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#31
11-21-2007, 01:04 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] You are lying. it is pretty OBVIOUS that he his platform does not include abolition of payroll taxes. You should check your [censored] before calling people liars. [/ QUOTE ] Nothing in bobmans post says that RPs platform includes abolition of payroll taxes. [/ QUOTE ] This is the funniest snipjob I have ever seen. Bravo. 
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#32
11-21-2007, 01:18 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
Boro, that's all well and good, but you're overlooking some stuff: 1. RP has said he wants to get rid of the 16th Amendment, which would necessarily involve getting rid of the corporate income tax too. Why are you including corporate IT receipts in your projections? [/ QUOTE ] Fine, include the corporate income tax, it's only like $0.4T, and still leaves the budget at 199X levels. [ QUOTE ] 2. Is your 1999 budget figure inflation-adjusted? If not, why not, other than to mislead people? [/ QUOTE ] How is this "misleading people"? The claim was that you could go back to 199X spending levels, not spending levels adjusted for the gigantic amount of money the Federal goverment has printed. [ QUOTE ] 3. All this talk about payroll taxes is a big off-topic. Does RP want to use payroll taxes for general government purposes? If not, then payroll taxes don't really matter to the larger picture (except to the extent that the government can't fund any deficits in SS or Medicare without the IT). If he does, then really all he wants to do is replace the income tax with the payroll tax, which is nothing to be lauded for. [/ QUOTE ] What are you talking about? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Why would payroll taxes have to be used for "general government purposes"? Paul's plan is to save a trillion in *empire and pork*. Cutting the individual IT would pay for that. Period. All else could be left as is. [ QUOTE ] 4. Whatever other verbal gymnastics you want to go through, the unalterable fact is that less than $200 billion dollars was raised by the government other than through a tax on income. Another unalterable fact is that the US cannot even pay interest on its current debt with that amount, let alone do anything else, except for the payroll-funded stuff like SS. [/ QUOTE ] So you're just admitting that the plan that you actually have a problem with is not Paul's plan, but the plan that you "think" Pauls's plan SHOULD be, so that it can't work? Brilliant. Sometimes I have a lot of respect for you. This is not one of those times. This is pathetic. Fact: Individual IT is only 40% of the Federal spending, that much could be saved in pork and empire without touching entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SS, returning the Federal budget to 199X levels, and the IRS could be abolished and the remaining taxes colleced via an overhauled, simplified tax code like some sort of flat or "fair" tax that Paul has said he would support if the IRS were abolished. There is nothing implausible about Paul's plan. In fact it is the only politically feasible plan I know of to seriously attempt to reduce the size of government without throwing people who have become dependent out on the street.
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#33
11-21-2007, 01:35 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] 2. Is your 1999 budget figure inflation-adjusted? If not, why not, other than to mislead people? [/ QUOTE ] How is this "misleading people"? The claim was that you could go back to 199X spending levels, not spending levels adjusted for the gigantic amount of money the Federal goverment has printed. [/ QUOTE ] You cant make the assumption that the government are able to get the same services they paid 1T for 10 years ago for 1T today, so of course you have to adjust for inflation, no matter what you think of the monetary system. For some reason people wont sell you stuff for the same price they sold it for 10 years ago...
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#34
11-21-2007, 01:45 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] 2. Is your 1999 budget figure inflation-adjusted? If not, why not, other than to mislead people? [/ QUOTE ] How is this "misleading people"? The claim was that you could go back to 199X spending levels, not spending levels adjusted for the gigantic amount of money the Federal goverment has printed. [/ QUOTE ] You cant make the assumption that the government are able to get the same services they paid 1T for 10 years ago for 1T today, so of course you have to adjust for inflation, no matter what you think of the monetary system. For some reason people wont sell you stuff for the same price they sold it for 10 years ago... [/ QUOTE ] There is a rather obvious fallacy glaring you in the face here. Namely that you don't HAVE to get the *same* services as they did ten years ago. You are CUTTING spending. That's THE POINT. *Today's* budget is $3T, $1.3T of which is pork and empire that can be cut, *leaving everything else the same*. There is no need to "adjust for inflation".
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#35
11-21-2007, 01:52 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
There is a rather obvious fallacy glaring you in the face here. Namely that you don't HAVE to get the *same* services as they did ten years ago. You are CUTTING spending. That's THE POINT. *Today's* budget is $3T, $1.3T of which is pork and empire that can be cut, *leaving everything else the same*. There is no need to "adjust for inflation". [/ QUOTE ] Yes, but we are not talking about the reduced government alone, we were also talking about the year 1999 or 199x, and if we are to compare we still have to adjust for inflation. Talking about 199x and budget and comparing it to today´s budget or any future budget without adjusting for inflation is flawed.
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#36
11-21-2007, 01:57 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
Fact: Individual IT is only 40% of the Federal spending, that much could be saved in pork and empire without touching entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SS [/ QUOTE ] Do you have hard numbers for this? Fact: I see a lot of fluff but few actual numbers for WHERE this money will be saved. Which was the whole point of the OP. Not one of the Dr. Paul fanboys (or Dr. Paul himself, or his staff for that matter) have provided any numbers. "Pork and empire" isn't really a quantification.
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#37
11-21-2007, 01:57 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
Fact: Individual IT is only 40% of the Federal spending, that much could be saved in pork and empire without touching entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SS, returning the Federal budget to 199X levels..., [/ QUOTE ] This statement is only true if you define "pork and empire" as literally everything that the government does, except SS/Medicare and a fraction of interest payments. Why do you keep dancing around with %ages of spending and %ages of receipts and 199X budget levels? Why don't you cite any actual numbers? Here are some numbers: $1,009.5 billion: the total amount collected in 2006 from "non-income tax" sources (keeping in mind that the vast majority of this amount was from the payroll tax, which is a regressive income tax) $1,050 billion: the total amount spent in 2006 on SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. There's also $200 billion in annual interest accruing, which is not included in this amount. source See page 334 for mandatory spending table and 239 for receipts. Now question #1 is, how does Ron Paul plan to pay for this quarter-trillion dollar annual shortfall? Question #2 is how he plans to pay for everything else the government does (including paying his own salary)? Question #3 is why the only explanation of his plans has been the [censored] trifecta of "We were fine for years without the IT"; "Cost of empire and pork blah blah blah go back to 199X levels"; and "Maybe we'll have a flat tax or a sales tax or something"? Question #4 is why usually skeptical people of reasonable intelligence are buying into this stuff so eagerly just because he criticizes current foreign policy and talks about the constitution a lot?
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#38
11-21-2007, 01:57 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
The individual income tax accounts for about $1.3T out of a total Federal budget of $3T. Removing it would leave you with a budget of $1.7T, the Federal budget of 1999. Your mileage might vary, but not by much. [/ QUOTE ] See here you talk about income (tax-revenue) in 2008, and that the 1999 budget which would be covered by tax-revenue excluding revenue from the income tax. If your 1999 budget is not adjusted for inflation those numbers dont add up, because 1.7T in 1999 might be =2T now.
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#39
11-21-2007, 02:15 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] The individual income tax accounts for about $1.3T out of a total Federal budget of $3T. Removing it would leave you with a budget of $1.7T, the Federal budget of 1999. Your mileage might vary, but not by much. [/ QUOTE ] See here you talk about income (tax-revenue) in 2008, and that the 1999 budget which would be covered by tax-revenue excluding revenue from the income tax. If your 1999 budget is not adjusted for inflation those numbers dont add up, because 1.7T in 1999 might be =2T now. [/ QUOTE ] Out of curiosity, how much do you think GDP would increase if personal IT was eliminated? Maybe you don't think GDP would increase, don't know for sure.
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#40
11-21-2007, 02:20 PM
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Re: Washington Post Fact Checker Questions Paul\'s plans.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] The individual income tax accounts for about $1.3T out of a total Federal budget of $3T. Removing it would leave you with a budget of $1.7T, the Federal budget of 1999. Your mileage might vary, but not by much. [/ QUOTE ] See here you talk about income (tax-revenue) in 2008, and that the 1999 budget which would be covered by tax-revenue excluding revenue from the income tax. If your 1999 budget is not adjusted for inflation those numbers dont add up, because 1.7T in 1999 might be =2T now. [/ QUOTE ] Out of curiosity, how much do you think GDP would increase if personal IT was eliminated? Maybe you don't think GDP would increase, don't know for sure. [/ QUOTE ] I saw an estimate of the deadweight loss of taxation at $0.24 per dollar raised. That's the amount of lost GDP foregone for every dollar of the income tax raised, so seemingly a fair amount. I don't think the gains would come about immediately though as businessmen figure out funding the things the income tax traditionally has.
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