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6 months from the largest tax increases in history (pg. 3)
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| Comrade Stalin |
| Did you guys know we still haven't paid off the debt from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803? 1803 bonds are still outstanding! You can also buy bonds outstanding from World War I if you wanted to. Case in point. This country was built on debt, and debt isn't necessarily a bad thing. Of course, too much debt is a bad thing. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Comrade Stalin
Did you guys know we still haven't paid off the debt from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803? 1803 bonds are still outstanding! You can also buy bonds outstanding from World War I if you wanted to. Case in point. This country was built on debt, and debt isn't necessarily a bad thing. Of course, too much debt is a bad thing. |
I didn't know that and I'm honestly skeptical without some factual evidence. I mean that was like $20! How can you buy bonds from WWI when long bonds have never (to my knowledge) been issued with a maturity longer than 30 (maybe 50) years? Perhaps the paper was rolled, but I doubt we're talking about the same paper that was issued in 1917. I'll gladly eat my words if you can point me in the direction of the evidence! (I can find most stuff on my Bloomberg terminal, but I'm not sure how to find that!).
That said, I did find this: http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/001818.html
But it doesn't sound like paper that has "indefinite" maturity, rather it sounds like somebody had a rectal-cranial inversion. |
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| Comrade Stalin |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
I didn't know that and I'm honestly skeptical without some factual evidence. I mean that was like $20! How can you buy bonds from WWI when long bonds have never (to my knowledge) been issued with a maturity longer than 30 (maybe 50) years? Perhaps the paper was rolled, but I doubt we're talking about the same paper that was issued in 1917. I'll gladly eat my words if you can point me in the direction of the evidence!
That said, I did find this: http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/001818.html
But it doesn't sound like paper that has "indefinite" maturity, rather it sounds like somebody had a rectal-cranial inversion. |
It's hard to find. I tried googling but no workie workie :(. I know this anecdotally so I'm not exactly able to prove it at the moment. If I recall, I heard that Louisiana Purchase debt was still outstanding, by a guest on either CNBC, or listening to 'Taking Stock' on Bloomberg radio. I've used every search term I could think of and couldn't find anything beyond what you already found.
| quote: | | (I can find most stuff on my Bloomberg terminal, but I'm not sure how to find that!). |
Damn, you got Bloomberg terminal, you lucky dog. I've recently been using the thinkorswim platform (free of course), and I've got to say. I really really like it. Of course it's nowhere near as awesome as the Bloomberg or Reuters terminals, but it'll do. How much is it? Like $1000/month subscription? I recently called Reuters to inquire about access to their data for my models and they told it's $100k per year!:wtf: But that's nothing for a hedge fund I suppose. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Comrade Stalin
How much is it? Like $1000/month subscription? I recently called Reuters to inquire about access to their data for my models and they told it's $100k per year!:wtf: But that's nothing for a hedge fund I suppose. |
I think it's around that. It's a soft-dollar expense so the company doesn't incur any of the cost (or probably no more than 10% of it). It's all paid for by brokerage commissions. It's quite a powerful piece of software! |
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| The17sss |
| quote: | Originally posted by jdat
Today states are having to cut back on everything because there is no tax money coming in. |
... and because of hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded Union liabilities that are crushing the private sector in those states. And because of like this:
IL governor hands out 20% raises to staff while proposing to borrow billions to close budget shortfall.
| quote: | Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has handed out raises — some of more than 20 percent — to his staff while proclaiming a message of "shared sacrifice" and planning spending cuts of $1.4 billion because the state is awash in debt. The Democrat has given 43 salary increases averaging 11.4 percent to 35 staffers in the past 15 months, according to an Associated Press analysis of records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
They include a $24,000-a-year bump for the man promoted to shepherd the state through the fiscal storm. Budget Director David Vaught got a 20 percent raise to bring his pay to $144,000 in October when he moved to his new position from Quinn's staff, where he was a senior adviser. |
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...OSlu-gD9GPUODG0
Quinn's solution to the state's $13 billion budget deficit? Borrow more money and delay bill payments, according to the AP. Illinois owes its public sector unions' pension plans roughly $4 billion and Quinn has proposed to borrow that money too. They also take 250 days to pay their bills, putting contractors and suppliers out of business. Fiscal deficit hawks, them Dems be! |
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| atbell |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
What the is this nonsense? You just destroy credibility with completely asinine statements like this. Sorry.:sadgreen: |
Is that all it takes to destroy credibility these days. I was hoping I could at least get to do some cigar play first...
Why don't you check the facts out a bit first. Are most serial killers conservatives who are trying to prove something? Why would I bring this up?
It's because it demonstrates what happens when people are trying to hold on to tightly to something that is past. Most people who do so just get frustrated and scared, those who are unstable will explode in a number of ways.
The idea of holding 'conservative' ideologies is that people want to preserve the past and that just plain doesn't work because the past is gone and the future just keeps comming. It's a better strategy to embrace the future and pull out the things that did well from the past which can be adopted to current realities.
In investing being conservative is an attempt to preserve capital. This usually works but inflation generally destroys all those gains. Money is usually made through taking well understood risks which then pay off. This could probably be quantified with a bit of work. The goal is not to invest in risk for the pure pleasure of risktaking but to study and understand where the market has made mistakes in thier evaluation of the risk of an asset.
well that either clears things up or makes it worse. |
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| atbell |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
You're a ing idiot who knows nothing of economics. I run a goddamn company- I understand how it works. If raising taxes was the solution, how come New Jersey, for example, is ever deeper in the red after taxes had been raised 115 times in the past 5 years? If your rationale worked, they'd be in the black. WITHOUT RAISING TAXES, Chris Christie already cut an $11 billion portion of the state deficit into zero by cutting wasteful spending, and freezing public sector union pay... not cutting it, just not allowing another raise like they constantly demand, even while the rest of the private sector suffers.
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Idiot or someone who wants to get a reaction, ... hook, line and sinker so far.
Do you think that maybe your not the only one who owns a company?
Do you think that maybe owning a company only offers some insight into economics, and only micro economics at that?
I don't think I said raising taxes was the solution but tax cuts certainly isn't.
The solution is paying for things that you use. Does your company get water? Do you drive to work? Do you have police that would respond to a break in? What about firemen?
I can tell you why NJ is in the red, because they spend more then they take in. That's always a simple answer.
So Chris Christie has cut a portion of the deficit, that means that his constituentcy will still be more in debt each year. Surplusses need to be run to pay off DEBT because the US owes the world a lot of money right now. To do that someone has to pay, that someone is US citizens. The way they are going to pay is yet to be determined.
Really, the finances of the government aren't so bad compared to the private sector so taxes shouldn't really be an issue. Credit card bills, car payments, mortgages, and student loans are what are crimping the econmy more than taxes.
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Good lord! When has it ever worked? Where's your memory of history? Life didn't start during Bill Clinton's presidency. How about after Jimmy Carter got booted out of office, with 12% unemployment, economic malaise, gas lines, inflation out the ass, and a top marginal tax rate of 70%!? Reagan steadily lowered that tax burden and BOOM... 20 million jobs created in 8 years and economic growth like crazy.
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My memory goes back a long way.
My data goes back to 1975 when the US began raising debt levels exponentially to obtain linear growth in GDP.
Ragan = fake growth
Bush I = fake growth
Clinton = fake growth
Bush II = fake growth
What needs to be confronted is that the 'solves' to the problems of the '70s were not. All of the 'prosperity' was fake because the amount of money that has been used to get the US economy going as it has been going is orders of magnitude bigger than the amount it produced.
The complexity which was applied hid this for a long time but even the most sucessful business are only sucessfull because of someone elses debt.
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It's so ing simple- as I explained before, if you have more people employed, you have more people paying taxes.. even at a lower rate, more people paying into the system bring more revenue to the government. How do you employ more people? Well, when people and businesses have more disposable income NOT confiscated by taxation, they hire, they invest, they expand businesses, they have more discretionary spending they use... the economy grows. Hello! European economic stagflation for the past 25 years as taxes rise and welfare benefits increase. If you sit down with CEO's and actual business owners, instead of listening to David Axelrod or whichever academic elite gives you a boner, you might learn something. |
It is not that simple, if it was you'd do the math to show it.
It's ok, I don't mind that you suck at grade 9 math, multiplying is hard.
Here's the math.
Company A pays 100,000 in taxes, all of that goes to the government.
If the taxes are cut so company A can hire workers with that 100,000 then only a fraction, say 25%, of the income of low wage employees goes to the government, that's 25,000.
Net government revenue goes down $75,000 thanks to a tax cut that is used 100% to pay for new hires ... at the astounding income tax rate of 25%.
Suck it up, pay your taxes.
The CEO's of America are the ones who have lead the country into the quagmire of 50 trillion dollars of debt with a GDP of 15 trillion.
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And you know what they are going to do now? MOVE TO CHINA, INDIA, and BRAZIL to try and do it again.
Have fun! |
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| atbell |
| quote: | Originally posted by Comrade Stalin
Did you guys know we still haven't paid off the debt from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803? 1803 bonds are still outstanding! You can also buy bonds outstanding from World War I if you wanted to. Case in point. This country was built on debt, and debt isn't necessarily a bad thing. Of course, too much debt is a bad thing. |
Debt for investment is ok but it's always best not to be in debt.
In a competative environment those who have debt payments to make start off at a disadvantage. |
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| atbell |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
... and because of hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded Union liabilities that are crushing the private sector in those states. And because of like this:
IL governor hands out 20% raises to staff while proposing to borrow billions to close budget shortfall.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...OSlu-gD9GPUODG0
Quinn's solution to the state's $13 billion budget deficit? Borrow more money and delay bill payments, according to the AP. Illinois owes its public sector unions' pension plans roughly $4 billion and Quinn has proposed to borrow that money too. They also take 250 days to pay their bills, putting contractors and suppliers out of business. Fiscal deficit hawks, them Dems be! |
This is a part of the problem for sure. It is hardly the union's fault that management, public and private, didn't keep their obligations.
What other options does Quin have to pay off bills if by your account he's not alowed to raise taxes? How much was the 20% raise worth? Apples to apples here. It's clear that the raise wasn't a good idea but it would be nice to know how much of that $13 billion would go away ... 1 million maybe? 10 million?
So that would reduce the problems to ... ah $12.99 billion. Oh, almost there, now for your non-tax fix. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by atbell
Is that all it takes to destroy credibility these days. I was hoping I could at least get to do some cigar play first...
Why don't you check the facts out a bit first. Are most serial killers conservatives who are trying to prove something? Why would I bring this up?
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Are you seriously and honestly going to try to pursue this? OK, what kind of sources do you have that actually substantiates anything remotely close to the absurd claim you are making?
FACT: Most, if not all, serial killers are deranged sociopaths. The end. Political ideology does not a murderer make. Quit being foolish.
The only way I can see anything close to that argument being feasibly made is if you present radical Islam as a political ideology (and somehow get around the overreaching contorted religious drivers behind it). It's one of the only ones I know of that ardently advocates for the killing of people. But then we wouldn't be talking about serial killers anymore, rather a whole sect of religious nutbags that want to take over the world.
Last I checked it is conservative right-wingers who support the death penalty for convicted murderers (including those serial killers) while it is those crazy liberal lefties who support killing of innocent babies..err abortion. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
it is those crazy liberal lefties who support killing of innocent babies..err abortion. |
Well in all fairness those little heads probably aren't going to grow up to be innocent at all. I say we kill them all to be safe and let god sort it all out in the end. Amen.
/and for the record, being pro state sentencing of the death penalty doesn't exclude you from the business of killing innocents
//couldn't be bothered to read the entire thread, so as a single earner with no dependents making less than a quarter million a year are my taxes going up in 6 months? If so it's about time. |
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| Shakka |
speaking of taxes...
who cares, right? Better get that SCOTUS stacked the other way fast!
| quote: |
Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”
And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.
Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.
Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.
In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.
Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.
While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.
“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”
When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”
Congress anticipated a constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Accordingly, the law includes 10 detailed findings meant to show that the mandate regulates commercial activity important to the nation’s economy. Nowhere does Congress cite its taxing power as a source of authority.
Under the Constitution, Congress can exercise its taxing power to provide for the “general welfare.” It is for Congress, not courts, to decide which taxes are “conducive to the general welfare,” the Supreme Court said 73 years ago in upholding the Social Security Act.
Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, described the tax power as an alternative source of authority.
“The Commerce Clause supplies sufficient authority for the shared-responsibility requirements in the new health reform law,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “To the extent that there is any question of additional authority — and we don’t believe there is — it would be available through the General Welfare Clause.”
The law describes the levy on the uninsured as a “penalty” rather than a tax. The Justice Department brushes aside the distinction, saying “the statutory label” does not matter. The constitutionality of a tax law depends on “its practical operation,” not the precise form of words used to describe it, the department says, citing a long line of Supreme Court cases.
Moreover, the department says the penalty is a tax because it will raise substantial revenue: $4 billion a year by 2017, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
In addition, the department notes, the penalty is imposed and collected under the Internal Revenue Code, and people must report it on their tax returns “as an addition to income tax liability.”
Because the penalty is a tax, the department says, no one can challenge it in court before paying it and seeking a refund.
Jack M. Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School who supports the new law, said, “The tax argument is the strongest argument for upholding” the individual-coverage requirement.
Mr. Obama “has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this bill,” Mr. Balkin said last month at a meeting of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal organization. “This bill is a tax. Because it’s a tax, it’s completely constitutional.”
Mr. Balkin and other law professors pressed that argument in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in one of the pending cases.
Opponents contend that the “minimum coverage provision” is unconstitutional because it exceeds Congress’s power to regulate commerce.
“This is the first time that Congress has ever ordered Americans to use their own money to purchase a particular good or service,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah.
In their lawsuit, Florida and other states say: “Congress is attempting to regulate and penalize Americans for choosing not to engage in economic activity. If Congress can do this much, there will be virtually no sphere of private decision-making beyond the reach of federal power.”
In reply, the administration and its allies say that a person who goes without insurance is simply choosing to pay for health care out of pocket at a later date. In the aggregate, they say, these decisions have a substantial effect on the interstate market for health care and health insurance.
In its legal briefs, the Obama administration points to a famous New Deal case, Wickard v. Filburn, in which the Supreme Court upheld a penalty imposed on an Ohio farmer who had grown a small amount of wheat, in excess of his production quota, purely for his own use.
The wheat grown by Roscoe Filburn “may be trivial by itself,” the court said, but when combined with the output of other small farmers, it significantly affected interstate commerce and could therefore be regulated by the government as part of a broad scheme regulating interstate commerce. |
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