For you liberals............

[acmanko]

I think all of the entitlement programs like welfare, food stamps, unemployment, medicaid, ect. should be cut back enough that it isn't enough to support someone. Maybe just enough to get by a few months, but would eventually not support a family or individual.

I too know people who have lived off my tax dollars for years without even a thought of going out and supporting themselves.

* I'm not a liberal.

So you think a injured soldier retuning from war should only get enough from the government to keep him/her off the street for a few months?

[bornriding]

You bring up a important question. How much is enough? I pay my share of tax and do not mind. I know how lucky I am to have what I got.

Aha, printer...............

See, you liberals ( at least liberal leaning ), don't mind paying taxes.........

But again, you won't specify what is enough, of even your salary, going to our government & to those needed people whom you are so concerned about.

Maybe this is where we disagree, Printer...
You believe that MOST people who are needy, are that way "through no fault of their own" & are just looking for help to get on their feet & back to work again, & who WOULD actually work, if the opportunity presented itself, to them.............

I, however, believe that the vast majority ( not all, of course ) of the needy are that way due to their own failings, & MOST wouldn't keep a job, if they got it.

But either way, WHY won't you answer the question.
How Much of YOUR salary do you think that you would STILL be OK with???
What the maximum the gov can take before you would scream, ENOUGH ?????????????

I am WAY PAST the point - I've been screaming for years.

Richard

[bornriding]

There are and can not be absolute figures that exist on a fixed basis due to the fact that we have a republic where the people are suppose to have a say over all the rules and regulations of this country.

I don't understand this, Delta....Why CAN'T there be figures, like 10 or 15% as a limit to how much THEY can TAKE??

If we think the Feds get too much, we have ways to reduce how much they get through a voting process.

You must live in a different world than I, as I have never, in my lifetime, seen the voting process REDUCE the taxes I pay out...

It use to work for the most part but now we do have a country mostly full of people who are centered only on their own needs and not the needs of the country or their local society.
And this has show up very well in our Federal, State and local governments simply because we put them there.

Now what percentage should any government take? That also depends on the tax structure that taxes the citizens.

WHY would it depend on anyone's TAX STRUCTURE???
Why shouldn't EVERYONE pay the SAME % of their income as tax.

We do have a tax structure that, more or less, favors the individuals that take financial risks, such as home ownership or running a business. So my $100 income could be taxed at a more favorable rate then yours if you do not participate in the building of America.

WE do have a present tax structure that FAVORS some individuals over others....such as the POOR, who pay NO taxes, child credits, etc.

I still say that if you cut out all the entitlement programs & limit the government to what the founders believed the government should be for ( like the constitution ), we would only have to pay around 10% of our hard-to-work-for income to support our Nation..............
Plus we would be STRONGER to boot..........

Richard

[bornriding]

We still have a garden (since I grew up with one) and hunt to supplement our meat 'stores' (since I grew up with that) and do a lot of things ourselves like cut our grass, shovel our snow etc. and no, we don't have a riding lawn mower even though we have a good sized yard. Why should I work to support others that won't? To support others that sit indoors watching their cable tv sipping a beer while I'm tending my veggie garden or canning my vegetables? To support others that run up and down the river on Saturday morning while I'm mowing the grass or repairing something around the house? Why should they worry, the have Action Groups (Like NECAC, the North East Community Action Corp) to winterize their house each year or pay for repairs to their furnace or a/c or even put in a new one.

Yeah, I'm talking about someone I know. A fellow and his obese wife that live just down the street. NECAC bought them a house and pays for work on it all the time. He is 'disabled' and cuts people's grass and shovels snow for cash for extra money. She sits inside and watches the tv (has to be cable, there's nothing over the air here!) and they have a pontoon boat, two wave runners, an RV and two vehicles. Neither one has a job because they are disabled...

Mrs. Reb,
AMEN!!!!!!!!
This is my experience here too...

Why is it that everyone I see in the welfare housing area ( of which I work sometimes ) is ALWAYS FAT?????
My neighbors, living down the road, are poor ( living in an RV for the past 3 years ), are NOT on welfare, & are slim.

See people, POOR does not have to translate to SORRY....

Richard

[acmanko]

Being as the USA did farely well without an income tax , Washington D.C. was built money from import duties, I believe something along the figure of titheing to a church would be sufficient. Somewhere around 10%. But mind you , if you failed in giving you'd be asked to leave.

[bornriding]

15%.
There, I said a number.
If you're dirt poor, 15% won't be much but at least you contribute.
If you're filthy rich, you get to keep most of your filthy richness it to invest in businesses that hire people - people like me.
If you're me, you have a better chance at getting rich with an extra 30% in your pocket.
If you don't work, you should probably reconsider your life choices since at 15% redistribution, there will only be enough welfare for those who really can't support themselves.
If you would like a list of government agencies we could eliminate to get our tax down to 15%, you should start a new thread. Not enough space here.

See, manitenence guy, knows what I am saying, & so far is the only one to appoint a number to what he feels is 'ENOUGH'...

Thanks,
Richard

[phbsales]

The point is not how much the government takes from you, because until they learn to control what they spend YOUR money on (yeah, right), what they take from you is NEVER enough.

[bornriding]

I think all of the entitlement programs like welfare, food stamps, unemployment, medicaid, ect. should be cut back enough that it isn't enough to support someone. Maybe just enough to get by a few months, but would eventually not support a family or individual.
I too know people who have lived off my tax dollars for years without even a thought of going out and supporting themselves.
* I'm not a liberal.

I could probably live with this for a few years, at least....

Richard

[bornriding]

15%.
There, I said a number.
If you're dirt poor, 15% won't be much but at least you contribute.
If you're filthy rich, you get to keep most of your filthy richness it to invest in businesses that hire people - people like me.
If you're me, you have a better chance at getting rich with an extra 30% in your pocket.
If you don't work, you should probably reconsider your life choices since at 15% redistribution, there will only be enough welfare for those who really can't support themselves.
If you would like a list of government agencies we could eliminate to get our tax down to 15%, you should start a new thread. Not enough space here.

See, liberals, Ryan understands what I am asking..........
So far, he is the ONLY one who has come up with a number that he considers ENOUGH....15%

I agree with what Ryan says, though I would be at 10% as a MAX.

Richard

[DeltaT]

Hey Delta, miss your posts, always thought out. One question though. Why should you get a break on owning a home when all that does is makes you more wealth not the country? It does not build America but subsidies you with someone elses tax dollars.

Printer.........just when I starting to give you credit for having some sense when it came to the benefit of individual ingeniuity & initiative.

I've been thinking about defining what I see as the difference between folks that think as you do and folk that think like I do..BTW, both are required in this world so it's not a right/wrong issue.

If the individuals are doing well that are within a certain society, doesn't the society do well?

I think you work in a hospital. Doesn't the hospital do better because you work there?

Individual home ownership develops certain benefits to the local communities. For one it makes that local community more stable since the owners have made an expensive long term commitment. Second, the local community benefits in that the area is typically kept better, more pride in home ownership, then rental areas of the same local community. Third, the tax base becomes more stable allowing the local government to predict more accurately thier budgets in order to keep a better community for all. Third, the local community benefits greatly in that the service sector, such as ours, benefits in the service and upkeep of those proud homeowners. Fourth, the nation does better since this is a national issue and equally applied across all 50 states. The economy does better because in place of allowing Federal Employees to spend your hard earned tax dollars, you as a home owner, get to keep more of you hard earned money to invest, and it is an investment, into your home and, thereby, your neighborhood.

Now getting into the financial benefits of what actually takes place in the background of a well placed mortgage is even more spectacular for the community and country. For one, a homeowner, when placing a loan, has just solidified your retirement over the long term with a stable investment.

The money loaned for the purchase of the home typically comes from a local community banking institution. And that banking institution loaned out the money because you and/or your employer invested their hard earned money to that bank for a reasonable interest return.

And where does that bank get that reasonable interest return? It comes from homeowners who have invested in purchasing a home for themselve and their families.

And do you know that typically homeowners tend to be better and more dependable workers who work for the company that invests their earingings into the bank that loans the money out so employees can invest in their community in the form of a home so the employess has more of a tendency to stay put and become a long term dependable employee as he/she works to pay off the mortgage thereby keeping your retirement safe and secure over you work life span?

There are more reasons but I'll leave it at this for now.

[acmanko]

earning a reasonable rate on savings used to be true, but not anymore.

my mortgage, held by a good strong local bank, has a rate of 5.325%. My CD's held at the same bank pay0.15%. If I ask them to hold my CD's as security, which at one time would get a rate of 1% over the rate I earned on the CD's, the rate I can borrow at is at least 6.00%

[DeltaT]

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeltaT
There are and can not be absolute figures that exist on a fixed basis due to the fact that we have a republic where the people are suppose to have a say over all the rules and regulations of this country.

I don't understand this, Delta....Why CAN'T there be figures, like 10 or 15% as a limit to how much THEY can TAKE??

If we think the Feds get too much, we have ways to reduce how much they get through a voting process.

You must live in a different world than I, as I have never, in my lifetime, seen the voting process REDUCE the taxes I pay out...

It use to work for the most part but now we do have a country mostly full of people who are centered only on their own needs and not the needs of the country or their local society.
And this has show up very well in our Federal, State and local governments simply because we put them there.

Now what percentage should any government take? That also depends on the tax structure that taxes the citizens.

WHY would it depend on anyone's TAX STRUCTURE???
Why shouldn't EVERYONE pay the SAME % of their income as tax.

We do have a tax structure that, more or less, favors the individuals that take financial risks, such as home ownership or running a business. So my $100 income could be taxed at a more favorable rate then yours if you do not participate in the building of America.
************************************************** *******

This get complicated fast because you are looking for a simple answer in a process that has become complicated due to people.

You can have one number used for taxing if you like. But first the IRS and the IRS code would have to be completly done away with in all forms, which is not about to happen.

Now I'm gonna pick on you here for a minute. See, you decide that a flat 15% income tax is going to be paid by all workers and you are happy..for the moment.

Then you realize that someone making a lot more than you pays a lot less in terms of dollars then you..so you approach your congressperson to have an adjustment made so the person making more pays more in dollars so you think it's fair.

Now take into consideration that 10 billion people are going to have their own exceptions/needs/demands, etc and you can start to see where the existing IRS tax code came from over the many years since it was created, back in the 30's I believe.

It's an impossible sitation simply because of people, like you and me. It's really that simple.

As for input to reduce taxes, we both live in the same world. We citizens have put into place many, many times the reductions of state, local and Federal taxes of all sorts. Look to Washington State for such a recent event.

Now the problem is, people run the local governments and they forget who they work for in the past 20 plus years. So they immediatley set out to override these instrutions from the people. Or to find ways around the same instrucitons. It's not the tax code that is the problem. It's the representatives of the people that are the problem in this case.

In Washington State we, the people, have demanded and put into law three time that our state govt cannot raise taxes withour our vote. Three times our state govt has overwritten this law. So what do you think needs changing?

The original income tax structure, as it progressed, was pretty fair and brilliant. It originally said to all citizens that you must participate in supporting this country if you are to live here. No one can argue with that point.

So the basic rule for paying or not paying income tax was: If you invest in yourself and/or your community with such things as homeownership or individual business then you may have an exception to the amount of money you sent to us, your government. But is you do not invest in yourself and/or your community then we will collect more money from you so that we can invest in your community.

And that was and is a very fair and wise way to run this country. But we now have a government full of people that believe that special interests are the best for themselves and that is why we are attacking our own form of government.

And it's possible that through our own ignorance that we will throw the baby out with the bath water in the next 10 years or so.

Here's the first Income Tax forms from 1913, I believe. It was more inline with what you are thinking but became more complicated as our lives and our demads became more complicated.

[bornriding]

Being as the USA did farely well without an income tax , Washington D.C. was built money from import duties, I believe something along the figure of titheing to a church would be sufficient. Somewhere around 10%. But mind you , if you failed in giving you'd be asked to leave.

Thank you, acmanko

At least you provided a number..
Which, if you really believe in that number, means that you should be upset by the additional amount of taxes taken from us working folk & would like to see the tax rate become 'FAIR' at everyone paying their 10%.
No need for deductions......just 10% of everything you make.

Richard