gets out unscathed when it all goes down.

I didn't doubt you would take us all with you, what price utopia now?

Wonder what the dufus will do if it goes down on his watch? Of course only he can fix it, and we have nothing to lose, so what's the problem Clete? We just cut you losers loose and learn to talk Russian, or Chinese, and let the rich guys bail us out at a discount price. Or maybe we bail the world out at full price.

No biggie, the dufus has things under control right JL?

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I didn't doubt you would take us all with you, what price utopia now?

We are far from being the only country carrying a ridiculous amount of debt, and that includes your beloved Australia. World wide debt is just absurd. Take a look.

https://moneyinc.com/20-countries-currently-debt/

We are not responsible for what other countries do about their affairs, just ours, but given nothing has been done about it here, and I don't see any elected officials with any good ideas, or the will to even holler about it (Except you JL 8D), then the whole discussion becomes, when the crap hits the fan, maybe we get some action. Until then I can stand a few bucks while everybody's hand is in the till too!

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Until then I can stand a few bucks while everybody's hand is in the till too!

I suspect you say that jokingly and I get that, but honestly, that attitude is widespread and is the source of the problem. We have come to view the feds as a giant money tree that we can just pull fruit from whenever we like. Our elected officials have no honor in acknowledging that it is the money gathered from taxpayers and should be spent responsibly. We do not care about our children, and we certainly do not care about our grandchildren. Aside from the horror of abortion, it is the great sin of our nation. It's a reflection of the stupid, selfish, and careless people we have become.

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Except you JL 8D

I take that as an extreme compliment.

Armies, boats and planes are expensive for sure, and as long as others have them, so must we. I see no way around that SAFELY.

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Armies, boats and planes are expensive for sure, and as long as others have them, so must we. I see no way around that SAFELY.

That's a fair point, but I do think it could be cut if we learned to mind our own business. Three points to consider:

1. Defense spending is only 15% of the budget, so we can't blame our deficits on that.
2. We spend as much on defense as the next 9 nations COMBINED. Surely we could cut some.
3. Do you see the irony in this? You, the liberal, are arguing to continue defense spending. I, the conservative, am arguing to cut defense spending. The whole world is going crazy!!

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

That's a fair point, but I do think it could be cut if we learned to mind our own business. Three points to consider:

1. Defense spending is only 15% of the budget, so we can't blame our deficits on that.
2. We spend as much on defense as the next 9 nations COMBINED. Surely we could cut some.
3. Do you see the irony in this? You, the liberal, are arguing to continue defense spending. I, the conservative, am arguing to cut defense spending. The whole world is going crazy!!

Do you hear yourself? Defence spending is only 15%. The problem of your deficit is your thinking, what other not essential will you tell us next is only this small percentage of your budget, one non-essential is interest on the debt. What small percentage is climate change? in fact, what do you spend your borrowings on? 40% of spending is discretionary but what does that spending do, it feeds your economy so you are on the horns of a dilemma, cut spending and trash the economy. All socialist economies have this dilemma and yours is no different

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

That's a fair point, but I do think it could be cut if we learned to mind our own business. Three points to consider:

1. Defense spending is only 15% of the budget, so we can't blame our deficits on that.
2. We spend as much on defense as the next 9 nations COMBINED. Surely we could cut some.
3. Do you see the irony in this? You, the liberal, are arguing to continue defense spending. I, the conservative, am arguing to cut defense spending. The whole world is going crazy!!

1. Maybe you should make a list of the other 85% we spend the money on that results in a deficit and as Clete points out, the interest on that debt.

2. So why is it that 2 or 3 of those nations can spend a lot less and still have formidable enough forces to cause big problems?

3. Half the world is crazy thought you knew.

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Do you hear yourself? Defence spending is only 15%. The problem of your deficit is your thinking, what other not essential will you tell us next is only this small percentage of your budget, one non-essential is interest on the debt. What small percentage is climate change? in fact, what do you spend your borrowings on? 40% of spending is discretionary but what does that spending do, it feeds your economy so you are on the horns of a dilemma, cut spending and trash the economy. All socialist economies have this dilemma and yours is no different

Sometimes you just nail it Clete. We cut military spending the people who make the war stuff lose their jobs and entire towns collapse.

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Do you hear yourself? Defence spending is only 15%.

If you would bother to read, I was responding to Tal's mention of defense spending relative to the budget deficit. Defense spending by itself is not the core problem of the budget deficit.

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1. Maybe you should make a list of the other 85% we spend the money on that results in a deficit and as Clete points out, the interest on that debt.

Interest on the debt is about 8% of the budget. As to why I don't list what the other 85% is spent on, it's because it makes no difference. We cannot continue to borrow a trillion dollars a year. That's just the bottom line. We would have to cut spending by more than 20% to balance the budget. If we rescinded the Trump tax cuts, it would narrow the gap by only a narrow margin.

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2. So why is it that 2 or 3 of those nations can spend a lot less and still have formidable enough forces to cause big problems?

One contributing factor is they pay their troops very little, say in Russia or China. They spend much less for equipment since their labor costs are a great deal lower than ours. The biggest problem we have is this idea that money grows on trees, that we can borrow, borrow, borrow endlessly, and that reality is whatever we want to pretend it is.

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We cut military spending the people who make the war stuff lose their jobs and entire towns collapse.

So we'll just continue to borrow a tril a year until we completely collapse. What a plan that is. What will those workers and towns do then?

Believe me: The towns will collapse faster if we don't keep Defense spending and the ChiComs invade.

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The towns will collapse faster if we don't keep Defense spending and the ChiComs invade.

Make any spending proposal you want as long as you also propose how to pay for it. What do you suggest we do to close a one trillion dollar budget deficit? What is your plan?

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

Make any spending proposal you want as long as you also propose how to pay for it. What do you suggest we do to close a one trillion dollar budget deficit? What is your plan?

You need to recognise you are addicted to PORK. All this spending is to keep the politicians happy, a little boonie here, a little boonie, there and soon those boonies become essential industries. You know how they pay for it, Tax, no that's not palatable so they borrow it, use OPM afterall interest is only 6% of the budget, so keep interest rates low

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You know how they pay for it, Tax, no that's not palatable so they borrow it, use OPM afterall interest is only 6% of the budget, so keep interest rates low

Pretty good description. It works as long as interest rates are low, but interest on the debt is projected to begin rising steeply over the next decade.

Sounds great until a rich guy, bank, or big biz goes belly up and takes the economy with it.

jlisenbe: There is plenty of fat in the Federal Budget to cut without cutting Defense......Defense spending is like NO OTHER SPENDING, WHY? Because Defense spending is what maintains the research engines of our Defense suppliers and keeps them churning out new ideas that are the best in the world at killing the enemy.....if you take the spending down or eliminate it, altogether, the ENGINE of Weapons Systems Ingenuity will grow cold and a cold engine is hard to start up again. Defense spending is a sacred cow/untouchable. The Right should go after the left's pet appropriations and this will have a two pronged effect:

1) It takes water out the liberal money river: The left uses their favorite Departments to effectively "build" their future voter base by "buying their votes"....you know, things like cradle to grave Government Housing and other hood niceties that they raise voters in...a disgusting institutionalized design behavior that came out of Johnson's Great Society crap
2) As we deplete the left's favorite programs, and put their troops of institutionalized voters to work, those people, or at least a good percentage of them, will get weaned off the Government Cheese tit and come over the Right as a natural progression of Natural Law (all clear thinking, logical people eventually begin to gravitate towards Natural Law)

Getting the deficit reducing funds from the left's favorite PROGRAMS is a much better way of attending to this problem than is reducing Defense spending.

You mean section 8? No repubs on section 8? No repubs in housing projects? No poor people are repubs? No repubs in the HOOD? No repub waste in government to cut?

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jlisenbe: There is plenty of fat in the Federal Budget to cut without cutting Defense......Defense spending is like NO OTHER SPENDING, WHY? Because Defense spending is what maintains the research engines of our Defense suppliers and keeps them churning out new ideas that are the best in the world at killing the enemy.....if you take the spending down or eliminate it, altogether, the ENGINE of Weapons Systems Ingenuity will grow cold and a cold engine is hard to start up again. Defense spending is a sacred cow/untouchable. The Right should go after the left's pet appropriations and this will have a two pronged effect:

As the link below will show you, when you look at the federal budget, you see money spent for social security, medicare, medicaid, defense, and interest on the national debt. What is left over is about 900 billion dollars. If you eliminate ALL of that, which would include transportation and veteran's benefits, you would still have a budget deficit of over 100 billion dollars. That is why you absolutely cannot balance the budget without cutting defense. In fact, we are all in for a rude awakening when it comes to fed spending. The longer we stupidly put it off, the ruder the awakening will be. I am not hopeful.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/b...-101/spending/

I have to say JL I'm loving your links today, very comprehensive. Sure backs up your position to pay down the debt during good economic times, but also my position of the timing and size of tax cuts. Debt is necessary sometimes but the real key I think is responsible management of that debt.

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I have to say JL I'm loving your links today, very comprehensive. Sure backs up your position to pay down the debt during good economic times, but also my position of the timing and size of tax cuts. Debt is necessary sometimes but the real key I think is responsible management of that debt.

1. The tax cuts can be criticized, but they are only a small contributor to the deficit, and if they did indeed spur the economy, then a healthier economy results in greater tax revenues.

2. Do you think that 22 tril amounts to responsible debt? Honest question.

1. I tend to take a longer view of things and actually feel that a lot of small stuff can add up pretty quick and be one big mess. I also think letting the economy feed it's own growth and refrain fron didling with what seems likea good idea at the time but has consequences forcing it to grow with tricks that wear off after a short period.

2. Not really especially with no plan to reduce it in a reasonable time, in a reasonable way.

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I tend to take a longer view of things and actually feel that a lot of small stuff can add up pretty quick and be one big mess.

If small stuff adds up pretty quick, then guess what large stuff does.

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Not really especially with no plan to reduce it in a reasonable time, in a reasonable way.

So it's OK to go DEEEPPPLLYYYY into debt as long as you have no idea of how to handle paying it off? Interesting theory.

France is still a basket case

How come the forces of conservatism here aren't all over this, a despot being bearded in his den, a socialist nation in termoil, afterall it was the point of this OP, This is lost on you, becuase if it doesn't happen in america, it doesn't happen

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

If small stuff adds up pretty quick, then guess what large stuff does.

Adds up even quicker.

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So it's OK to go DEEEPPPLLYYYY into debt as long as you have no idea of how to handle paying it off? Interesting theory.

I never said it was okay to go into debt and NOT have a plan.

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Originally Posted by paraclete

How come the forces of conservatism here aren't all over this, a despot being bearded in his den, a socialist nation in termoil, afterall it was the point of this OP, This is lost on you, becuase if it doesn't happen in america, it doesn't happen

Calm down and tell us what you're going on about Clete, or a link or two.

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Originally Posted by talaniman

Adds up even quicker.

I never said it was okay to go into debt and NOT have a plan.

Well Tal without a plan to repay it, but then you haven't borrowed from the germans and the world bank otherwise some adjustment and belt tightening would be needed

We sell savings bonds Clete, that's how we borrow.

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Originally Posted by talaniman

We sell savings bonds Clete, that's how we borrow.

"savings" Bonds what are you saving for? Your next aircraft carrier? Yes, I know about government bonds, you have to have a good credit rating otherwise they are just junk

They sell like hot cakes all over the world Clete.

We just can't jeopardize the safety or, even, the existence of the nation by dumbing down Defense: There are too many foes that we face....and they continue to spend. We can change our foreign policy and dump our Defense spending into hardware and pull back from the "Global" exposure we now have to help par down the $$$s but we can't get behind technologically, that would spell the end.

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Originally Posted by talaniman

Calm down and tell us what you're going on about Clete, or a link or two.

obviously CNNN has failed you

https://www.mail.com/int/business/ma...-stage-hero1-1

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Originally Posted by Vacuum7

We just can't jeopardize the safety or, even, the existence of the nation by dumbing down Defense: There are too many foes that we face....and they continue to spend. We can change our foreign policy and dump our Defense spending into hardware and pull back from the "Global" exposure we now have to help par down the $$$s but we can't get behind technologically, that would spell the end.

the only foes you face are ones of your own making, that fact escapes you. Yes you should dump your foreign policy and I see Trump has dumped some of the crap of previous eras however he still likes to brandish an aircraft carrier or two

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We just can't jeopardize the safety or, even, the existence of the nation by dumbing down Defense: There are too many foes that we face....and they continue to spend. We can change our foreign policy and dump our Defense spending into hardware and pull back from the "Global" exposure we now have to help par down the $$$s but we can't get behind technologically, that would spell the end.

Typical. You want to keep spending money with no idea of how to pay for all of your defense needs. I guess we'll just keep that up until financial disaster strikes. What a plan.

Jlisenbe: The corollary isn't very attractive either: ChiCom troops marching in U.S. streets: You don't think that can happen? Probably couldn't given all the nuclear weapons we have but that's really dependent upon the capacity of the delivery systems it would take to get those nuclear payloads onto target and fry ChiComs…..and if we just stop improving and the ChiComs develop missile shootdown technology, well, we will be SOL. The other part of this is the NATIONAL WILL TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS: If we had that, and could depend upon the delivery systems that would allow our weapons to strike with pinpoint accuracy, we could almost stop what you might term excessive defense spending.

However, the NATIONAL WILL in the U.S. has been putrefied by leftist ingress into our education systems, particularly at institutions of higher learning: All of these individuals are potential problems in a national crisis, potential fifth column participants.....and, as we have seen with the willing participation of the State Department in coup cabal of President Trump, these leftists are deeply planted at all levels...a genuine infestation of communist sympathizers....I suspect that many of them look toward Peking as a master. Remember: It was Clinton, whose campaign accepted boat loads of money from the ChiComs, who permitted Loral Corp., under the guise of supplying the gyroscope technology to the ChiComs for cheap satellite launch rocketry systems, to assist in developing the ChiCom Nuclear Threat. Then, also remember, Obama eviscerated NASA to further deplete U.S. technological capabilities. You also see leftist tacticians attacking Boeing Corp., through various legal schemes, with the eventual goal of running them into bankruptcy.

Perhaps the best way to erase the National Debt: Tell the ChiComs to go burn their atheistic arses in hell and refuse to make any more payments on their loans to us! This would assist the U.S. and help break the ChiComs.