problem with your argument:

When they call the marriage a tax it was like saying the government is not forcing you to get married and therefore not be in violation of interstate commerce law...but when you do get married, you get a tax break.

 

its just the way i understood what i had read, which could be wrong. do they call marriage a tax? how is marriage related to interstate commerce?

 

its not related, nor is healthcare. But, not being married is a tax. You receive a tax rebate when you get married.

this is how scotus ruled.

this is why about 20,000 pages of tax code is getting added and the IRS is adding thousands of jobs.

 

yes you do receive a tax break of some kind for being married. tax code is like reading chinese to me. that's why i dont do my own taxes.

 

i mean the tax code is longer than all of Shakespeare's written work...

 

Actually being married is a tax penalty for dual salary income earners with no kids. Being one year I calculated being married cost me about $3000 a year in taxes. You jump into higher tax brackets faster. For example one person enters the 33% tax bracket with income from work at 178k. Say two people working making roughly the same amount as each other well they enter the 33% when they jointly make just 217K not double. at some point I think a deduction went in that lessened this but I can't remember when it happened.

Bob

 

You know you can choose to file separately and you get the same tax brackets as a single income earner.

 

yeah, that's what we do. ------- loopholes.

 

what you guys say makes sense

in my house i am the only income, i have 2 kids and a mortgage and there are other things that are at play that work in my favour for now. still...taxes are very complicated to me, i hate them, i pay someone else to deal with it. i don't make enough to be in the high brackets and i honestly do not even know what it costs me per year in taxes. i work so much i don't really have time to worry about it which im sure its not good.

bottom line is...it is ridiculous how complicated it is and how huge the irs is. i wish someone had the ***** to come out with a flat tax, no loopholes, no bullcrap, no irs. the irs should be abolished.

 

Remember when America was a land of rugged individualism and self-reliance?

Yeah, most people don't.

When the world had direct consequences for bad decisions, laziness, and general apathy, it allowed people to have the logic of cause and effect demonstrated in their lives. This cause and effect was not cruel, but rather, it was instructive. It taught them from an early age the value of forethought, diligent effort, and the value of strengthening your family unit for achieving shared goals.

These days, there is no forethought and seldom is there even reflective afterthought. Diligent effort has been replaced by a slothful sense of entitlement. And the reliance on a strong family unit has been replaced by a variety of checks cut to individuals for breathing and breeding.

How again is it that we are progressing, my dear progressives?

 

The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and another act in 2004. Part of those damn Bush tax cuts for the rich.

Married filing separate does not give you the same result as splitting the income and filing individual.

 

Well we've pretty much eliminated the poor, everyone has a job, and no one gets sick. and it only took 60 years of these programs to get here!

 

You are right. It has been a while since I looked at those tables. I thought it reverted back to single status tables. My mistake.

 

And 8 years of deregulating industry to get where we are today.

 

lol. if it wasnt for deregulating industry, everyone would be a millionaire and we'd all be living in uptopia...like back in 2004, before companies like GE moved all their jobs to China.

And it's a good thing the HUD was regulating industry and telling banks/fannie/freddie what sorts of loans they should be handing out...without those polices we'd be worse off today.

 

Deregulation during the Bush era is a massive myth. It's doublespeak.

But then don't let logic get in the way of your statist cliches.

Here's a paper released in 2008 showing that the budget of regulatory agencies SOARED the previous several years:
http://www.mercatus.org/uploadedFile...7%20Budget.pdf

Here's a document showing the number of pages ADDED to the Federal Register, where regulations are recorded:
http://www.llsdc.org/attachments/wys...-reg-pages.pdf

Pay attention to the Bush years vs. the Clinton years.
MORE pages were added!

-- quoting --

2011 82,419
2010 82,590
2009 69,676
2008 80,700
2007 74,408
2006 78,724
2005 77,752
2004 78,851
2003 75,795
2002 80,332
2001 67,702
2000 83,294
1999 73,880
1998 72,356
1997 68,530
1996 69,368
1995 67,518
1994 68,108
1993 69,688
1992 62,928


Here's an article on the myth:
The Myth of Financial Deregulation - Reason.com

 

Obviously if you want more regulation then elect more conservative republicans. It has worked that way every time in my lifetime.

But honestly I don’t think it is about the amount of regulation it is about the kind of regulation. Conservatives tend to make regulations for industry and to make them more self-regulated by industry insiders creating financial bubbles environmental disasters and the like. They also like to privatize government functions making it even more corrupt and wasteful while claiming it is making the government smaller even though it cost more to make a few private sector political donors extremely wealthy on government contracts. Progressives tend to regulate for the general welfare of the nation which usually has the effect of reducing business growth usually to more sustainable levels and reduces environmental disasters and the like.

Bob

 

+1billion

 

Sustainable means stealing from the earners and giving to the lazy and the willfully stupid.

Common axiom in old socialist/communist Eastern Bloc countries, "The nail that sticks up will get hammered down." Translation: Don't achieve; Be average.

 

Unsustainable is when a few people acquire a highly disproportionate amount of the wealth that gets generated from the efforts of the hard working, talented, and risk takers because they have control of most of the available capital and have purchased the government with a portion of it to help make sure the rules are such that they are always the winners no mater wether things go good or things go bankrupt. Then you end up with guaranteed winners and guaranteed losers. In a free society that is unsustainable. Giving hedge fund managers, private equity firms, giant investors, and bankers, a free ride on paying for government and costs associated with civilized first world country society needs is a failed Idea. It is pretty much how a fascist government would be run.

Bob