"fiscal cliff" debate
By debrakcarey
@debrakcarey (19887)
United States
November 30, 2012 1:07pm CST
John Cochrane is a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.
In his blog, The Grumpy Economist he tells how raising taxes on the richest producers hurt the UK's economy:
http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/11/experimental-evidence-on-effect-of-taxes.html
Europe has been running a very useful set of experiments on what happens if you address yawning deficits with high income, wealth and property taxes. Which brings me to a report from the Telegraph
Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p (percent) top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.
In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.
This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election....
It is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, announced in the Budget earlier this year that the 50p top rate will be reduced to 45p from next April.
Since the announcement, the number of people declaring annual incomes of more than £1 million has risen to 10,000.
However, the number of million-pound earners is still far below the level recorded even at the height of the recession and financial crisis...
Far from raising funds, it actually cost the UK £7 billion in lost tax revenue
So tell me again WHY we are about to do this very same thing?
3 people like this
7 responses
@dragon54u (31634)
• United States
30 Nov 12
We're about to do it because after 4 years of careful conditioning, the sheeple are convinced that THE RICH MUST PAY!! Horrible people are the only ones with money, they are selfish and make their money on the backs of the poor, or so the story goes. Obama has carefully and skillfully convinced the majority of Americans that the rich are of no use to the country. By getting rid of them, American will sink like the Titanic and there will be just two classes--politicians (the rich) and the great unwashed poor.
America has become the land of the willfully blind and ignorant.
1 person likes this
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
30 Nov 12
I agree, but I contend it took longer than the last four years. We've been dumbed down for the last generation. Media played a major role in the process, Schools/colleges are number one culprit!
1 person likes this
@dragon54u (31634)
• United States
30 Nov 12
I agree, the last 4 years were just needed to finish the job of brainwashing.
@GardenGerty (160488)
• United States
30 Nov 12
Because people do not deserve to have more or better things even if we work for it. Not that I am rich, I am already one of the poorest of the poor. We must all share and give away anything that makes us different, unique, or (gasp) wealthy. I am sorry, but I saw this in books written for three year olds . . . take a look at the socialism in the book Rainbow Fish. He had to give away all of his special scales so that others would have the same as he did. Indoctrination of the very young. I hated that unit when I worked in the pre school.
1 person likes this
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
They try to pass it off as 'the teachings of Jesus' to make it more palatable.
What they do not realize is Jesus also taught that it is the HEART (the soul) of man that matters. And if sharing is NOT DONE from the heart for reasons of love and compassion, in faith that God will provide for you abundantly when you do so, it is of no effect and God is not honored. To be on the other side of that forced sharing, the one who receives it, is to have your faith in God's provision for your life taken from you. Who needs to have faith in God if the government is there to step in?
Bitterness, resentment, envy and covetuousness are the fruits of government taking and giving. A far cry from the fruits of the Spirit described in the New Testament that come as a result of exercising our faith in God.
@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
30 Nov 12
It's called peer pressure.. the UK of "Europe" did it, and besides that, everyone knows every idea of dems is kool and those fiscal conservatives, well it's a lot more fun to character assassinate any of them who try to speak to us, that of course comes after the 'news' media twists everything they say.. No voice / One party! That's where it's at. (And don't forget to send me all my benefits! Broke!? What U mean, broke!!??)
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
I had been told that Americans were smarter than the average bear all my life...lol.
It is beyond frightening to realize that we're not.
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
I am reminded of Esau, he had so little regard for his birthright as the firstborn, that he sold it to his brother for a bowl of bean soup. When he realized what he had given up, he felt a murderous rage for having been duped. BUT, he did not think that he'd done anything wrong in the transaction, blamed it all on his coniving brother. We're like Esau, we do not realize what we've been endowed with, and have sold it to the government for a 'bowl of soup'. When we collectively realize what has happened, the sh!t will hit the fan so to speak.
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
1 Dec 12
It is known as envy. As a Canadian, I used to get the Winnipeg Free Press, the main newspaper of our city, and there was always a letter to the editor of some one who had only a high school education, and sometimes not even that who complained that he was not getting the same income as a doctor or a lawyer who had spent years in university getting his degree. Thus those people who are on welfare, and especially those who are not there because of a disability but because they did not want to work, those who came here illegally, want the money that the rich made by their own effort.
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
1 Dec 12
Unless they win it on the lottery, they will never have as much as a professional, and not only that, once they get it, will never use it responsibly. They do not have the experience of managing money. That i why giving money to the welfare and the poor class does not work. They will spend it as soon as they get it.
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
Equality. Dangerous concept if not coupled with responsibility and accountability.
1 person likes this
@natliegleb (5175)
• India
1 Dec 12
Well that debate is lasting for long time and it keeps pouncing upon us each time and wanting to reduce the deficit and the tax is unparallel anyways and we must aim to counter it
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
There is no reducing it. It has taken on a life of it's own.
@Rigel4 (47)
• United States
1 Dec 12
This type of thing is easier to do in the United States because the super rich don't ay taxes anyway. General Electric actually takes money from the government rather than pay taxes. It's easier for people from the UK to move to another country in Europe because Europeans are so used to moving from country to country and they speak multiple languages. Don't think for a minute that the rich are going to leave the ol' US of A because we're "number one!" USA!....see what I mean. Think G Dubbyuh living in France, never gonna happen.
It boggles my mind how poor folks like us seem to endlessly worship the rich when, for some strange reason, we pay much larger percentages of tax to income than they do. Think for yourself for once and quit listening to those goobers with the "Don't Tread on Me" flags.
Jesus...
@rodney850 (2145)
• United States
1 Dec 12
Rigel,
No, you won't see GW leave the good ol' USA as you so flippantly put it but he and many others like him will start shifting their money where it will do the good ol' USA the least amount of good. Worshipping the rich and respecting the job they do are two different things. The next time you need a job go find someone making 30k or 50k ore even 75k to give you a job, they might let you mow their lawn and rake the leaves(probably not the 30k). You need to get a grip on reality, example: let's tax Wal-Mart 75% of their gross earnings, that will solve a tremendous amount of our country's financial woes and not tax the middle class, right? Wrong! Since Wal-Mart has been running mom and pop's out of business for decades they are the most shopped and depended on store in this nation and if Wal-Mart were to be taxed like this do have a guess as to whom will pay these new taxes? You, me and the rest of America through higher prices. It never works, PERIOD!
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
What I don't understand is the American people LIKE cheap stuff, yet we are angry that companies outsource jobs? Wasn't it Clinton that signed NAFTA? Free trade demands we cooperate in a GLOBAL economy. It is NOT the companies fault that American workers have for decades demanded high wages and benefits.
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
Guess the numbers don't mean anything to you then?
I've never had a paycheck signed by a poor man. No, it was those with the talent to make money that provided me with a job and wrote that paycheck to me in exchange for my time and talent.
It is NOT ME who should learn to think for myself my friend, you've bought into the whole class warfare bit and are already enslaved by those who would rule over you. I at least see the danger of putting my complete trust in them, you however, are blinded by their pretty words and really expect them to care for you.
@debrakcarey (19887)
• United States
1 Dec 12
I remember that. I remember thinking how strange it was for Americans to think that way. When did we stop believing in a person's right to do as they will with their property, their person, and start thinking what was theirs is ours?
Mark my words, the government will be seizing homes and the land they sit on next, for the good of us all, of course.
