rickyp wrote:rayjay

And it's 34% for small businesses in the US.

And with the HST 23.5% in Canada (Ontario anyways) for small business.

You just can't stay on topic. That's not an income tax. HST is a sales tax, which is a regressive tax. No thank you.

rayjay

If that's the case, why do you object to the rate going down to 20% in the US?

I don't.
If it were simply applied, and if the budget ran at a surplus (since the economy is doing reasonably well) it would make sense to keep taxes low.
What you don't have is a balanced budget, nor is the tax code simple.
Start by simplifying the tax code so everybody understands who pays what ... then figure out if revenues are adequate to run the required services... (Probably are if you cut defense spending to a reasonable level) .

So Trump has to fundamentally change the entire US tax structure, align with your view on defense spending, and balance the budget, and then you would consider to deign to support good elements of his tax plan. That's sort of the same thing as saying "when Hell freezes over." Whereas others slightly move goal posts, in your debating style, you move them from Hard Rock Stadium to the Northwest Territories.

(BTW since you mentioned housing. 65% of Americans own their own home. So do 65% of Canadians. We don't get to write off mortgage interest. And yet despite this incentive ownership is the same. Canadian homes do tend to be smaller. But then 43% of Canadians are mortgage free versus 29% of Americans... Is the mortgage deduction thing actually working? Or is it just putting more of the tax burden on renters ? and perhaps encouraging debt accumulation because of the ability to write off interest?)

No argument from me. I'm fine with getting rid of it, although it's been around so long the transition would be very tough. The deduction which has been with us for over 100 years is poor economics. But the political forces behind it have made it too hard for every president since to get rid of it. Regain to his credit had the principles and ability to limit its application to the wealthy in 1986. (I know you are a closet Reagan fan.) Trump's plan does reduce its significance by increasing the standard deduction.

Ricky:

Economic conditions have been up and down since 1980 in the US. /

Economic conditions have been up and down for way longer than that.

Rayjay

The term "living wage" is more complicated than you realize.

No its really not. Its insisting its complicated that keeps people fooled.

If it's so easy, what is the hourly rate for the living wage in Canada? Use numbers.

rayjay

You just can't stay on topic. That's not an income tax. HST is a sales tax, which is a regressive tax. No thank you

For consumers its a consumption tax.
For businesses its a tax on profit.
Every company keeps track of the HST it collects and that it pays. When you collect more than you pay, you submit the amount. Only profitable companies pay.

rayjay

So Trump has to fundamentally change the entire US tax structure, align with your view on defense spending, and balance the budget, and then you would consider to deign to support good elements of his tax plan.

I think its funny that you actually think Trump might understand the details of the tax proposal.
The point I'm making, is that the whole notion of this |Plan" is that it "cuts taxes". And mostly it cuts taxes for the wealthy.
That's the sole policy that matters.
As if a tax cut is the only solution for whatever ails the economy.
And its certainly not.
POLITICO looked at each time the country changed the top income tax rate and the following five years of GDP per capita growth rate. The results are similar to the CRS findings: changing the top income tax rate does not have a predictable effect on economic growth.
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2 ... t-wealthy/

I think most agree that a tax plan should FIRST and foremost be simplified so that its application is fair and transparent.
Second: It should create enough revenue to pay for planned expenditures.
Then; lets worry about cutting taxes ....
Right now, all that's being considered is How much to cut, and how to make the tax cuts for the wealthy appear reasonable. Not even the deficit hawks are really worried about the implications on the debt of this proposed plan. Its just a bloody boondoggle like everything Trump does.

If it's so easy, what is the hourly rate for the living wage in Canada? Use numbers.

These guys have developed a formula.

http://www.livingwagecanada.ca/files/39 ... nt_Nov.pdf

A living wage:
• enables working families to have sufficient income to cover
reasonable costs;
• promotes social inclusion;
• supports healthy child development principles;
• ensures that families are not under severe financial stress;
• is a conservative, reasonable estimate;
• engenders significant and wide ranging community support;
and
• is a vehicle for promoting the benefits of social programs
such as childcare

Are these principles reasonable?
If so, then the easiest way to provide this (besides the social programs that most western democracies provide everyone - like Universal health care) is a minimum wage law.
If someone can't achieve this by working 40 hours a week at Walmart - why should the government then need to help WalMart ensure its employees achieve this level of security?

rickyp wrote:

A living wage:
• enables working families to have sufficient income to cover
reasonable costs;
• promotes social inclusion;
• supports healthy child development principles;
• ensures that families are not under severe financial stress;
• is a conservative, reasonable estimate;
• engenders significant and wide ranging community support;
and
• is a vehicle for promoting the benefits of social programs
such as childcare

Are these principles reasonable?
If so, then the easiest way to provide this (besides the social programs that most western democracies provide everyone - like Universal health care) is a minimum wage law.
If someone can't achieve this by working 40 hours a week at Walmart - why should the government then need to help WalMart ensure its employees achieve this level of security?

Did you use #s? What's the hourly pay rate where you live?

[quote="rickyp"The point I'm making, is that the whole notion of this |Plan" is that it "cuts taxes". And mostly it cuts taxes for the wealthy.
That's the sole policy that matters. [/quote]

So, if the GOP is overhauling the Federal Income tax scheme and the poor pay zero Federal income taxes, how could it give them a cut?

(Note well: any attempt to drag SSI into this is null and void, unless you want to propose a serious plan for restructuring it so that it makes sense. I am talking about Federal Income taxes, not SSI, not State taxes, not local taxes, not vehicle fees, building fees, hunting and fishing licensing fees, nor fees for docking yachts out of State)

Ricky:

I think its funny that you actually think Trump might understand the details of the tax proposal.

Do you not realize that there is a Treasury Secretary? .

Ricky:

looked at each time the country changed the top income tax rate and the following five years of GDP per capita

There's only been 1 real cut to corporate tax rates since WWII, and it worked very well as I've already posted. The rest of this is your not staying on topic and not even reading what I write. Hash tag you are a waste of my time.

The irresponsibility of tax cuts...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.c ... oblem.html

RJ and DF,

A few questions:

(1) Do you agree that wealth was more fairly distributed between the middle-class and the wealthy as the result of liberal policies started by the New Deal and continuing from the 1930s to the 1970s?
(2) Do you agree that more wealth has gone to the top as a result of more pro-business and pro-wealthy tax and regulatory policies started by Reagan from 1980 to the present?
(3) Do you agree that wealth stratification has negative effects on society, with more money going to influence politics, alienation from politics by voters who realize they have less and less influence, lower investment in infrastructure and education as the rich see less of a need for it (and since they are making the money they are the ones that have to pay for it), and negative effect on the social order as the middle-class gets squeezed more and more.

Before you answer...Here is an article with nice charts showing what has happened to the distribution of income since that time.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-a ... inequality

So if our policies have concentrated wealth over the past 40 years...and that the results of that are negative...why are you advocating policies that will in result in even more weath going towards the top?

If you have different policies that result in more wealth going to the middle-class...I would be happy to hear about them. Otherwise the policies you are advocating seem selfish. Let's cut corporate taxes, so executives and shareholders can make even more money...and refuse to make sure that employees make enough money to live on. Bah Humbug!

"When the standard of living of a large mass of people falls below a certain subsistence level – a level regulated automatically as the one necessary for a member of the society – and when there is a consequent loss of the sense of right and wrong, of honesty and the self-respect which makes a man insist on maintaining himself by his own work and effort, the result is the creation of a rabble of paupers. At the same time this brings with it, at the other end of the social scale, conditions which greatly facilitate the concentration of disproportionate wealth in a few hands." Hegel, Philosophy of Right]

"Not only caprice, however, but also contingencies, physical conditions, and factors grounded in external circumstances (see § 200) may reduce men to poverty. The poor still have the needs common to civil society, and yet since society has withdrawn from them the natural means of acquisition (see § 217) and broken the bond of the family – in the wider sense of the clan (see § 181) – their poverty leaves them more or less deprived of all the advantages of society, of the opportunity of acquiring skill or education of any kind, as well as of the administration of justice, the public health services, and often even of the consolations of religion, and so forth. The public authority takes the place of the family where the poor are concerned in respect not only of their immediate want but also of laziness of disposition, malignity, and the other vices which arise out of their plight and their sense of wrong." [Hegel, Philosophy of Right]

Hegel was no socialist, though Marx was inspired by his writings.

"A particular man’s resources, or in other words his opportunity of sharing in the general resources, are conditioned, however, partly by his own unearned principal (his capital), and partly by his skill; this in turn is itself dependent not only on his capital, but also on accidental circumstances whose multiplicity introduces differences in the development of natural, bodily, and mental characteristics, which were already in themselves dissimilar. In this sphere of particularity, these differences are conspicuous in every direction and on every level, and, together with the arbitrariness and accident which this sphere contains as well, they have as their inevitable consequence disparities of individual resources and ability.
Remark: The objective right of the particularity of mind is contained in the Idea. Men are made unequal by nature, where inequality is in its element, and in civil society the right of particularity is so far from annulling this natural inequality that it produces it out of mind and raises it to an inequality of skill and resources, and even to one of moral and intellectual attainment. To oppose to this right a demand for equality is a folly of the Understanding which takes as real and rational its abstract equality and its ‘ought-to-be’.
This sphere of particularity, which fancies itself the universal, is still only relatively identical with the universal, and consequently it still retains in itself the particularity of nature, i.e. arbitrariness, or in other words the relics of the state of nature. Further, it is reason, immanent in the restless system of human needs, which articulates it into an organic whole with different members (see the following §)." [Hegel, Philosophy of Right]

It is "folly" to make a demand for economic equality.

Hegel wrote this about 1820.

freeman3 wrote:The irresponsibility of tax cuts...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.c ... oblem.html

Sorry, but this is nothing but a liberal talking point.

Tax cuts mean people have more of their own money. What they do with it creates growth in the economy, which will increase income, which increases government revenues. To pretend the economy is static is just dumb.

freeman3 wrote:RJ and DF,

A few questions:

(1) Do you agree that wealth was more fairly distributed between the middle-class and the wealthy as the result of liberal policies started by the New Deal and continuing from the 1930s to the 1970s?
(2) Do you agree that more wealth has gone to the top as a result of more pro-business and pro-wealthy tax and regulatory policies started by Reagan from 1980 to the present?
(3) Do you agree that wealth stratification has negative effects on society, with more money going to influence politics, alienation from politics by voters who realize they have less and less influence, lower investment in infrastructure and education as the rich see less of a need for it (and since they are making the money they are the ones that have to pay for it), and negative effect on the social order as the middle-class gets squeezed more and more.

Before you answer...Here is an article with nice charts showing what has happened to the distribution of income since that time.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-a ... inequality

So if our policies have concentrated wealth over the past 40 years...and that the results of that are negative...why are you advocating policies that will in result in even more weath going towards the top?

If you have different policies that result in more wealth going to the middle-class...I would be happy to hear about them. Otherwise the policies you are advocating seem selfish. Let's cut corporate taxes, so executives and shareholders can make even more money...and refuse to make sure that employees make enough money to live on. Bah Humbug!

Bah humbug to your questions.

They are loaded. For example, "Do you agree that wealth was more fairly distributed between the middle-class and the wealthy as the result of liberal policies started by the New Deal and continuing from the 1930s to the 1970s?"

That's insanely broad. An encyclopedic, 24-volume tome could be written addressing it. Let's see . . . massive industrialization, WW2, the Marshall Plan, radio, television, the FDIC and FSLIC, and how many other economy-shifting events, developments and programs affected the economy--beyond just taxation?

rayjay

Did you use #s? What's the hourly pay rate where you live?

Average? Minimum? Living?
Because there are differing cost of living,a living wage differs by locale.
Canadian minimum wage doesn't meet a living wage either by the way... (By the definition used...)

Brandon, MB - $14.55 | Access the Report
Thompson, MB - $15.28 | Access the Report
Winnipeg, MB - $14.54 | Access the Report
Whitehorse, YK - $18.26 | Access the Report
Calgary, AB - $18.15 | Access the Report
Edmonton, AB - $16.31 | Access the Report
Waterloo, ON - $15.42 | Access the Report
Nipiwan, SK - $15.17 | View the Announcement

In my town they calculate a living wage to be $17.05 an hour.. Expensive town.
feel better now?

Do you not realize that there is a Treasury Secretary?

.
I do. He's that good looking fellow from Goldman Sacks. Who says:
It's very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy,'
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/18/its-ver ... -says.html

I believe the republican strategy is to say tax cuts so much, everyone "Feels" they are getting a tax cut. Kinda like the people who signed up for Trump University heard the word University and thought that's what they were paying tuition for... a real genuine degree granting institution.
Lets ignore the deficits now. Its not a Democratic administration....

freeman3 wrote:RJ and DF,

A few questions:

(1) Do you agree that wealth was more fairly distributed between the middle-class and the wealthy as the result of liberal policies started by the New Deal and continuing from the 1930s to the 1970s?
!

The depression and WWII resulted in massive equalization -- your link shows this. It also shows how the hiccups in 1987, 2000, and 2007/8 improved equalization. I do agree that the take off in the US economy in the 50's and early 60's helped as well. Social security also substantially helped. Other programs probably helped too, although there have certainly been unintended consequences. Do you agree that social programs are partially responsible for the breakdown of the family structure? (I'm answering your questions; you should answer mine.)

(2) Do you agree that more wealth has gone to the top as a result of more pro-business and pro-wealthy tax and regulatory policies started by Reagan from 1980 to the present?

I do agree that more wealth has gone to the top, but that is primarily because our economy is very different now than it was in the 50's. In the past, to scale an automobile company you needed to hire a lot of uneducated or somewhat educated men. You built factories across the Midwest. To scale a software app you only need a few people in San Francisco or Boston or Singapore. BTW, your link is somewhat biased because it starts the measurement from 1979 when the economy was doing poorly. Better to measure income inequality from trough to trough or peak to peak. I also can't tell if it fully takes into account social welfare payments.

Are you saying there was a time when regulatory policies did not favor big business and the wealthy? We certainly have a massive amount of taxes and regulations today, right?

(3) Do you agree that wealth stratification has negative effects on society, with more money going to influence politics, alienation from politics by voters who realize they have less and less influence,

Sort of. It's not that wealth stratification leads to more money going to politics. It's that wealth leads to more money going to politics, especially in an environment when Washington or state houses controls business well being through a weirdly regulated state. Companies invest money somewhat rationally, and investing in your Congressman or woman has a high ROI. As to money going to influence politics, I don't see a material difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Hillary raised more than Donald. Unions contribute as much as Corporations, more or less.

lower investment in infrastructure and education as the rich see less of a need for it (and since they are making the money they are the ones that have to pay for it), and negative effect on the social order as the middle-class gets squeezed more and more.

I bet that more money goes to infrastructure and education today than at any time in history. Perhaps it's not the sum of money but how it is spent. Both infrastructure and education spending are controlled by unions. As an aside, when you have a kid in the public schools and see how bad a teacher can be, and how protected they are by the unions, get back to me. You may already notice issues with union dominated road construction. Perhaps you are just being played by unions and don't even realize it.

Before you answer...Here is an article with nice charts showing what has happened to the distribution of income since that time.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-a ... inequality

Yes, nice charts. Do you think there is any bias in them at all?

So if our policies have concentrated wealth over the past 40 years

The charts don't prove it is our policies. They just show it exists..

...and that the results of that are negative...why are you advocating policies that will in result in even more weath going towards the top?

I'm advocating policies that will grow our economy. I think part of the reason for our political malaise is that our economy has not grown fast enough over the last 15 or so years. Europe can survive as a more static society, but the US is based on bringing in new people and growing. Our high corporate tax rates are preventing growth.

If you have different policies that result in more wealth going to the middle-class...I would be happy to hear about them. Otherwise the policies you are advocating seem selfish. Let's cut corporate taxes, so executives and shareholders can make even more money...and refuse to make sure that employees make enough money to live on. Bah Humbug!

Nice touch. So basically I'm an a$$hole and you are a good person. It's as if you haven't read a word I've written on unintended consequences, incentives, and the overreach of the state. My life experience is that people are better off if you tell them they can make it with hard work, perseverance, and a little luck. (and that is largely true) They are worse off when you tell them the society is massively unfair (somewhat true), racist (somewhat true), and they can only succeed through politics (clearly false). These are both self-fulfilling prophecies.

We've been waging the war on poverty your entire life and most of mine. Why hasn't it worked? Just not enough fire power?

Ricky:

rayjay
Did you use #s? What's the hourly pay rate where you live?

Average? Minimum? Living?
Because there are differing cost of living,a living wage differs by locale.
Canadian minimum wage doesn't meet a living wage either by the way... (By the definition used...)
...
In my town they calculate a living wage to be $17.05 an hour.. Expensive town.
feel better now?

Perhaps you don't understand what I'm saying? That's why I asked for #s. My point is that "living wage" is both complicated and not fulfilled where you are, or maybe anywhere. If the living wage is where the indignity of social services are not needed, then the living wage in Canada is way higher than you represent. In Ontario (use your own province if I got that wrong) housing subsidies kick in at 80% of area medium income which is about $77,000 CAN. So for a one-earner family that is a wage of $38.50 per hour. If Canada made that the minimum wage it's economy would be in massive trouble.

Thanks for the response, RJ. Just a few points:

(1) I understand that you have a good faith belief that the tax plan will be good for the economy and I guess lift everyone's boats but I did want to call your attention to the wealth stratification issue and that this tax plan is almost certainly going to make it worse. I guess I should have avoided saying that policies you advocate seem selfish. It's always best to avoid bringing the personal into it, though I don't think it was quite as bad as you interpreted it as being. Anyway, my mistake. I know you're a fair person and try to do the right thing, that you're not looking out for your own self-interest here. That doesn't mean you're right here, of course.

(2) If the charts are biased I would be happy to see fairer ones. I really never see counter-arguments to arguments on wealth stratification. The other side just stays silent

(3) I am not talking about the war on poverty. I am just talking wealth growth going to a very small percentage of people. I am also telling about the working poor having enough to live on, not those who are unemployable or trying to cure all poverty.
(4) 1981 is a good dividing point because that when's when Reagan came in and the economic policies that conservatives had wanted to enact--tax and pro-business policies--came in to counter-act the more worker friendly policies that came out of the New Deal
(5) We did have a structural change in the economy from the Industrial Age to the Information Age starting in the 1980s...but is the majority of the country just supposed to accept that most of the wealth must go to the top? Do you support any policies that would change that? deunionization has been one of the reasons--do you support policies that would give workers more bargaining power vis-a-vis large corporations? What policies can you think of that will benefit the middle 60% (not the bottom 20% or top 20%).
(6) The chats don't show it is the policies? So tax policy, trade policy, deregulation, allowing oligopolies to exist without enforcing anti-trade laws, loosening financial regularltions, allowing much more of our economy's wealth to go to Wall Street and shareholders...none of that caused wealth stratification? Reagan didn't happen? GW did not happen? Even Clinton got rid of Glass-Steagall, as part of an Democratic acquiescence in pro-Wall Street policies.
(7) The difference in money in politics is that people like the Hunt Brothers and Sheldon Addison (and yes George Soros but there are more on the pro-business side) can invest in politics not for their own personal interest but for ideological reasons and also as an expression of power. They have so much money they can throw it away in influencing politics without hoping for a payback.
(8) We spend a lot on infrastructure? Maybe but our road, bridges, and transportation system are in decay and our educational system costs a lot more than when you and I went to school. Certainly in California the steep rise in costs for public colleges was due to an ideological shift.
(9) I want to see more of our economy's wealth go to people that do stuff that actually directly creates something in the world . Having so much of it go to to people that move money around and who own stock...is wrong in my opinion. And not good for the economy long-term. In my opinion, Trump's plan will do more to help the sitters...and not the doers. And we have had quite enough of that over the past 40 years.