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Except that now, having won re-election, the impetus for President Obama to seek the middle has gone down. Think of it like this:

Option 1: Obama presses his case and wins. How does this happen, you ask? Sweeteners like the mortgage refinancing scheme are widely popular among the public and both parties, who see it as a means of reducing foreclosures and distressed mortgages in their districts through principal reduction and deed-in-lieu agreements. These will mostly be done through Fannie Mae, which will also reduce the total spending FNM requires to police heavily delinquent mortgages (90+ days). Many of these mortgages are in conservative-leaning districts of conservative-leaning states like Arizona and Florida.

In this scenario, the White House claims a big win by getting Republicans on the Hill to fold while also giving middle class voters a nice gift. The stimulus spending addendum will be a nice little sop to small businesses in key swing areas, shoring up Democratic support ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.

Option 2: Obama presses his case and loses. In this case, mandatory sequestration comes into effect, slashing government spending in the conservative-favored defense industry and the Pentagon, as well as slashing down popular social programs. Looking at both of these, the idea stands to damage Republicans far more than Democrats, as they are both symbolically in control of the legislative process through the House, and Republican-leaning states have higher proportions of citizens using social programs. Some of the key Republican congressional areas of Virginia, Las Vegas, Florida, and the Midwest also have substantial military presences that stand to be cut in a sequestration.

What we've seen in polling both before and after the election is that Congress has become the main target of voter frustration, and their inability to come to terms on a debt reduction deal stands to be a major issue in 2014. Republicans can choose to cut their losses and put up a strong challenge in 2014 by agreeing to the White House deal (or some slight modification of it), or they can stand by their principles and face a tough fight in the face of economic headwinds and disgruntled constituents.

Either way, it's not difficult to play this issue to an already receptive public who will see the failure to pass a debt deal as Republican unwillingness to acknowledge their defeat in November. I'm making no comment on the wisdom of the policy proposals put forward by the White House, merely on their efficacy as political cudgels to alternately demoralize Republican regions while tossing broad, across-the-board treats to voters in key electoral regions.

At 11/30/12 11:18 AM, adrshepard wrote: Interesting, but I don't see its current relevance. To me, it seems to be evidence of a positive trend that shouldn't be reversed, as opposed to a justification for higher taxes because the country coped with it before.

The relevance is that both our annual operating deficit and our long-term debt is growing, and as the amount of money we collect in taxes declines, we're less and less able to pay off our obligations. Even as the economy grows and individuals make more money, the declining percentage of tax receipts by the government strains our ability to pay down deficits while still providing a consistent level of service.

At 11/30/12 10:53 AM, leanlifter1 wrote:
Why make a big stink about taxation when it is illegitimate to begin with is all I am saying. If you can prove that fiat currency and taxation is legitimate then you have something here but until then we need to highlight the fundamental illegitimacy of the monetary system and taxation rater than just complain about the incidental fallacy's of the monetary and taxation system in question.

This is the last I'll say on this line: regardless of your concept of 'legitimacy,' it's the standard by which we pay our tax and debt obligations. There's a massive army of enforcement officials (not to mention a real Army) dedicated to maintaining that. So your personal feelings about fiat currency aside, it seems likely we're going to be using it to pay our public and private debts for a long time coming. You can choose not to pay your taxes in filthy fiat currency. I will send you a gift bag in federal prison.

For the rest of those reading this and waiting to comment - one of the points the article brings up is that payroll taxes, which are paid out of your paycheck to fund Social Security and the like, are rising faster than income taxes. This disproportionately affects the poor, who in some cases do not pay any income taxes. Any thoughts on this are welcome.

At 11/30/12 10:36 AM, leanlifter1 wrote: Whats the point when money has been turned into fiat and not actual wealth like it is supposed to be. In essence paying taxes is just paying back money to the people that gave it to you which so happens to be the same people that created debt.

I had the sneaking suspicion you'd be both the first commenter and the first one to try and derail this from a thread about tax policy over the decades. I'd kindly ask other commenters to pass right over Leanlifter and focus on the actual points raised in the article and the post.

Most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes - federal, state and local - than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010.

The uneven decline is a result of two trends. Congress cut federal taxation at every income level over the last 30 years. State and local taxes, meanwhile, increased for most Americans. Those taxes generally take a larger share of income from those who make less, so the increases offset more and more of the federal savings at lower levels of income.

Link

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This plays into one of the great psychological biases - the tendency for people to think that both their overall tax burden and their general share of total tax receipts is higher than in reality. There's an admirable amount of research put into showing that, whether you're looking at something like dividend taxation or capital gains from stock, overall income tax or the number of tax credits a family receives, people are mostly doing better than they have at any time in most of your lifetimes.

There's such a tendency to get caught in the moment, to look at the past two or three or five years and claim some long-term trend, that it's important to step back and remember that the historical data tells a different story. Here's a more interesting point from the article:

The analysis shows that the overall burden of taxation declined as a share of income in the 1980s, rose to a new peak in the 1990s and fell again in the 2000s. Tax rates at most income levels were lower in 2010 than at any point during the 1980s.

Governments still collected the same share of total income in 2010 as in 1980 - 31 cents from every dollar - because people with higher incomes pay taxes at higher rates, and household incomes rose over the last three decades, particularly at the top.

So the biggest contributor to rising tax receipts isn't an across-the-board hike in taxes on Americans -- it's rising PRODUCTIVITY within American households. A family is on average earning more than they did in 1980, especially if that family is already in the upper echelons. The idea that the past four years have been some unholy apocalypse for the wealthy is simply untrue.

Let's try and keep it civil as we collect our thoughts on this.

I've been idly scratching my shin for a while while I browsed the fine threads in Politics, and I just looked down and my whole shin is bloody as fuck. THERE I GO AGAIN.

makin' me dream of u

An update: Went up to NYC with my office as part of a relief volunteer team, helping out people in the area without power. Usually I'd insert a snarky comment here, but I spoke with a woman still looking for her child in the wake of the flooding, and there are general rules about survivability this far out from a disaster on the scale of Sandy.

It's just really unfortunate, and it makes me upset with myself that I volunteered wholeheartedly to help clean up the flooding of my white brothers in Brooklyn and such, but couldn't be fucked to go volunteer for the Katrina recovery when people were begging for volunteers in college. Makes you feel kind of like a dipshit.

>Someone has policies I don't like
>Dictator

Oh shit I'm back in high school.

At 11/8/12 07:31 AM, TheKlown wrote: This is your average President Obama supporter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=39dy7 zD4E78#!

And your average Romney supporter is just like you, a "blank slate."

The average Romney supporter is ---

Oh wait, he lost.

At 11/7/12 09:42 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

Why vote when it's a 4 year dictatorship you are voting for.

You misdefined the word "dictatorship". STOP POSTING!!!

You seem to misunderstand what freedom is and what a dictatorship is not. STOP OSTRACIZING !

We tend to ostracize fools. So go 'way.

The Republican asspain evident in these threads is nourishing me even days later.

At 11/7/12 04:35 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 11/7/12 04:31 PM, Feoric wrote:

First the people do not control the money supply the Federal Mint controls the money supply and inflation is a temporary fix to a permanent problem that will end in another great depression especially since peak Oil is here.

Wait, the Mint is controlling the money supply and national inflation targets? They must be busy - all along I thought it was the Fed.

At 11/7/12 04:38 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

No it was Murder and disgusting that many of Humanity feels that murder is no big thing. Bin laden had a family and mom to just like Bush.

Let's kill them.

Who Bush ?

All of them

At 11/7/12 04:10 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 11/7/12 03:51 PM, Feoric wrote:

Killing Bin Laden wasn't a tax increase.

No it was Murder and disgusting that many of Humanity feels that murder is no big thing. Bin laden had a family and mom to just like Bush.

Let's kill them.

Soooooooooooooooo kids.

I was supposed to go to New York to fill in for some coworkers who can't make it in - physically, their road has been destroyed and hasn't been cleared yet. But our bus arrived, we took one look at the shit show going on in Manhattan, and turned right the fuck around. Jesus Christ, seriously, New York is a disaster area of the worst order.

How do you know you've been working the campaigns too hard? When you don't realize Sandy was even a deal until Nov. 7. Can't believe I missed all this.

At 11/7/12 03:48 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:
Fractional reserve lending is not vague but I guess to most Americans it is a big word and to complex to care about right brig on the iPhone 5 and mccheese burger.

Can you sit down and review your sentences for clarity before hitting Post? That would be helpful to me.

Also do you know that every dollar that leaves the Federal Mint has an addition debt attached to it and that debt is than passed onto the American citizens. Whats the debt at again ?

And this disproves a 1.99% inflation rate how?

At 11/7/12 03:35 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 11/7/12 03:30 PM, JMHX wrote:

2012 Inflation Rate, SEPT2012 : 1.99 %

Rampant, runaway sub-2% inflation.

Guess you haven't considered FIAT currency and fractional reserve lending as well as perpetual debt into the equation.

Securities and Exchange Act Taft Hartley Coining Silver Spiderman.

See, I can throw together vaguely financial terms, too! Doesn't change the fact that the globally acknowledge rate of American inflation is under 2%, which is a fraction of what inflation was in 2005, and only slightly higher than it was when President Obama took office.

And now when Barack 'The Islamic Shock' Hussein SuperAllah Obama comes in glory to another term in the White House expect to see inflation hover to around 2.5-3% as the economy regains momentum.

At 11/7/12 03:25 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 11/7/12 03:14 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

That depends on where we are in the recession, not on Obama.

You say recession but really I mean come on it's inflation.

2012 Inflation Rate, SEPT2012 : 1.99 %

Rampant, runaway sub-2% inflation.

At 11/7/12 03:21 PM, jimbobmuffincake wrote: Camarohusky:

How would you know that considering Obama isn't nearly into his next four years yet? Don't assume

Yes Jimbob, assuming is bad.

Camarohusky should shut up the OP is 100% correct and not wrong in any way ever.

Romney/Ryan 2016 - Believe in America Again Again

I guess you could say this initiative puff puff passed?

Good luck persuading the Republicans in Congress to admit Puerto Rico after they just got whomped on the back of overwhelming Latino turnout for Democratic candidates.

At 11/7/12 02:44 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 11/7/12 02:40 PM, JMHX wrote:

At 11/7/12 02:27 PM, LemonCrush wrote:

When was that "Constitution written" and how many of those "rights" have been nullified buy all the Regimes over the years especially Bush/Obama. ?

I'm glad to see your veneer of 'law and order' is just for political expediency, and you're cool with tossing out the whole Constitution when it suits you.

At 11/7/12 02:27 PM, LemonCrush wrote:

I think there should be a constitutional amendment taking away life time appointments for judges.

It should be an elected position, not an appointment, and certainly not a lifetime appointment.

I, on the other hand, support our Constitutional system.

At 11/7/12 01:30 PM, Profanity wrote:

I'll give you the short answer, skipping the fact that I've filled several notebooks with research for elections:

Did Profanity mention he also has degrees in this field, or that he is a political science professional? I'm trying to log all the instances of this so I can make a humorous collage later.

At 11/7/12 11:40 AM, LemonCrush wrote:

At 11/7/12 01:44 AM, Kwing wrote:

Obama is the COMMANDER IN CHIEF, son. Meaning that he could've ended the wars on day 1 of his first term if he wanted to.

This is what some people actually believe.

At 11/5/12 10:57 AM, mayeram wrote:

So you are saying that a government is typically better able to decide your long-term needs than you are?

It depends. Unlike Camarohusky, I'm not going to say this is categorically true. You asked me about what kind of tax system I'd like, one in which taxes are a mandatory part of citizenship or one where I pay taxes only for services I need.

Being young, this would lead me to optimize earning power by opting out of certain taxes that don't affect me at this time (or ever). In reality, though, taxes have never been about an individual, it's a redistribution of money for some purpose or other. So when you say "only the services I need" or something along those lines, you're misrepresenting the purpose of the tax system.

But yes, on some issues a government (or indeed a private company, like what happens when you buy an HMO insurance policy) being an accumulation of individual data points, is better at structuring services for the long-term than an individual. Innumeracy and economic irrationality are just facts of life that require planning.

Then why object to paying taxes or for that matter why would you object to anything that the government does if they know what is good for you better than you do?

I don't object to paying taxes, on principle. I object to some of the uses of tax money, sure, and to some of the programs that redistribute it, absolutely. But that doesn't make me somehow hypocritical because I believe in the overarching premise of the institution itself.

At 11/5/12 10:57 AM, mayeram wrote: Ok, so you would say that the reason that insurance companies are good and the government is bad is because you choose to pay the insurance company, whereas you are forced to pay the government?

Would you be in favor of a form of government where you are not required to pay taxes, but the services and rights you have vary depending on what taxes you pay?

Not really, because individuals are really bad at planning for long-term needs.

Gold down over 10% from its peak around $1810 as of today.