e-monk

the 'foreign aid' we should be cutting back on is defense spending - we spend more on defense than the next 25 countries combined and 24 of those countries are our allies - Eisenhower had it right 50 years ago with his military industrial complex speech

Nimreitz

I think this is exactly how unemployment works and you have to undertake a job search to get the benefits (or lie and commit fraud). Welfare isn't a free ride at all, I'm under the impression that it is completely shitty and you have to take a bus at 5am to work some horrible job, and that's just to get welfare benefits, not what the job actually pays. Food stamps are for the kids mostly.

Ballscientist

If you tax the people (between age 22 to age 45) who don't work at all, they will come back to work.

Now young husband and wife (don't work at all) get $46,000 US dollars a year from the government.

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R-Star

If its anything like Canada, that is how it used to be. When I was on unemployment all I had to do was file online every month. No one ever asked for proof I was looking for a job, so after a while I quit documenting.

You get 1 year of unemployment before you have to go back to work, so many up here (mainly lazy french assholes in Quebec, and Newfies) will go back to work for the exact allotment of time required (I think something like 6 months), then file again for unemployment.


I doubt its much different in America. They try to make it sound so tough on the news shows, but that's become the norm of saying how hard it is to be poor, weak, or stupid in America these days. Popular thought these days is the rich are lazy and their money just appeared on their doorstep one day, and that they're all holding back the people looking so very hard for jobs.

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R-Star

America needs to tax every single person in America a flat tax rate.

30% for the poor, 30% for the rich. 30% for everyone. Obviously that's an arbitrary number, but you get the point.

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Ballscientist

I remember that when I was in a small town called Red Deer, Alberta. The personal tax rate was 43.5%. Now in Canada, the highest personal income tax rate is only 29.6%.

R-Star hometown (Red Deer) was about 10,000 people at that time.

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R-Star

What? No.

I used to pay around that 43.5%. Its what the upper middle class get banged with and then it starts to lower the richer you get. 29.6% is definitely not the highest tax rate.


I get taxed way less now, but its only because I keep the majority of my money in my business account and only pay myself $60,000 a year. Once my wife is off maternity leave I'll pay her out $60,000 a year as well. I think that's taxed around 30%, and then what I leave in the business only gets 14%.

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R-Star

You weren't alive when Red Deer had 10,000 people in it.

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Nimreitz

I know unemployed people and in Wisconsin at least you have to file online every week, but as far as I know you're right about no one ever checking that you are really looking for a job. I also don't think 6 months would be enough to qualify for any meaningful unemployment, but it would not surprise me at all if Canada was more welfare friendly.

Hyperion

The US collects 18% in taxes a year. Move it to 25% on everything and the deficit goes away and you have funded medicare.

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"The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly"

R-Star

And is 25% that bad? I mean, if you know that is what everyone else is having to pay, it seems fair. The rich are paying the same percentage as the poor, and the middle class doesn't have to pick up the slack for the rest of the country.

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E.H. Munro

Ballscientist is eternal, he is the Forever Man.

They're tried. But for the last 65-70 years, regardless of marginal rates, revenues tend to come in at 18%-19% of GDP. It takes monumental crises to get them higher than that, and you can't have one of those on an ongoing basis.

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If everyone loves you you're doing it wrong.

"Opium is the religion of the masses." Fred Reed

The Power of 99 Press

"He thinks it's going to be fun being governor. It's only fun being governor of New York if you have money to spend, and I spent it all." Nelson Rockefeller on his successor, Hugh Carey.

R-Star

Its ridiculous how much Americans complain about tax, when pretty much every other major nation pays more. Most paying quite a bit more in fact.

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Nimreitz

That's because our rich are selfish ****s. No one is asking them to pay 83% like it was in England before Thatcher; it's 38%, and they are freaking the **** out and throwing constant crybaby bitchfests.

Ballscientist

Sorry, a "grandma" told me that Red Deer was about 100,000 people at that time.

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