Hide your money in the sock drawer. We are so fucked starting in January. Pretty much everyone will be affected. I leave you with these choice quotes, before proceeding to the facts that will send our economy over the cliff:

quote:

Under the Obama plan, the typical family will pay tax rates that are 20% lower than they faced under President Reagan. Any and all charges that Obama would raise rates on capital gains, dividends, income, savings and so on for the approximately 98% of American families making less than $250,000 are simply not true.

-Obama's campaign website

quote:

If you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, you will not see a single dime of your taxes go up. Not one dime. If you make $200,000 a year or less, your taxes will go down.

-October 7th, 2008 (the first of many times)


So, here's the bad news:


First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

Personal income tax rates will rise:
The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family:
The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax:
This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors:
The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.


Second Wave: Obamacare

Over 20 new or higher taxes as part of Obamacare, garnering over $500 billion from working families. They include:

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax”:
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The “Special Needs Kids Tax”:
This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike:
This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Rest can be seen here:
http://www.atr.org/obamacare-taxes-final-tab-a4744



Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes


When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:


The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year:
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear:
Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses: There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs. There are 48 pages of taxes to be raised here---> http://www.jct.gov/publications.htm...artdown&id=3646

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.
The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.
Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.

Source: http://www.atr.org/files/files/0701...an2011taxes.pdf


Everyone will be affected, not just those making over $250K. The engine of economic growth, small businesses which create 80% of our jobs, is about to be crushed. Do the math: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, federal pay exceeds private sector pay by 83% now in comparable jobs. We've lost around 7 million jobs since 2008. Government jobs, which are funded by the private sector, have increased 30% in the same period. Translation: we are economically fucked, as the malaise period during Jimmy Carter's administration will feel like the roaring 20's.

January 2011... the purposeful creation of a permanant and majority underclass of dependants (and thus Democrat voters) will begin to take a firm hold. You heard it here first.

How do you pay down the national debt without raising taxes?

quote:

Originally posted by Comrade Stalin How do you pay down the national debt without raising taxes?

lol spoken like a true Democrat. I can't believe you're really asking that question. There are a variety of tried and true methods; you know full well that if you decrease the tax burden (especially corporate and capital gains taxes) real stimulation of investment and growth will occur. If businesses have incentive to hire, they add more people to the payrolls, thus having more individuals paying taxes. More people paying taxes, even at a lower rate, means more money going to the federal government to pay down the debt. It's practically a law of physics that taxing an activity depresses that activity. We now have the highest corporate tax in the world, and capital gains is about to go up 160% in January; this will kill investment incentive.


Cutting the out of control spending would also help, obviously, as would ending the destructive existences of public sector Unions. Unions have destroyed the economies of Michingan, California, New York, and Illinois. They have hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities that the taxpayer is on the hook for. You saw what happened in Greece, right? Same thing. We are constantly asked to do with less, while government salaries soar and their yearly raises always increase... even now while shit is bad.

And, spending all our bogus stimulus money that basically went to unemployment benefits, undeserving companies, and to Unions was a huge mistake. As Rick Santelli points out so clearly:

quote:

The notion of stimulus is you want capital in the system, but when you have artificial stimulus, you give capital to the people that aren't really creating an expansive employment scenario or creating something that's actually positive for a society. What you end up doing is putting capital to businesses that on their own couldn't get capital and that's for a reason. The market didn't allocate it because they didn't deserve it.

Today's report that unemployment is at 9.5% is very misleading... because an additional 650,000 people are so defeated, they have given up on job searches and have left the labor force- those people are no longer counted as "unemployed" once that happens. The U6, or, underemployment rate where you basically have people working part time with no benefits out of sheer desperation is between 17-22%. Anyone with an economic brain would see that nothing is really being done to help grow the economy. Therefore you must conclude that it's being done by design, (in my opinion- and several others) to create a majority of people dependant on government. It is a fact that the longer people take unemployment handouts, the less likely they are to be motivated to go back to work on their own. Stretching them out from 72 to 99 weeks... now trying again now to stretch it another 6 months on top of that? 2.5 years of handouts? I mean, seriously. And why would the charitable donation deduction also be cut? What's the purpose of that? The only logical reason would be so more people depend on government.

not that i disagree hugely with anything you've written kev, but cutting taxes won't stimulate the economy if people are out of work and have nothing to spend in the first place, and businesses won't invest more if they don't have the number of consumers to justify it. i agree though that raising taxes in today's climate isn't going to help.

i wouldn't wanna in charge of the US economy for all the money in the world. you've got a debt burden which makes spending any money in this recession seriously problematic, yet not spending money could be even worse.

conservatives have a real quandry imo because they can't complain about the debt then lambast any attempts to raise taxes, and they can't complain about a recession and then criticise attempts to stimulate the economy through government spending. spending has a bigger impact on GDP than cutting taxes.

shit's all fucked up.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN conservatives have a real quandry imo because they can't complain about the debt then lambast any attempts to raise taxes, and they can't complain about a recession and then criticise attempts to stimulate the economy through government spending.

I don't think anyone's told them this just yet.

___________________
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss lol spoken like a true Democrat. I can't believe you're really asking that question. There are a variety of tried and true methods; you know full well that if you decrease the tax burden (especially corporate and capital gains taxes) real stimulation of investment and growth will occur. If businesses have incentive to hire, they add more people to the payrolls, thus having more individuals paying taxes. More people paying taxes, even at a lower rate, means more money going to the federal government to pay down the debt. It's practically a law of physics that taxing an activity depresses that activity. We now have the highest corporate tax in the world, and capital gains is about to go up 160% in January; this will kill investment incentive.

We lowered taxes big time, and look what happened. Deficits soared under a so-called fiscally conservative Republican administration. I'd actually like to see a national flat sales tax, with all other taxes abolished. But since our democratic system allows the minority party to throw a monkey wrench in any meaningful reform, we have to work with what we have, which is a mixed economy. After this crisis, and the Great Depression, there will be a huge faction that see government as the answer. With that in mind, and that very faction in power, we are not going to be paying down the deficit by lowering taxes.

quote:

Cutting the out of control spending would also help, obviously, as would ending the destructive existences of public sector Unions. Unions have destroyed the economies of Michingan, California, New York, and Illinois. They have hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities that the taxpayer is on the hook for. You saw what happened in Greece, right? Same thing. We are constantly asked to do with less, while government salaries soar and their yearly raises always increase... even now while shit is bad. And, spending all our bogus stimulus money that basically went to unemployment benefits, undeserving companies, and to Unions was a huge mistake. As Rick Santelli points out so clearly: Today's report that unemployment is at 9.5% is very misleading... because an additional 650,000 people are so defeated, they have given up on job searches and have left the labor force- those people are no longer counted as "unemployed" once that happens. The U6, or, underemployment rate where you basically have people working part time with no benefits out of sheer desperation is between 17-22%. Anyone with an economic brain would see that nothing is really being done to help grow the economy. Therefore you must conclude that it's being done by design, (in my opinion- and several others) to create a majority of people dependant on government. It is a fact that the longer people take unemployment handouts, the less likely they are to be motivated to go back to work on their own. Stretching them out from 72 to 99 weeks... now trying again now to stretch it another 6 months on top of that? 2.5 years of handouts? I mean, seriously. And why would the charitable donation deduction also be cut? What's the purpose of that? The only logical reason would be so more people depend on government.

I don't particularly like the Teacher's Unions who make our public schools the laughing stock of the first world. I can only imagine the other unions negative effect on government policy.

===============================================================

Kevin, there is something you must recognize here. The so-called, free market, fiscally conservative, Republican party of the last 8 years failed miserably. Their laissez-faire, pro-big business, de-regulatory, low tax policies failed. The tide of history has therefore, logically, shifted to the other side of the spectrum. All the solutions you outlined were exactly the policy of the Bush Administration. You can't expect the next administration to follow that lead when it clearly didn't work. You have witnessed a shift in government policy, from right to left, which after 8 years of Bush, can only be seen as a logical shift. Obama wasn't voted into office to continue Bush's policies. You know that. America voted for a leftist president knowing full-well what they would get. And any country that would vote for the same party responsible for ballooning deficits, two un-paid wars, and a collapsing economy, is a country that doesn't deserve my respect.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN conservatives have a real quandry imo because they can't complain about the debt then lambast any attempts to raise taxes, and they can't complain about a recession and then criticise attempts to stimulate the economy through government spending. spending has a bigger impact on GDP than cutting taxes. shit's all fucked up.

Well this is true... although real conservatives like myself abandoned Bush and the RINO's after their detachment from the very principles they got elected on. Only if they acknowledge the mistakes they made and show by example that they will not continue down that path can they be forgiven. What they did is being exponentially magnified by the people in power now... so, if what Bush and his team did was fucked up, what does that say about the current administration? The perfect example is the new governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. He's the first dude I've seen in a long time that ran on fiscal responsibility and is actually doing what he said he'd do: absolutely refusing to raise Jersey's massive tax burden in any way, while making the necessary cuts in spending that will lead to balancing the state's budget.

quote:

Originally posted by Comrade Stalin We lowered taxes big time, and look what happened. Deficits soared under a so-called fiscally conservative Republican administration.

Yes, we did... and aside from having an unemployment rate between 4.5 and 5% during Bush's tenure, more tax dollars went to the Federal Government than at any point in history. Deficits soared, as you correctly point out, at first... and then you can see the trend each year heading towards balance. Look for yourself at this motherfucker of a graph:

quote:

But since our democratic system allows the minority party to throw a monkey wrench in any meaningful reform, we have to work with what we have, which is a mixed economy.

This statement is very misguided. Please tell me what meaningful reform has the GOP stopped in the last 18 months. The minority party cannot do anything right now. They don't have the votes, and haven't had the votes to stop anything. Every single idea presented by fiscally responsible members of the GOP (Paul Ryan for example) is not even considered... if they aren't physically locked out of the discussions like they were over healthcare. You have to get off that talking point that the GOP are to blame right now for our fiscal crisis. If the Democrats wanted to push through something that could honestly help, it would be easy as pie. I agree with you about having a single flat tax... it would supercharge the economy all by itself... which is why the government is opposed to it.

quote:

After this crisis, and the Great Depression, there will be a huge faction that see government as the answer. With that in mind, and that very faction in power, we are not going to be paying down the deficit by lowering taxes.

That's correct... because what's happening is by design; by human nature, people will incrementally give up bits and pieces of their liberty for someone to step in and quell the chaos; that someone being the only entity powerful enough to do so: government. And they know this. But government is actually not benevolent, nor does it have our best interests at heart. The power players do what they have to do to stay in power and grow. They never "tighten their belt", no matter how horrible the economic times are. This is why if the tax-and-spenders stay in power, they'll never lower taxes for any reason.

quote:

Kevin, there is something you must recognize here. The so-called, free market, fiscally conservative, Republican party of the last 8 years failed miserably. Their laissez-faire, pro-big business, de-regulatory, low tax policies failed. The tide of history has therefore, logically, shifted to the other side of the spectrum. All the solutions you outlined were exactly the policy of the Bush Administration. You can't expect the next administration to follow that lead when it clearly didn't work.

I agree- they failed miserably and deserved to be ousted from power. But they did not fail because of the principles of conservatism, which works every time its tried. They failed because they became what they most despised. And I'm all for regulation, but proper regulation. Our authoritarian, out of control super-state poses a regulatory burden on America now that costs us $1.2 trillion annually. Consider the following:
-3,503 new regulations took place last year.
-Regulatory costs absorb 8.3% of domestic GDP.
-Regulations + spending combined puts the federal government's share of the economy at over 30%.
-Regulations cost more than income tax!
-New rules that cost at least $100 million increased by 13% between 2007 and 2008.
http://cei.org/news-release/2010/04...eral-regulation

quote:

You have witnessed a shift in government policy, from right to left, which after 8 years of Bush, can only be seen as a logical shift. Obama wasn't voted into office to continue Bush's policies. You know that. America voted for a leftist president knowing full-well what they would get. And any country that would vote for the same party responsible for ballooning deficits, two un-paid wars, and a collapsing economy, is a country that doesn't deserve my respect.

Again, I agree- Republicans needed a swift kick in the ass and to be thrown out on their asses. Bravo to that. But the pendulum swung way too far in the other direction. We desperately need it to come back the other way a bit.

But I disagree that America knew what they were getting. Unfortunately, so many of them were grossly uninformed (and economically illiterate); Bush derangement syndrome was enough to vote for anybody... only now is the buyers remorse setting in, and the evidence of this is Chris Christie in New Jersey, Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Bob McDonnell in Virginia, and the tidal wave of Democrat losses coming in November's election. If this was what America wanted, Obama and the Democrats would be more popular than ever right now.

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss so, if what Bush and his team did was fucked up, what does that say about the current administration?

Bush wasn't facing an economic calamity during 7 of his 8 years of epic spend-a-thon.

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss Yes, we did... and aside from having an unemployment rate between 4.5 and 5% during Bush's tenure, more tax dollars went to the Federal Government than at any point in history. Deficits soared, as you correctly point out, at first... and then you can see the trend each year heading towards balance. Look for yourself at this motherfucker of a graph:

The huge increase isn't the Obama administration going wild on the government credit card. They are following the Roosevelt model, albeit, not satisfactorily in my opinion. I would have liked to see something like the Hoover Dam being built by now. Stimulus my ass. With the economy as it is, the government isn't going to be lowering taxes in the face of such a huge deficit. The government cannot count on the economy rising to the point in which tax revenues also increase.

quote:

This statement is very misguided. Please tell me what meaningful reform has the GOP stopped in the last 18 months. The minority party cannot do anything right now. They don't have the votes, and haven't had the votes to stop anything. Every single idea presented by fiscally responsible members of the GOP (Paul Ryan for example) is not even considered... if they aren't physically locked out of the discussions like they were over healthcare. You have to get off that talking point that the GOP are to blame right now for our fiscal crisis. If the Democrats wanted to push through something that could honestly help, it would be easy as pie. I agree with you about having a single flat tax... it would supercharge the economy all by itself... which is why the government is opposed to it.

I mean both sides of the aisle really. Look at China. They have no democracy and because of that, decision making is really fucking simple for them. For us, we have a long drawn out, petty bickering for months on end, only to get watered down legislation/reform. The Chinese also just has a huge real estate bubble, but they didn't collapse like we did. Why? They keep their banking system on lock-down. No prop trading desks or derivatives schemes. When their economy overheats, the Chinese government took drastic action. What did we do? Greenspan didn't do a damn thing other than raise interest rates to curb our bubble. Bush didn't do anything either. They saw this bubble as good. Why stop it if a record number of people now own homes and the Dow Jones is at 14,000? Case in point, our democratic system is a hulky, disfunctional, quagmire, and it's unfortunate that an authoritarian communist government is pwning us in just about every category except military hardware. What does it say when our biggest asset is the military, and not say, the best education system in the world? How sad.

quote:

That's correct... because what's happening is by design; by human nature, people will incrementally give up bits and pieces of their liberty for someone to step in and quell the chaos; that someone being the only entity powerful enough to do so: government. And they know this. But government is actually not benevolent, nor does it have our best interests at heart. The power players do what they have to do to stay in power and grow. They never "tighten their belt", no matter how horrible the economic times are. This is why if the tax-and-spenders stay in power, they'll never lower taxes for any reason.

When the private sector fails, government must step in. When unemployment is 20%, how can one continue to still believe that the economy should be "left alone"? Again, I would have liked stimulus money to have bankrolled something like a Hoover Dam, but nooooo...

quote:

I agree- they failed miserably and deserved to be ousted from power. But they did not fail because of the principles of conservatism, which works every time its tried. They failed because they became what they most despised. And I'm all for regulation, but proper regulation. Our authoritarian, out of control super-state poses a regulatory burden on America now that costs us $1.2 trillion annually. Consider the following: -3,503 new regulations took place last year. -Regulatory costs absorb 8.3% of domestic GDP. -Regulations + spending combined puts the federal government's share of the economy at over 30%. -Regulations cost more than income tax! -New rules that cost at least $100 million increased by 13% between 2007 and 2008. http://cei.org/news-release/2010/04...eral-regulation

Funny, when regulators fail because of a complex regulatory framework, they make it even more complex with more regulations! We need some like a Glass-Steagall. Simple rules that apply to everyone and hardly need some regulator applying faulty subjective judgment on a company based on complex garbage.

quote:

Again, I agree- Republicans needed a swift kick in the ass and to be thrown out on their asses. Bravo to that. But the pendulum swung way too far in the other direction. We desperately need it to come back the other way a bit.

Ah, the law of equilibrium. Bush was pretty fucking right wing. It was pretty much expected that we would get a president that was as leftist as Bush was right wing.

quote:

But I disagree that America knew what they were getting. Unfortunately, so many of them were grossly uninformed (and economically illiterate); Bush derangement syndrome was enough to vote for anybody... only now is the buyers remorse setting in, and the evidence of this is Chris Christie in New Jersey, Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Bob McDonnell in Virginia, and the tidal wave of Democrat losses coming in November's election. If this was what America wanted, Obama and the Democrats would be more popular than ever right now.

America wanted another Roosevelt. Obama is the closest thing to that, albeit, not enough for me anyways.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN Bush wasn't facing an economic calamity during 7 of his 8 years of epic spend-a-thon.

Our economy went into supersonic turmoil when 9/11 happened. We recovered a lot faster than anticipated.

quote:

I mean both sides of the aisle really. Look at China. They have no democracy and because of that, decision making is really fucking simple for them. For us, we have a long drawn out, petty bickering for months on end, only to get watered down legislation/reform. The Chinese also just has a huge real estate bubble, but they didn't collapse like we did. Why? They keep their banking system on lock-down. No prop trading desks or derivatives schemes. When their economy overheats, the Chinese government took drastic action. What did we do? Greenspan didn't do a damn thing other than raise interest rates to curb our bubble. Bush didn't do anything either. They saw this bubble as good. Why stop it if a record number of people now own homes and the Dow Jones is at 14,000? Case in point, our democratic system is a hulky, disfunctional, quagmire, and it's unfortunate that an authoritarian communist government is pwning us in just about every category except military hardware. What does it say when our biggest asset is the military, and not say, the best education system in the world? How sad.

Although this does make sense, we are not an authoritarian dictatorship (at least not yet, but Obama's doing his best to change that as much as he can). And my money says you'd be cool with Obama emulating China's model, but if a Republican became president you'd quickly be screaming for the ugly democratic process. It's supposed to be ugly and complicated for a reason- so that one person doesn't have the ability to become drunk with power and change everything as he sees fit. It pains me when leftists extoll the virtues of China's communist government. There are virtually no human rights there, working conditions are horrible, free speech is crushed, government controlls all information that gets out, and pollution is beyond your worst nightmares. Take a look at this photo essay of just that atrocity---> http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21...ution-in-china/

quote:

When the private sector fails, government must step in. When unemployment is 20%, how can one continue to still believe that the economy should be "left alone"?

The private sector's failings are not solely based on their doings. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are GSE's, and just as much to blame.

quote:

Funny, when regulators fail because of a complex regulatory framework, they make it even more complex with more regulations! We need some like a Glass-Steagall. Simple rules that apply to everyone and hardly need some regulator applying faulty subjective judgment on a company based on complex garbage.

Haha... +1. Legislators do what they know how to do: make laws. More and more of them, slowly strangling a business' ability to function. As a business owner yourself, just wait man- you'll begin to see shit from a totally different angle.

quote:

Ah, the law of equilibrium. Bush was pretty fucking right wing. It was pretty much expected that we would get a president that was as leftist as Bush was right wing.

Correction: he "was" pretty right wing. Until he became a big spender, grew the size of government, pushed for amnesty in 2007, and basically abandoned several of his principles. By the time he left office, he was almost at John McCain linguini spine moderate levels.

quote:

America wanted another Roosevelt. Obama is the closest thing to that, albeit, not enough for me anyways.

Most Americans lack the understanding of what Roosevelt really did. The eradication of the American historical memory is in full force. I mean, shit man, there was a Marist poll the other day showing how 26% of us don't even know who we're celebrating our independence from! American's just knew they didn't want another Bush or Republican for that matter, and ran the other direction too far. It's like the teenage girl who breaks up with her strait laced boyfriend and then goes out with the dropout sporting tatoos and 47 piercings. Eventually, they'll be a regression to the mean. (hint: this november )

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss Our economy went into supersonic turmoil when 9/11 happened. We recovered a lot faster than anticipated.

The cause of that problem had nothing to do with economics. Of course things recovered relatively well.

___________________