US Taxes---Who pays what.

[sousaman2089]

Maybe if we didn't spend over $4,000,000,000 on the war in Iraq...

[Braves4Life]

I read somewhere where the CBO confirmed that the cost of the Iraq war under Bush was $709B less than obama's 1st stimulus bill.

-- Also, 59% of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.

-- As 2007 began, there were about 26M on food stamps. Now there are ovr 44M. One out of every 4 American children is on food stamps

-- US households are now receiving more income from the government than they are paying to the govt in taxes.

-- Only 66.8% of American men had a job last yr. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of US history!

-- The unemployment rate increased to 9.1%? But there are millions who have run out of benefits & no longer counted.

-- We borrow 40 cents of every dollar we spend.

-- State & local govmnt debt has reached an all-time high of 22% of US GDP!

-- Obama's 2012 budget will add $9.47 Trillion to our national debt!


Our problems in this country are about more than just these stupid wars.

[SFP]

Saddest statistic I heard was that 20% of our children live in poverty. We need incentives to keep manufacturing jobs from going over seas and start educating the masses in what they are consuming so they know the economical and ecological impacts on their decision.

[Braves4Life]

Saddest statistic I heard was that 20% of our children live in poverty. We need incentives to keep manufacturing jobs from going over seas and start educating the masses in what they are consuming so they know the economical and ecological impacts on their decision.

In most places there are now twice as many government jobs as manufacturing jobs. Those jobs are never coming back SFP. America must completely re-invent itself if we are to continue to be the world leader. We always have through history...... but I have a bad feeling that this time will be different.

[AZ BU Fan]

Read an interesting article in the Az Republic....

Mfg in the US, in terms of dollar output, is at an ALL TIME HIGH.....(pre current fiscal/political policy caused recession)

Trouble is, for those who can only depend on semi skilled labor jobs, US MFG PRODUCTIVITY is also at an all time high, which means companies have figured out how to make more with less employees.

Unfortunately, in our, more or less, developed country, future economic expansion will be outside North America. If US Companies are to succeed in the future they must be able to compete outside the US vs companies in countries who have much different costs than US bound companies.

The US can not unilaterally close the border to imports or tarriff other non US companies imports....Retaliation will kill US companies who need outside markets to grow or risk getting bought out by larger foreign based companies.

If it were only as simple as legislating greedy US Corp CEO's from exporting US labor, or, the US just attacking imports from lower cost countries....Like it or not, the World economy is now totally interconnected....

Every US worker is now competing with counterparts worldwide.....the only way to make more than these counterparts is to produce more from less than they do.

At the same time, US Corp Tax System, US Legal System, US Health Care System, and US Labor Unions are not helping US Companies succeed vs Non US Companies....

Re Middle East War.....Looking at the big picture, US may be in Iraq and Afganistan to flank Iran as much as they are there to try and prevent China from gaining access/'control' of those oil resources through corruption of these countries 'governments' (China doesn't play by any rules btw). China is becomming another pre WWII Japan....in desperate conquest to get access to oil and other natural resources to keep their economy running at full speed to grow their GDP...which is China's biggest challenge to prevent a future 600M rural unemployed peasant overthrow of the current gov and the new "haves" there...Great article in The Economist about this geopolitical situation. Any country with significant resources cozying up to China will definitely be on the US political/military radar...

[Beninator]

Saddest statistic I heard was that 20% of our children live in poverty. We need incentives to keep manufacturing jobs from going over seas and start educating the masses in what they are consuming so they know the economical and ecological impacts on their decision.

An attempt at this type of legislation (manufacturing jobs) was introduced in the Senate last year, that would use the tax code to give companies tax breaks to bring jobs back to this country and eliminate tax breaks for companies that close facilities in this country to go overseas. However, this bill never saw the floor of the Senate as Republicans with a handful of Democrats filibustered to block the measure which resulted in the bill not getting the votes needed to proceed. I think that is a travesty!

From Washington Post link:

The Democratic corporate tax bill includes three provisions. One would end tax deductions that companies may take for expenses incurred when they shutter a U.S. operation and shift the work abroad. The second would impose an income tax on products once made in the U.S. but now manufactured by foreign workers. The third measure would provide a payroll tax incentive for companies to create American jobs by shifting overseas operations back to the U.S.



Links
CBS News:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20017896-503544.html

Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092403293.html

Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-28/senate-republicans-block-tax-incentives-to-move-foreign-based-jobs-to-u-s-.html

[sousaman2089]

[Braves4Life]

A.....Republicans with a handful of Democrats filibustered to block the measure which resulted in the bill not getting the votes needed to proceed. I think that is a travesty!

Agreed!

[SFP]

In most places there are now twice as many government jobs as manufacturing jobs. Those jobs are never coming back SFP. America must completely re-invent itself if we are to continue to be the world leader. We always have through history...... but I have a bad feeling that this time will be different.

I have to believe the same type of manufacturing jobs are never coming back but as you said reinvent ourselves to create high quality, high tech manufacturing jobs can be had. Germany's manufacturing for high quality goods has increased! America needs to step up and once again work hard at achieving greatness. It can be done but our current leaders are lost, greedy and corrupt. I have faith that the light bulb will go off before it is to late, otherwise we'll be a nation of the haves and have not. If you think we are there now, it can get a ton worse.

[sousaman2089]

In order to get high tech manufacturing jobs, Americans will have to learn a totally new skill set. That means education reform, which means economic reform. A lot of things must happen for all our problems to go away.

P.S. Our leaders have always been greedy and corrupt, good luck trying to fix that problem.

[Chico]

20 years ago places like Cat had at least 10 workers with great benefits doing what 1 can do today. In a way I guess you can say modern technology has also helped take jobs away.

[BU RICK]

...............

Re Middle East War.....Looking at the big picture, US may be in Iraq and Afganistan to flank Iran as much as they are there to try and prevent China from gaining access/'control' of those oil resources through corruption of these countries 'governments' (China doesn't play by any rules btw). China is becomming another pre WWII Japan....in desperate conquest to get access to oil and other natural resources to keep their economy running at full speed to grow their GDP...which is China's biggest challenge to prevent a future 600M rural unemployed peasant overthrow of the current gov and the new "haves" there...Great article in The Economist about this geopolitical situation. Any country with significant resources cozying up to China will definitely be on the US political/military radar...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-southchinasea-idUSTRE75R0C820110628

http://blog.cleantechies.com/2011/06/15/offshore-oil-dispute-in-south-china-sea-has-enormous-global-implications/

[tornado]

this morning's June jobs report is hideous....a major, major downturn and far, far worse than anyone expected....
Had this happened during Bush's term it would have been HORRIBLE news yet this morning, many news stations have yet to even mention it...almost as if they're trying to protect the administration...

BUT - our ever intelligent leaders have a solution...
they want to raise taxes, and do another stimulus - the very things that got us into this horrid mess..

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=147376

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/271207/new-stimulus-veronique-de-rugy

BTW -- let's just say we DO raise taxes just as our Prez asks, and let's say we really hit 'em hard and QUADRUPLE taxes on corporate jet owners....
seriously -- just how many of them are there, and would any such tax help in even the slightest way?

http://radioviceonline.com/go-ahead-tax-the-rich-lets-run-the-numbers/

Nope -- here's a novel solution that many in government have never and would never consider...
stop the wasteful spending and ridiculous giveaways that have created our entitlement society!!

[SFP]

Nope -- here's a novel solution that many in government have never and would never consider...
stop the wasteful spending and ridiculous giveaways that have created our entitlement society!!

I agree 100%! The problem is that the largest share of the entitlement programs if reduced or if the loopholes were cut then those politicians that voted for it would be crucified by special interests of those entitlement program and it seems like the average citizen believes everything they hear.

I'm still wondering what that ROI was for that trillion dollar package to our banking industry. I thought we wanted to wrestle the economic financial power from the few but since the crisis the opposite has happened. Entitlement programs for the lazy are a problem but the vast majority of entitlements and tax loopholes are for the large very rich and corporate welfare recipients. This leaves the middle class holding the bag, which consequently is shrinking.

[Da Coach]

I think most Americans would agree.
Housing projects like Taft Homes were originally built in Peoria in the early 1950's, and similar projects like Harrison Homes were built in the era from the 1930's through the 1950's in most major American cities, as a temporary "safety net" to assure quality housing for low-income workers, post-war veterans, and for disabled and other people who could not work and could not afford it.

In fact the Taft Homes site reports that Taft was only intended as a temporary, short-term housing facility for the many Korean War veterans who returned home and could not find enough adequate housing-

http://pha.peoria.il.us/listingmodule/view_listing/id/4/src/@random48fce044d0024/

These kinds of housing projects were never intended or envisioned as long-term, permanent homes for anyone. But now that is what they are. And we even now have 4th and 5th generations (and maybe more) of some families who have resided in these projects their entire lives, and apparently have no intention and no hope of anything better.
This abysmal cycle of poverty and hopelessness is promoted by the current social welfare system of the United States. There is simply no incentive for a small segment of people to better themselves when the government will pay them to live in free (or low cost, subsidized) housing, and pay them to have more children.