The Political Discussion Thread

[Annoyed]

Depends on what it is you tax, and how you structure it.

If you levy taxes against a business, the business passes it along in the cost of the product. Or the business leaves, closing plants and costing workers their jobs

Which, in most cases gets counteracted by lower income taxes for the poorer people, or alleviated to a degree by governmental assistance.

Are you actually making the argument that a business closing a plant and firing possibly thousands of workers is a good thing??????

[aretood2]

If the United States issued such an announcement, there would be endless whining from every corner of the media.

Let alone the comments about what Denmark is doing.

Let's see how many object to Sweden's plan. My bet is it will pretty much be ignored by the mass media.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/01...-refugees.html

Obama has been deporting record number of illegal immigrants since 2012 and the conservative media doesn't even know about it. The liberal media is pretty quiet about it too. I don't see why this would be any different. Unless they were all gay, then the media would actually care.

[Gatefan1976]

Are you actually making the argument that a business closing a plant and firing possibly thousands of workers is a good thing??????

Are you actually making the argument that you should be a slave caste to a company?
Make up your mind dude. You argued that the government should not have bailed out the auto companies, or the banks which would lead to the -VERY- thing you are now arguing is bad.

Which is it?

[Annoyed]

Different situations entirely. The Bank and auto industries were privately owned for profit businesses which had failed due to stupid decisions on the part of their management. There was no justification for Bush II to have the government bail them out. If I open a business and it goes under because I mismanaged it, do I have the right to expect a bailout?

The situation we are discussing here is where a government chooses to tax a business so heavily that the owners choose to move it out of the taxing jurisdiction's authority or close it altogether.

Never mind apples and oranges, these are as different as two different fruits from different planets.

[Gatefan1976]

Obama has been deporting record number of illegal immigrants since 2012 and the conservative media doesn't even know about it. The liberal media is pretty quiet about it too. I don't see why this would be any different. Unless they were all gay, then the media would actually care.

You mean, one is legal, and the other is not?

[Gatefan1976]

Different situations entirely. The Bank and auto industries were privately owned for profit businesses which had failed due to stupid decisions on the part of their management. There was no justification for Bush II to have the government bail them out. If I open a business and it goes under because I mismanaged it, do I have the right to expect a bailout?

If you cannot pay your staff, you have mismanaged your company.
Do innocent people get destroyed because of that, yes.

The situation we are discussing here is where a government chooses to tax a business so heavily that the owners choose to move it out of the taxing jurisdiction's authority or close it altogether.

You mean, because of greed?
Mmmm, them Teflon corps can do nothing wrong.
Ma and pa companies would not get "taxed out of existence", but, as usual, that fact seems not to crack that head full of FOX fear that comes out of Bull**it mountain.

Never mind apples and oranges, these are as different as two different fruits from different planets.

You seem to be applying the notion of taxing the top 1% heavily as equalling "Taxing everyone heavily", and that's just garbage. The way the system works now -discourages- the free market by having corporate entities so large that there -is- no viable competition to them, and if one does happen to come up, it gets bought out by the bigger corp and folded into the "family". Look at Disney's acquisition of Marvel and Lucasfilms for starters, Or look to your entire food network where everything is owned by 3 main companies.

It's not the middle class, or even the potential emerging "wealthy" class that people want to see taxed, it's the people sitting on billions of dollars who remove that wealth from the economy, except for when it comes around to buy the next politician to make sure you get left alone.

[Coco Pops]

So how is a company like Apple allowed to make an 80 billion dollar profit and pay like 1 or 2% in tax depending on which country they are in?

[Falcon Horus]

So how is a company like Apple allowed to make an 80 billion dollar profit and pay like 1 or 2% in tax depending on which country they are in?

Because they have an expert legal and accountancy team which makes sure they get the best options and the lowest taxes in every country they operate in.

The whole taxing the big companies is a hot subject in Belgian politics these days. Currently it's the middle-class who pays the most taxes, and singles (i.e. people like myself and my sister) or single parents who carry the heaviest tax burden.

[Gatefan1976]

Because they have an expert legal and accountancy team which makes sure they get the best options and the lowest taxes in every country they operate in.

The whole taxing the big companies is a hot subject in Belgian politics these days. Currently it's the middle-class who pays the most taxes, and singles (i.e. people like myself and my sister) or single parents who carry the heaviest tax burden.

This is -exactly- what people like Bernie want to change, and if you stop and think about what he and other tax reformers are putting forward, it is exactly what they want to address. They don't want "middle anywhere" paying for useless things, they want to move the wealth that is currently stagnant and in the hands of the few into the realm of the "people" where it can do something useful.
The "right" consistently and stupidly votes against their own interest, not because core right wing principles are bad, but because they no longer represent those core principles. If I were American and lived before Reagan, there is a damn good chance I would have voted republican, because republican values are the values that lead to the whole notion of freedom for the oppressed. It wasn't the Democrats fighting for De-segregation, nor Woman's Suffrage, it was the REPUBLICANS. Since Reagan however, they have been infiltrated by the "Moral Majority", and before that (post WW2) they have been gutted by Corporate interests under the misguided notion that Capitalism is a Political Ideology. Capitalism is -not- a political ideology, Plutocracy is a political ideology.
So, we get back to Republicans voting against their interests. They are brainwashed to believe that -Capitalism- is actually a political ideology, that if you "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", you too can become part of the "movers and shakers", or at least live a "good life", and the fact is, you won't. Chances are, you will bust your gut "doing the right thing" without even realising that you put the yoke of slavery on, not just willingly, but you RUN towards it, and try to convince others that it is the "right thing to do". You might as well be the costal Africans who sold out their own countrymen to slavery in the western world to get some of the white mans shiny baubles, cause one day you might be the "Massa"
Being the "Massa" is not a position I would try to achieve.

Wake up folks, you are being sold a pipe dream from the Plutocrats, and they are using your fear and greed to keep you in line. Anyone who understood what "plutocracy" is derived from, and the symbolism of that would run away faster from that crap than a Vegan from a free steak dinner.

[Gatefan1976]

So how is a company like Apple allowed to make an 80 billion dollar profit and pay like 1 or 2% in tax depending on which country they are in?

Dude, I assume you have heard some of the stuff coming out of Canberra in regards to that, yes?

People are losing their patience with the legal manuverings of corporations to hide their cash, and eventually, we will get people in office who will change the law. Once the law changes, Corporations loose their protection.

[Annoyed]

Gatefan1976, You can dream all you want. But at the end of the day, it is the well to do that write the tax laws and codes, and regardless of who is conducting the orchestra, the song will never change. They will not write the laws and codes to harm themselves. You can't change that.

So regardless of the rhetoric, it is the middle class and lower that actually pays most of the taxes. This is a pretty good argument against raising taxes.

[Gatefan1976]

Gatefan1976, You can dream all you want. But at the end of the day, it is the well to do that write the tax laws and codes, and regardless of who is conducting the orchestra, the song will never change. They will not write the laws and codes to harm themselves. You can't change that.

So regardless of the rhetoric, it is the middle class and lower that actually pays most of the taxes. This is a pretty good argument against raising taxes.

So your "solution" is to bone yourself?
Just chuck it in the "too hard basket"?
If people with that mindset didn't try to convince others that doing nothing with a broken system is the only thing to do, I wouldn't give two hard turds about them.
Thing is, they don't. They are the A-hole who sells everyone else out in "The Matrix" for a fake steak so they can feel better, and damn everyone else.

[Annoyed]

No, since I can't prevent myself from getting hit with whatever they want to tax in one way or another, my solution is to oppose tax increases in general.

The US doesn't have a tax problem. It has a spending problem.

[Coco Pops]

Unfortunately Annoyed is correct.

It'd be political suicide in Australia or the USA for any government to come down hard on corporations and tax. Guess who donates the most money to political parties so that this doesn't happen?

[Falcon Horus]

And thus the middle-class continues to whine about taxes while every politician thinks only about themselves.

There's gonna come a time that the middle-class won't take that bull**** any longer.