Tea Party Cheers For American Credit Downgrade

[dedndave]

it's not having money
it's having more money than you could possibly spend in a life-time
this seperates those who may even have a few million from those who have several billion
they screwed someone (usually, the working class)
"evil" isn't the word i chose - that's your word - don't put it in my mouth
i used the terms "moral" and "ethical"

[baltoro]

...When I read this,...I laughed,...

In fact, many of the headlines here in Europe concerning the U.S. deal with things that are just very, very strange for the average European, such as "intelligent design" taught in schools, climate change deniers, kids who accidentally kill their parents with guns lying around, death penalty, etc etc - Europeans see Americans like a kind of Alien race.

That's pretty damn accurate. You cannot believe what it's like to actually live here,...Everybody's angry all the time,...and, they're not even clear as to why that should be happening. Every goddamn day, it's a tsunami of stupidity and shit that's so trivial and pointless you'd think the whole world was hopelessly psychotic,...it's like they've regressed back into childhood.

[anunitu]

it is an old concept, but it comes up a lot..if I screwed you,it was nothing personal,just business. That was a line from the movie "Taken"
Where the main guy responsible for the main characters daughter being kidnapped says "it wasen't personal,its just business" right before the main goodguy shoots him and says "its personal!!"

[hutch--]

To a foreigner (ME Aussie) there is something blatantly obvious about the changes in the US over the last 15 years or so. When Clinton was in office the US was prosperous, safe, stable and well respected internationally. 2 terms of Bush saw two unwinnable wars started, fascist level control of Americans with the Patriot Act, progressive bleeding of American finances with the banking sector who control the Federal Reserve and the final rape and pillage of the US economy in late 2007 with the bank bailouts.

Obama did not create the situation that the US is in at the moment, the damage was done by Bush and his cronies. Effectively Obama was handed the poisoned chalice and has been very limited in what he could do about the mess that Bush left. He has wound down the Iraq war and appears to be acting to wind down the Afghanistan war as well but most of the economic damage is already done and the massive profits derived from these two wars have gone overseas. Is it any surprise the Haliburton is now based in Dubai ?

[dedndave]

i know!!!
we can pull all the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and invake Dubai - take all our money back   :U
i know damned well all the board members live in the US   :P
they should be paying taxes, if they are any kind of "patriots"
(patriotism was a key issue in the elections where they jammed their buddies bush and cheney into the white house)
of course, the money is probably in Switzerland - we'll invade them, too   :bg
neutral, my ass

[NPNW]

asmghost,


What set of circumstances is when we need to change things?

[xanatose]

Increasing taxes will not help on this, as the mega corporations just keep the money out of the USA. For example, Apple keeping billions in Europe, and Google having an equivalent of 2.4% tax rate in the USA. Instead, why not focus on helping the small to middle size companies whose assets are on the USA as they are the ones creating jobs and keeping the money inside. Make it as simple as possible for a small to medium company to do business in the USA, And make it difficult for those companies that keep the assets outside (where they cannot be effectively taxed).

Government has made many mistakes. But, IMBO, the biggest one was to bail out the banks. If a bank holding mortgages goes out of business, the would mean that the cost of property would have lower. But since they where bail out, the cost of property still remains artificially high (compared with the average salary). This in turn means that less people can afford to buy a home and instead are forced in the circle of rent paying. Which means that the money did not get to average joe. When government bails our an irresponsible party, it harms a responsible party.

Money (as means of conveniently interchange resources) if the bloodline of an economy. When it does not flow, the economy health lowers. When it stop flowing, the economy have a hearth attack. And if it stops for a while the economy disintegrates. Keeping the money in a few, is the equivalent of lowering the amount of blood circulating.

Capitalism only works when the failed enterprises are allowed to fail. Otherwise, if just a rigged game that only helps a few, while hinders the rest. So I guess we should made up our minds of what we are. Are we a capitalistic society or are we a socialist society. Being both just bring the worse of both worlds.

[jj2007]

Increasing taxes will not help on this, as the mega corporations just keep the money out of the USA.

Right, but there are taxes you cannot avoid. For example, European countries tax fuel - try getting tax-free fuel for your car here, it is kind of difficult...

Or take land ownership: Tax any land that exceeds, say, 10,000 square metres per person or corporate identity. You cannot take your land to Dubai...

Tax alcohol and cigarettes, and Marihuana; and an economist with a strong neoclassical ideological stance would say, cocaine and heroine and other dangerous stuff, too - why leave that revenue to the mafia?

Not by accident, the least efficient tax in terms of evasion, income tax, is still dominating in OECD countries. Guess why :toothy

There are some other nice tricks to get income distribution back to normal, but that would be over the top for an assembly forum ;-)

[hutch--]

> Make it as simple as possible for a small to medium company to do business in the USA, And make it difficult for those companies that keep the assets outside (where they cannot be effectively taxed).

There is great wisdom in this suggestion but as long as the big end of town have the political clout, they will fight it tooth and nail to keep their advantages. Here is OZ back in the late 90s a federal government introduced a tax system for small business that was designed to drive them to the wall, an accounting system so complex and heavy handed that it was beyond the capacity of many small family businesses. They did it by forcing small family businesses to have the same accounting methods as massive corporations who have far more complex accounting needs than a family sized business.

It did the job for the corporate sector and drove a vast number o small businesses to the wall. Then they have another trick, changing government regulation to directly suit the interests of corporations at the expense of small business. Many successful small businesses wee driven to the wall with massive costs to satisfy the newer and ever more complex regulations that were put in place.

The way to kill small business is to price it out of existence with massive workloads and ever increasing government charges, taxes, compulsory insurance and so on until they just give up and shut down.

[Bill Cravener]

BANK OF AMERICA: In 2009, Bank of America didn't pay a single penny in federal income taxes.  BOEING: Despite receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies from the U.S. government they didn't pay a dime of U.S. income taxes between 2008 and 2010. CITIGROUP: Citigroup's deferred income taxes for the third quarter of 2010 amounted to a grand total of $0.00. EXXON-MOBIL: The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying any taxes in the United States. WELLS FARGO: Despite being the fourth largest bank in the country pay little or nothing in taxes. And on and on it goes. Its nuts!

These days I find it difficult to say the words "I'm proud to be an American". Its a sad thing that we are pretty near to becoming a fascists country.

I guess George Carlin had it right (warning profanity): http://youtu.be/acLW1vFO-2Q

[NPNW]

I personally would like to see Eisenhower's tax plan re implemented. As a Republican, he increased taxes to 93%.

[NPNW]

here is a link with more info on Ike. 

If Ike were here again, I'd vote Republican.


blueworksbetter.com/EisenhowerFlamingLiberal

[hutch--]

yep,

IKE was one of the best and the only recent Republican that was decent.

Bill, nothing wrong with being an American, its just you have lousy gutless politicians.

[Bill Cravener]

I remember Ike, I was but a boy watching him on the families black and white TV. :bg

Bill, nothing wrong with being an American, its just you have lousy gutless politicians.

I agree Steve, its just that I get fed up with the right insisting that the wealthy not pay there fair share by refusing to not increase taxes on those who have benefited the most from this country. Bush and his cronies two unfunded wars and the Bush tax cuts to the rich and the loopholes big corp use to steal from the average American are what brought us to this mess. I remember you and me getting into big augments with those members from the right over at that other asm board and you and I both knew this mess would come to be because of the Bush administrations arrogance.

By the way, this new CNN/ORC International Poll says that most Americans agree that the rich should pay more and some two-thirds polled say that politician's best not monkey with SS and Medicare.

New CNN Poll: Majority want tax increase for wealthy

[hutch--]

I have a similar long memory Bill, i made a lot of enemies and was targetted with a lot of nasty sh*t from that bunch of kissarse cockroaches but I notice they are strangely silent these days. They were all mouth when Bush and his cronies were raping US taxpayers and attacking US civil liberties but when they did the final pillage in 2007 the same set of cockroaches were PHUKED over by him as well. I guess there is some justice in the world, just a shame that ordinary decent Amricans have to pay for it as well.