My problem with tax increases is I know damn well the money will just be wasted. DC has shown us time and time again they are not responsible with our money. I say show me the spending cuts first. Let's see how things go and once they prove that my money won't be wasted then we can talk about tax increases.

 

This.

 

Yea, that's pretty hard to argue with.

 

As a poor first-time college student, my experience has been quite the opposite.

 

Kinda scary to think this whole thing could collapse around us. It really shows that the government doesn't really give a **** about our lives and families. I've known it all along but many in this country don't realize it.

 

Papi Obama has got us all covered. Dont you worry guys.


Yeah right. I still feel my generation is at fault because re-electing this guy was bad for business. I know a tad bunch of people recieving aid and they still recieve money after taxes have been "reported." Abolish that crap. Were in the land of oppurtunity. Do auditories and let government give aid to those who REALLY need it to buy the carton of milk.

Mean while the one time Sam payed me back was $300 last year and I only see 75% of my work week in my paycheck...............

 

They need actual spending cuts, not the BS they feed us. A decreased increase is not a cut, spend less this year/month than last year/month=spending cut!

 

And that is exactly what the politicians wanted. Folks like you see all of the benefits with none of the costs - and think it's great. Unfortunately, the real truth is about to become much more evident. Kiss your future goodbye.

As somebody once said, "You think healthcare is expensive now, wait till it's free."

 

You have a problem with 12-14% of you income being withdrawn as taxes? Come talk to me when its 18%.

 

Yes I have a problem with it when the President comes out very clearly states nobody making less than $250,000 a year will pay a dime more in taxes. I am paying a crap load more in taxes last year than the year before and it is because of the laws passed by Obama and his Democratic party.

 

While the tax credits I received when I filed my tax return did come from taxed income, while the scholarship I earned is someone else's money, and while the small interest-free Stratford loan that I pulled out to cover the rest of tuition is your tax dollars at work, isn't it worth the expense?

I didn't attend college to leave with a useless degree and a mountain of debt. I went to college because I'm going be the next generation of this country's producers. If anything is worth spending money on, shouldn't it be the education of the future workforce of the country? The money I receive is not a handout, it's an investment. Just like how solid infrastructure promotes economic growth, my education costs money now, but the amount I pay back in the future will make my "handout" look like chump change.

I'm no fan of glorified social safety nets, but I have seen how the system works for people on both ends of the spectrum. I agree, there is a balance that must be struck. I'm not just saying this because I'm young and haven't experienced the real world, or because of my hippie liberal professors. My engineering professors are quite conservative... probably because they used to work for a living... I've seen the tax code at work, and it sucks, but if there is anything worth investing in, it's the stuff I'm doing right now.

 

You are correct in that the Presidents statement was misleading. The fact of the matter is that yes EVERYONE'S taxes have increased, largely in part due to the expiration of the payroll tax cut which was 4.2% in 2010 and has now been raised back to 6.2% Rises in the medicare and social security rate are also biting in to your take home pay. This in combination with the reduction of certain child tax credits, including the lowering of dependent care "pre-tax" contributions makes for less take home pay.
The limitation and phasing out of certain personal exemptions has also increased your effective tax rate by 2%. Between payroll and personal exemptions you are already 4% higher than last year. If you made $250,000 as an individual or $300,000 married, you will have an additional 3% increase in taxes effectively reducing your take home pay by 7% vs. the 4% of lower income wage earners.
We have to raise taxes, but spending has to be limited. I would first eliminate much of the foreign aid to non democratic countries. This would return billions of dollars into the economy.
I would discontinue you many "social" programs including free cell phones and healthcare for immigrant workers. This would bring another billion or so dollars back into the budget.
There is a laundry list of other expenditures which I find frivolous but will save for another rant. However, as the population grows, taxes must increase and with a balanced budget we can minimize the impacts of these increases.
I would rather have a public hanging and march the members of house and congress out onto the white house lawn and deal with them as the French dealt with their elite a few centuries ago. I don't want to eat cake, I want to chew some ***!

 

Misleading could be excused. Misleading is using vague language to have your subject interpret what they want to hear. His statement was an outright lie. Do you really think it only took a couple weeks for them to write the whole 900~ pages of the health care law? It was in the works way before he won the office. He had a damned good idea what was going to be in the law while running. And he supported all of the tax increases in the law from the start.

Just the "free" cell phones cost over a billion per year. That is a program that is not needed and is a duplication of other programs. EVERY phone line in this country has access to 911 all you have to do is plug in a phone and dial. If you look on your phone bill you will see a 911 charge. Providing the 911 to all phone lines is what that fee is for. I agree there are many, many areas where government can be cut without sacrificing any service. There are way too many programs that either overlap or are so closely related that they could be combined or completely cut.

The problem is when the government looks at ways to cut it goes to department heads and asks for their suggestions. None think their agency should be cut or combined and they can justify their existence to people who are unfamiliar with their industry. A perfect example is the schedule where I work. The regional director decided he wanted to take away our weekends and expand our hours (as retribution for the workers digging in and resisting is bad policies). As a result he expanded our hours from 600AM-900PM to 600AM-midnight (local managment cut our hours from 6AM-7PM so we sit around for 5 hours doing nothing). He also expanded our work days from Monday-Saturday to 7 days a week. The new schedule actually costs approximately 500k more than the old schedule (from what we have been told). The total cost of overtime was less than 100k and that has not been completely done away with. His reasoning when confronted was 1) we have two new terminals taking different types of cargo. 2) We are expecting an increase in the amount of cargo from the operations already in existence. 3) When our existing customers get out of sequence it results in overtime work. Our union leaders off site bought all of the reasons. The reality of the situation is the two "new" terminals have been in full operation for over two years. One hasn't seen any customers and has resulted in them using the space for a warehouse not a transient facility as it was designed. The second actually resulted in the loss of the one recurring customer we had and nobody to replace them. Now the amount of traffic through that terminal is neglible (<20 per year). The net result is lower traffic. We have been "expecting an increase in traffic" at our main terminal for about seven years now. It has not increased and in fact we receive less traffic now than a year ago. There are no new customers in negotiations to use the facilities we have. Yes the current customers we have can get off sequence resulting in overtime. With how our operations are set up we can easily lower any overtime to no more than a couple hours every once in a while. The cost of the new schedule far exceeds the overtime we would have spent by the customers getting off sequence. Facilities that take in many multiples more cargo than we do only work Monday-Friday 600AM-800PM.

As population grows so does the tax base (assuming they grow up and get a job and don't sit around receiving a government hand out). Essentially this makes the tax base and GDP synonymous. As long as the government does not grow faster than the tax base, then the increased tax revenue from the increased number of people working, should be able to handle the increase in expenditures. If government grows faster than the tax base then taxes have to go up. If government grows slower than the tax base taxes can go down, or ideally money can be put away for emergencies, so that loans do not need to be taken out or taxes increased when the economy, inevitably, has a downturn.

 

It is not so much worth the expense or not, it is a case of hearts and minds.
They want the end result to be the view point of the evil money makers "paying their fair share" where nothing changed to you.
This is how life long party voters are created.

The old saying, college students are liberals, until they get out of college and start earning a living and change to conservative party.
The ones that don't change are the ones that get the useless degree you are talking about.

Scholarship have a place in this world, when used correctly.
They are also used for those worthless degrees that you talk about, which is not correct usage. That is state / fed money that is wasted on someone that is not going to produce much of anything to feed the system later in life.

Just keep your head screwed on straight, and don't let what is happening now taint what logic tells you later in life and you will be fine.
No need to justify student loans, I had mine back in the day also ( as did quite a few others ). Then again student loans were not centered in the govt when I got mine.

 

Isn't this the truth !

Calling a slowed increase a decrease is just DC speak for budget cutting.
Both sides do this game.
I keep voting for the non-incumbent, but they don't get elected ( I am in 95% liberal IL ).