Steve Kelley for January 22, 2015

It takes cash to run a country. A better educated populace is good for all. Defund some of the military or raise taxes.

A better educated populace also increases the tax base. Besides, federal taxes are lower now than in decades. They need to be brought back up a little to bring us back to our previous leader standard. The only thing we lead in now is military spending and incarceration.

As much as you complain about government taxes, corporate interests raise fees with no added value all the time. I remember a time when you could partially pay a credit card bill and only pay interest on what you didn’t pay and NOT be charged $35 for privilege.

How about fixing some roads and bridges?

And when you take from the working class to give to the richest it is called corporatist redistribution. You have been drinking the kool-aid, Harley.

It is definitely not communist redistribution, but why do you continually insist on shooting yourself in the foot? The rich are doing quite well without your lap-dog assistance. It is the lower classes that are suffering as income and wealth disparity become the major issue in society. A recent study by OXFAM indicates the top 1% will, by next year, account for more than half of the world’s wealth. OXFAM advocates for universal health care, better education, higher minimum income, and tax reform to prevent tax evasion by Corporations and the wealthy.

If the two on the couch are making over $500,000 annually, then they should pay a higher rate on your capital gains.Why should they pay a LOWER tax rate than I do when I make a LOT less?

Are these the Koch brothers, in private?*

@Odon – I’ll be the first to agree with you that we should defund some of the military but the government has plenty of tax dollars. They just need to make hard priority decisions like every other business and family in the US.

@Cdward – I won’t disagree with you. A better educated work force can increase their earnings and thereby raise there ability to pay taxes. I’m all for it. Where you and I disagree is WHO should pay for that education. I support my local school district to create High School grads. I paid and I am still paying my own kids tuition so that they can get their careers started without being saddled with debt. I resent the heck out of progressives that say I should also have to pay for a bunch of other kids who’s parents won’t help support them past high school.

My wife and I waited to have children until we had the maturity and financial resources to raise them properly. I ask a little bit of discipline from those families that bring children in the community and then expect the community to cover all their expenses.

@eepat – You seem to have bought into the idea that any money the Government leaves an earner is somehow giving them a gift.

I am not in favor of jiggering the tax code to take from productive and hands it out to the masses. That just perpetuates a dependent class that will vote for the politician that promises them the highest return for their vote.

I am for taxes being paid by all to fund shared services: Infrastructure, Law Enforcement, Military, etc.

We should be looking at at a VAT or a Sales Tax.

@Gypsy8 – I’ve heard that report touted around the Web as well. I’m still not clear on why I should be concerned by the fact that the 1% own > 50% of the wealth.

The news reports would have you believe there is the 1% and then there is everyone else. I see a few more shades of gray then the Chicken Littles. I don’t have any personal friends that are in the 1% though I know a few of them from work but almost all of my friends are in the top 5% or 4%.

We don’t see the 1% having more as an impediment to our success. But we are very concerned at the bottom 50% who think the Political process is the best way to improve their bottom line by taking from the top 1%. You see the top 1% can afford Lawyers and Accounts to protect their wealth from the takers. But those of us in the next tier can not and so we become the primary target of the Tax Looters.

I encourage people to worry about growing and managing their own wealth and not ask the government to steal on their behalf.

@nance19oped – Here is an economics lesson.

People who earn capital gains are paying taxes twice.

If I own shares in a company and that company earns $100/share – The government takes 40% right off the top leaving the me with $60. Then I get my dividends and the government taxes me another 15% in Capital gains leaving me with $51. So the marginal rate is 49%. Certainly even you can see where I am paying more then my fair share of taxes.

Tax advocates would like you to believe that Stocks are owned by the Rich Bastards of the world and it’s OK to tax them. Let me list a few more groups that own stocks that you wouldn’t feel so good about taxing: University Endowments, Pension Plans for your local School District, Churches, People coming close to retirement (like me) who want to take care of ourselves in Retirement and not become a burden on the state or our children.

Don’t be fooled by people who tell you that corporations aren’t paying Federal Income Tax. I worked in the Tax Department of a fortune 50 company and I can tell you that even with all the tax code benefits there are piles of cash flowing into the Federal Government. The few high profile annecdotes drummed up by tax advocates each had special circumstances surrounding their tax liability that is not sustainable.

Dividends paid to investors are almost invariably drawn from the Earnings after taxes of a Corporation and that means investors stand second in line.

Those $58,000 Hellfire missiles now cost $70,000 apiece, to do the same job an $8 (retail) bullet can do. Yep, let’s put our money where the MIC gullet is.

Do you make more than $500,000 a year? No? You are likely getting a tax cut. If you do make more, pay up and quit your bitchin’.

@nance19oped – Are you really that ignorant of how stock ownership works or are you being purposely obtuse to avoid acknowledging the point?

Let’s be clear. Other then the rules imposed on corporations Ownership of stocks IS ownership of a business.

If your neighborhood pizza place (probably a single owner business) had to pay 40% on their business earnings and then pay 15% on what was left you would say that Luiggi was paying 49%. But you seem to think it is somehow different when it is a corporation that is getting taxed.

The Owners of corporations – Me, my co-workers, pension plans, etc. Are all paying 40% of their companies income before they get to see any. And then are expected to pay another 15% on top of that when the money is destributed to them. I’m actually comfortable with that because part of that 40% tax is an insurance package that leaves the owners with limited liability. But to expect them to pay 25% or 28% or 40% is a terrible price and it HAS driven companies out of the US.

Mr & Mrs who-ever-you-are; your governor and your mayor do the same thing! What are you griping about?

Steve Kelley wasn’t paying attention.Obama wants to LOWER middle class taxes of working people, and pay for it by closing loopholes and requiring the few richest elites to pay closer to the rate that working people do, instead of their special lower rate on unearned investment profits.

Why should working people WORK HARDER for LESS MONEY on which we pay a HIGHER TAX RATE so the few richest investors can WORK LESS (or not at all, depending on how much of that principal came from Daddy’s inheritance) for MORE MONEY on which they pay a LOWER TAX RATE (or none at all depending on how much they can hide with loopholes, deductions, exemptions and offshore Cayman Island tax shelters).

Harley: I stated the cost of those missiles.

Anweir: the cost of getting them there: “cab fair”, and a pair of boots. As to risk, yes, to get spotters in on the ground to confirm target identity, and let a drone take the shot IS, granted safer, as of course you don’t have to reveal at all where the shot came from. (been there, so has my son and his friends) But not all situations are all that “risky”. (What country and terrain you’re in DOES also make a difference.)

At the same time, there are LOTS of cases where they’ve had collateral damage with drones that wasn’t necessary, wrong target, and that’s “costly” too.

Not at all times (even in Afghanistan and Iraq) is a long rifle guy in any further danger, as he’s alrady on the ground, in the area, and probably already getting shot at. I probably won’t watch “American Sniper” as we’ve been there. The combat scenes though would probably not bring back as much as the scenes of coming back to “the world”.

Anweir: dispite what Tom Cruise and the jet jockeys want, you know full well that what the ground troops need more, especially in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, is an A-10 to spupport them, with a real pilot on board who won’t blow them up because they show up as a thermal image to some idiot officer calling the shots from a few thousand miles away. NO WAY I’d ever have wanted close support from a drone jockey. You’re also aware of how effective, accurate, and selective an Apache pilot can be. The 22 and 35 are just expensive junk, to operate like piloted drones.

So these people are multimillionaires living on trust funds? They look a lot like middleclass people, but, in that case, they’d be getting lower taxes, not a hike..I guess it helps if you work your opinions out without getting confused by knowing what the president has actually proposed.

I’ve read the “fair tax”. When the radio "commentator first started promoting his idea, I considered it. Then I read the proposal, does not (sould not) work as proposed. But keep pushing it. Keeps you from messing in other things.

Those Muslims from Saudi Arabia, whom the Bush’s bow to and kiss?

“FAIR TAX! and politicians would not be able to use the tax code for political gain!”.How would benevolent progressives tell the “little people” that they want tax the rich, while winking at the rich with tax loopholes?.A fair tax would be… fair and that’s not how progressives do things.