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At 1/16/13 05:36 PM, TheMason wrote: Absolutely false! You can hunt deer with a .45LC or .44 rem mag...but you cannot hunt one with a .223 because it is deemed to be an unethical kill because it lacks the killing power of other rounds!

Not in all states. .223 is perfectly acceptable for deer hunting in lots of places. Sure, its not as strong as extra large pistol rounds or higher calibre rifle rounds, but it still has more stopping power than regular pistol rounds. Besides, how many semi-automatic weapons are there for public sale chambered for rounds larger than .223?

The high rate of speed of a 5.56 makes hollow points less likely to mushroom, plus it delivers less punch. Force equals mass x velocity. What is going to produce more force? A smaller or larger bullet? Simply put a .45 ACP will kill much quicker than .223 or even 7.62x39.

The 45 may be larger, but its not going anywhere near as fast as a rifle round. I'm not big on the nuts and bolts of guns, but I haven't found anything on the internet through a little research that says a standard pistol round has more stopping power than a .223.

At 1/16/13 03:47 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Either way, saying assault weapons are not meant to harm is nothing less than specious. Guns are designed solely to harm flesh. You may be right that in close situations the most crime takes place assault weapons may end up causing less harm, but to imply that any gun is truly safe is just plain false. Guns are meant to be lethal.

The bigger problem with his point is that assault rifles fire more powerful rounds which travel at higher speeds. A .223 round is going to cause much more damage than a 9mm or .45 bullet, and there's arguably no practical reason why anyone would need that large a round for self-defense purposes.

All you have done here is shown that Assault weapons don't make that good of crime weapons. Come back and say why that fact has anything to do with an AWB being an unessecary infrigement.

You're looking at it from the wrong direction, trying to justify the right to have guns from a position of need. The 2nd Amendment establishes the right to bear arms in general, not just certain types. The actual need for the guns is irrelevant. Therefore, someone is entitled to have nearly any gun so long as there isn't a good reason to deprive him of it. There are good reasons for restricting fully automatic weapons or heavy machine guns, obviously, but Mason's point is that there aren't any similar arguments that apply to the AR-15 or similar semi-automatic rifles because they simply aren't used in that many crimes and don't have a comparatively larger potential for massacres than other weapons.

At 1/8/13 07:00 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 1/8/13 05:32 PM, adrshepard wrote: You could draw the parallel with why the government can't compel priests to reveal the details of confession or force spouses to testify against each other even if doing so could prevent future crimes.

I would be wary of drawing this correlation. These privileges have the specific purpose of encouraging full and forthright communication between the privileged parties. By ensuring that no communication will ever be legally required to be disclosed the speakers will feel more free to be fully honest.

It's pretty much the same concept of protecting something that has no value (at least according to poxpower) at the expense of something that does. There's no objective reason why talking to my wife or priest should be more or less important to me than what happens to my body after I die.

The problem here isn't that so many people are refusing to donate organs, it's that so many people just aren't aware ro going through the steps (more like step in singular) needed to donate an organ posthumously.

I doubt it. People understand the concept of organ donation and anyone who's ever looked at a driver's license knows how to become one. Numbers I've just looked at now say less than 40% of driver's license or state ID holders are organ donors. That sounds like active refusal to me.

At 1/8/13 07:10 PM, poxpower wrote: Hum the very purpose of a goverment is to take away some of your liberties to insure a better society. That's the entire point. Why we do or don't take away a particular liberty is entirely a case by case basis of cost vs benefits.
In the case of organ donations, the cost is virtually nothing and the benefit is ENORMOUS.

No, YOU think the cost is nothing because you're assessing value from a very narrow perspective. Value means something different to everyone, and if a large group of people believe that being buried whole with all their organs has value, you can't simply dismiss that.

At 1/8/13 11:55 AM, poxpower wrote: I don't understand why you have to sign anything to give hospitals the right to use your organs when you die. You're dead, they're not yours anymore. You don't exist. If you don't exist, you don't own things.

People are dying every day because of this nonsense and we're spending money on useless paperwork and wasting valuable time.

It's all about the protection and respect of individual liberties, even if it comes at the expense (or at least the missed opportunity to benefit) of everyone else. You could draw the parallel with why the government can't compel priests to reveal the details of confession or force spouses to testify against each other even if doing so could prevent future crimes.
I, too, don't particularly care what happens to my body when I die, but some people do, and there are enough of them to get upset if we suddenly decided to make it mandatory.

I have thought about the idea of making organ donation mandatory for people who live on public assistance or depend on Medicaid, though. But seeing as we treat public assistance as a gift rather than a debt that should be repaid, I don't think there's any chance of such an idea ever being adopted.

At 1/8/13 04:38 PM, poxpower wrote: For instance, a prisoner costs like 25+ k a year to keep. Yet no one wants to give some kid 25k a year so he goes to college for free. So if you keep the kid poor and he turns to crime, you are losing 25k every year, on top of the money he's not generating through a job ( which is taxed ). So this short-term greed is actually costing 20 times more over a lifetime.

Plenty of people want to give capable kids money to go to college. There are endless scholarships to apply to and even more opportunities for financial aid. But not everyone can or should go to college.
"Turning to crime" is not the inevitable result of being poor, neither is it the only real option. People turn to crime because they want something quick without having to work for it. College isn't out of reach for most people, if not through financial aid then through joining the army (which can be a career in itself). Hell, even if you do go to college, you don't exactly rake in the cash as soon as you graduate. It takes time to accumulate enough money or advance in a career until you can be really comfortable, even more so if you have student loans or lack a college education.
So no, I don't think that handing out 25k a year to people who don't have the willingness to work for it is going to magically reduce the crime rate or save money.

Maybe I'm missing something after reading the back and forth in the last few pages, but Socialism is a pretty easy concept to pin down and distinguish from a community investment. Roads and schools are not examples of socialism because, like Lemon said, they have a positive direct effect on most everyone and a positive indirect effect on everyone (even if you don't use the roads or public schools yourself, some aspect of your life, whether it's what you do for job or what you buy has been made possible in part by this sort of infrastructure).

However, programs like Social Security and Medicaid are socialist, or at least very close to it. The country as a whole doens't benefit from payments to senior citizens, only senior citizens do, and because of the way the payment system is set up, the current recipients haven't technically earned it; there just happens to be enough money in the system at the moment for it to seem like they're getting their own money back. It won't always be the case. It's a similar situation with Medicaid, because it benefits people who tend to be very replaceable in terms of their ability to contribute to society (and the economy).

Both of them are socialist in design, but because the alternative is letting poor people die from untreated injuries or diseases and seeing elderly or disabled people who are literally unable to work pushed into poverty are so unpleasant, most people don't have a problem with them.

If you ask me, the federal unemployment benefit extensions are socialist because they basically redistribute money from one group and give it to another for no other purpose than to prevent the recipient from liquidating his assets and eventually becoming eligible for public assistance. Being poor obviously sucks, but no one has an inalienable right to own a home, or to have a car, or to maintain a savings or retirement account. The argument that it stimulates the economy misses the point because the same could be said to justify placing annual spending quotas on each citizen or confiscating the wealth of people who've saved too much or spent their money on things that don't stimulate the economy enough (like imported goods). When a government ventures into the area of deciding what is and isn't acceptable economic activity it veers the country closer to a command economy, which have usually been inspired by socialism but were universally oppressive.

Socialism, when put into practice, basically restricts people's choices and freedom and undermines the individual's right to benefit from his own efforts, abilities, or good fortune.

Yeah, that's totally Bush's fault.

Actually, as a result of the banking bailout in 2008 (during Bush's presidency), the federal budget deficit on Jan 19th, 2009 (the day before Obama's inauguration) stood at 1.2 trillion dollars. Obama's stimulus only added the final .2 trillion to it. Furthermore, the subsequent deficits were the result of not only the automotive bailout, but also finally accounting for the 800 billion dollars spent on the Iraq War during the Bush presidency that was never accounted for in the federal budget.

Hardly. TARP is responsible for one year, and is nearly paid back. You're right that the stimulus contributed only about 200 billion, in 2009. It was responsible for another 350 billion in 2010 and 175 billion or so in 2011.
The automotive bailout only cost around $80 billion. It did not cause trillion-dollar deficits.
Neither did the off-budget spending for the Iraq war suddenly add up and cause the deficits later. The CBO puts total Iraq and Afghanistan spending at 1.4 trillion between September 2001 and October 2012, or a bit less than $140 billion a year. That still doesn't bring Bush's deficits anywhere near to Obamas
.

Are you calling nearly 8 years of unemployment under 6 percent with strong GDP growth economically ruinous?

We are calling eight years of ignoring predatory lending practices, re-implementation of trickle-down economics, an unnecessary foreign war, and deregulation of Wall Street economically ruinous.

Lol, "predatory lending," as though the people taking out hundreds of thousands in variable rate interest mortgages were just innocent victims and not greedy morons. If you take out a loan for that much, you better read the fine print and not just take the word of whoever gets the commission.
Second, you can call it what you want. Whatever the hell policy it was worked pretty good.
Third, it was absolutely necessary based on the information we and most of the world had at the time, and Iraq is better off for it.
Fourth, you can't point to any specific deregulation that occured during the Bush presidency that caused the economic meltdown. All you can say is that "they should have done more," which is basically the same as saying "I don't know specifically what they should have done, but what they did do should have been done better."

Dear god, another delusional infrastructure freak. What do you think the stimulus project was? Hundreds of billions on "shovel ready" infrastructure projects.

Actually, only 92 billion or so was spent on infrastructure projects. Here is a good article detailing why the ARRA fell short in meeting our infrastructure deficit.

Only $92 billion? So I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought.

Yet ARRA helped to sustain as many as 3.6 million jobs, preventing a jump as high as 2% in the national unemployment rate. As I see it, we borrowed against long-term economic growth to prevent a short-term economic disaster. Source

As many as 3.6 million jobs? Don't you mean as little as 600k jobs? Their estimate for total jobs had a spread of 3.1 million jobs, which is statistics speak for "we have no idea."
It would not have been an "economic disaster." It would have been the same thing we have now, only slightly larger, and the country would have been better off in the long run for it.
The way I see it, this sort of emergency spending is only beneficial if it prevents the liquidation of capital that is going to be used again later. Labor isn't a concern because it will survive the recession (your ability to work or your training doesn't go away). Now I'm not going to look through the list of each recipient of the hundreds of billions in stimulus funding, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of them had more to do with simply hiring people than actually constructing something or performing a service that had to be done. Hiring more teachers isn't as important as keeping the school open and operating. Employing more firemen isn't as much of a priority as making sure the station doesn't have to shut down and sell its fire engines only to have to buy them back 10 years later. You get the picture. I could be wrong that this was a problem; I don't know the extent of these sort of projects compared to ones that I would consider worthy.

True, but the price of maintaining the infrastructure we have and re-engineering it so that we can continue to do those things in the future. Not to mention the need for renewable sources of energy and a grid capable of handling power loads in the 21st century and beyond.

That's true. And I have no problem with those sort of investments that have demonstrable savings and benefits down the line. The part that worries me is this: for all this talk about how terrible all the infrastructure is, it would have taken decades for it to allegedly fall apart so much. Why haven't state and local governments done anything about it? They may be forced to run a balanced regular budget, but the capital budget is a different matter. If the savings in maintenance costs or new growth returns are so clear and obvious, why haven't they been taken care of by now? The only explanation is that the benefits aren't as clear as some would like us to believe. I've skimmed through the reports of that engineering association that gives the report card of American infrastructure, and they are very careful to point out that every project should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis so as not to be wasteful, and that economic studies of infrastrucutre leading to growth (or the other way around) are inconclusive.
So when you take away risk from the states by giving them grants for projects, they aren't going to care whether the project is a viable investment over the long term. All they care about is the jobs it will create, and the feds can worry about paying the loan back.

Cash assistance is only provided to families on the very low end of the economic spectrum (for instance, Florida requires that total assets < 2,000$ to be eligible, along with a littany of other requirements). So for many people who are used to living middle class lifestyles, after being laid off they are ineligible for cash assistance, and probably ineligible for other forms of welfare.

Yes, but that $2,000 excludes a person's house and their car, so long as its worth less than $8,500.
I'm sure many people who are used to living middle class lifestyles are not eligible. That's the entire point. They are not entitled to a middle class lifestyle, and if they have too many assets to qualify for public assistance, after a certain period of time, they should liquidate them. There's no sense in extending UI through deficit spending when the recipient has the means to contribute more himself.

Without UI, there is no money to spend and thus, no demand created, leading to both a raw and net drag on economic growth. Moreover, UI may be subsidizing their lifestyles, but it provides incentives to remain in the hunt for a new job, and statistics show that people on UI tend to find equivalent work faster than those without UI.

Of course there's money to spend. If they aren't eligible for public assistance, they have money to spend in the form of assets that they haven't yet sold or cashed in. If they are eligible, they have that money to spend.
I have no doubt they find equivalent work faster. But they certainly don't find employment faster. Everything I've read about unemployment insurance says it extends the jobless period and that, by some magic coincidence, most people tend to find jobs just as their payments are about to expire.
Is it easier to look for work when you don't have a job? If by "easier," you mean "easier to be lazy and still find a job," then yes. But looking for a job doesn't take 8 hours a day, more like 1 at the most. I've done both for extended periods of the time, so I'm not about to buy into the argument that people can't be underemployed and jobsearch effectively.

At 12/31/12 03:02 AM, Saen wrote: It's true and it makes me sick. While throughout Bush's two terms Republicans were all in on increased government power and interference within our lives.

There's a difference between using the Patriot Act to target terrorists sand forming legislation to federally mandate the budgets of private companies, compel people to make purchases, and generally screw over any individual or company that doesn't want to make way for a new entitlement.

That was actually the plan before Bush was elected. Ensure solvency of major social safety net programs (SS and Medicare) and then pay down the National Debt. See what happens to our priorities after eight years of a Republican administration?

Federal budget deficits under Bush (billions):
2001: 128.2 (surplus)
2002: (157.8)
2003: (377.6)
2004: (412.8)
2005: (318.3)
2006: (248.2)
2007: (160.7)
2008: (458.6)

Federal budget deficits under Obama (billions):
2009: (1,412.7)
2010: (1,293.5)
2011: (1,299.6)
2012 (estimate): (1,326.9)

Yeah, that's totally Bush's fault.

Yup and the said thing was the country posted a surplus just before Clinton left office, we were on track. Electing bush will be remembered in our history and the U.S. History foreign countries teach as one of the dumbest and economically ruinous decisions our country had made.

Are you calling nearly 8 years of unemployment under 6 percent with strong GDP growth economically ruinous?

Not only that, but government spending during a recession is a direct economic impetus. Most of the spending - like you mentioned - is on infrastructure (which is badly needed in our country, we currently face an infrastructure deficit that is threatening to sabotage our country). Other programs - like unemployment benefits - yield far greater benefits per dollar spent (I think it was like the US gets back 1.30$ for every 1$ invested in the long-term unemployed).

Dear god, another delusional infrastructure freak. What do you think the stimulus project was? Hundreds of billions on "shovel ready" infrastructure projects. Yet, despite the "desperate" need for them, how many were actually started within a year of the funding grant? Even Obama admitted as much later on. The CBO, as well, said that the stimulus plan acted as a net drag on the economy over the long run. This isn't rural Africa. All the best routes for businesses to ship freight and goods already exist. There isn't any "new" economic potential to be unlocked, only greater efficiencies to be acheived, and the margins for those are already pretty low.

No one denies that people spend unemployment benefits. The question is how much of that spending would have been performed anyway? Unemployment benefits essentially subsidize a standard of living; they don't support a family from going homeless or starving to death. The state margins for welfare (which averages a higher payment than UI) mean that the people who really need UI to meet basic needs for food and shelter are probably already eligible for public assistance. Those that aren't are simply experiencing a slow bleed on the public dime, putting the taxpayer on the hook for maintaining their assets above the welfare eligibility levels. I understand that its a recession, but I've said this before and I'll say it again: if you haven't had a single job in over 60 weeks or some other absurdly long amount of time, you shouldn't be allowed to keep any of the assets not exempted from your state's assistance requirements. You do not an innate right to be kept off the welfare rolls.

In my home town of Jax Beach (Neptune beach and Atlantic beach as well), it was federal dollars from the Obama stimulus that payed for new roads, sidewalks, bridges, aesthetics, school revamping and hiring. As a result the real estate market has go on the upswing, restaurants and shops have opened up, development has increased, the town is more beautiful that when I've ever lived there, and it is so much easier to drive around town! And Republicans are not in favor of federal dollars being spent in this way, PLEASE TELL ME WHY!

BECAUSE IT'S FUNDED THROUGH DEBT! Someone else paid for your sidewalks, your bridges, and your aesthetics, all of which have no investment value at all and are examples of utterly wasteful federal spending. On a national scale, the saying "there is no free lunch" is always true. Those people who moved to your area because it "looks so nice" are only transfering their spending from one geographic area to another; it's nice for you, but not for their former area of residence which has now lost part of its tax base. It's the same case with your new businesses and development. If the money to support it came from new arrivals, it reflects a transfer of wealth from other areas. If it reflects new hiring supported by federal spending, then those businesses are going to be in for some serious disappointment when the funds run out (or taxes go up to pay for these new public employees). The sidewalks and bridges have no economic value in and among themselves (I doubt the bridges have opened up vast new trade opportunities for the transport of goods, otherwise they would have been built by now). In essence, none of these great things that have happened to your town are founded upon anything of real value innate to your area, but are merely the result of a one-time influx of public spending or a transfer of income and wealth from some other town, making it essentially a zero-sum game for the country as a whole. In the meantime, the interest costs on the debt keep going up, and because nothing in your town actually served as an investment, there's nothing to defray or outweigh the charges.

At 12/17/12 10:59 AM, JMHX wrote: This is one of the direct causes of the wave of mentally disabled homeless we see on the streets, and one of the biggest contributing factors to the rise in undiagnosed and untreated mental illness among the poor or chronic wards of the state. You can bounce in and out of prison and hospital facilities DOZENS of times before you kill someone or end up dead on the street.

And yet none of these people have access to firearms or carry out mass killings, so I don't think we can blame school shootings on Reagan. Lanza's problem was not a lack of access to mental health services.

At 12/15/12 03:16 PM, Feoric wrote:

However, they can still buy from unlicensed dealers at gun shows, or from a private seller. So, start there. Impose harsh penalties to sell weapons from an unlicensed dealer and buying from one.

From what I can tell, selling guns without a license is already illegal, unless it's a sale of guns in very small quantities in private sales to other individuals. They aren't the type of people who are going to rent space at a gun show, and if they did so without a license, they could not legally sell their weapons.

Start having more checks on private sales.

I don't see how that could ever be enforced.

Implement a national gun registry.

I don't see how that would do anything to solve the problem. Someone illegally selling guns is not going to register them with the government, and the police are almost never going to find out if someone legally owns a firearm or not until after it is used in a crime. Maybe it would discourage private sales, but I doubt those occur with enough frequency that regulating them like normal sales would have much effect.

Control high capacity magazine sizes.

We already do on the state level. But I don't see how much that would affect the average mass shooting. People are generally running for their lives or hiding, not waiting for the shooter to reload so they have a chance to attack him. Maybe it gives them more time to run away since he spends more time reloading, but in an enclosed area, like a building, a few more seconds wouldn't make much of a difference I'd bet.

At 12/14/12 10:13 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 12/14/12 02:39 PM, adrshepard wrote: Or it's because mass shootings like this account for about 100 deaths per year, or about 1% of all gun-related homicides.

I'm taking his point to it's logical extreme. If the main crux of his argument is that the statistical percentage of what the total number of casualties incurred during mass shooting sprees is so low that it doesn't warrant a change in gun control laws, my question is how high does it have to be in order for you to be in favor of new/modified laws? How many events like this does it take?

If there's a silver bullet solution to end shooting sprees, I'm not seeing it. Banning assault weapons entirely may have some effect, but JMHX's graph suggests that most of the sprees are committed with handguns anyway and I doubt the type of people who go on rampages would think "Well I can't get my hands on an AR-15 or AK so I guess I'm not going to murder a bunch of random people." My point was that these mass shootings are too few and too small to justify policy changes. You couldn't prevent them without banning guns altogether and even then the government couldn't stop people from arming themselves.

At 12/14/12 01:35 PM, JMHX wrote: Why do gun advocates support murdering children?

Because we're such ignorant, redneck twats and cower from the piercing light of your moral righteousness.

Or it's because mass shootings like this account for about 100 deaths per year, or about 1% of all gun-related homicides. Not to mention even the most conservative estimates of defensive gun uses (DGUs) annually in the US number several hundred thousand.

At 12/12/12 06:49 AM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote:

Unions are still needed today, my old man got fucked up while working and the company tried firing him (with some Bullshit Technicality) and the Teamsters got on it and stopped the termination process of his employment. and with big Companies having increased productivity and stagnated wages (see the Graph below)

I wouldn't jump to conclusions from that graph. The last few decades have seen a shift away from labor intensive industries in the US (like some kinds of manufacturing) and to other countries with low labor costs. The way some US businesses have compensated for higher labor costs is by increasing capital, which makes each worker more productive and requires fewer employees for a given amount of output. Those workers are almost always paid more because it takes more skill or experience to operate the equipment.

The one thing I don't understand in the whole union debate is why none of the right-to-work laws eliminate the exclusive representation provision, which forces the union's agreements to cover all employees, even if they aren't in the union (which leads to the free rider problem). It seems to me that it be very easy for a company to have negotiations with a union for its members alone and have a "take it or leave it" deal to cover the rest of the non-union employees. If the non-union employees don't like the terms, they'll join the union, if they do, then everyone wins. Even stranger, no one seems to be talking about it or giving reasons why it wouldn't work. The only things I could find on the internet about it were some 12-year-old proposal from the Cato Institute and an opinion piece from Forbes.

At 12/10/12 12:26 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

I think we could all agree that the article took some liberties and oversimplified things.

He was definitely in the mildly rich category, but his company decided to do a blind layoff in order to avoid any lawsuits and now he can't find a job. So much for those ways of thinking.

I find that extremely hard to believe. But even so, he'll have the prestige of the former high position and good references. When the economy expands again, he'll get a job.

Another person I know was having some trouble at her nursing job and decided to start her own business. She took a major risk and was pursuing a part of the job she both knew well and enjoyed. Now she's lucky to make $35K in a year. Yet, she is still considered an expert at what she does and the State is following her lead.

If what you say is true, she'll probably end up making a lot more as a consultant later on.

They both were highly skilled and gave tons of their time to the firm working toward promotions. Yet, because of their genitalia and their lack of membership in a certainchurch (wealthy white men church) they were pushed out. No other big firm wanted them, as they would only saw the layoffs and assumed they weren't good enough....

This is the story I have real problems with. No one at a firm is going to fire, or even lay off two educated female employees at the same time who happen to follow a different religion without a really defensible reason. Also the fact you say it has hurt their future employment prospects tells me they were only there for a short time, which means the layoffs were probably based on seniority. If the firm didn't like non-protestant women, they never would have been hired in the first place.

...At that same accounting firm, there were several average male workers who were all card carrying members of the church. They didn't have very good grades out of school, didn;t try that hard at their job, and frankly, weren't that good.

You realize that "they only fired me because I'm ______" is one of the oldest gripes in the book, right?

What insults me the most about this is that the article, by making a hard distinction says that rich people are inherently better, when we all know that, except in a few cases, getting even mildly rich is just as much about who you now and being in the right place at the right time, as it is about tking risks, being properly educated, and working hard.

Perhaps that's true, but when you think about it, how else could it work? The rich are by definition a minority, yet the number of educated people rises all the time. Unless you are exceptionally brilliant or capable, it's going to be difficult to stand out from everyone else and get golden opportunities unless you know someone. Calling it "nepotism" suggests that the people who become wealthy are totally unqualified for their positions and undeserving of it, but do you really think that they're allowed to just cruise along and accumulate wealth without any real effort? Someone or some people have to make a decision along the line that the person is worth a giant salary and luxurious benefits, and even though people like Mitt Romney live entirely from dividends, I've never heard of any one of those people that didn't have a high-level job at some point earlier in their career.

Wealth and connections may give you more opportunities, but whether that opportunity amounts to anything will always depend on the effort and ability of the person.

At 12/9/12 10:41 PM, Ravariel wrote: Taxes have very little effect on the greater economic health of the nation. Raising or lowering them will do very little for the economy as a whole. Taxes are already at historic lows, and corporate profits are at historic highs. If these things spurred economic growth, we would be in one of the most prolific boom times of recent memory.

Then why does nearly every economist think that the repeal of the Bush tax cuts would substantially hurt the economy? It should't make a difference, right?

Le sigh. Once again, splitting people into false categories. Any boost in pay for workers is shared among all people. They have more money to put into the economy, any boost in price is spread over the entire economy, making the effective impact on any one person negligible.

Any boost in pay for workers is shared among those workers. The higher prices are shared among everyone else. Just because it's not immediately visible doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The fact remains that the unions put upward pressure on prices and costs. Sure, taking one penny from everyone and using it to support higher wages for a few may not seem like much, but there are millions of union members in the US. The effect adds up.

I'm not saying basic welfare services for the poor should be cut. The problem is that unemployment benefits are not basic welfare services.

How are they not? They are assistance for people who are unable to find their own ways of paying the bills.

No, they are a form of insurance to mitigate the effects of unemployment for brief periods of time. Workers and companies pay into it over the span of their employment and if they are terminated through no fault of their own, they get some of that money back in the form of UI, usually for about six months. The biggest indicator that it's not a traditional welfare payment is that the payment is usually 50 percent of the normal paycheck, regardless of how high or low it was.

Oh, they've sacrificed. Do not think for one minute that they are living high of the government hog. They make ends meet... barely. There is literally no other way that they can do so. They are also not a unique story.

I can only take your word on that, though I find it hard to believe that your parents could have been making enough money before they lost their jobs that 50 percent, their only income, would be enough to pay for their mortgage, health insurance, and other expenses. I also find it odd that the housing bubble would eliminate ALL of your parents savings. It must have been a pretty poorly managed portfolio if it problems in a single sector could wipe it out entirely.

I find that inherently more fair and equitable than forcing someone else, even a wealthy person, to cede some of his income on the basis that he doesn't need it. That decision rests with him alone.

...They juke the system, use loopholes and offshore accounts in order to avoid paying what might be called the most basic form of charity: taxes. If a person is unwilling to pay for the very things that allow him to get rich (roads, safe borders, a healthy workforce, etc), why would we assume that by removing that, s/he would all of a sudden voluntarily give his money to someone else?

Ok, calm down, Elizabeth Warren. For one thing, I'm not saying people shouldn't be taxed to support welfare services, only that they shouldn't be taxed to keep people off the welfare rolls. Also, the most widely employed "loophole" for the wealthy is the charitable exemption. Second, offshore bank accounts do not have anything to do with personal income taxes unless the person is sole owner and propietor of an international business with sales overseas. There is no legal way to earn money overseas and put it into your own account without reporting it. It's just harder to find offshore accounts than domestic accounts during an audit. Major companies keep profits overseas to avoid the taxes they would pay if they repatriate the money as normal earnings. Third, the wealthy owe as much of their success to roads, safe borders, and a healthy workforce as they do to plants. After all, without plants, how could they respirate? Wealth has long been possible in the absence of national borders, healthy workers, and roads (which were not built simply to help the wealthy). Plus, you have access to all of these utilities and benefits, yet you are not rich. Obviously something else is responsible for their success.

At 12/8/12 03:44 PM, Ravariel wrote:

At 12/8/12 12:21 PM, adrshepard wrote: I can call that a blatantly superficial analysis that has no basis in reality. Tell me, what is the economic mechanism that says, other things equal, higher taxes increases economic growth?

Other things aren't equal, and looking at shit in a vacuum is counter-productive.

I agree. Which is why it seems stupid to believe that raising taxes on anyone encourages economic growth.

I like how you think those groups are completely separate. As if union members were not also consumers or taxpayers.

Who do you think is paying for their higher wages? Are these greedy business owners simply going to absorb the cost through lower profits, or are they going to raise prices?

Nevermind the complete lack of understanding of the greater context and import of the union movement.

I don't see how that's relevant.

People who live an upper-class lifestyle don't have the same right to keep the money they've earned and must redistribute it to others in the form of direct subsidies or expanded government services that people don't really need.

And by what measure do people "[not] really need" them? How do my parents, who live in one of the most economically depressed areas of the entire nation, with an unemployment rate of around 25%, who have been actively looking for work for nearly 2 YEARS not need their unemployment benefits extended? How do families with multiple children, one income and little in the way of education or skill "not need" food/medical/cash assistance?

You went off on a tangent on your last sentence. I'm not saying basic welfare services for the poor should be cut. The problem is that unemployment benefits are not basic welfare services. It sucks that your parents can't find work, but how long should society pay them before they start liquidating their assets? Are they driving the cheapest possible car? Do they have any savings or stock? Do they have anything of value to sell? Do they own their own home? Could they sell it, move to a smaller one, and keep the difference?
None of these are pleasant, but you can't expect to go two years without any income and not have to make some serious sacrifices. I find that inherently more fair and equitable than forcing someone else, even a wealthy person, to cede some of his income on the basis that he doesn't need it. That decision rests with him alone.

At 12/8/12 12:52 PM, Saen wrote: Of course they should. Most infantry combat is fought with guns, not swords, bows, hastas, etc. so strength for the most part isn't relevant. The exception is in close combat situations, which I believe still won't be a problem if she's had the same proper training as everyone else.

Yeah, but all that equipment is heavy. Existing fitness requirements differ for men and women (women don't have to do as many pushups to get a full score, for instance), too, though that's could just be way to get more women in the military. I've never heard of separate fitness requirements for combat troops, but I suppose any deficiencies would reveal themselves during training, anyway.
Here's an interesting article involving women in the marines written by a woman that brings up the medical and physiological component.
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-ar e-not-all-created-equal

At 12/8/12 10:13 AM, theburningliberal wrote: Call it whatever makes your little heart flutter a little faster, but history shows that higher tax rates on the wealthiest of earners spurs economic growth.

I can call that a blatantly superficial analysis that has no basis in reality. Tell me, what is the economic mechanism that says, other things equal, higher taxes increases economic growth?

I can't speak to that, as I don't know what information he was basing that on.

Of course you can't speak to that, because Obama was either lying through his teeth or is so incompetent that he didn't even bother to run the numbers before assessing what is and isn't possible.

Regardless, many Democrats have been trying to throw the GOP a bone to let them save political face, and this may just be another example of that. And given how it turned out, now we have a plan that mirrors some of what the GOP wanted to do with the Romney-Ryan plan that the GOP has already turned down

What the hell are you talking about, "already turned down?" Ryan's budget passed House when it was brought up for a vote last year. The plan republicans are talking about now has the full support of the party's leadership in the house; they will vote for it.

With no limit on place on deductions, I don't think it would impact charitable giving much.

http://www.philanthropyjournal.org/resources/fundraisinggivi ng/impact-changes-tax-rates-charitable-giving
Granted, a higher increase in tax rates makes the charitable deduction more attractive, but it also decreases a person's total income. Since the analyses of the $50k cap say keeping the charitable deduction would reduce revenues by $400 billion, that suggests that people will sacrifice $400 billion and keep giving. However, when overall taxes go up by $800 billion more under Obama's plan to $1.6 trillion, I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't have a similar if not greater negative effect on charitable giving. I've looked this up but I can't find anything that specifically addresses it.

Considering the problem of the disconnect between wealth and rewards in our country, maybe this is exactly what we need...: If we were to pay people based on their actual contributions in the work they do, CEO's would make less and mostly everyone else would make a little more. But no, that's socialism. -_-

I'd dispute that such a disconnect exists, at least on a systemic level (there's always going to be good and bad luck in financial outcomes). I'm not denying that wealth gives a preparatory advantage in terms of cost of educations and personal connections, but someone with average ability isn't going to make it to the top income ladder simply because his family is rich and he went to Dartmouth. You aren't going to find many high-income earners fresh out of college, regardless of where they went. It takes decades of proven experience and ability to get to the CEO or high-paid executive level.
And yeah, taking money from CEOs and giving it to everyone else is socialism because it's based on an arbitrary assessment of worth and not a market-based determination. CEOs get paid what they do because the boards of directors who actually own the company are willing to pay that much for their expertise. Whether in reality they could have paid a different person less who would have done a better job is immaterial. All purchases of goods of services are based on the same principle of profit and utility maximization based on available information.

If you think this is socialism or Marxism, you really need to study up.

There's different degrees. Increasing taxes on the wealthy to fund an extension of unemployment benefits strikes me as socialist because it is essentially subsidizing the lifestyle of the recipient rather than ensuring his basic welfare.

Let's be honest, shall we? Class warfare is practiced on both sides...Anti-collective bargaining laws, Deceptively named "Right-to-work" laws, not to mention the entire aim of the Bush tax cuts was to shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle class while keeping profits high and driving wages down.

Nonsense. Anti-collective bargaining laws are aimed at removing a major inefficiency in the labor market. Unions, especially public sector ones, only advance the interests of the employee at the expense of the customer or taxpayer. They basically have the same effect as government subsidies that distort and limit competition. The downward pressure on wages reflects the reality of the labor market, which, like all markets, is pretty much the only proven tool to ensure an efficient allocation of resources.
Obama's policies, on the other hand, don't appeal to economic rationale but instead to an arbitrary notion that everyone is entitled to a so-called middle-class lifestyle. People who live an upper-class lifestyle don't have the same right to keep the money they've earned and must redistribute it to others in the form of direct subsidies or expanded government services that people don't really need.

What I don't understand is how anyone looking at these negotiations can interpret Obama's position as anything other than class warfare motivated urge to punish the rich. The Republicans put forth an offer that a lot of their constituents don't like and represents a major shift from their former stance of no new revenues. Obama and others say that $800 billion can't be achieved through tax reform alone, yet only a year ago they were citing figures of up to $1.2 trillion in new revenues without raising rates. It's not the numbers; 10-year revenue estimates do not change by $700 billion (Obama now says tax reform would only raise about $500 billion) over the course of a single year.
Obama has said that a $50,000 cap on deductions would hurt charitable donations, and it would, but everyone seems to be ignoring that raising taxes on the wealthy by $1.6 trillion would inevitably hurt charitable donations as well, I'd wager by an even greater extent than the deduction cap.
Now Geitner says that the administration is willing to go over the fiscal cliff if there isn't any increase in rates.
Is this not a confirmation of so many of the fears conservatives and republicans have held over Obama? That he's out to demonize wealth and success and redefine the cultural attitude of Americans towards the rich? That he has enough political support now (or at least there's enough antagonism against house republicans) that the seemingly accurate labels of "socialist" or "Marxist" won't have any effect?
I almost think it'd be better to go over the cliff and have everyone suffer than embrace the ideals of class warfare.

At 12/5/12 07:57 AM, theburningliberal wrote: What really gets me is that, after 8 months of campaigning on the Ryan budget and seeing that budget defeated by 3% points in popular vote and a 126 point margin in the electoral college, the GOP has decided to put forth the Ryan plan (or some version of it) as their fiscal cliff bargaining position.

I think I get the picture: Obama was reelected because voters disapproved of Republicans' deficit reduction plan (even though nearly every poll showed Romney with an advantage on that particular issue), but the Republican House majority was reelected for some other reason that doesn't reflect any disagreement with Obama. Cute.

Obama won the election. We get it. But it's stupid to believe that equates to an absolute endorsement of every one of his policies and a rejection of every one of Romney's.

Your table is factually incorrect, too, if it's referring to the most recent Republican offer, which did not include Social Security and Medicare reform.
What's more troubling is the notion that wanting tax rates to stay the same is an inherently republican position. I was under the impression that taxation was a necessary evil and that if a deficit reduction solution could be reached without raising taxes, it was more preferable to one that was (after all, that's what Obama offered in 2011. By the way, the "unspecified deductions and loopholes" that would bring in $800 billion in revenue consist of a $50,000 cap on tax deductions, which incidently would almost exclusively affect higher-income earners.

At 12/4/12 05:57 PM, JMHX wrote:

At 12/4/12 05:14 PM, adrshepard wrote:

There's a reason ivy-league and prestigious schools only accept a handful of applications each year; their academic programs are intense and only a select few capable students can handle them.

Having gone through one of these programs I can without any doubt guarantee you this is not a true rationale.

I go by what I read: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/college-ranki ngs/2011/most-rigorous.all.html

At 12/5/12 12:36 AM, theburningliberal wrote: Now, I will not begrudge businessmen their right to make a dollar in this economy, but it's somewhat sordid to me that as manufacturing was moved offshore, the income gap began to rise in a hurry, nearly doubling the % of income for the top 1% over a period of 20 years, following nearly a half century where it had remained relatively stable. Moreover, it is an inherently negative thing for the US economy to lose over half of GDP related to manufacturing (26%:1965 to 12%:2009).

I'm not buying it. For one thing, you're assuming that the richest people in the US derive their money from manufacturing, when it's clearly not the case: http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/
Sorting by industry, people defined by manufacturing wealth only count about 15, or about %3.8.
Glancing through the list, it's clear that service, entertainment, and advanced technology industries dominate the current climate. You might argue that retail operations like Wal-Mart indirectly benefit from offshore manufacturing, but I'd bet that competition for Wal-Mart contracts is intense and only the companies with the best advantage (like low production costts) can reliably compete.
Plus, why is it inherently negative to lose half of its manufacturing base?

Moreso, the strength and length of US recessions over the last 40 years have helped aid the growth of the wealth gap. Between 2000 and 2006 alone the US jost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs to other low wage countries,which supports the bottom line of businesses and lines executives pockets, but doesn't help the Average American who is trying to get by in this new economic order.

Isn't it possible that a reduction in production costs was needed for the business to stay viable? If it were purely a question of profits, why would they wait until there's a recession?

Companies that establish subsidiaries in low tax countries pay lower tax if they certify that their profits are invested abroad (i.e, back into the country where that subsidiary was established, not the US). So why stay? Also, by establishing manufacturing operations in low tax countries and manipulating transfer pricing, companies avoid paying US taxes altogether.

From what I understand, the certified foreign reinvestment exemption would make sense if there wasn't so much potential for abuse. Also, the problem you're describing is also cited as a justification for lower corporate tax rates. Wouldn't that increase the wealth gap as you call it?

Also on the table with tax policy is the role of trickle-down economics, the bullshit idea pushed by Reagan and Bush and pretty much every Republican in 2012. The basic (unstated) tenet is simple - shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle class and keep profits high by keeping wages low.

Except that the tax burden was never shifted, or at least it hasn't yet. The Bush tax cuts reduced everyone's rates, regardless of income, and the only way you can argue that it increased the tax burden is if taxes end up being raised on the non-wealthy to pay for it. I don't think you could argue that the burden of state and local taxes increased due to the reduction of federal revenue given that federal outlays to states have increased over the past several decades unless you could show that the magnitude of taxation was greater than the outlay increase.

So while executive pay has increased from 42x the average wage in 1980 to 419x the average wage in 1998 (and even higher since, with many Wall Street banks giving bonuses to their CEO's totalling more than 20 billion dollars during and after the 2007 collapse), their ability to successfully run their businesses has apparently diminished.

That's quite an oversimplification of the matter. First of all, you're using examples of the financial sector to suggest that the rich as a whole do not deserve the money they get from working. You're also ignoring the fact that CEOs do not set their own salaries, rather it's the board of directors for each of the companies. Third, the financial crisis was not solely attributable to CEOs. Sure, CEOs, as the leader of an organization, inevitably have a role in the company's outcomes. But they don't operate in isolation, and they don't rule over a company by fiat. It's not as though CEOs made the decisions and choices they made against unified opposition from the board of directors and against all common sense.

At 12/4/12 10:53 AM, poxpower wrote: Yes, article. Everyone can be rich. Of course. And not doctor rich, everyone can be Trump rich. You know, that guy who was born rich? Born rich through HARD WORK!

Everyone can be Trump rich; nothing is standing in your way that can't be overcome. Being born rich makes it easier, but it's not a guarantee, and an expensive education alone doesn't make one successful. There's a reason ivy-league and prestigious schools only accept a handful of applications each year; their academic programs are intense and only a select few capable students can handle them. The money has nothing to do with it; they could make a fortune by keeping tuition the same and increasing admissions.

Besides, if startup money is all that's needed to become really wealthy, why do so many lottery winners squander their in about five years? Why don't they start their own dynasty?

At 12/4/12 04:10 PM, JMHX wrote:

At 12/4/12 03:48 PM, adrshepard wrote: Post that shit in General, yo.

THIS IS POLITICAL AS FUCK BRO.

Yea, but it's ignorant, tho. All it is's you running your mouth, thinkin you is all clevs and shit, yet you got nothin to say.

Post that shit in General, yo.

At 12/2/12 07:46 PM, JMHX wrote: I'm just going by the actions the Pentagon has taken, and the consensus of places like the Congressional Research Service and the Pentagon's own top brass, who testify frequently on the Hill.

Then let's just hope that the predictions and analyses of these modern-day experts turn out better than those of the people who decided the US didn't need to invest in or research in tanks and train snipers after WWI, decided aircraft would never need machine guns because they had air-to-air missiles, or thought that the US would be best served by a light, expeditionary force army before beginning two massive occupations in 2001 and 2003.

It's been abused since the 1940s when the Birchers lumped everything together and re-labeled it as nothing but giving money to poor people to buy drugs.

I guess you give generously to panhandlers in the streets, then, because they would never spend it to get drunk or high.

Just ignore my point, go for dat Ad Hom.

Are you actually black or are you just a white guy pretending to be black?
Your point was that conceptions of poor people using financial assistance to get drunk or high was a tired stereotype that didn't reflect reality. If that's true, then there's no reason why you wouldn't give cash to homeless people on the street. After all, I'm sure every one of them has a sob story about their poverty and how it has nothing to do with their own choices or behavior.

Have you SEEN our national bridge infrastructure report? Shit be falling down, 'yo.

When has any public utility EVER been without problems? Besides, those reports are a joke.

Hokay. Fuck "reports" and "engineers" and that shit.

Fuck the ones with a political agenda, yeah. Do you not see what they gain from publishing these so-called reports? They can't claim that our existing infrastructure is so old that it's a public health hazard, because existing law already addresses that. They can't even claim its financially worthwhile, otherwise they'd lead with that and not "such and such a magazine ranked the US infrastructure as 24th out of 150 in the world." No, they flood the debate with "Think of the middle-class construction jobs" and "roads help the economy" nonsense. I've read through some of their reports, and when it comes to the actual meat and bones of the investment analysis they simply hedge by saying that "each case must be determined on an individual basis," and "studies differ on the strength or existence of the causal relationship bewteen public utility investment and productivity and economic growth."

Do your roads fall apart a lot in SimCity with this view? Not even CALVIN COOLIDGE...

Didn't you just attack me for making an ad hominem remark? Man, you trippin'...you don't even knows what yous sayin from one minute to da next.

At 12/2/12 03:48 PM, JMHX wrote: Actually, the onus to prove this is on you, since an unsustainably large military budget is a national security risk. When the time comes to make large cuts to what becomes an unaffordable defense program, the main victims are defense contractors, weapons systems, foreign basing and military overseas supply chains. The point here isn't that "we hurt ourselves by cutting these,"

Here you go again with your labels like "unaffordable" and "overextended" as though these are indisputable truths that everyone agrees with. Something is only unaffordable in the sense that no other money can be allocated to it without sacrificing some other vital spending. What's vital is a question of priorities, not truth or fact.
Eliminating foreign bases and advanced weapons systems by definition hurt "us" by reducing our country's combat effectiveness and capability. Those should only be cut as a last resort, because it's absurd to believe the US will never have a need for strong conventional forces again, or that certain regions where we have bases will never be the stage of combat again. If you want to maximize efficiency through managing "brass creep" and reforming the contract award process, fine, but keep our operational capabilities intact.

"Welfare" isn't just one thing. Social security, unemployment insurance, WIC, credits to families with dependent children and veterans' disability benefits are all classified as 'welfare.' You're going to have to be more specific with what programs you're talking about,

Look up welfare electronic benefit transfer cards. Current law allows state welfare benefits to be spend on anything, even cigarettes and booze.
Unemployment insurance should be allowed to revert back to the normal six month duration.

It's been abused since the 1940s when the Birchers lumped everything together and re-labeled it as nothing but giving money to poor people to buy drugs.

I guess you give generously to panhandlers in the streets, then, because they would never spend it to get drunk or high.

Have you SEEN our national bridge infrastructure report? Shit be falling down, 'yo.

When has any public utility EVER been without problems? Besides, those reports are a joke. Everything is rated "D" but is simultaneously used all the time without any apparent problems. What's the difference between a "B" road and a "D" road if cars can still drive over it? What's the difference between an "A" bridge and a "C" bridge if they both support the same volume of traffic? Expansion of transportation networks to prevent excessive congestion, ok, but only if the freight delay and fuel consumption costs can be shown to exceed the cost of investment over a reasonable period of time. Improvements to infrastructure to reduce the cost of annual maintence, fine, but under the same restrictions. For any other reason, it's not worth it. For all the talk on the national level, I have yet to hear any compelling argument or declaration that spending trillions in infrastructure improvements would achieve definitive savings. Supporters always talk in generalities about the economic growth it would lead to, but that's only true when a new form of transportation is first being implemented, not when existing transportation systems are updated to accommodate volume growth. The potential for savings are there, but new, untapped economic potential? I doubt it.

And don't even get me started on the safety aspect. If the only consequence of not spending trillions is that a dozen people may die in a bridge collapse once every five or ten years, sorry, they ain't worth it.

At 12/2/12 01:28 PM, Feoric wrote: We could cut down the military to a size that dwarfs the next 5 or 10 countries as opposed to 30. We could stop pissing away money in the desert through wars.

A military that dwarves only the next 5 or 10 countries would not be able to meet our current demands and would seriously jeopardize counterterrorism and deterrence efforts. The next 5 or ten countries do not have the demands that we do, and you're going to have to come up with a pretty compelling reason of why we should abandon our global position of strength.

We could reformulate the tax system so that brackets actually curve out alongside income instead of basically discouraging wage income.

Conceivably it could discourage wage income but it takes so much initial funding to be able to live off of investments that its not an option for all but the very wealthy.

As far as social security/medicare/medicaid, it doesn't need to be cut at all, but it does need reform. Eliminate the payroll cap and reform part D and that's about it. Senator Begich had a plan to do that for just Social Security and thats supposedly to add 75 years to Social Security complete with higher COLA adjustments.

So his plan is basically wealth redistribution from people who have money to those who don't, especially since his plan maintains the existing social security payment penalties for people with high income. We need to make a decision on what social security actually should be: a program to keep seniors out of poverty (which is what it was originally designed as), or a self-funded pension program.

There are literally zero people on welfare that are living comfortably. How much money do you think welfare recipients get?

Comfort is a relative term. Depending on the state, welfare recipients get a hell of a lot more money than they need to survive and work. Free spending cards, which allow welfare recipients to spend money on cigarettes and booze, are one example. The 90's reforms put an end to most of the problems, but if you include welfare to mean Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, there's much more waste and abuse.

Why invest in job training if the jobs aren't there? It would be better if money was spent on infrastructure projects that would employ all those unemployed construction workers and improve conditions for US citizens and businesses.

That'd be great, except there aren't that many infrastructure projects that have a viable need to be done (as opposed to make-work projects). State and local governments had to scramble to find projects for stimulus funding in 2009 and I have no doubt that even the projects that weren't obvious wastes probably wouldn't meet a investment/return test. After all, it wasn't like the states themselves had to repay the funds. Even the CBO has said that the overall program is most likely going to produce an overall negative effect on the economy when you include the debt service costs.

At 11/30/12 12:52 PM, JMHX wrote: Well, to start, those "statistics from over 30 years ago" constitute what's called a trend line, and the information it provides is valid to a country currently talking about the 'crippling tax burden' faced by Americans...This is one of the main arguments for a higher effective tax rate coupled with targeted spending cuts, since current levels are no longer meeting the demands of the system. We're finding the difference in payroll tax increases, which harm the middle and lower classes and still fail to plug the gap in spending.

How is it any more of an argument for higher tax revenues than it is for decreased spending? You're implicitly assuming that the vast majority of government spending is essential and cannot be cut. If the levels of taxation aren't meeting the demands of the system, then perhaps its demands are too high.

At 11/30/12 11:20 AM, JMHX wrote: 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.

But you're assuming that the level of service has been consistent when it has actually expanded. Federal education and health care spending are probably the two biggest examples in which spending growth has rapidly surpassed the inflation and population growth rates.

Using statistics from over 30 years ago to justify higher taxes works just as well to justify reduced spending.

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.

As far as people claiming the past four years have been terrible for the rich, I don't think I've ever heard anyone attribute that to higher taxes. Most of the complaints against Obama have been that his policies would inevitably lead to higher taxes in the future.