how reagan ruined the economy with reagan-nomics, or greed unleashed

its been 30 years from ww2 till reagan.
30 years from reagan till now.
lets compare.

from ww2 till reagan, the national debt decreased.
from reagan till now the debt increased, 186% under him alone ( what a fiscal conservative? ). the only time it decreased was under clinton, which ill explain in a moment.

from ww2 till reagan, wages were higher and companies gave you retirement and benefits.
after reagan, those things have vanished for the most part.

income inequality from ww2 till reagan decreased.
after it has increased, almost to the point of the guilded age. (top 1% economic control in 1928: 23.9%, in 1980: 10%, in 2007: 23.5%)

wages and productivity followed roughly the same path, up, till 1980. then it split. median income stagnated while productivity continued to go up.

so what changed? the tax rate for the top. in 1946 it was 91%. it was 50% when reagan took office. 8 years later it was just 28%.

taxes serve two purposes. one is to fund the gov, the other is to place checks on greed. by taxing the top so much, the desire for them to pay themselves stupid amounts of money is reduced. all that extra money in the company allows for expansion, increased benefits, and retirement plans.

remember how clinton balanced the budget and decreased the debt? it was because he increased taxes on the rich, bringing in more money to the gov. the only way for the gov to get money is by taxes, so lower the taxes, lower the money the gov has to pay its bills.

lets look at capital gains tax. bush, following reagan-nomics, reduced its tax rate to just 13%. now the top 1% control 50% of stocks, and make a lot of money off them. why? if i buy a hundred dollars worth of toasters and sell them for $100 profit, i pay 35%. if i buy a hundred dollars worth of stock and sell it for $100 profit, i get taxed at 13%. so which am i gonna do? this sets up a system where the top dont create jobs to sell product, but trade paper, creating no jobs.

some of you say "how can you place a top salary cap on a ceo?" yet you are the same people that say a fry cook shouldnt make living wage because it takes from profits. what about the millions the ceo takes? surely their reduction in pay would increase the companies profits, no?

take the forbes 400. if you taxed them 50%, they would still average 1000x the median wage. to put it another way, 1000 people could live off the wage of one ceo taxed at 50%.

now before you go off and say i think everyone should be paid the same, youre wrong. just as i believe in progressive taxation, i believe in progressive income. the swiss have a proposal out now called the 1:12. a ceo can only make 12x more than the lowest paid worker. i think thats a little low. however, i dont like the current 1:300 we have now.

a side effect of this massive income gap is called the plutonomy. it was written about in 2 memos by citigroup (2009 some articles on ats about it) basically they said that since the top 1% control 50% of stocks, and have more wealth than 95% of americans, why deal with the rest? focus on the 1%. this idea basically turns you into a wage slave, overworked and underpaid.

just a few things for you to consider.

stormson
the tax rate for the top. in 1946 it was 91%. it was 50% when reagan took office. 8 years later it was just 28%.

GOOD! The lower the taxes, the better. The government has NO RIGHT to steal money from Americans. We are already over taxed. There is no reason for the taxes to be as high as they are. If the government would spend more wisely, we wouldnt' be paying the taxes that we do today.

taxes serve two purposes. one is to fund the gov, the other is to place checks on greed.

'Place checks on greed'???? Are you kidding???

1 - The people running government in DC are the greedy ones. They want more and more money to fund their stupid irrelevant projects and to fund their rich lifestyles.

2 - Your statement about 'placing checks on greed' is INVASIVE. It's you pushing your version of morals on others. The left wing complains about the right wing pushing their morals on others when the right tries to abolish abortion in the USA .. but then you people turn around and do the same damn thing with money and taxes. Keep your version 'morals' to yourself and don't try to invade my space with it.

the only way for the gov to get money is by taxes,

That's not true. If the government would SPEND MORE WISELY and not waste money, it would have plenty of money and wouldn't be trying to steal more of ours to fund it. And if the government invested wisely it wouldn't need any money from us at all. And if the government stopped giving away our money to foreign governments in 'aid', they'd have plenty to keep things moving along just fine.

yet you are the same people that say a fry cook shouldnt make living wage because it takes from profits.

Separate issue. Not all wages are supposed to be 'living wages'. A fry cook is a dime a dozen and easily replaced... but an educated professional like a doctor or engineer has more skills and knowledge, is harder to find, and is therefore worth more. Simple economics.

just as i believe in progressive taxation, i believe in progressive income.

I believe in what a free market can support ... not a forced communist ideal. Free market works. Invasive government intervention like a fored 'progressive income' will fail every time because the government is incapable of running anything correctly. Obamacare is a perfect example of the buffoonery of big government.

I think Reagan was one of the best Presidents our nation has seen



What more is there to say? The man lived it....despite the very determined and energetic attempts to re-write his terms in office and ignore the accomplishments he did make. Pity....nothing in history is safe from the political re-write these days. I'm sure glad some of us recall it from living it.....or we'd not know how much is said about President Reagan that is just out right nonsense.

Opinions certainly vary though, of course.

reply to post by stormson

Flashback to former ATSer, "OutKast Searcher".

See, the reason why socialist OWSers failed is because they were well meaning but misguided.

Even their savior Obama and others on the Left like Bloomberg were more than happy to ensure that OWSers were systematically terrorized and obstructed.

Misinformation aside, regardless of tax rates, tax collection is at an all time high and tax collection/theft/revenue goes up every year. It even went up during the Reagen years.

In 1946, receipts totaled $39 billion. Last year, the government took in $2450 billion (to put it in perspective).

So the government now takes in 69 x more than it did in 1946. Question is, does the government need this much money? Absolutely not. The government is bloated, mismanaged, wasteful and corrupt. To suggest that they should be given MORE money is irresponsible and toxic.

Not even sure why you're mad at Reagan, he was not a real conservative. Well, maybe a "big government" conservative (doublespeak, I know).

Ron Paul was so disgusted by Reagan's anti-conservatism, that he left the Republican Party.

But we'll skip Ron Paul. If you think that income caps and taxes are good; and that Reagan was too conservative; Ron Paul would melt your brain.

Anyway, in this video, Peter Schiff address all of the OWS ideologies: taxes, greed, capitalism, income, all of it.

48:47, the Bush tax cut mantra.

1:10:50, the 90% tax rate mantra.

You can lead a horse to water...

reply to post by gladtobehere

I love that Peter Schiff video, talk about walking the walk, bravo!

reply to post by stormson

from ww2 till reagan, the national debt decreased. from reagan till now the debt increased, 186% under him alone ( what a fiscal conservative? ). the only time it decreased was under clinton, which ill explain in a moment.

Congress spends the money. Reagan asked for cuts in spending repeatedly and was chastised for it by the left.

remember how clinton balanced the budget and decreased the debt? it was because he increased taxes on the rich, bringing in more money to the gov. the only way for the gov to get money is by taxes, so lower the taxes, lower the money the gov has to pay its bills.

No, Clinton did not balance the budget.

Remember, Congress spends the money.
It was the much maligned Newt Gingrich that led the Congress that accomplished this feat (where did it get us?) that you are trumpeting!

Does anyone ever consider : U.S. feds might have a huge investment fund. Not to mention the uhh invisible gold at ft knocks.

As in the case of the several states.

Comprehensive Annual Financial Report

reply to post by stormson


You mean its not 10000000000000000000000000000% Obama fault ?!?!?!?!

I thought he was responisble for EVRTHING!!!!!!!!!!



Serously though I see you your point and you cans see how the debt in the USA went from as bad as it is now to almost nothing then Reagan STARTED the increase we have now.

Fact is Obama is not the only one resposnisble for the debt from. He just a link in a chain of stupidity.

As for wage inequality I just dont see how anyone can defend that.

Capitlism only work when there is a flow of money and high social mobility. As soon as the super rich can suck up all the money like they do now jobs dry up and social mobility declines and you get unhappyness.

Capitlism only works when:
1) The money flows freely
2)Money isnt sunk away in oversea savinga acounts doing nothing
3) Buisness have low start up costs
2) Social mobility is high.


When a CEO earns 300X of that of the adverage working who actually does all the work while he spends most of the time on a golf course things break down. How can those at the bottom bareing earning enough to live on ever hope of climbing the ladder? While the CEO are sinking billions into offshore saveing acounts and property ect how are you supposed to compete with that? There no fair competition. You get in a position were if your born at the bottom you stay at the bottom?

Do those defending huge wage inequality really want that? Where you are doomed to always be at the bottom serving your "betters" ? As long has mr CEO who doesnt give a rats ass about you gets to avoid any social responsiblity?

Yeah those at the top deserve to get higher wages ect But at the moment things are just stupid.

reply to post by FlyersFan

We are already over taxed.

If you think we are overtaxed now you know nothing about paying taxes. The constant cutting of taxes is what screwed this country.

FlyersFan
GOOD! The lower the taxes, the better. The government has NO RIGHT to steal money from Americans. We are already over taxed. There is no reason for the taxes to be as high as they are. If the government would spend more wisely, we wouldnt' be paying the taxes that we do today.

US has some of the lowest taxes out of the advanced economies, just as the lowest prices. Although I agree US government money is not spent that well. I pay far more taxes, although I receive also a lot for these, while in US you pay low taxes and also do not receive much.

'Place checks on greed'???? Are you kidding???

1 - The people running government in DC are the greedy ones. They want more and more money to fund their stupid irrelevant projects and to fund their rich lifestyles.

Keep the salaries of the gov the same, while losing lobbying (tough punishments for it) and restricting politicians from owning companies or stocks, while non-privatising utilities serving the needs of people (education, prisons, electricity, water, healthcare)

2 - Your statement about 'placing checks on greed' is INVASIVE. It's you pushing your version of morals on others. The left wing complains about the right wing pushing their morals on others when the right tries to abolish abortion in the USA .. but then you people turn around and do the same damn thing with money and taxes. Keep your version 'morals' to yourself and don't try to invade my space with it.


So you are saying greed is good? That is what is ruining America right now - greed and hunger for power. What do you think has created the decline of the nation since Reagan? The trickle-down economics is not serving people, but the greediest, who are willing to step over anything, anybody for personal gain. I do not consider myself very moral person, but such behaviour is simply sick in my opinion and should be non-tolerated.

That's not true. If the government would SPEND MORE WISELY and not waste money, it would have plenty of money and wouldn't be trying to steal more of ours to fund it. And if the government invested wisely it wouldn't need any money from us at all. And if the government stopped giving away our money to foreign governments in 'aid', they'd have plenty to keep things moving along just fine.

Separate issue. Not all wages are supposed to be 'living wages'. A fry cook is a dime a dozen and easily replaced... but an educated professional like a doctor or engineer has more skills and knowledge, is harder to find, and is therefore worth more. Simple economics.

Skilled people should have higher wages than non-skilled ones, although the ones with less skills should earn enough to survive. No person in the world deserves earning more 20 times than another person, when they work the same amount of hours.

You also have to take into account genetics. Not all people have been blessed with high intelligence. There are many who are never able to be more than average, simply due to genetics. Do they have suffer and live paycheck to paycheck for the rest of their lives simply because they got worse genetics, less intelligence and/or worse health? Also you have to consider that everybody has not born into rich family. US is supposed to be country of opportunities, while in reality kids from poor families have nearly no opportunities compared to kids in most Eurpean poor families.

I believe in what a free market can support ... not a forced communist ideal. Free market works. Invasive government intervention like a fored 'progressive income' will fail every time because the government is incapable of running anything correctly. Obamacare is a perfect example of the buffoonery of big government.

Progressive income fails every time? US had its most successful times during high progressive taxes before Reagan. Currently some of the strongest economies in the world : Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway are definite proof that progressive taxes can work very well. Their debts are significantly lower than in US, their people are happier, more educated, healthier on average. Nordic nations have more competitive economies and are more innovative than US, yet they are having some of the highest taxes in the world with very strong progressive taxes. The extreme wealth caps are detrimental for a country, just as privatisation of most essential human needs. It only leads to abusing people´s basic needs in the long run.

I can only hope that EU will never take the direction where US is headed right now, although considering that most EU economies are couple of decades behind US due to having to rebuild their nations after WWII, it might happen, but I hope it never does. Trickle-down economics doesn´t work for a nation at whole, it only works for the greediest on the expense of the middle-class and poor. A dog-eat-dog society in the long run, in a way that is what its like in many fields already in US. I personally believe in a society where its harder to be poor than rich and that is what Nordic nations are currently like. Becoming filthy rich is nearly impossible, skilled workers earn nice salary, while poor earn enough to survive and their kids get the same opportunities as the kids of rich people do.

buster2010
The constant cutting of taxes is what screwed this country.

No. The constant irresponsible spending of the US Government is what screwed this country.

We were looking good, coming out of WW2... helping the allies win and such.

WW2- Franklin D. Roosevelt- Democrat.. worked pretty well... well, except for the fact Eisenhower- a Republican, sealed that deal.

Korean War- not so good. Democrat president, Harry Truman in charge- technically still at war.

Vietnam- not good at all. Democrat president, Kennedy in charge; Republican Nixon got us out.

Shah of Iran Pahlavi... under Democrat presidency and ended under Democrats- Mr. Carter.

Not really sure what point I was tying to make.

reply to post by stormson

its been 30 years from ww2 till reagan. 30 years from reagan till now. lets compare....

If you are going to do a Reagan Bashing thread how about doing it with the REAL FACTS instead of media hype. (banker owned of course)

What is there for a neutral (well a politician hating independent) to say about Reagan?

The true damage done to the country that has repercussions to this day is LEVERAGED BUYOUTS aka Hostile Takeovers.

First you have to understand what a “Leveraged buyout” is

A leveraged buyout... occurs when an investor, typically financial sponsor, acquires a controlling interest in a company's equity and where a significant percentage of the purchase price is financed through leverage (borrowing). The assets of the acquired company are used as collateral for the borrowed capital.... Typically, leveraged buyout uses a combination of various debt instruments from bank and debt capital markets...

The leveraged buyout boom of the 1980s was conceived by a number of corporate financiers, most notably Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. and later his protégé Henry Kravis. Working for Bear Stearns at the time, Kohlberg and Kravis, along with Kravis' cousin George Roberts, began a series of what they described as "bootstrap" investments...en.wikipedia.org...

Notice the property used for COLLATERAL of these loans was not owned by the Corporate Raiders! This is nothing more than THEFT and FRAUD. It would be like me looking at the 500 acres owned free and clear by a couple of retirees and I go to the bank and get a mortgage using that land as collateral.

This is not moral or ethical and given what happened during the Great Depression, I would be very surprised if laws were not enacted to prevent it.

So where were the Courts and laws to prevent this?

....Both economic and regulatory factors combined to spur the explosion in large takeovers and, in turn, large LBOs. The three regulatory factors were the Reagan administration's relatively laissez-faire policies on antitrust and securities laws, which allowed mergers the government would have challenged in earlier years; the 1982 Supreme Court decision striking down state antitakeover laws (which were resurrected with great effectiveness in the late eighties); and deregulation of many industries, which prompted restructurings and mergers. The main economic factor was the development of the original-issue high-yield debt instrument. The so-called "junk bond" innovation, pioneered by Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham, provided many hostile bidders and LBO firms with the enormous amounts of capital needed to finance multi-billion-dollar deals.... www.econlib.org...

So what did the US government do?

...In January 1982, former US Secretary of the Treasury William Simon and a group of investors acquired Gibson Greetings, a producer of greeting cards, for $80 million, of which only $1 million was rumored to have been contributed by the investors. By mid-1983, just sixteen months after the original deal, Gibson completed a $290 million IPO and Simon made approximately $66 million.[9] The success of the Gibson Greetings investment attracted the attention of the wider media to the nascent boom in leveraged buyouts.[10] Between 1979 and 1989, it was estimated that there were over 2,000 leveraged buyouts valued in excess of $250 billion..... www.econlib.org...

A US Secretary of the Treasury started the sellout of our economy. Reagan through his laissez faire attitude did nothing to stop it.

......The three regulatory factors were the Reagan administration's relatively laissez-faire policies on antitrust and securities laws, which allowed mergers the government would have challenged in earlier years; the 1982 Supreme Court decision striking down state antitakeover laws (which were resurrected with great effectiveness in the late eighties); and deregulation of many industries, which prompted restructurings and mergers. The main economic factor was the development of the original-issue high-yield debt instrument. The so-called "junk bond" innovation, pioneered by Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham, provided many hostile bidders and LBO firms with the enormous amounts of capital needed to finance multi-billion-dollar deals....www.econlib.org...

Without intervention greed took over.

Corporate takeovers became a prominent feature of the American business landscape during the seventies and eighties. A hostile takeover usually involves a public tender offer—a public offer of a specific price, usually at a substantial premium over the prevailing market price, good for a limited period, for a substantial percentage of the target firm's stock. Unlike a merger, which requires the approval of the target firm's board of directors as well as voting approval of the stockholders, a tender offer can provide voting control to the bidding firm without the approval of the target's management and directors.....

Because it allows bidders to seek control directly from shareholders—by going "over the heads" of target management—the tender offer is the most powerful weapon available to the hostile bidder. ... Although hostile bidders still need a formal merger to gain total control of the target's assets, this is easily accomplished once the bidder has purchased a majority of voting stock.... www.econlib.org...

So what is the result of the 1980's leveraged buyout feeding frenzy?

Of mergers and acquisitions each costing $1 million or more, there were just 10 in 1970; in 1980, there were 94; in 1986, there were 346. A third of such deals in the 1980's were hostile. The 1980's also saw a wave of giant leveraged buyouts. Mergers, acquisitions and L.B.O.'s, which had accounted for less than 5 percent of the profits of Wall Street brokerage houses in 1978, ballooned into an estimated 50 percent of profits by 1988...

THROUGH ALL THIS, THE HISTORIC RELATIONSHIP between product and paper has been turned upside down.. These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers.... In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America....

Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages.....
January 29, 1989 www.nytimes.com... New York Times

America was quietly sold off piece by piece. Statistics showed in 1990 after Reagan and before Clinton's WTO was ratified, Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP. www.fame.org...

A listing by category of Foreign ownership of U.S. corporations

reply to post by butcherguy

Congress spends the money. Reagan asked for cuts in spending repeatedly and was chastised for it by the left.

That's because Reagan was wanting to cut domestic social programs.

No, Clinton did not balance the budget. Remember, Congress spends the money. It was the much maligned Newt Gingrich that led the Congress that accomplished this feat (where did it get us?) that you are trumpeting!

Yes Newt likes to claim that too bad it isn't true.

Is Newt Gingrich Responsible For Four Balanced Budgets?

However, this talking point is much more fiction than fact. For starters, as USA Today noted, “Gingrich was in office for only two of those budget years (fiscal 1998 and 1999). But he continues to claim credit for two balanced budgets that were passed after he left office (fiscal 2000 and 2001).” Furthermore, as Citizens for Tax Justice’s Bob McIntyre wrote, it was actually the 1993 budget, which all Republicans opposed, that laid the groundwork for the balanced budgets that occurred under President Bill Clinton:

stormson

taxes serve two purposes. one is to fund the gov, the other is to place checks on greed. by taxing the top so much, the desire for them to pay themselves stupid amounts of money is reduced. all that extra money in the company allows for expansion, increased benefits, and retirement plans.

Stunning. Where did you get that idea? Taxes punish the greedy? Is that in the constitution? Income taxes are used solely, 100 percent, to pay back the Federal Reserve for the money lent in one's name. Tariffs, Excise, Import, License, State, Local, Sales, Fines, Surcharges, gasoline, electricity, and on and on and on are largely the place where operating funds derive.

You are better off making this argument. The Trickle Theory is predicated on the notion that rich companies hire people, spend money on R&D and pay more taxes when they have more to spend. Ergo, less taxes is good for jobs.

Apple has billions in cash. Apple is not hiring. Apple is not lowering prices. Apple is not spending any more money on R&D then they have. Apple still seeks ways to avoid paying taxes. Apple builds its products in sweatshops located in other countries. Apple's stock value is always top five in the world. The company is capitalism's poster child.

Apple should be the poster child for the brilliance of Trickle Down Theory too. Apple proves otherwise.

reply to post by stormson


I know information on economics is dead boring but our collective ignorance of economics and how the government, bankers and corporations all wort together to extract as much wealth (labor) from us workers as possible lets them royally $crew us.

So back on to the boring economics information.

There are two other interesting points that go with the Hostile Takeover information. The first is a relatively new innovation Mutual Funds.

A Brief History Of The Mutual Fund

...The idea of pooling resources and spreading risk using closed-end investments soon took root in Great Britain and France, making its way to the United States in the 1890s....

The creation of the Massachusetts Investors' Trust in Boston, Massachusetts, heralded the arrival of the modern mutual fund in 1924. The fund went public in 1928, eventually spawning the mutual fund firm known today as MFS Investment Management....

The mutual fund industry continued to expand. At the beginning of the 1950s, the number of open-end funds topped 100. In 1954, the financial markets overcame their 1929 peak, and the mutual fund industry began to grow in earnest, adding some 50 new funds over the course of the decade. The 1960s saw the rise of aggressive growth funds, with more than 100 new funds established and billions of dollars in new asset inflows.

Hundreds of new funds were launched throughout the 1960s...

The 1970s also saw the rise of the no-load fund. This new way of doing business had an enormous impact on the way mutual funds were sold and would make a major contribution to the industry's success.

With the 1980s and '90s came bull market mania and previously obscure fund managers became superstars; Max Heine, Michael Price and Peter Lynch, the mutual fund industry's top gunslingers, became household names and money poured into the retail investment industry at a stunning pace....
www.investopedia.com...

So why am I mentioning Mutual Funds? The key point is that those who pooled their money own the stock BUT DO NOT VOTE IT! For example the Johnson family owns several mutual funds and through them votes a large chunk of Monsanto stock yet most people only see the fact that pension funds are invested in Monsanto. Get the picture now? The control has been taken from the little guy and handed to a few financiers.

It gets worse.
Stefania Vitali, Department of Physics, Università di Palermo, italy; James B. Glattfelder, a physicist and a researcher at a Swiss hedge fund and Stefano Battiston, Statistical Physics University of Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland did some ground breaking work.

Their peer-reviewed paper is The Network of Global Corporate Control

Abstract

The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability... We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.

If you are like most people and have difficulty wading through the scientific language. Occupy.com has an article, and The Physics of Finance Blog has a post and New Scientist has an article.


The IMF (International Monetary Fund) aka the Global Banksters has a REAL interesting report.
Convergence, Interdependence, and Divergence Finance & Development, September 2012, Vol. 49, No. 3

...In many countries the distribution of income has become more unequal, and the top earners’ share of income in particular has risen dramatically. In the United States the share of the top 1 percent has close to tripled over the past three decades, now accounting for about 20 percent of total U.S. income (Alvaredo and others, 2012). At the same time, while the new convergence mentioned above has reduced the distance between advanced and developing economies...

This is 'Social Justice' in action. The global elite are just taking their slice for their trouble of promoting 'Equality' This is what Bill Clinton''s NAFTA and World Trade Organization has caused and it was carefully orchestrated to do so.

The USA now has ~ 22% unemployement the reason this does not show in government statistics is because Clinton changed how unemployment was figured.

reply to post by buster2010

As I said, what great deal was it for us, to balance the budget?
Did we lose that fat national debt?
No, it's still there.

Stand by for arguments stating that huge debt is necessary for the survival of our once great nation.

The Clinton administration really changed government. Government has always been a haven for thieves, but it was the Clinton administration that shockingly disrupted the old, sensible limits, the limits that had kept the system working reasonably well for so many decades.

It was more about a generational shift than partisan politics. The WWII generation would never have been so greedy and dumb and lazy and short sighted; only the baby boomers would be so foolish.

stormson
from ww2 till reagan, wages were higher and companies gave you retirement and benefits.
after reagan, those things have vanished for the most part.

History shows that Lyndon Johnson's administration was the turning point from real wage growth to real wage declines in the US.

Retirement benefits were promised to union workers well into the Reagan years and in some cases even beyond them, but these promises were based on unrealistic economic growth that used the era of WWII to LBJ as the baseline that the US would soon be back to, when in reality that era was long gone and those promises could never be kept.

Bill Clinton's NAFTA was the real, final end of that sort of thing.

reply to post by buster2010

If you think we are overtaxed now you know nothing about paying taxes. The constant cutting of taxes is what screwed this country.

No, it was the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that really screwed this country.

We pay interest on the Federal debt.
That debt is - $44,215 per person (Greece is only $38,937 per person)
We pay interest on the mortgages on our homes whether or not we are renting.
We pay interest on School loans
We pay interest on cars
We pay interest on credit cards
We pay the interest on all those leverage buyout loans when we buy American made products

Only THREE percent of the US money supply is actually cash all the rest is loans made out of fiat money fashioned by bankers out of pixie dust and we PAY INTEREST on ALL OF IT!

My parents bought a house in NYC for $3,000 that house is now ~ a half million even after Forclosegate.

I once did the math. If inflation (currency devaluation) had not stolen the value of our savings I and my husband could have bought a home free and clear in seven years on entry level salaries.

Griffin captured what is going on when he said:

I think it's time for a new definition of usury as follows: any interest on any loan of fiat money (meaning money made out of nothing). This example of a $100,000 home, as shocking as it is, producing $172,741 unearned interest, this is just a grain of sand in the Sahara. You have to multiply that by all the homes in America, by all of these hotels in America, all the high-rise buildings, all the factories, all the airplanes, automobiles, farm equipment, schools, everything, all the physical assets of America. You apply this same ratio and can you see it in your mind? We're talking about a river of unearned wealth that is so wide you can't even think of crossing it, flowing perpetually into the banking cartel. A dead short across the productive element of society. Money being taken from people who are working hard providing the material and the labor. They don't even know that this is being taken from them and it's in this huge river of wealth flowing into the banking cartel. It's a staggering thought.

The speech of Sen. Daniel Webster, during the debate over the reauthorization of the Second National Bank of the U.S. in 1832, summed up much of the American view toward money in general and a lot more colorfully.

“A disordered currency is one of the greatest of evils. It wars against industry, frugality, and economy. And it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation. Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. This is one of the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man’s field by the sweat of the poor man’s brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation: These bear lightly the happiness of the mass of the community, compared with fraudulent currencies and robberies committed with depreciated paper.”

“Robberies committed with depreciated paper,” the man said. This was another way of referring to bad debt. In the accepted American view of the time, bad money led to excessive credit. Excessive credit led to bad debt. And bad debt was part and parcel of bad economic policy. It harmed the nation. The accumulation of bad debt was ruinous to the growth of the economy.

We are seeing the results of what Sen. Daniel Webster was warning about today. The banking cartel with the aid of politicians of all stripes have sucked this country dry.

Now they are ready to move on to more fertile field in China, India and Brazil leaving the wreckage behind for us to clean up. Unfortunately we as a country are soft and used to luxuries that we can no longer afford. Why in heck do you think we keep getting illegal immigration amnesty bills? It is a desperate attempt to get in new young workers and stave off collapse so it is gradual and does not trigger and unwanted reaction.

But do not worry they have PLANS for after the country collapses. PLANS for when we are completely bankrupt and can not pay taxes/mortgages so our homes and lands are confiscated by the banks and government. We will all be herded into Transit Villages aka Company Towns. The environmental movement has been busy brainwashing us with horror tales like CAGW so we will accept our serf's collars without a fuss.

reply to post by crankyoldman

Stunning. Where did you get that idea? Taxes punish the greedy?

He completely missed the point that taxes are on WAGES and WAGES are earned by WORKERS.

The elite don't get taxed because they do not earn salaries like the rest of us. International corporations can play accounting games so the 'Profit' is taxed where ever the heck they please. (I worked for one who shifted all USA income out of country and never paid a dime in US tax.)

I once had a great chart on corporate excise tax (import tariffs) combined with individual tax but I lost it. So here is the information in a couple of charts. (From WIKI Commons)
Excise taxes as a share of federal revenues 1950 - 2007 it plummets. The chart is from WIKI-Excise Taxes

Import duties have the other uses such as leveling the playing field so cheap imports made in countries without pollution controls, regulations and with 'slave labor' do not drive out local corporations. Getting rid of 'Protective Tariffs' was a prime goal of the World Trade Organization and why our jobs left the country never to return. It allowed the international corporations to continue charging Americans high prices for cheaply made foreign products, and bankrupt small business competition that was too small to go overseas. A real win-win for the Global Elite.

FOUND IT! Anyone talking about taxes should look at this chart.

Federal receipts by source as share of total receipts (1950-2010). Individual income taxes (blue), payroll taxes/FICA (green), corporate income taxes (red), excise taxes (purple), estate and gift taxes (light blue), other receipts (orange). en.wikipedia.org...

It shows corporate taxes and excise tax has dropped like a rock while Payroll Taxes have skyrocketed.

Do not believe that Corporations pay half of the payroll taxes. They don't. That is just a 'polite fiction' to make the sheeple happy. Corporations consider it part of your 'Pay Package' along with health benefits, paid vacation and any other goodies. You get fired and that liability vanishes.