Muscatine

I love when people bash the Reagan years in office, my parents and grandparents were more prosperous  in the Reagan years. My parents did better in the 80's than they did under clintons years. My parents were able to buy a beautiful home in the 80's they paid 50,000.00 for it. My father worked for Prime Mover as a laborer, my mother babysat.

Its funny cuz my dad lost his job, and thier home during clintons tenure.

Friends of ours also were more prosperous in the 80's as well.

You and chosen dont get it, people from both parties screwed this country up.

You have this belief that the dems, if elected will raise taxes on themselves. When was the last time you looked in your wallet and said "darn it i have 20.00 in there, man i better get my taxes raised, cuz im just not paying my fair share" you my friend are ignorant to believe that the wealthy people in congress are going to vote to raise thier taxes, Do u think John Kerry will telll his wife with her Heinz fortune to ante up?

Well ok they may but im sure they will vote themselves a raise to offset it.

And this bailout was a bi-partisan deal, people from both sides of the isle.

During the 80's HON was one of the best paying places to work. During the clinton years the wages dropped considerably, prime mover followed suit after Hon sold them .

The republicans believe if u allow more buisiness'to keep more of their money they will expand and create jobs.

As i stated the other night in another posting, they say that the tax rate on buisiness' is 35percent , foriegn countries offer tax rates of 10 percent, so if u do the math a company can afford to expand and create new jobs, unfortunately they have to move thier companies from the U.S. TO DO IT!

heres a cut and paste item.

Soak the Rich: Cut Their Tax Rates!

Pete du Pont

Former Governor of Delaware, is
Policy Chairman of the
National Center for Policy Analysis

Raising taxes on the wealthy has been a staple of liberal dogma since Karl Marx championed the idea in Das Kapital in 1867. Modern liberals - Clinton, Kennedy, Bonior, et al - always see the need to raise taxes on the wealthy to make them pay their "fair share."

But if that is the liberals' goal, their ways and means of reaching it are badly flawed. For if you want to soak the rich, cut their tax rates!

A revealing analysis by Ed Rubenstein, "When Less Is More: Tax Lessons of the 1990s," in the October 31^st edition of the on-line public policy weekly, IntellectualCapital.com, reached just this conclusion: reduce tax rates on the wealthy and their share of tax payments will increase.

Rubenstein looked at three significant changes in tax policy enacted in the '80s and '90s: the Reagan tax cut of 1981, and the Bush and Clinton tax increases of 1990 and 1993. His conclusion: the wealthy paid significantly more taxes after tax rates were cut in 1981; they paid much less in taxes when rates were raised by President Bush in 1990; and not much more after the Clinton tax increases of 1993.

Rubenstein's data demonstrate that four years after the Reagan tax cuts of 1981 "overall tax collections increased by 16%" but "people making more than $200,000 were paying 127% more taxes in 1985 than they had been in 1981." IRS data show that people with incomes of $100,000-200,000 were paying 41% more; $200,000-500,000 76% more; and those with incomes above $500,000, 201% more taxes. All this while marginal tax rates on these people were dropping from 70% to 28%.

The Bush tax rate increases of 1990 had just the opposite effect. His new 31% tax bracket for people making $200,000 or more reduced tax payments for those taxpayers by $2.5 billion, or about 2.4%. Rubenstein explains: "But for everyone else, [those with incomes less than $200,000] tax payments actually rose, by $3.6 billion, or 1%. This odd dichotomy makes it difficult to blame the entire reduction in income tax revenues on a weak economy. The rich didn't have a bad year, they merely changed their behavior in response to higher tax rates. They bought more municipal bonds, converted ordinary income to capital gains, worked less, and shifted discretionary income to 1990, when rates were lower. In the process, they foisted a larger share of the tax burden on less affluent taxpayers...."

The Clinton tax increase adds further basis to Rubenstein's thesis. Like Bush, Clinton created a new, higher rate bracket for the wealthy: 39.6% instead of 31% on individuals earning more than $200,000. One would think that this higher rate would have produced higher tax payments by the very wealthy. It did, 11.4% more revenue in 1993 than in 1992. But tax revenues from the $100,000-200,000 income individuals - to whom the new rate did not apply - rose about the same amount, 11.7%. So, "instead of collecting an extra $16 billion from taxpayers in the $200,000+ income group, as was forecast, Uncle Sam received just $5 billion."

Rubenstein analyzed what happened. "In analyzing the tax results, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein finds that affluent people reported nearly 9% less taxable income in 1993 than they would have at the old tax rates. This was accomplished in many ways. High income taxpayers made more aggressive use of existing tax loopholes. Or they simply worked less. Working wives seemed especially affected by higher tax rates. The percentage of families with two or more earners fell from 58.2% in 1989 to 56.4% in 1993."

"At the end of the day," Rubenstein concludes, "income tax revenues fell to 9.3% of personal income in 1993, down from 9.6% in 1989, when the top rate was still 28%."

The bottom line is simply this: "Federal income tax rates for affluent taxpayers were increased twice in the 1990s. Wealthy taxpayers, however, account for a smaller share of income tax payments today than before the rate hikes."

Raising tax rates on the wealthy turns out to be a net loss; the economy suffers but the wealthy are unaffected. Incentives to save and invest and work are reduced; only class warfare rhetoric is increased.

So, liberals, if you want to soak the rich, forget Karl Marx and all that egalitarian rhetoric. Just cut their tax rates; then they'll pay more.

http://www.ncpa.org/oped/dupont/nov796.html

Sorry to hear thier plite.

We lived it too. The Clinton years were the next step of the ill effects of globalization, corporate monster profit taking, and the realization that "trickle down" doesn't work. Then the repubs took a 2/3rds majority and Clinton became the Reagan and Bush years scapegoat. A modern paria denounced and maligned for his personal life and the fact mind you, that unlike Bush, Clinton's congress refused him any room. The dumbest manuver the man took was to pass NAFTA. I voted for Dole and stood by that conviction, though even today I understood my own mistake. the NAFTA Slick Willie passed was rewritten under GW to occomadate those power-hungry profits-mongering(Hon) corporations. In spite of the lesser tax cuts Clinton passed. He still signed breaks that citizens didn't reap.

The 80's. What a crappy decade for the middle. The highest and the lowest got enough, the enegry crisis, (started under Nixon) broken unions, reckelessness in corporate shuffeling, blasted to dust our regulatory and oversight commissions. And, the man in charge? Ronnie. We worked for $3.40 an hour. We paid over a dollor for a gallon of gas and saw no end in sight. Then came the newest market mess. Then came the turmoil spawned by Reaganomics perpetuated again under GHW Bush and the S&L scandal bailout. I'll take a hit here, but Clinton didn't create the messes he tried tirelessly to correct though he took the blame for. Hoover had nothing to do with the depression and anyone with at least half a brain knows that(which I'm certain you do) but he took the blame and even today there are some short-sighted goombas that still think he caused it. The chartered "new deal" was Hoover's baby and FDR scooped up the credit. Hoover a repub. FDR and dem. I will never give the credit  or blame entirely to one party. But the highest office in the land holds the books on who did or didn't do what. Tight control, "do as I say not as I do" and secretism tactics like Tricky Dick(oil,HMO,spying)  Ronnie, GHW and GW are the Repub's major achilles heal. Never has this nation been so shrouded in undercover tactics, fear mongering, and abuse of power than under these "best accept it or be called unpatriotic" scammers. So you are wrong, I do get it. "they are all crooks," but you have to see by now that since 1960. we have been on this roller caoster of shame while "those with the most deserve more" mentality that only hurts this nation in the long run. And by God there have been three to one Repubs leading the charge.

I had to chuckle at the comment about those congressional scum(my term)both sides, raising taxes on themselves. A wonderful notion to be sure, but as you point out, it would take a noble call to arms to get it done. However, they have and we sent them a message. Do.. or leave the seats you hold. You recall the 33% pay raise congress voted thenselves in 1995? I laughed myself to sleep. We sent letters and  made calls at a record number and pace. Congress said "okay we get it. We see that you are suffering and how dare us take you even deeper into debt." Funny days they were then. But just like the bad car dealer who asked 50% more than he has in a car, he knew the haggling would start and took only 20% more than he had in the car. A standing ovation had to occur after that deal was finally hammered out. All of them did that too. These bastards have more than enough and so does corporate America, a tax alignment is due and needed. Budgetary shortfall has been the norm now for far too long under that kind of management.

The Bailout! There's a good one. Bipartisan scam crammed up all our asses and penned by the big guy himself. Odd that it took nearly another 102 billion stuffed in there by the unhappy repubs who stalled it in the first place to finally climb aboard. Sadly that they did. I actually applauded them for stopping it, but then it became clear the real reasons, not enough tax-break pork for them. Funny huh?

I cannot get beyond the lack of folks understanding here. Corporate greediness and the endless passage of opening our borders(the wrong way) to corporate trade legislation with this electorate. It just seems to be so hard for people to see what took place in a multi leveled attack on American goods and services by Powerful wealthy lobyists/corporations/crooked politico/oil/health/drugs/ auto and energy industries in this country; who care only about HUGE profits and the stupid legislators that gave them the green light. My uncle was one of those Hon wheels under a white collar that suffered that mentality under the Clinton tenure. Yes, it happened as it did all across the country. It didn't happen in a year or even ten, it took a couple decades to get us there and here. I get giddy when I read that "the Rebiblicans think that if you let those with the most keep more it will be spread to the rest." A fine notion if you structure our commerce system so they have to oblige. Yes have to, because if you let them as they have been allowed since 1993, even with the massive tax breaks they have been given(even under Clinton) they will choose to LEAVE US HIGH AND DRY while they close factory after factory reap the BILLIONS (HON/Detroit/Amana/John Deere/Cat/Leer/Prime Mover/Singer/Carver and the list goes on and on- growing by the hundereds annually. Leaving the entire country in the greatest debt, unemployed, homeless, uneducated, and hopeless. Ask them how much they lost in the past couple decades, or better yet just take a look at thier books when you get to the Bahams, Camens, Hong Kong and so on. So yup, it's a fine notion, let those with the most keep more, but it fails every time you let them have what they want.   

They get the best deal in non-taxable corporate income by not having to report any off shore. It's not the business tax breaks; they got them galore, and it still behooves them to exit the USA for even greter profits. Tell me, how do you justify any tax breaks to a company that fires 5000 workers here and moves to Mexico, Central or South America, or even China? You cannot. But they still get them and it costs us even more as a nation. That's why I can no longer tollerate the Repubs. Your family and mine are broke now and or unemployed as a result of the passgae of ALL these greedy and reckless trade deals that have done nothing for America. It just makes those obscenely rich even richer. All the worst and most reckless under GW and the 2/3rds leading republican Congress. I want that crap repealed and I know that only the dems will even try to do it should we all get fed up finally and tell them if they don't already see it. 

Oh yeah,..... Santa, I want congressional term limits too. 

I understand your points, and the points ive tried to make is that dems and republicans  are responsible.Both parties are to blame. Heres a fine example, someone wants to pass something, but needs support so pork barrell spedning gets added to it.

I want term limits too, for congress and the president. Yes i know the president is limited. But if a prez screws up, we should have the right to say "sorry u cant run this time, put someone else up"

"We the people" dont have the control over the officials that we've elected. We've essentially hired these people, but have no right to "fire" them if they screw up badly, until the election.

If i screw up badly at Hon, they have the right to terminate me right then and there, not 3 or 4 yrs later.

If "we the people" had more control and dumped politicians right then and there i think our government would work for those who put them in that posistion versus those who provide them the most money for , campaign contributions or remodeling thier homes or other gifts and such.