y8s

iTrader: (8)

flat tax wont work because of the cost of living thing i just said. poors already overpay for necessities compared to richs on a percent scale.

and dont get me wrong, I pay taxes and take govt benefits too (home buyer credits, energy credits, etc). that infrastructure isn't there to make you angry, it's there to serve and help you. take advantage of it but dont take it for granted.

magnamx-5

iTrader: (7)

For once i agree with your wholehartedly mat

fahrvergnugen

Cueball,

You might look into mod'ing that TT more carefully. There is quite a bit of conversation on VWVortex.com that DSG trannys don't respond well to mods, that they aren't equipped to handle the extra power. I can't recall what the suggested horsepower ceiling is, but it should be found there.


Flat tax will never happen. A convoluted tax system that not only keeps thousands of tax folks, both IRS and CPAs at work, and also one that hides the dirty mess behind the curtain, they have no choice but to keep it in place...

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

Funkingroovin. On a brand new car we'll consider any mods very closely. I'll check out the vortex forum. Thanks!



Here's one of those BS political emails that get sent around all the time. This one struck a cord though...

Edited for length.

> 545 PEOPLE
> By Charlie Reese
>
> Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems
> and then campaign against them.
>
> Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans
> are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
>
> Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against
> inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
>
> You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
>
> You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on
> appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
>
> You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
>
> You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
>
> You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank
> does.
>
> One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine
> Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300
> million are directly, legally, morally, and individually
> responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
>
> I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that
> problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated
> its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally
> chartered, but private, central bank.
>
> I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound
> reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to
> coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-
> picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million
> dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject
> it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's
> responsibility to determine how he votes.
>
> Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you
> that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this
> common con regardless of party.
> What separates a politician from a normal human being is an
> excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the
> gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for
> creating deficits.. The president can only propose a budget.
> He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
>
> The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole
> responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and
> approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the
> House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party.
> She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any
> budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over
> his veto if they agree to.
>
> If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
>
> If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..
>
> If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in
> IRAQ
>
> There are no insoluble government problems.
>
> These 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom
> they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose
> gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give
> the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
> Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there
> exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation,"
> or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath
> to do.
>
> Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
>
> They, and they alone, have the power.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

cueball, you've just described what a representative democracy is. because I bet most of those 545 people are way smarter than the average american.

but some of those descriptions are too glib--it is a catchy email forward after all and has no responsibility to be accurate or cite sources so it can say whatever it wants. it is up to you to accept or reject its claims (which is why I hate these--they are all too easily accepted at face value when they are of questionable source).

lets look at california's system. they hamstring themselves by voting down taxes and voting for more things that requrie government money via the ballot initiative system. where did it leave them? writing IOUs because the government couldn't generate enough tax dollars for the expensive programs the people wanted.

it's similar in the federal government. people say "I want my taxes lower and my roads to have less potholes and better schools" and they can't do it without having a defecit.

back to the original statement in my post: are you personally capable of writing a national budget or a new tax code on your own?

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

No one in the congress or senate is able to write that on their own either! It's all done by commitee, proxy and guesswork.

Y8's I wouldn't agree the majority of congress or the senate is any smarter than you or I. They are politically savvy, educated in politics and law. You and I are not. A person does not need to be smart to be elected, they need to be personally apealing, have good stage presence, be able to memorize large amounts of information and able to create trust in others. I would venture that a commitee made up of the brighter MT members, with some time and education, could create an entirely new tax code just as well as a random sampling of congress.

Yes that email is glib. Yes it's the typical email crap floating around. It does contain truth. If they really wanted to fix things they could. They could throw out rooms full of legislation, tax code and law and start fresh if they had the desire or will. They simply do not.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

^^ I said "average american". I'd like to think that I am above average. You are smarter than average. Which means more than half of people are stupider than we are.

I dont doubt that we could create that code, but man would I rather **** with cars

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

+1 That's why we are debating this BS on a turbo Miata forum and not on the senate floor!

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

This is a critically important and oft overlooked fact insofar as criticism of representative democracy is concerned.

One-half of all Americans are of below-average intelligence. 25% of all Americans have an IQ of 89 or below. 1 in 20 have an IQ of less than 75, and are therefore seriously retarded. One out of twenty! Try to pick 'em out next time you're in the mall, on the bus / train, etc.

And pretty much every one of these people who isn't currently incarcerated or on parole / probation for a felony offense is eligible to vote. (In Maine and Vermont you can vote from prison, and in 13 states you can vote while on parole / probation.)


Regardless of their political views, hubris, gall, predilection towards having sex with young boys, etc., the fact is that nearly 100% of those persons who are elected into the three branches of the Federal Government are college graduates, and a large percentage came into politics by way of the legal system or the upper echelons of the business community. This means that they are at least smart enough to be admitted into (and graduate from) institutions such as Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, the Naval Academy, Duke, West Point, etc. As a matter of pure statistics, this would tend to place them somewhere in the 120-130 IQ range, putting them in the upper 10% of all American in terms of raw intelligence.


Representative democracy applies a sort of filtering process to the will of the people.

I like that.

ZX-Tex

iTrader: (15)

Well said. I agree completely, and if I remember my revolutionary history properly, that was part of the intent of the Founding Fathers. Though it may have been very practical in their time for somewhat different reasons, like the relatively very slow movement of information at the time, it is still important for the same basic reason. If we the people voted DIRECTLY for every piece of legislation, including the budget, the whole Government would blow recklessly in the wind of sometimes fickle public opinion, and institutions like the press (through the low IQ morons that buy the garbage in rampant media sensationalism) would rule the country, rather than report on it. Just think of what kind of damage a grassroots megalomaniac could achieve. Representative government, though not perfect, is still FTW.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

I sat behind George Will's son last night at a baseball game. He's got Down's syndrome. Man is that guy's dad seriously retarded.

cueball1

iTrader: (13)

I'd venture to guess Y8's, Joe P, Brain, Sav, and many other regulars here fall into that same top 10%. Now who's at the bottom 10 here!?!

rharris19

iTrader: (41)

Sometimes? What actually bothers me is that the only consistant thing in the majority public opinion is the lack of consistancy. I meet people everyday that simply repeat everything they heard the previous night on FOX News, NBC, or whatever their choice of "news" is. They have no idea what it means and most of the time they either forget completely about when the next story comes around in a week or completely change their mind from watching another news station.

It is too easy now for people to just take a passive stance on things and just believe whatever they are told. That is why those mass e-mails are go viral so easily. People actually get irritated at me when I question things like that to the point that I have given up on even trying. People are stuck in thier ways of blind acceptance of anything easy to subscribe to.

What people are even worried about with the news doesn't even make sense most of the time. Take for instance this: my mother has a doctorate in accounting, so is by most measures intellegent. When I sat down to talk about the presidential campain, her first reaction was to say that she didn't want a muslim in the Whitehouse that had the middle name of Hussein. THAT was her pressing issue! I tried to explain that he wasn't a muslim, but I might as well been talking to a wall. I asked her what she thought about his policies and she couldn't tell me a damn thing. **** like that pisses me off, and makes me happy to have a representaive democracy.

I atleast didn't vote for him for logic driven reasons and not bull **** emotional dribble.

rharris19

iTrader: (41)

A flat tax would work great if implemented correctly. I don't understand why there is a staggered system anyway. The poor get away with paying little to no taxes, while still being able to use publicly funded things like roads and government programs. I get taxed out the *** and they get the same benefits that I do!

Of course it will take up a larger portion of thier money to buy necessities when they have less money to spend on them. To me that is one of those statements that draws emotion from people, but if thought through reasonably, has no real meaning. That is what Obama's campain was driven off of.

I personally think that we should get rid of 75% of the government programs and make people start working for things and not trying to make everyone so damn equal and happy. If you want something, work for it. No program should make it easier to afford it, when you couldn't in the first place.

I am tired of being taxed and getting LESS in return than those who are paying little to no taxes.


On a side note. I do love how there are intellegent people on this forum that can handle debating and discern between this and person attacks.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I think what probably bothers a lot of people (whether they consciously realize it or not) is that the concept of progressive taxation is essentially consistent with a slogan conceived by French socialist Louis Blanc and popularized by the father of modern communism, Karl Marx, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

In other words, scaling the rate of taxation of a person's income relative to the amount of that person's total income, and scaling the percentage of support disbursed to an individual also relative to their pre-tax total income, is one of the fundamental tenets of Marxist communism.

naarleven

iTrader: (2)

Personally you'd have to be crazy to support a regressive tax system (flat tax).

There is a very real capability of taxes to squander low income and exasperate poverty all the while propping up more established higher income citizens. It creates a vicious circle where coming out of poverty is impossible. Imagine attempting to pay for classes at the local Community College when 60% of your income (which is completely spent on commodities- gas, food, ect) is taxable(by flat tax estimates up to 40% VAT) and the remaining 40% is spent on rent.

And people need to deradicalize in the United States. There are working market socialism states that are doing very very well and in many cases better than the US. I think we need to move towards a more centered, less partisan - issue based- approach on American politics. There are many cases where private efficiency is better than government controllability and vice versa. It just needs to be looked at on a issue to issue basis.

For instance one of the greater ironies of the current healthcare debate is the idea that a public option would give the Federal Govt an unfair advantage compared to private healthcare companies. Ironic considering this is contrary to 99.999% of current thinking on Govt VS Private. Think UPS efficiency and reliability versus USPS cost.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I'm not debating the merits of a flat tax, only pointing out one reason why opposition to progressive taxation is essentially ingrained into the fiber of most Americans.

There are, of course, alternatives.

Consider the idea of a Federal sales tax, as done in many European countries. This, of course, already exists to some extent, as tobacco, alcohol, gasoline, etc. What if a Federal Sales Tax were to be imposed on all items? Obviously, good precedent exists in the form of most state sales taxes. Certain items, such as groceries and mortgage payments, are completely untaxed. Certain other items, such as automobiles, are taxed at a higher rate than average, and that tax is progressive insofar as the application of "gas guzzler" taxes and "luxury" taxes. A person buying a Honda Fit will pay less tax, both in real numbers and as a percentage of the purchase price, than someone buying a 7 series BMW.



You'll get no argument from me here. China is a shining example of a functional socio-capitalist state. But a lot of their success really has less to do with socialism as with eco-nationalism almost to the point of xenophobia. The Chinese government disproportionately taxes imported goods, erects barriers to foreign ownership of property and businesses, grants favorable status to businesses engaged in export trade, and so on.

The downside of this, of course, is a reduced standard of living and equivalent purchasing power per capita for the majority of their citizens. Imagine, for a moment, what would happen if it were no longer legal to purchase washing machines, TVs, avocados, clothing, etc., unless those items were manufactured in the US or Canada. Since those countries have much higher manufacturing costs than the countries that currently produce those things for us (owing not just to wages, but also to business costs such as EPA / OSHA compliance, worker's comp and other benefits, etc), then the price of almost everything we buy would skyrocket, and as a result, the divide which currently exists between those who own summer homes and those who do not would suddenly extend to cover those who own washing machines and those who do not.


Following that logic, money that is currently going into private healthcare will instead be redirected, at a proportionally higher rate (dollars spent vs. healthcare delivered), into the public programs. The total amount spent on healthcare will rise, and/or the total quantity of healthcare delivered will decrease.

rharris19

iTrader: (41)

UPS is a business and must be efficeint to survive. They must also do it for a profit. USPS on the other hand is government run and does not need to turn a profit. In fact they are a money losing liability. The difference is that the USPS charges rates that both UPS and Fedex can't afford to charge.

Now if you were to take this comparison to healthcare and there are striking similarities. Private heathcare is out to make money. The government can step in and offer healthcare at cost to them since they don't have to make money. They also drive down the cost to us by telling doctors what they are going to pay and if they don't like it, they don't take you as a patient. This drives away a good amount of competant doctors and specialists from the program, so you are left with only those who agreed to the new rate. I don't know of any government run program that has ever been quick to react to ANYTHING, so to expect the healthcare system to run as efficiently as it is now, is far fetched in my mind. Everything has to go through such a long and drawn out process that it is unbarable. Your employeer can also decide that it isn't worth it to keep the private policy and move everyone over to the public plan. If you can't afford private on your own, then you are SOL.

Whenever I want to ship something cheap, I use USPS. Whenever I ship anything valuable or important, I use UPS.

So yes, the new healthcare is much like USPS. They don't have to make money and they don't have to be the most efficient. As long as they provide the cheapest rates, it doesn't matter.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

addendum to my above:

The reason that this is a problem, of course, is that those who make the decision to go with public vs. private healthcare (disproportionately, those in the lower income brackets) are not the same as those who will bear the increased cost of this system (disproportionately, those in the higher income brackets.) As a result, those who choose to pay for a higher level of service will bear a disproportionately increased cost, as they must now also pay for the less efficient service of those who accept a decreased standard of care in exchange for reduced out-of-pocket cost.

This is exactly the situation that exists today in the housing market (buying a home vs. living in the projects) and it is exactly what will happen to the healthcare system, probably to the point of creating a sort of healthcare ghetto.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Are there pimps and hoes in this ghetto?