Cable News Ratings for Tuesday, December 11, 2012

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1. TZCA

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 8:49 AM

   @Matthew

   So raising taxes on the top 2% will only provide enough revenue to cover a fraction of the annual spending at current levels, but will only reduce growth by maybe 0.1%. So it basically accomplishes nothing. Taxes will have to be raised by everyone to accomplish anything, so why the rhetoric? Votes. That’s why. So liberals have little room to complain here when in reality, your own middle class paychecks will also go down, if not because of an actual increase in the tax rate, but because of all the other little tweaks such as 0.9% increase in Medicare, 2% increase in SS, no AMT patch, and caps on a multitude of deductions and exemptions.

   I am fully aware that tax hikes are SUPPOSE to be one part of the solving the bigger ‘problem’. So where are the other parts being offered by your Democrats in Congress? All I’ve seen is Obama’s plan which is a highly modified variant of the Simpson-Bowles plan in regards to cuts, so much so that there really isn’t any true cuts being offered.

   In my rants surrounding tax hikes, as an upper middle-class earner, I am ok with paying a little more in taxes, so long as others are paying more in taxes as well and everyone has skin in the game. I am not naive enough to believe that our debt problem can be solved by cuts alone. Instead, I see all this liberal flabber-mouthing about raising taxes, which does nothing more than support a very broken and wasteful government, and what will these taxes truly provide? Net result: nada, except maybe a 0.1% reduction in a GDP in stagnation at 1.5% to 2%. The Republicans should just vote present and let you liberals flounder about when all those big Bush problems are still there even after the evil 2% are taxed more.

   Yeah, you can have your plate of broccoli back, thanks.

2. Raz

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:00 AM

   I love how these people cheer for Fox, without realizing it’s just a propaganda station for rich people. They pretty much caught Fox Representative asking Petraeus to run his Presidential campaign for him

   Just like Chris Matthews offered his help to candadates. Please MSNBC (and NBC )is just a puppet for the Obama white house-or Kremlin West.

3. Raz

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:01 AM

   Are just, had a bad spell there

4. tony

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:06 AM

   Someone hosed her down because,RACHEL IS NOT ON FIRE!

5. TZCA

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:10 AM

   Raz
   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:01 AM
   Are just, had a bad spell there
   ___________________________________________________________

   We all have bad spells here and there. My last post was chock full of verb conjugational errors.

6. Ratboy

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:29 AM

   @ My last post was chock full of verb conjugational errors

   Sounds PAINFULL!!!!

7. cathy

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:31 AM

   beedavisjr says he doesn’t watch MSNBC. But everything he post is straight from Rachel Maddox show. I stated the 9 days because I have heard dems agree with the number.

   Here is what we need to remember. Obamacare is already going to add a 3.8% tax on $250,000 and up. No matter what happens. So, what Obama is asking, isn’t that the rich have a tax rate to 39%, he is asking for 42.8%. 39 plus 3.8%.

   I can tell you as far as my family goes, this tax increase will bring in less money to the U.S. government. I was offered to work full time. But I will not be taking up the offer. Because we are right at the $225.000 level. It cost money to work, clothes, gas, we’ll eat out more, I’ll have to get someone to clean my house. So, after that cost and the extra taxes, it wasn’t worth it. The company will not be hiring anyone else because they have been looking for six years and can’t find anyone.

   There are many other people in the same place. Successful people marry other successful people. There are many costs to working and when taxes hit a high enough point successful married couples decide to become single income families. This is great for their children and local schools. (Most of these highly skilled, college education many with master degrees, volunteer in class rooms.) But it doesn’t help our economy or the tax man. Many of these people are deciding to remain out of the workplace after their children are grown.

   Maybe this is just a case for the people right around the $250,000 tax group to the $120,000. I only know what is happening around me. But the comments that Rich people aren’t going to stop working because of a tax increase is WRONG! Rich people especially weight their opposition all the time and taxes are a factor in their decision.

   I am upset at all this class warfare. I was raised poor. For years I ate butter and sugar sandwiches in the summer. I didn’t have McDonalds, twinkles or Coke until I got my first job at age ten delivering papers. I worked a 9pm to 5am full time job, so I could go to college. I was working or studying for four years. I worked 50 to 60 hour weeks after college to move up in my company. Now, that I have made it, everyone wants from me. Or they call me greedy. It’s hard work to be successful. While other people were having a good time partying with friends, I was studying or working. Get out of your backsides and work for your own money.
   If I can do it anyone can. I am dyslexia and in 8 grade I only read at the second year level. But I keep asking for help from everyone I could find.

8. Matthew

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:32 AM

   “So raising taxes on the top 2% will only provide enough revenue to cover a fraction of the annual spending at current levels, but will only reduce growth by maybe 0.1%. So it basically accomplishes nothing.”
   _________________

   No, it contributes to a deficit reduction plan without significantly lowering GDP – a 0.1% reduction in projected growth is more favorable than any other deficit reduction that you can engage in. Defense cuts, failure to extend unemployment, allowing the payroll tax cuts to expire, all of those will be worse for growth than the upper income tax cuts.

   This complaint is coming from a party that vetoed a bill to modernize the certification process for returning vets (thus greatly increasing their employment opportunities) because it would cost $1 billion over five years, but tax rates that will only create 0.1% GDP growth annually are worth preserving, at a deficit cost of billions per year? Please.

   “Instead, I see all this liberal flabber-mouthing about raising taxes, which does nothing more than support a very broken and wasteful government, and what will these taxes truly provide?”
   _______________________

   Unquestionably, the Democrats are dragging their feet on specific cuts, and using trickery (such as the end of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq) to reach their so called ‘spending cut’ numbers. Nevertheless, they at least acknowledge that spending cuts can be PART of a plan, while a significant number of Republicans either 1.) want no taxation at all or 2.) allude to unspecific ‘base broadening’ plans in a bordering-on-insane obsession with raising revenue while keep rates the same.

   If the Republicans can’t even be brought on board for the deficit reduction that will hurt the economy the least (expiration of the Bush cuts on upper brackets), how the hell do you convince them to sign on to things that really will hurt the economy, like defense cuts?

   It also seems a bit disingenuous to spend an entire campaign season harping on Obamacare’s $700 billion in Medicare cuts, then complain during the fiscal cliff debates that Democrats aren’t serious enough about cutting Medicare.

   Republican fantasy-world rhetoric has seriously poisoned the well, and I don’t see how they end up with any solution that’s actually going to please them. Either they make a deal for moderate tax increases, or they do nothing and get massive tax increases, as well as defense cuts, and either way theres going to be someone mad at them: either their own base for making a deal, or with Independents and Democrats for failure to make a deal. This is completely self-inflicted.

9. TZCA

   Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:35 AM

   @Ratboy
   “Sounds PAINFULL!!!!”
   ___________________________________________________________

   Man, you can only imagine. I just got back from a long stint on the loo and I still don’t feel right.

10. Matthew

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:40 AM

    “Maybe this is just a case for the people right around the $250,000 tax group to the $120,000. I only know what is happening around me.”
    _______________________

    This argument is really, really phony, and would only make sense if we lived in a country that doesn’t have marginal tax brackets. More money is more money, period. A person making $250,001 is 61 cents richer than a person making $250,000 under Obama’s plan, period. You are either misrepresenting your real-life opportunities, or you have the worst accountant in the world. For example, if you had a chance to go from $225,000 to, say, $300,000, your fiscal situation is greatly improved with the 300k, even after taxes, clothes, gas, etc.

    Ironically, one of the proposals Republicans on the Supercommittee floated to ‘reform the code’ without raising rates was taxing a persons’s entire income at the 35% rate once they crossed into the upper bracket, which actually would be detrimental to a person in the scenario you propose.

11. Matthew

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:50 AM

    “Well, you see, our family had the opportunity to make $280,000 a year instead of $250,000, but the extra $1,380 we’d be paying after the taxes return to their old rates really reduces my incentive!” – Something That Has Literally Never Happened In The History Of Ever

12. TZCA

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 9:56 AM

    @Matthew

    “No, it contributes to a deficit reduction plan without significantly lowering GDP – a 0.1% reduction in projected growth is more favorable than any other deficit reduction that you can engage in. Defense cuts, failure to extend unemployment, allowing the payroll tax cuts to expire, all of those will be worse for growth than the upper income tax cuts. ”
    ___________________________________________________________

    You don’t seem to think there is a difference between a revenue that counters 9 days of spending, 40 days of spending, or 100 days of spending, because to you this is neither here nor there. And since you and I differ extensively in this significance and I think I made myself clear, I have nothing more to say in this regard.

    “It also seems a bit disingenuous to spend an entire campaign season harping on Obamacare’s $700 billion in Medicare cuts, then complain during the fiscal cliff debates that Democrats aren’t serious enough about cutting Medicare.”
    ___________________________________________________________

    The fuss from the Republicans was not about denying the need for Medicare cuts. Instead the fuss was a rebuttal to Obama claiming that Republicans want to end Medicare because of their proposed cuts, but then not admit that his own Obamacare would gut Medicare by $700 billion. The Republican candidates were very clear that Medicare needed fixing, they just weren’t specific on how (other than recommendations of a voucher program). Seems to me you are confusing two separate issues and padding them together to support your claim.

    Again, the Republicans are doomed either way, so they just vote present and let the Democrats be dirtied by the whole thing. The Democrats can only blame Republicans (or just Bush, or just Cantor, or just Ryan, or just McConnell, or just Fox News as the propaganda machine for the Republicans) for so long.

13. Matthew

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:05 AM

    BTW, Obama’s upper joint filing threshold is annually adjusted, so it’s actually closer to $265k for a joint filing now to move into his proposed upper bracket, so in the scenario proposed above (currently earning 225k) at least $40,000 of your new income will still be under the old rates.

    Also, if you’re putting a portion of your new income into an I.R.A. then not all of your income is taxable in the first place. There is literally no way that this tax rate is enough to be a deciding factor for anyone who’s seriously in such a position. Time away from your family? Sure. Inconvenience of transportation, having to change your schedule, stress? Sure. 4.6% more of your post $260k income disappearing as a deciding factor on whether or not to take a job? PLEASE.

14. TZCA

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:05 AM

    yeah, that’s the extra $1380 in addition to the increase of $11000, so for the extra work required to obtain that extra $30K, it doesn’t pay off, and yes, it has happened in the history of ever.

15. Matthew

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:05 AM

    @TZCA:

    Fair enough.

16. TZCA

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:08 AM

    I work with contractors who turn down extensions to their contracts offered by my supervisors to avoid hitting the higher tax rates, because this puts them into AMT levels which affects scheduled deductions they can write off. So, this is the history of ever, and it does happen.

17. Matthew

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:09 AM

    Fair enough in response to your post about deficits, NOT about your claim that a person would turn down work under the scenario you propose. That $11,000 is going to be there with or without increasing the upper income rates, so how is Obama’s proposal seriously going to be a factor in someone’s decision to take a better job? And, of course, all of this is BEFORE deductions. That $11,880 in taxes is assuming you’re paying the statutory rate, which you most certainly aren’t.

18. Matthew

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:13 AM

    Again, if you’re THAT close to the $265k margin, why not just put a greater proportion of your income into an I.R.A. And if the new income is significantly beyond the upper bracket margin (say $300k per year or more), isn’t such an income increase incentive enough? This would have to be a dealbreaker for such a small proportion of high earners that it barely rates as a valid argument.

19. TZCA

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:16 AM

    Well, since I see it regularly, people regulating their hours to keep below threshold levels, and I know these same people are now discussing what they need to do to keep their joint filing below $200K per person, I know it will happen, and the government will not see all of that glorious revenue. I know people are currently cashing dividends to avoid a hike from 15% to 20% (or as high as ordinary income under Simpson-Bowles) and moving funds to Cayman or Swiss holdings. And even if the government did see the revenue, it would only pay 9 days, or 40 days, but nowhere near 100 days and definately not a full year of exploded government spending. But that’s neither here nor there.

20. Matthew

    Posted December 13, 2012 at 10:18 AM

    Just one more thing before I go, and that’s to acknowledge that you’re absolutely right about the AMT. It’s threshold is long overdue for adjustment, and if they fail to include that as part of a deal, that is something that should be blamed on the Democrats, but that is a fundamentally separate issue from whether or not the PROSPECT of a 4.6% tax rate increase would be significant in deciding whether or not to take a job. That, to me, is not a reasonable argument.