If only Obama could get over 50%, he’d have a lock on re-election:
Update: Remember, because of the implicit marginal rate, people in this category face huge financial disincentives to earning more money.
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You just misunderstood Obama’s “everyone must have some skin in the game” remark.
He didn’t necessarily mean their OWN skin – yours will do nicely.
But it is disturbing so few are paying in. Why, Michelle has only been able to take sixteen vacations so far, and it’s been over three years now. How much must she endure?
Well, most hand wringing Republicans have resigned themselves to the belief that it is Mitt or bust. Just as they did after Newt won South Carolina, and the establishment said the Newt would lose 45 states to Obama, they are doing the same thing with Santorum. I prefer Gingrich over Santorum, but I am hugely in support of the defeat of beltway conventional wisdom. I’d rather defeat the establishment by running Rick or Newt and defeating Obama, than by running Mitt to lose to Obama, so that I could point to the establishment and say, “See I told you so, you establishment folk don’t know sh@%!!!”
The one pundit this applys to big time is Jennifer Rubin.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/is-santorum-the-sharon-angle-of-2012/2012/02/18/gIQAdjU8LR_blog.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop
You would think that after Dole and then McCain we would have learned our lesson.
Unfortunately no. The establishment Republicans steadfastly REFUSE to learn the lessons of the TEA Partiers because of the power that those establishment types would have to forfeit. They dislike it when people take control of their own destiny almost as much as the Liberals dislike it.
I suppose it is based in a form of human nature, that those with power are loathe to give it up. However those who dislike giving up the power should never have been entrusted with it in the first place.
To 99% and beyond!!
Well done Professor Jacobson. Well done.
Bummer of a chart
Time to move to a country that believes in free markets and small government and people working for a living. Like Russia, Germany, England, China… 🙂
“There are literally dozens of paycheck calculators on the Internet. Just Google “paycheck calculator” and enter $60,000 of gross pay and you will arrive at my number. I have no idea who the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is, but their computation of payroll taxes on $60,000 in pay is at odds with every payroll calculator on the Internet.”
Does it really matter …
GEITHNER: You could have taken [the chart] out [to the year] 3000 or to 4000. [Laughs]
RYAN: Yeah, right. We cut it off at the end of the century because the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.
The increased rate of cockroaches/bloodsuckers, signal a Greece-ifaction of the USA. Greece is now bankrupt, and is on the verge of becoming a Failed State, because the cockroaches/bloodsuckers killed off all the hosts.
What will happen when all the hosts are killed off in the US?
They won’t be killed off; they’ll either move to more profitable places (the way Europeans have moved to the USA for decades/centuries to get ahead), or they’ll get to the top of the local food-chain. Like that stock-broker in Chicago said: if you think passing laws to make our lives difficult is going to get rid of people like me, you’re wrong – we’ll be on the top of any power-structure you create, because of who we are, and because of who you’re not.
Check out Drudge’s big headline now, and then read the accompanying story. Santorum’s aide completely mis-spoke, just like when Ted Kennedy accidently called Obama, “Osama Obama”. But, Drudge is playing it as if the aide meant what she said. Drudge is Mitt’s boy.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
More reason to like Santorum as far as I’m concerned. Hopefully Mitt will come to Barky’s defense, I know his Mythbots will.
Thanks, you beat me to it.
Can’t believe Drudge is running this as his banner headline.
And now Drudge is running the banner with the photo, below. Drudge is looking pretty anti-religious himself here. They’ll do whatever they can to take Rick down. Rick’s my second choice, but I don’t have the stomach to watch a re-run of what Drudge did to Newt in tandem with Romney’s negative Ad machine.
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/vGSQs.Tt0ij0QGx4g3ITJQ–/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0zMzU7cT04NTt3PTUxMg–/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/57269bf921dfb305070f6a706700ba36.jpg
Those people living off of government benefits may vote for Obama but these same people will suffer the most if he is re-elected when their benefits disappear. What Obama is doing is unsustainable. Total economic collapse is around the corner. The only thing keeping from happening now is that the World has not found a substitute for the dollar. (Most currencies are pegged to the dollar). Once a substitute is found, nobody will accept our money and rampant runaway inflation will ensue. Our economy will collapse and the government safety net will disappear along with most government services.
Our elected officials (with few exceptions) are not telling us the grim reality we are faced with.
In fact many are eagerly working to bring about the collapse so in the ashes of what was the USA, they can re-build the World System into their imagined Utopia.
He’s actually at 70%, not 49.5%
The statists have a natural constituency consisting of the 49.5% with zero tax liability and they also have the 20% of the population that works for the Governement. And, don’t forget, more than half the ‘super-rich’ 1% tend to be liberal.
Just as the people with zero tax liability find it natural to support ever increasing Governmnent handouts paid for by higher taxes, so do the people working for the government find it natural to support ever increasing pay/benefits for themselves paid for by higher taxes. Then you have people like John Kerry, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that want everyone to be middle-class, whether they work or not, and believe the government should be used to forcibly redistribute wealth (other people’s wealth, not their own, of course).
This is the Democratic Party in a nutshell.
Its a complete divorce of power from responsibility. Those that benefit from the system pay nothing into it and yet control much of the power in government to enact their policies.
The moochers will lose many benefits, some subtle, others more obvious. Once the liberal-progressive-socialist consolidate their place on the top of the shit pile, the rest of us will be frozen into place. Check out what happened in the U.S.S.R. The people at the top got excellent health care, nice houses, cars, Black Sea vacations. The working stiffs got 5 story-tall cement-block flats, bad health care, and total lack of freedom. The 1%ers, and their friends, the top 2-3%ers, will end up with the goodies, if we aren’t careful.
I hope people are paying more attention to the democrats, especially the ones in Congress, using the term “democracy”.
They are not ill informed, or misspoken-
Allow me:
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.”
-Benjamin Franklin
REBEL DEMOCRATS BACK CITIZEN-ORIENTED REPUBLICAN IN SAN DIEGO MAYOR’S RACE!!! The reason? This candidates focus on taxpayers and fiscal sanity. The GOP at the national level could learn a lesson from this race.
The only reliable, sustainable process for ‘income redistribution’ -moving money from the richer to the poorer – is via jobs given the latter by the former. Another way, less reliable but eminently doable, is for the poorer to create their own wealth in the same way as did the richer, or as did those from whom the richer inherited wealth.
Wealth creation is the root of capitalism, of freedom, and of the American way.
Wealth redistribution via entitlements is barren ground, producing nothing but immorality and the soullessness of statist dependence. It is incapable of sustaining anything or anyone beyond the Thatcher boundary – the limited amount of other people’s money – and constitutes the most certain and shortest path not to the end of America ‘as we know it’, but to her literal end.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and probably promptly get yelled at by one or more commentators here).
The solution to this is to move from a system of Income Taxation to a system of Consumption Taxation and ELIMINATE the Income, Corporate, Estate and FICA taxes.
Taxing income is a HUGE disincentive to causing someone to go out and earn a living. If they don’t get to keep what they earn, what’s the point? That “something” is better than “nothing”? No.
Taxing income is a poor substitute for figuring out how much of society’s resources someone is expected to use and we now (via the “cashless” society) have the ability to track just about every dollar spent. Thus we have the ability to track what individuals / family units consume.
The prepaid rebate to each household based on HHS Poverty guidelines eliminates the “poverty” factor in taxation (that no one should pay taxes until their basic needs are met).
Will there be some pain as a small number of individuals are taxed “twice?” Yes. That is the nature of change. I’ll GLADLY have that in order to get the economic benefits associated with getting rid of 58,000+ pages of tax law that can be replaced with a 5-10 page bill, reducing the IRS to about a total staff of about 1000 people to audit and police the VERY small number of businesses that make up the vast majority of transactions, and STILL funding the government at today’s rates.
I agree, but only if we REPLACE the income tax with a consumption tax.
Reducing the income tax while adding a VAT would be a disaster. This was the proposal Herman Cain had, and why I opposed him.
Greece… Here we come! Gawd he’p us!! Free stuff for all!!!
The democrat goal is nearly achieved folks and the end may be near…
Is this a real graph? Is this a blogger trick graph? I don’t know! I DON’T KNOW!
[…] (hat tip: Prof. Jacobsen) […]
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