| 9/27/2008 6:59:58 PM From: Peanuts That's income tax. Now add all the other taxes Obama plans to initiate. Also taxing companies raises prices. So in effect in Obama's plan your going to be paying more. |  |
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| 9/27/2008 9:51:19 PM From: hugo Both idiots are promising lower taxes and more spending when we are 12 trillion in debt. Hope my grandkids are on welfare so they won't have to work just to pay taxes. | |
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| 9/29/2008 4:22:24 AM From: BCAR Pretty simple, I pay more with Barack Hussien Obama in office. Plus we haven't even figured how he plans to pay for all the programs and give aways he has promised. Obama want's to redistribute income, plain and simple. |  |
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| 9/29/2008 7:02:47 AM From: MrsK I think with the growing number of poor and homeless people in our country, redistribution of income and taxing those who make more and pay less seems pretty damned attractive. And please understand that I may be poor at the moment but voluntarily because I opted to go back to school. When I was making good money I paid my taxes. I didn't bitch and whine and complain when I didn't get a refund either. |  |
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| 9/29/2008 7:04:26 AM From: MrsK Oh yeah, and by the time I graduate I will have a very good career going for me and will be paying taxes once again. If it means that everyone gets a fair chance at medical care, and education I won't complain then either. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:19:06 AM From: mercury What ever happened to the idea that if you work hard you are rewarded? Why should anyone break their back so some fatcat can drink martinis on the golf course? |  |
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| 9/29/2008 7:35:48 AM From: mercury point being: when did earnings begin to equate to productivity. Pissed me off more than anything to know that as a bookkeeper, I was classified as a "non-productive employee". I've always wondered how they'd figure out how "productive" the sales staff was with out my work. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:41:54 AM From: BCAR Why not just have everyone pay the same. From the guy making 10,000 a year to the guy making 1,000,000 a year. Everyone pays the same percentage. This should make folks happy, at 20% one guy pays $2,000 and the other pays $200,000. As it is now guy A. Pays nothing and in fact gets 2,000 to 5,000 back depending on how many kids. And guy B. Pay's around 30% or more. Where we are going is that everyone should just quit working, stay home and let the government support us. That will last about 5 weeks. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:46:11 AM From: mercury because those with the money to lobby for loopholes won't let that happen... it might cost them a little bit (or a lot, depending). And those with the power to close those loopholes are addicted to the lobbyists funding. It makes sense... and that's the problem. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:47:03 AM From: BCAR And earnings? Well they usually equate to value not productivity. The guy that makes the widget is more valuable than the one who counts the widget. The one who designed the widget is more valuable than the one who makes the widget. The one who manages the counter and the maker and the designer and keeps things flowing is worth more than that. And the guy that owns the widget factory and provides them all with employment ...... well he should be getting a return on his investment equal or better than simply sticking it in a savings account. Otherwise why bother with it. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:47:56 AM From: BCAR I sure wish someone would show me a bunch of these mythical loopholes. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:49:40 AM From: mercury I agree that the guy that owns the widget factory deserves a return on his investment, but each cog in the widget wheel is just as important as the next or none of it turns at all. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:50:08 AM From: MrsK ^Agreed. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:53:33 AM From: BCAR But not neccesarily the same value based on ease of replacement, impact on the operation, etc. That's why janitors don't make $250,000 a year and CEO's don't make $9.75 an hour. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:54:06 AM From: mercury explain to me this: how can GM claim a multi-million quarterly loss, then turn around and say that "because of a change in how health care costs are accounted", turn it into a million dollar profit? My answer: loopholes. It happened just a few years ago... | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:56:16 AM From: mercury and that's why the head accountant makes the big bucks... they know how to make it appear that funds are flowing when there isn't a dime available. It's called cooking the books... and I got quite an on the job education in this practice. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:56:42 AM From: MrsK Ok, so why should the CEO making 250K's have more opportunity to ensure the likelihood that Jr will got college, while the Janitor is scraping together all that he can just to put food on the table, yet at the end of the year pay just as much as the CEO??? | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:57:03 AM From: BCAR They acrue money for benifits through the year and if they do not in effect pay those benifits out then they add it to the balance sheet. But personally GM is a f ucked up company and the perfect example of corporate welfare and poor management vision. Left on their own they would likely have gone tits up years ago. | |
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| 9/29/2008 7:57:15 AM From: mercury that's right... CEO's make million dollar bonuses while running failing companies. The janitor gets shit canned. | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:00:15 AM From: BCAR Supply and demand and ability to pay MrsK. Mercedes 500SL's cost $85,000. A Ford Taurus $19,000. Should the Government subsidise the cost of the 500SL to $11,000 so Mr. janitor can have one? | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:00:23 AM From: mercury It seems that we have a large amount of these types of corporations today, though. It's not just GM. Our nation is in crisis due to these practices, and it all equates to greed. | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:02:55 AM From: BCAR Not all CEO's make huge bonuses. But their compensation is set by the board of directors, who represent the stock holders who get proxy statements to allow them to vote on the board. In true capitalist fashion the more shares of stock a person owns the more votes they get. It's a long story. | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:03:14 AM From: MrsK The same greed that would cause someone to spend 85K's on a car/status symbol Merc? | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:04:03 AM From: mercury It seems that many companies allow their upper level employees to have that choice, and pay for it out of company funds (in addition to outrageous salaries + undeserved bonuses), which results in a decrease in those profits that are supposed to be shared with ALL the people who make those profits possible, and continue that benefit all the way until death. | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:04:43 AM From: mercury IMO, yes, MrsK. | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:05:39 AM From: BCAR There is plenty of greed to go around. Most people will drop a mutual fund or stock not earning against inflation in favor of one doing 8 - 12% a year or more. Fund managers are paid to produce. CEO's are paid to increase stock share price, and on it goes. | |
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9/29/2008 8:06:39 AM From: MrsK My Opinion too, Merc.  | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:09:57 AM From: mercury How do you justify a bonus, ANY bonus, when stock prices drop like stones? And why is that allowed? GREED. It seems more and more that corporations don't even care about making their stock holders happy anymore, as long as the guys at the top don't have to give up their Mercedes and 4 or 5 of their houses. | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:24:54 AM From: mercury also... I'd like to point out that I don't think the gov should subsidize the Mercedes so every janitor can have one, too. I'd like to know what's wrong with the CEO driving a fuking Taurus? If he was paying for it out of his own legimate earnings, I'd have no issue with it, but that's rarely the case; the Mercedes is part of his "benefit" package, while those lower on the scale have to worry if they can take their kid to the doctor when they get sick, because that's the first thing to be cut. | |
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9/29/2008 8:26:46 AM From: MrsK Merc... I love you.  | |
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| 9/29/2008 8:52:03 AM From: LiquidSnake "That's why janitors don't make $250,000 a year and CEO's don't make $9.75 an hour." Actually some of the janitors that work in my building make around 20-25 bucks an hour. Not bad for scrubbing shitters for a living. |  |
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| 9/29/2008 9:09:01 AM From: BCAR Well #1, I don't know how it works elsewhere but around here if we don't make profit numbers they don't pay bonus. Then again at certain levels your compensation package is whatever you can negotiate. As to who should or should not drive a "fuking taurus" well I guess that's a personal choice based on what a person wants and what they want to spend. As to "benifit packages" well again in a free enterprise system if you can bargain for or move for or change jobs for better compensation then you are allowed to do so. There shouldn't be a penalty for making a better life for yourself. | |
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| 9/29/2008 9:11:11 AM From: BCAR Then of course we could nationalize all business, let the government decide who works where and who makes what and what we drive and where we live. I believe the Soviet Union had a system like that not long ago. Don't know if that's still working for them or not. | |
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| 9/29/2008 9:11:29 AM From: MrsK You are absolutely right BCAR. There should not be a penalty for making a better life for yourself. There should also not be designed road blocks for trying to make a better life for yourself. | |
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| 9/29/2008 9:23:12 AM From: mercury http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/companies/ford_execpay/ sounds like it's a pretty profitable position for a company losing billions. But, I know... it's what he negotiated, so good for him. Bad for everyone else; stockholders included. and you're paying that bill, too. | |
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| 9/29/2008 9:23:49 AM From: eddo the $85,000 Mercedes is a whole hell of a lot safer and more reliable than the $19,000 Taurus. Maybe the Gov't should subsidize that. as long as I can buy a $11,000 Ferrari, I'm cool with it... |  |
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| 9/29/2008 9:24:01 AM From: mercury our last profit sharing check was $167... 5 years ago. | |
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| 9/29/2008 9:26:10 AM From: MrsK Safety, reliability, blah blah blah... The 85K Mercedes is a status symbol plain and simple. Status Symbol determines a very high percentage of the national purchase trend. | |
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| 9/29/2008 9:27:02 AM From: MrsK Furthermore they both burn Gasoline and should be scraped anyway to make way for golf carts. | |
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| 9/29/2008 10:33:03 AM From: BCAR Which is why (if anyone has followed any of my comments of late) that I am against bailouts. Of both Multi Billion dollar companies and $9.75 janitors who can't handle their finances responsibly. That's how lessons are learned. Any fool should know you can't afford a $400,000 house on $2,500 a month. And any company should know that you can't have more workers laid off/ retired/ on leave/ with pay and benifits than you do full time workers while paying bonuses and losing your ass in the marketplace. | |
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| 9/29/2008 10:34:57 AM From: BCAR Staus symbols are fine if you can afford them. Like any other possesion. | |
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| 9/29/2008 10:40:21 AM From: mercury at least we're on the same side of the fence on that point, B. I don't know a single person that is in support of this one, but how much you wanna wager that it's going to happen? So much for "voice of the people", huh? | |
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| 9/29/2008 10:50:17 AM From: mercury I think mandatory quarterly audits, paid by the corporations, could eliminate the majority of the abuse and accounting manipulation. Corporations would have no choice in who performed their audit and repeat audits in a fiscal year by the same firm would not be allowed. Make it a requirement of being a publicly traded organization and we'd see a lot of the creative accounting practices disappear and let's face it... it's those creative accounting practices, along with abuses of corporate welfare, that brought us here. | |
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9/29/2008 11:03:30 AM From: hugo Actually, what got us in this current crisis is liberal lending practices which were encouraged by the federal government combined with a burst in the housing bubble.
The situation with GM, high pension and medical benefits crippling the company, is a small preview of what will happen to the US when baby boomers begin retiting en masse. | |
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| 9/29/2008 11:05:46 AM From: hugo Why did they happen to pick a couple with $20K of itemized deductions? I'm betting because those who file using the standard deductions pay more under Obama. | |
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| 9/29/2008 11:48:13 AM From: MrsK Hugo, what got is in this mess was a lot things. Including finger pointing and playing innocent. In order for us to be heard we have to have a voice, And thus far we've only been successful at giving our voice to those in power. The only way that I see "we the people" getting back our voices and power is by TAKING it back. | |
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| 9/29/2008 12:27:22 PM From: hugo We go to the voting booth every November and we vote for the same ole two parties. We the people have our voice. Sadly, most of us are idiots. | |
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| 9/29/2008 12:30:12 PM From: mercury liberal lending practices = creative accounting. inflated housing market = creative accounting. ARM lending = creative accounting. borrowing against pensions = guess what?? creative accounting! The average auto worker experienced 26 weeks of layoffs per year from 2002-2006, resulting in even MORE creative accounting (but this time on the other end) in order to keep feeding their family and have a snowball's chance of keeping their home. creative accounting is bad news for everyone and needs some kind of independent oversight. | |
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| 9/29/2008 12:32:11 PM From: hugo Liberal lending practices does not equate to creative accounting. No creative accounting was needed. | |
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| 9/29/2008 12:54:47 PM From: mercury So what was the plan? did they expect to NOT be holding all these mortgages? how did they NOT expect that? what are the figures to back that this was a good plan for the company, even given the best case scenario? (bet they're creative ;o) How was this expected to play out, other than the way it has? And finally... what makes anyone think they won't be just as careless with the blank check our government is about to cut them? | |
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9/29/2008 2:31:31 PM From: Peanuts Quote: Historically, Senator Obama's tax rate would be the highest individual tax rate since the Jimmy Carter days. Tax shelters and tax avoidance strategies were common when the top marginal rate was 70 percent or higher. This new top tax rate will again encourage these gimmicks, reducing investment and economic growth as resources are squandered in an attempt to avoid punitive taxation.
Many individuals will attempt to transfer their compensation from wages to capital gains, since capital gains would only be taxed at 25 percent, or less than half of the top rate on wages. This would put a great deal of pressure on a company to do anything it could to make its stock quickly increase in value. Other individuals would try to incorporate so they could pay business taxes instead of having to pay taxes on their wages. Again, these resources would be diverted away from more productive uses and slow the economy.
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| 9/29/2008 2:39:31 PM From: Peanuts We're already in a ressison. | |
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| 9/30/2008 2:05:14 AM From: hugo The hope was that house prices would keep rising. They were stupid but not real creative. | |
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| 9/30/2008 3:42:59 AM From: mercury so.... home values keep rising, interest rates keep rising, yet paychecks keep falling. To put that on paper and have it make any type of sense would require a WHOLE shitload of creativity, imo; maybe even 2 shitloads. Accounting is not about just recording today's profits, it's also about projecting future earnings. All markets experience fluctuation, yet "record profits" will continue endlessly in the housing market because the housing market is blessed that way? They had to know there was an end to all this, and THIS is the only logical end to the game they tried to play. To think otherwise is quite imaginative; or possibly delusional. Anyway... it all goes back to my original statement: we all break our backs so the big guy can drink his martinis on the golf course... and he'll keep driving his Mercedes while the rest of us shoot each other for food :P | |
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| 9/30/2008 6:22:40 AM From: BCAR Rising housing prices are considered a good thing and that's how they sold it. House costs 200K with interest or partial interest, or viable or ballon loan. Payment that should be 1500 a month with a conventional loan is only $650, the real interest or costs are defered. If house appreciates in value in 2 years to $260K the owner can sell for a profit or re-finance and the whole scheme starts over again. Problem: House depreciates in value to $160, everyone is fracked. As Mr. Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute". | |
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| 9/30/2008 7:19:32 AM From: Ali I'm glad I only have $15K invested in my house. Simple living can be a good thing. |  |
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| 9/30/2008 8:00:44 AM From: timesjoke I agree with BCAR, the government should not be getting mixed up with these bailouts. Most of the bad loans are for homes that should never have been written in the first place. The houseing market became inflated through artificial means and it was doomed to failure, when this failure came, we should have just let the free market take it's course. Now we have created more harm than good. |  |
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