A long time ago I lived in Madison County, Alabama. The taxes were fairly low, but those that worked for the county actually worked. And were paid realistic wages. They had adequate pensions, but not gold plated ones. At the time Madison County was the only county in the U.S. that had every road in the county paved. And the roads were in good shape. Not the pothole pocked roads that exist around here.
So yes all those things have to be paid for, but the total wage packet for public workers should be about equal to the total wages in the private sector. What has happened in most places is that the state and county workers have unionized. And the union has been able to bargain for better pensions and better healthcare than exists in the private sector. This happens because those that approve the wage contracts have no incentive to keep costs contained. If they approve gold plated pensions, the public workers vote for them. So the politicians prosper by approving wage and benefit increases.
This ends up requiring higher taxes. Which increases costs for businesses, and leads to jobs going overseas.
We can afford all the government we need, but can not afford government that gets paid more than the private sector.
Bullshit. Every cent that a business has to pay out, is part of the overall cost. It doesn't matter if the income tax is the responsibility of their employees, since they have to collect & forward them to the proper agencies.
Gunner Asch on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:01:07 -0700 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
From Peter Schiff's prepared remarks to Congress. Schiff is the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital.:
"In my own business, securities regulations have prohibited me from hiring brokers for more than three years. I was even fined fifteen thousand dollar expressly for hiring too many brokers in 2008. In the process I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to mitigate a more severe regulatory outcome as a result of hiring too many workers. I have also been prohibited from opening up additional offices. I had a major expansion plan that would have resulted in my creating hundreds of additional jobs. Regulations have forced me to put those jobs on hold."
formatting link
end quote ==
A company is fined for hiring too many workers. It cost the company half a million dollars in legal fees to avoid a worse outcome. And this is suppose to help the economy how? How any other companies have had similar problems, or have heard of similar problems, and have no desire to go to that dance. So they are "sitting this one out" - too bad for the people they would have hired, but ... . What you tax, you get less of; what you subsidize, you get ore of.
Indeed, this is one of the factors, and appears to be an extremely common "symptom" as organizations increase in size and complexity. General Motors Corporation is the poster child for this.
Another factor, noted in a separate posting, is a tendency to lose any sense of the value of money, given the millions and billions the managers deal with every day.
formatting link
$16 Muffins Found at U.S. Meetings By Seth Stern - Sep 20, 2011 2:58 PM CT
Yet a third factor is the borderline fraud, angle playing, and corner cutting, which (apparently) crosses the line into actual fraud, as it is commonly understood, fairly frequently, e.g. TARP, most of the FRB stimulus schemes, and of course the latest item to float to the surface -- Solyndra.
formatting link
Reuters) - Solyndra LLC's chief executive and chief financial officer will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and decline to answer any questions put to them at a Congressional hearing on Friday, according to letters from their attorneys obtained by Reuters.
There is noth---- from prior post ------
When individuals and organizations attempt to enjoy the benefits and services of a developed country but are unwilling to pay their share of the cost, it is called "freeloading" or tax evasion, and what they don't pay, but use *MUST BE PAID FOR BY EVERONE ELSE.*
{I will add that fraud, waste and abuse are part of the costs which must be paid, like it or not.}
Even when a corporation relocates their production out of the country to reduce labor and regulatory costs, they still make use of large numbers of benefits and services, for example patent/trademark protection by the courts and law enforcement. Their real property is protected by the courts, land registry, and fire/police. They make extensive use of the infrastructure such as roads, bridges, canals, ports and airports to distribute their products. The individuals running these corporations expect public safety services for themselves and their families. They expect their food to be safe and their drugs to be effective. They want their schools to be effective. They just feel it is unfair they or their companies have to pay for any of it.
Even if the other posters are correct with the old saw "companies/corporations don't pay taxes, their customers do" (which is highly questionable, as some of the cost is allocated to the owners in the form of lower dividends), it is still worthwhile to tax the corporations their full and fair share of the governmental operating costs, so their customers know the actual cost of the product/service when the pay at the cash register, rather than making only a partial payment at the cash register and an additional
*LARGE* payment on April 15th, through the IRS.
NB ==> Having said that, it is also apparent that huge amounts of US governmental revenue, at all levels, are diverted and wasted on obsolete, extraneous, and fraudulent schemes and programs. However, the Greek solution of "do-it-yourself" tax cuts and a large and growing informal or "black" Greek economy, rather than undertaking the difficult but necessary task of repurposing and reconstituting their government to minimize waste while meeting current vital national requirements, does not appear to be a viable solution.
What is striking isn't the level of taxation for individuals, corporations, etc. but the range. We (the USA) aren't the highest or the lowest. But one thing that jumps out is that 0 to 35% rate.
Not a lot of other countries have such a range, particularly for corporations. It turns out that in the long term, tax revenue ends up being about 20% of GDP. And it appears that many countries just nail a fixed tax rate down somewhere around this point. Taxes on individuals do tend to be in a greater range across the board because of the natural tendency to be somewhat progressive and not hurt the poor.
Its not the level that people are incensed about, its the variability.
==================== Where this is all heading. Note that Greece appears to be unique only in that it is first.
formatting link
'We Won't Pay' Greece's Middle Class Revolt against Austerity By Ferry Batzoglou and Jörg Diehl in Athens
Small business owners in Greece have long been the backbone of the economy and reliable taxpayers in a country where tax evasion is rampant. That, though, is now changing. Self-employed workers like Angelos Belitsakos have had enough of rising taxes and have begun to revolt.
The people who could ultimately give Greece the coup de grace are not the kind to throw stones or Molotov cocktails, and they have yet to torch any cars. Instead, they are people like 60-year-old beverage distributor Angelos Belitsakos, people who might soon turn into a real problem for the economically unstable country. Feeling cornered, he and other private business owners want to go on the offensive. But instead fighting with weapons, they are using something much more dangerous. They are fighting with money.
Belitsakos is a short, slim and alert man who lives in the middle-class Athenian suburb of Holargos. He is also the physical and spiritual leader of a movement of business people in Greece that is recruiting new members with growing speed. While Greece's government is desperately trying to combat its ballooning budget deficit by raising taxes and imposing new fees, people like Belitsakos are putting their faith in passive resistance.
The group's slogan is as simple as it is stoic: "We Won't Pay."
Working 12-Hour Days, Seven Days a Week
This business owners' absolute refusal to pay any taxes resembles an uprising of the ownership class, rather than the working class, a rebellion of the self-employed business owners who have long been the backbone of Greek society. These are not the people who weaseled their way into Greece's oversized civil service; these are people who put their money in the private sector, working 12-hour days, seven days a week. Or so Belitsakos says.
Standing in his small store, Belitsakos makes a sweeping gesture and says that the people in his movement no longer have a choice. "The state will kill us," he says. "We're acting in self-defense." Then he starts to do the math. Over the last two years, his sales have massively shrunk as 60 of the tavernas and restaurants he used to make deliveries to have terminated their contracts with him. At the same time, the government has raised the value-added tax (VAT) twice while imposing a never-ending series of new fees. He mentions the ?300 ($406) one-time fee for the self-employed, a two-percentage-point boost in the VAT, a ?180 solidarity levy for the unemployed and a property tax that is "easily a few hundred euros every year."
Belitsakos calls them "charatzi," a word from Ottoman times that can perhaps best be translated as "loot" or "compulsory levy." The term is meant to indicate taxes levied arbitrarily and without justification, such as the tithe once paid to feudal lords. "But I can't and won't pony up. It's wrong," Belitsakos says. "Don't you understand?"
Editorial comment by UG -- Another citizen fails to see why they should be pauperized for the benefit of the supranational banks, even as increasing numbers of the poor, particularly the old and students are driven to eat from dumpsters.
formatting link
from bins ? the new make do
19 September 2011 Athens On 19 September, the Greek government announced new cuts designed to convince its partners to hand over the 6th tranche of international aid. Meanwhile in the streets of Athens, more and more people are searching for a cheap way to feed themselves. Giorgos Pouliopoulos
Until now, the phenomenon was unknown in this country, but with the economic crisis, we have seen more and more people searching bins for food. In the past, only tramps and Roma rooted through bins. Then came the arrival of the Asian and African migrants who sifted through rubbish, heaping their finds into supermarket trolleys. Today Greeks are also looking through bins. Many of them are looking for things to sell, but others are searching for food.
For 25 years, Iranian born Samat Eftehar has owned a tavern in Exarchia. "It is still a lively little neighbourhood. I have known most of the people here for years. Some of them who were already on low salaries have had their wages cut. They are decent people, and now they are forced to eat from bins," he says.
Sometimes, he gives away food to needy people he knows. "I don?t think we have seen the last scene in this tragedy yet. Things are getting worse. There?s a real famine,? insists Samat Eftehar. ?I don?t mean a famine where there is nothing to eat, like in Africa. I?m talking about a famine where people can?t even afford to buy meat once a month."
They will do that anyway. "Keeping" thier wealth is not as big an issue to them as "increasing" their wealth. I'm sure most of us would be able to manage the rest of our lives comfortably if we had no debts and just a couple million in the bank. That is not what drives the ultra-rich. They are driven by endless expansion as a goal in itself long after any possible life needs are meet ten times over.
But there is a much stronger argument against the idea we can somehow keep the party going by picking some deep pockets.
If were were to simply confiscate the wealth of anyone who is worth more than $1 million dollars - not tax it, flat out take it and put them out on the streets - it would run the federal governement for a handful of months.
Then we would find ourselves with exactly the same problem we have now and a few more folks in the soup line.
On the scale of federal budgets, the rich are not a big deal even if we take them collectively and even if we wipe them out. The poor have nothing to contribute.
The only way out is a federal spending level that is sustainable from what taxes you can reasonably suck out of the middle class without driving them to extinction.
--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to snipped-for-privacy@netfront.net
Taxing anybody has NOTHING to do with money to the government. The government doesn't need money from anybody.
The govt needs to tax only to keep the private sector from spending too much.
The private sector spending too much is not currently a problem.
In 2007 the private sector spent 4 trillion more than their income. They accomplished this over-spending by borrowing. In 2010 the private sector spent $2 trillion less than they earned. That means they didn't borrow and they saved and paid back old debt.
You don't need to look any farther than that decrease in spending to explain why 15% of people who want jobs can't find a full time job.
The unemployment situation would be fixed almost immediately if the federal govt just stopped taking so much in taxes.
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.