Obama camp demands Romney's tax returns from the 80's

Its not, as long as they have a reason besides greed and selfishness. I would ask that you look at historical tax rates and then look at the current budget deficit and national debt.

Why is it wrong for the government to set a progressive tax rate that is SUSTAINABLE and does not increase debt?

The obvious answer to the republican mantra that "low tax rates creates jobs" is hysterical laughter, because look at out present situation and every damned republican President since Reagan has done the same fucking thing, lower taxes and run up the deficit!

HELLO!!! ITS NOT SUSTAINABLE!!!

Taxation is not anywhere the equivalent of seizing property, the man on the radio taught you that. The premise is so retarded and partisan, it really doesn't belong in a serious discussion.

I don't disagree but the Federal Government has its job to do. Discretionary spending is not that big a percentage of the budget, they have bills to pay and they must be paid. Right now, taxes are at their lowest point in history and it is not working out.

Yet the 1% still pays too large a share in income. You can drone on about the tax rates being low (which they are not the lowest in history no matter how many irrelevant articles you post), but the fact remains that the 1% have a huge tax burden on them, compared to the bottom 53% who net at zero. This doesn't seem like the structure that the 1% would layout given the opportunity.

Yeah, that's worked well historically... yes, we have the option of not learning from the past, but why repeat those failures?

I would ask that you look at spending as a percent of GDP. But we agree on this:
HELLO!!! ITS NOT SUSTAINABLE!!!

It is when the bottom 51% can vote to take away from the top 49%

My premise has nothing to do with creating jobs or a republican mantra or hardly anybody on the radio. I believe certain federal mandates should be repealed and we let the states deal with the liability of fallout. States can, and have handled safety programs and environmental issues, mandated by the feds, very well, and have learned they can actually increase the state coffers by doing so. We end up with state and federal programs stacked on top of each other doing exactly the same thing. I believe the end result would end in lower fed taxes for most and maybe higher state taxes for others. I also believe the only thing we need the Feds for is protection from foreign enemies, protecting equal and civil rights, and helping the needy. In terms of illegal searches, without the mandated work place safety rules the SCOTUS would be able to look at probable cause without impunity. Sometimes we paint ourselves into a corner with fucking brush, disbanding needless government agencies, in my opinion. would be a great start.

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I also do not think it's wrong to ask for accountability when asked to pay more. As long as there is a mutual agreement on the shit that's got to get done. People need to research their opinions and see where the end results are. If people did that, we might find out we agree more than we think.

OK Blargy, please post the period when the overall EFFECTIVE corporate and personal tax rates against GDP and income percentage were lower. I will wait...

And please take the hook out of your mouth on how much people in the lower half of income brackets pay or don't pay. They still pay FICA and medicare taxes, so they still pay federal taxes and if they made more money, they could afford to pay more. They also pay sales tax, property tax and state tax and the percent of tax they pay is greater than that of the "rich" as a percent of their income.

Why you you gullible hacks keep running around, regurgitating the propaganda that has been drilled in your head by the man on the radio and exposing yourself as the drooling drones you are is beyond me.

It worked great during the Clinton era and worked fabulously when the country was built. The rich paid 90 percent... and wait for it... They Were Still Rich! Lived in big houses, drove big cars, ate fancy food and fucked fancy pussy but they paid their fair share and the rest of the country was built up and a man put on the moon.

I never suggested that raising taxes alone was going to balance the budget, now did I?

Its quite the opposite right now blargy, the top 1 percent has taken away from the bottom 99 percent and even through they managed to get the laws changed and they now own just about every TV, Radio station and newspaper in the country, thinking people are still onto them and that's why vulture capitalist Romney will never be elected to the office of POTUS.

Even though people realize that Obama is somewhat of a corporatist himself and has capitulated with the forces that drive globalization, he is a far better choice than the lead-pipe, scorched-earth, magic-underwear wearing, vulture-capitalist Romney.

Like what? EPA? OSHA? FDA? DEA" ATFE?

Which one should go?

Ron Paul says the IRS should go, that's why people think he's a loon.

I can really only speak from my experience in the environmental safety profession. But much of the regulatory structure is the same. My profession wouldn't exist without the EPA and OSHA. They were great at educating clueless businesses and state governments how to implement safety and environmental programs. These programs have generated billions in permit , non compliance revenue and saved business billions in liability damages. Now they have become waterlogged and, as far as I'm concerned, have polished the turd about as far as they can. As far a what Paul said, disbanding the IRS would prohibit the ability of the US government to collect a penny from anybody as it would take away its enforcement capabilities. So no, that would be stupid.

Our Federalist system of sharing power with states was brilliant. It allows states to adopt, collect fees and make laws above the government mandated requirements. It's great because it allows the federal government to teach, with enforcement, things that if not kept in check, could destroy the benefit of nation. If we were to keep true to that system then we would allow a provision that once the states had control of an issue, where it would be detrimental or unconstitutional to deviate from once implemented, then that federal program could be disbanded.

As far as tax brackets go, here are the historical rates for upper earners... not sure where corporate or GDP come into play but it seems like you're moving the goalposts.




It seems like you know you're losing the argument because now you're bringing in fica, and medicare etc... Guess what, I want everyone paying for their own social security and medicare. I only get to collect my check when I retire, and since I can't collect yours or your medical service, guess what - I don't want to fucking pay for it.

We enable people not to work in this country.

Google effective taxes paid despite the confiscatory rate and get back to us...

So let's cut spending. I'm a big fan of that... too bad the Democrats who are in charge are not.

How do the rich steal from the poor again?

Funny thing is that I don't really believe that Obama is a corporatist, despite his massive pile of flaws; he just started to realize that in order to move the economy, you need to allow businesses to have freedoms to make money. He doesn't like it much though and has alienated the business community while he was schooled.

I never realized that you were a Socialist, but your paranoia of the free-market certainly shows.

That you would post this chart is fucking laughable. Post WW2 to the early 1970's was one of the most prosperous periods in American history and in coincided with the creation of the largest middle class in world history and tax rates for the rich were at 90 percent.

Only when they began to lower those rates, did budget deficits begin to raise their head and the national debt start to grow again but ONLY under republican presidents.

Republican presidents have been HORRIBLE stewards of our collective treasury. Treasonously so.

I'll get to your other bullshit later, I have a hot grill I have to worry about right now.

I get a kick out of how unfair life is for the one percent according to Blargy. Especially since he is not one of them and he spends all his time defending them ! Fucking tool is he.

You blame Republicans but Obama has outspent everyone by leaps and bounds. In only 4 years no less. Also, who was it that extended the Bush tax cuts? I can't remember, help me out with that... since our tax rates are so low.

With regards to tax rates, you again, need to look at what was actually paid, not what was listed on paper. If you force people to hide/shelter/loophole income, they will do so. All you're really doing is creating inefficiency for no one's benefit.

Give it up ! You are just a shill for people who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

Mark, the main reason why we were so prosperous post WW2, is we had no competition. Anything you couldn't buy yourself, you had to buy from America...everywhere else had been blown to bits.

Another things It's a myth"the rich" were actually paying 90 percent taxes at some point in history. That's never been the case. There were so many deductions and exclusions that the taxable income was not comparable to someone's entire income. You could deduct business meals, all business travel, all forms of interest payments, and much more. You could even deduct spousal travel expenses on a business trip Companies could also provide almost anything to an employee, from an apartment to standard benefits. It was possible to shelter tens of thousands of dollars from taxable income. Three-martini lunches and expense accounts were the reality, skewing tax calculations.

I agree zimmie and was going to post that very fact but the fact remains that while the stated rate was 90 percent, the middle class was growing and we were paying down the debt from WW2.

The fact remains that Reagan fundamentally changed that and turned it on its head, tax rates were cut and the debt started to rise. The party paid with someone else's money had begun...

And another reason the 90 percent was good and I have mentioned this before was that it did indeed reward investment and encouraged investment and kept capital in play, instead of being squirreled away, never to see the light of day again.

No Blargy, he really hasn't. Besides the stimulus, what other spending program has Obama pushed? And paleeze don't say Obama-Care we are already paying for everything that Obama-Care will. IIRC, discretionary spending is down under Obama. Remember it was Bush that passed drug coverage for medicare and fought two wars without a care in the world about how to pay for them, hell, he eevn doubles-down and cut taxes and left Obama with a huge deficit

Obama felt the need to keep the tax cuts in place because the economy was teetering on the brink of complete collapse from the Bush/Wall-Street housing debacle. I would have let them expire but anyway they will expire next year. I am already making some adjustments to my budget in anticipation of paying more taxes.

Umm, the chart I posted reported the effective tax rate, you know, what was actually paid...

And its never been lower.

Including the god damned corporate rate!

he can't ! he has been programmed to avoid truth !

Are you unaware of the debt growth during Obama's presidency? He's been president for nearly 4 years, I'd say he is responsible for his own spending, and lack of cuts at this point. I'm not even counting Obamacare yet, though that isn't going to help matters.

Obama felt the need to try his hand at class warfare and lost. I don't even have a major problem with their extension, except that extending for 2 years was pointless pandering. He should have made a decision to either keep or remove permanently.

And I was saying what Zimmie later said:

Another things It's a myth"the rich" were actually paying 90 percent taxes at some point in history. That's never been the case. There were so many deductions and exclusions that the taxable income was not comparable to someone's entire income. You could deduct business meals, all business travel, all forms of interest payments, and much more. You could even deduct spousal travel expenses on a business trip Companies could also provide almost anything to an employee, from an apartment to standard benefits. It was possible to shelter tens of thousands of dollars from taxable income. Three-martini lunches and expense accounts were the reality, skewing tax calculations.

Look at 89-92...

OH brother ! More self centered bloviation from the resident asshole.

Are you unaware that spending has gone down sharply the past two years and Obama used much less of a stimulus than Ronald Reagan did? If you were the least bit intellectually honest instead of being buffeted by the ideological snake-charmers on the radio, you would be supporting Obama.

So now the Bush tax cuts are class-warfare?

Were they class-warfare when Bush signed them???

I already addressed that Blargy, try and keep up.

Obama camp demands Romney's tax returns from the 80's

Yeah, And watch the national debt reverse direction and start to go up, my point exactly.

Link to this sharp decrease in spending... I'd love that... all we have is more debt. We do have compromises that may slow the debt growth over a 10 year span. That's responsible governing.

No, I said that Obama tried class warfare before he signed off on their extension... that failed badly.

Not sure that you did because you are still on this "taxes used to be way higher" kick. If you had addressed it then you'd concede that it is misrepresentative of the gross percentages that were actually paid.

All you said was that taxes are at their lowest they've been. All I did was prove that incorrect. There was no judgement or analysis on my part except that you were incorrect.

Here's one.

Growth in Real Per Capita Govt Spending Lower Under Obama and Clinton Than Under Reagan or the Bushes

Jon Ponder | Mar. 19, 2012


Here is the methodology:

To compare presidencies, I did the calculation two ways. One starts in the quarter before the president was elected (e.g., 2008Q4), the other starts in the first quarter of the presidency (e.g., 2009Q1). (The ARRA probably had some effect in Q1, but most of the change was simply economic conditions that the incoming president had nothing to do with, so I think I prefer the Q1 to Q1 method). Ranking since Johnson (starting in 1968), and using the first-quarter comparisons, and calculating growth under Obama through 2011Q4, Clinton is the most austere, followed by Obama. The most spendthrift are (1) Nixon-Ford, (2) Reagan, and (3) Bush II. The figure is pasted [above.]

Andrew Sullivan reacts:

This is the kind of reality that makes Sean Hannity’s head explodes. So far, the GOP candidates have been running against a fictional president with a fictional record. Obama didn’t campaign to increase government spending, but inheriting what was in the final quarter of 2008 an annualized contraction of 9 percent of GDP, he opted for a stimulus. That accounts for much of the spending.

I know we are supposed – along with Fox News – to have total amnesia about the spending record of George W. Bush, who had nothing like the recession Obama inherited to counter. But there it is. Along with the fact that of the last seven presidents, the top three spenders are all Republicans.

Here is another from the Whitehouse

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/contract_savings_fact_sheet_final.pdf

From the start of the Administration, the President has charged agencies to cut waste and give the American people a government that not only more affordable, but also more efficient and effective. One critical area for those efforts has been contracting. During the prior Administration, contract spending exploded but contract management and oversight capacity were not strengthened to keep up with that demand.

President Obama took aggressive action to curb that growth, starting with a March 2009 directive to agencies to cut billions in contracting spending and continuing with efforts to ensure the government stepped up efforts to protect taxpayers from cost overruns and poor performance as part of the Campaign to Cut Waste. As a result, we have ushered in and sustained a new era of fiscal responsibility in contract spending.

In FY 2010, contracting decreased for the first time in 13 years. Agencies collectively spent $535 billion -- $80 billion less than they would have if growth continued at the same rate as under the prior Administration.

In FY 2011, contract spending continued at the same lower level as in FY 2010. This is the first time in 18 years that spending has either declined or remained flat for two consecutive years. Under the 12% growth rate during the last administration, contracting spending would have soared to $690 billion, or $155 billion, more than agencies ended up spending in FY 11.

Between FY 2009 and FY 2011, agencies spent tens of billions of dollars less than they would have if contract spending had continued to grow at the same pace as experienced during the last Administration or even just at the rate of inflation.

Agencies achieved these results by buying less and by buying smarter, such as by leveraging the government’s buying power (known as strategic sourcing) and using IT tools that enable agencies to reap both the efficiencies of the internet and the benefits of increased competition to drive prices down. For example, over the last two years, agencies report that they have saved tens of millions of dollars by using reverse auctions for thousands of everyday commodities such as computer hardware and facilities equipment, where vendors use an online site to bid prices down to win an agency’s work.

Does not appear to be a wild spender at all.

OK Blargy, as you know I disagree that not extending the tax cuts amounted to class warfare, it amounted to a mistake. I just paid my taxes today. My effective Federal rate was 7.6 percent... At a time of war, at a time of great financial upheaval, at a time of great deficits and great public debt, extending the cuts was not a good move.

Yes Blargy, taxes used to be waaaaay higher, both the stated and effective rates.

Corporate rates

Personal rates

Where the hell did you prove anything???????

Barack Obama says tax rates are lowest since 1950s for CEOs, hedge fund managers


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President Barack Obama held a news conference on June 29, 2011, promising regulatory reforms
During a press conference on June 29, 2011, President Barack Obama was asked whether tax increases should be a part of a deal to approve a new debt ceiling -- the subject of long-running negotiations as the current statutory cap on federal debt approaches in August.

Obama said that he believes some types of revenue increases should be included. As part of his answer, he sought to provide some context about current levels of taxation, at least for the most highly compensated Americans.

"You can't reduce the deficit to the levels that it needs to be reduced without having some revenue in the mix," Obama said. "The revenue we're talking about isn't coming out of the pockets of middle-class families that are struggling -- it's coming out of folks who are doing extraordinarily well and who are enjoying the lowest tax rates since before I was born. If you're a -- if you are a wealthy CEO or a … hedge fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they have ever been. They're lower than they've been since the 1950s."

We realize that Obama offered two different standards -- the lowest rates ever, and the lowest since the 1950s. We’ve decided to use the latter standard -- "since the 1950s" -- because the data is more consistent and easily accessible. (With one exception to fund the Civil War, there was no federal taxation prior to 1913.)

The most basic way to look at this question is to use the highest marginal rates for ordinary income -- what’s commonly called the "top tax bracket." This rate -- which today is 35 percent -- is applied to any money earned above a certain threshold. For 2011, that level is $379,150 for married couples filing jointly, for individuals and for heads of households, and $189,575 for married couples filing separately.

Assuming you’re talking about the "ordinary" income a CEO or a hedge fund manager earns -- a key assumption, which we’ll discuss in more detail later -- Obama is pretty close to right, but not 100 percent.

Between 1960 (when the "1950s" faded into history) and the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan pushed through landmark tax cuts, top tax brackets had much higher rates than those in place today. For instance, the top rate was 91 percent in 1960, and 70 percent on the eve of Reagan’s election in 1980.

By 1988, the top federal income tax rate fell to 28 percent, and it stayed there until 1990. It ticked up to 31 percent for 1991 and 1992, before rising to 39.6 percent in 1993.

So, for five tax years -- 1988 through 1992 -- the top tax bracket had a lower rate than today’s top bracket. Put another way, out of 52 tax years since 1960, the top tax rate was lower than today’s only 10 percent of the time. (Today’s top tax bracket has been steady since 2003, so in nine additional tax years, the earlier bracket was tied with today’s.)

That’s not exactly what Obama said, but it's close.

Now for the complications. First, hedge fund managers, who were specifically cited by Obama, typically don’t pay taxes on their income the same way other Americans do.

The bulk of hedge-fund managers’ income is typically considered "carried interest" -- that is, their share of profits from the funds they manage. When a fund has capital gains and those gains flow to the manager, they are taxed as a capital gain, not as ordinary income. From a taxation perspective, the difference is significant -- taxation can be as low as 15 percent, rather than the 35 percent paid by everyone else (including other types of Wall Street managers).

The 15 percent rate for capital gains has been in place since 2003, so tax rates for hedge-fund managers’ carried interest isn’t new. But 15 percent is the lowest it has been since 1950, said Eric Toder, co-director of the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. So for hedge-fund managers, Obama’s statement looks correct.

There’s another complication. One more way to analyze Obama’s statement is by effective tax rates. An "effective" tax rate is what a typical taxpayer actually pays after deductions, exemptions and the like. It’s always lower than the statutory tax rate, sometimes significantly lower.

There’s data on this, but it’s a bit more scattershot and doesn’t go all the way up to 2011. But we’ll do a quick review of the data.

A 2007 study by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez calculated effective tax rates for various income groups.

For people whose income ranked between the top 1 percent and top 0.5 percent, the effective tax rate for individual, corporate, payroll and estate was 34.0 percent in 1960, 36.1 percent in 1970, 37.6 percent in 1980, 31.5 percent in 1990, 35.7 percent in 2000 and 31.3 percent in 2004.

For those earning between the top 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent of the income curve, the numbers were 41.4 percent in 1960, 44.6 percent in 1970, 43.0 percent in 1980, 33.0 percent in 1990, 38.4 percent in 2000 and 33.0 percent in 2004.

For those earning between 0.01 percent and 0.1 percent, the rates were 55.3 percent in 1960, 59.1 percent in 1970, 51.0 percent in 1980, 34.3 percent in 1990, 40.2 percent in 2000 and 34.1 percent in 2004.

Finally, for those in the top 0.01 percent of the income distribution, the effective tax rate was 71.4 percent in 1960, 74.6 percent in 1970, 59.3 percent in 1980, 35.4 percent in 1990, 40.8 percent in 2000 and 34.7 percent in 2004.

So for each of these elite income groups, the effective tax rates were at or near historical lows in 2004, though for certain groups, the effective rate was equal or slightly lower in 1990. Of course, this data is seven years old.

Meanwhile, the 2010 Economic Report of the President included a table that showed "that the effective tax rates that applied to high-income taxpayers reached their lowest levels in at least half a century in 2008." The table (labeled table 5-8) had data running back to 1960 and for both taxpayers earning at least $250,000 and taxpayers earning over $2 million. The table mirrors the Piketty-Saez data in that the 2008 levels are at or near lows for the period, with only the early 1990s coming close.

So where does this leave us? There’s some degree of uncertainty in making this kind of statement, since a very high-earning American’s tax rate can vary greatly, depending on the kinds of income earned (and what tax rate it’s subjected to) and the kinds of exemptions and deductions claimed on their return.

Even so, when Obama said that "if you're a … wealthy CEO or a … hedge fund manager in America right now, your taxes are … lower than they've been since the 1950s," he's close: Their tax rates are at or near the lows for the years elapsed since then.

The top marginal income tax rates were lower between 1988 and 1992 than they are today, but otherwise, Obama is right. They were higher for the other years. Meanwhile, the rates that are used to tax carried interest for hedge-fund managers have been at historical lows since 2003. And effective tax rates for high-income earners were either at their lowest since 1960 or very close to their lowest (at least according to the most recent data available). On balance, we rate Obama’s statement Mostly True.