[mike777]

Of course the whole point is for people wanting capital gains to take risks not make safe investments....to invest in companies and not high speed schemes.....

I mean google was high risk...facebook, railroads...car companies.....medical/drug companies....etc..


Take today ...is GM safe or high risk....is an internet company safe or high risk.....cable tv... telephone..netflix....you decide.....

How many of these companies are going out of business soon because of old tech..poor management etc.... which green companies will make billions and others a footnote of history...

[helene_t]

awm, on 2010-December-08, 21:03, said:

Heck, even a fixed salary devalues because of inflation, but I don't get to pay less in taxes on my work income if inflation goes up.

No. If I own one dollar and earn 5 cents in interests while inflation is 2%, my dollar is now worse 98 cents so after having collected the interests I have a real gain of 3 cents which is what I ought to pay taxes of.

If I have no capital but earn 5 cents then I have a real income of 5 cents. It is true that if I wait some months before spending the 5 cents then inflation has taken a bit of them, but if the taxes of interests are lower than the income tax rate then I will, in that case, benefit from the low tax on the interests of my salary account.

I think the fairest scheme would be one in which interests, capital gains etc are taxed at the normal income tax level but that the inflationary loss on investments is tax deductible.

But there are two other things that should be taken into account, both of which are cases for lower capital gain tax:
- Suppose I have a 50% chance of gaining a million a 50% chance of losing half a million on my investment. Then my expected gain is 250,000 but the expected tax base is 500,000, assuming that a loss is not deductible.
- Some capital gain is from shares in industries that already paid corporate tax of the profits that caused their share prices to rise.

All this said, I suppose the current American system (like tax systems elsewhere) is regressive which I don't think it should be. However, top politicians, lobbyists and big campaign sponsors tend to have high incomes so it is in their interests to keep the system regressive.

[mike777]

Several posters keep coming back to main point....fairest........


But you never define fair or why what you say is fair is best...you just drop it...

----


I think we all agree that if you make billions or 90K you should never never pay more than your fair share. keep in mind there are many many kinds of taxes ...not just income tax

----------


in any event I go back to gift tax.

[helene_t]

mike777, on 2010-December-09, 05:03, said:

But you never define fair or why what you say is fair is best...you just drop it...

Saying something is fair is just the same as saying that I am for it. Well, not quite the same, as I could be in favor of a policy because I believe it to be in the interest of the common good. But you get the point.

Basically I would say that if two people have the same income it is "fair" if they pay the same amount of tax. And further, I think a certain degree of progressiveness makes a tax system fair. I may or may not be able to argue those points. But they are just normative statements so if you disagree it doesn't mean that one of us has to be "wrong".

Anyway, fairness is not the main theme, this thread is about deficit reduction. Or maybe, in light of recent developments, we should call it "reduction of the rate by which the increase in deficit accelerates".

[kenberg]

Fairness is highly over-rated. Consistency, opportunity, effectiveness are all better measures of a program.

One of the best thoughts of the Deficit Commission is that we must all share in the solution. It is true that I think the rich should contribute more than I do, but I also have no trouble understanding why I should be called upon to contribute more than we expect from a family of four that is struggling on 60K a year. But this idea that those of us who are making (a lot) less than 250K a year just cannot possibly do anything and it all has to be done by those making above that is really nuts.

Robert Samuelson writes a column for the Post and about once a month he rants about how the elderly are such a burden to us all. As near as I get it, his idea is to solve the entire problem of deficits by socking it to retirees. (He did recently mention farmers, but that was an exception. Mostly he is obsessive about older folks.) I, and other retirees, will not be going quietly down this path. But a balanced approach, based on some sacrifice by everyone, will get my support.

[y66]

I see that 10 year bond yields spiked yesterday which was attributed to increasing inflationary expectations from increased deficit from continuation of Bush tax cuts. If yields continue upward, so will mortgage interest rates, dampening demand for housing, increasing risk of foreclosure and further postponing economic recovery.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2010-December-08, 12:08, said:

Depends on how new you are thinking.


Bill Clinton managed the legislative process reasonably well, despite his failure to push health care through. So did LBJ. These guys were consummate politicians, whatever you think of the course they set sail on. If memory serves me right, both Clinton and Johnson lost an election early in their careers. This can help provide balance in later years.

I'm sort of serious about this. Obama perhaps believed the press about how transformative he was (whatever that means) and now he seems a bit at a loss after discovering that he is just another president.

He has to get his act together, and quick. A weak presidency is not in the national interest.

I suppose there's really nothing new in politics — it's all happened before, somewhere, somewhen.

I agree with your last two points. Don't hold out much hope, though.

[PassedOut]

Interesting piece yesterday about the lawyer defending health care reform against the free lunch crowd: Long Road for Lawyer Defending the Health Care Law.

Quote

Mr. Gershengorn responds that the insurance requirement falls within Supreme Court precedents allowing Congress to regulate “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” With each hearing, he has sought to perfect his argument that the act of not obtaining insurance is itself a consequential commercial decision.

“The appearance of inactivity is just an illusion,” he told Judge Hudson in October. “The consumption of medical services without paying for them, and then shifting those costs, has a devastating effect on the economy.”

For sure. If activist judges see a new "right to be a freeloader" in the US Constitution, it will be damned near impossible to control health care costs.

[luke warm]

PassedOut, on 2010-December-10, 08:47, said:

For sure. If activist judges see a new "right to be a freeloader" in the US Constitution, it will be damned near impossible to control health care costs.

well that's what this is all about, right? if the interstate commerce clause is sufficient to allow the fed gov't to take this action, the courts will tell us

[awm]

I don't really see how the health care bill could be unconstitutional.

The federal government already asserts the right to reduce your taxes if you have a big mortgage, if you have lots of kids, if you're paying for college. They charge you different taxes if you're married or not. They provide money to the poor through welfare and medicaid. They provide money to the elderly through social security. They pay for healthcare for poor children.

All the healthcare bill is really doing on this (as best I can see) is charging people more in taxes if they don't have health insurance (and less in taxes if they do). Given all the other things the government can constitutionally adjust your taxes for (apparently) I can't imagine that this is a problem. And there are societal costs from people who don't have insurance and then go to the hospital when they get sick anyway, and get treated anyway (doctors swear an oath not to turn people away for lack of money, and I wouldn't want to live in a society where the sick are just allowed to die if they can't pay). Oh, the bill also extends medicaid to slightly higher incomes and gives some money to low-income people who buy health insurance, but again this is much the same as welfare or a tax credit.

Really I think the people pursuing these law suits are just trying to make a political point and have no realistic chance of winning. Even the "conservative" judges put there by Republican administrations are unlikely to buy their arguments.

The funniest part (to me anyway) is the constant claims from the right that "Obamacare" is a "government takeover of healthcare." In fact it's mostly a giveaway to the insurance companies, and there's no added government-run healthcare at all. Many on the left are upset that we didn't go for a single-payer system or at least a public option (i.e. government-run health insurance). And of course, the right also won a lot of votes in 2010 by accusing (with some degree of truth) democrats of cutting medicare, which is.... government run healthcare.

[blackshoe]

What Congress has a right to do is, basically, specified in the Constitution. The corollary to that is that Congress does not have a right to do things not specified in the Constitution. Congress has nonetheless asserted such rights over the years, and we, the People, have allowed them to get away with it. That doesn't make it right, nor does it make everything Congress does done by right.
All that said, until We, the People, decide to put a stop to such Congressional assertions, Congress will continue to make them, continue to accrue power, and continue to tax and spend as Congress sees fit. Personally, I don't expect that to change anytime soon - although a good and very smart friend of mine used to say "I give this 'noble experiment*' another 25 years at most". The last time he said that was in 1990, shortly before his death. I suppose we might have more than five years left, but the signs of rot are certainly there.

* He was talking about our form of government.

[kenberg]

Law and philosophy each weave a tangled web. Put them together and the result is total incoherence. I approach it in a different way.

I regard myself as an American. I want to examine what this means. I grew up in Minnesota, I moved to Maryland in 1967. I did not regard this as leaving my homeland. I really like the city of Toronto. I conceivably could move there someday. Moving from Maryland to Toronto would be different from moving from Minnesota to Maryland. Moving to London or Paris would be even more different. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Miller, many writers moved to Paris after WWI. They were the expatriates. When Faulkner moved from Mississippi to California he was not called an expatriate.

Perhaps I am being obscure. The point is that we grow up thinking of "American", not Minnesotan, as our fundamental political identity. Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama says "You need a passport to come here", but the joke worked exactly because it isn't so. Washington, in our automatic thinking, gets to impose its will on St. Paul (St. Paul is the capitol of Minnesota and the fact that I have to say that underscores my point), the UN does not get to impose its will on Washington. We are not Minnesotans, we are not world citizens, we are Americans. I am speaking of the way we actually think of ourselves, I am not intending some patriotic point here.

Once it is acknowledged that we see ourselves as Americans rather than Minnesotans, most of the rest follows naturally. Yes Congress can, for better or worse, impose a health law on U.S. citizens because Congress makes American law and we are Americans.

Of course we have Constitution that sorts out powers to the federal government and powers to the states. But words are always elastic. I don't recommend holding one's breath until the people demand that the federal government defer to state's rights. On some given issue, when it suits a particular purpose, some may demand it. But in general, no, it won't happen. We will interpret the Constitution to accommodate our view of our political identity..

[luke warm]

kenberg, on 2010-December-11, 17:35, said:

~~the UN does not get to impose its will on Washington.

not yet

Quote

Once it is acknowledged that we see ourselves as Americans rather than Minnesotans, most of the rest follows naturally. Yes Congress can, for better or worse, impose a health law on U.S. citizens because Congress makes American law and we are Americans.

but i think that's the point... it can't be denied that they can and do as you say, but what blackshoe said is true... there is a reason the rights and differences were spelled out in the constitution, and calling these things merely philosophical meanderings isn't very satisfying

[awm]

Here's an interesting link about deficit reduction by a Nobel laureate.

As far as the health care bill, it's mostly about income tax. The 16th amendment gives the federal government pretty broad powers in this regard. And I'm sure there's plenty of case law as to the constitutionality of medicare and various tax deductions/exemptions. I'm sure there's some people who'd like to see the federal government's taxation powers limited a lot more than they are, but as things stand with the health care bill doing very little that the government wasn't doing before (except for matters of degree) I can't imagine how these cases could win. Their track record in the courts is pretty bad so far, and a number of non-partisan groups have stated that the lawsuits are pretty ridiculous.

[y66]

awm, on 2010-December-12, 21:48, said:

Here's an interesting link about deficit reduction by a Nobel laureate.

This guy sure thinks and writes clearly. Will bookmark that site.

[kenberg]

The Stiglitz article includes the following source of deficits:

Quote

growth in corporate welfare, from bank bailouts to ethanol subsidies to a continuation of agricultural subsidies, even when those subsidies have been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization.

A while back on NPR there was a guy explaining why we are subsidizing Brazilian cotton growers. I am doing this from memory but I think I have it right.


Apparently Brazilian cotton growers complained to the WTO about unfair U.S. domestic subsidies. They won, they won the appeal, they won the appeal of the appeal, and pretty much no one thought we had a leg to stand on. Politically it was impossible to stop the domestic subsidies so we worked out a deal with the Brazilians to subsidize them as well.

This is what i got out of the story. It would be good to hear that I got it wrong.

[luke warm]

kenberg, on 2010-December-11, 17:35, said:

Yes Congress can, for better or worse, impose a health law on U.S. citizens because Congress makes American law and we are Americans.

Quote

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson struck down the "individual mandate" requiring most Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014. The Justice Department is expected to challenge the judge's findings in a federal appeals court.

more found here... this will definitely end up in the supreme court... the legal question is, as far as i can understand, whether or not the federal gov't can constitutionally mandate that americans purchase (in this case) health care

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on 2010-December-13, 16:49, said:

more found here... this will definitely end up in the supreme court... the legal question is, as far as i can understand, whether or not the federal gov't can constitutionally mandate that americans purchase (in this case) health care

Interesting data point regarding Judge Hudson and conflict of interest:

http://tpmmuckraker....ons.php?ref=fpb

Money Quote:

"Is Judge Hudson's status as a shareholder coincidence or causation? Probably the former, but the optics aren't good," James J. Sample, an associate professor at Hofstra Law School, told TPM. "Federal judges are required by statute to disqualify themselves from hearing a case whenever their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. It's a hyper-protective rule and for good reason. At the very least, his continued financial interest in Campaign Solutions undermines the perceived legitimacy of his decision."

[kenberg]

When I was a kid I took a spill and injured my back. My parents took me to the hospital, which refused to admit me until my father went back home and brought in some evidence that he would be able to pay the bill.

I think that we do not take that approach anymore. If, however, people with means decide that paying for health care insurance is just too much of a burden, we might consider returning to those good old days.

Anyway, it's my hope the Supremes settle the issue.

[mike777]

One of the main questions is if the mandate is a tax?

The President said it is NOT! but the attorney general says it is.

This ruling seems to be based on the fact it is not a tax.