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View Full Version : The NPR debacle--question for you devo pros



iris lily
3-10-11, 10:03am
While I'm certain that all of you would watch James O'Keefe's video that shows Willy Schiller, um, talking and would find nothing wrong with his words, I have to ask you:

1) Why was Willy out to lunch with the badnicks if, as NPR constantly bleats in their press releases, the organization turned down a $5 million no-strings attached check? Surely it could mean only one thing: he was exploring a donor relationship that had yet to come to fruition. So, he had not accepted te $5 million--yet. Right?

2) If Willy Schiller's words were so innocuous, why is he disavowing them? He's saying that his words don't represent NPR's values or his own view (well, WTF Schiller, why spew them, then. ) How utterly ridiculous is that?

What utter BS. The arrogance and lies of NPR top brass has been bothering me for years.

I first began noticing the lying years ago when there were hearings in Congress about their funding. I don't remembe the year, but it must have been a time when Republicans were in charge. I was truly bothered by their lie of presenting, overall, a balanced viewpoint of political and cultural issues. To this day I remember being out in the garden with the radio on, and stopping my weeding work to absorb what I was hearing--I couldn't believe it. I lthink NPR's stories are interesting, entertaining, and I love many of their shows. But balanced they are not.

I'm no fan of O'Keefe's ridiculous Gotcha "journalism" but I haveta say, if he's brought down some of the stinky, smelly stuff at the top end of my beloved NPR, then he's The Dude. Thanks, man.

Alan
3-10-11, 11:32am
While I can easily feel bad for anyone caught up in a sting, I still find it interesting when representatives of institutions receiving public monies let their guard down and allow their true feelings to come to the surface.

I truly like and appreciate NPR. I listen to it a lot while out and about, although I've cut back some after the recent Juan Williams debacle. That said, it's certainly no surprise to me that the top brass there have the attitudes they've recently shown. Their PC brand of hostility to certain groups and undying allegience to others is amusing at first, but becomes increasingly tiring day after day.

They've created a real public relations problem for themselves and could use a good housecleaning along with a renewed focus on their core mission. If I were on their board, I'd suggest that they voluntarily give up their public funding and compete in the media market place like everyone else. Then they could cater to like minded listeners and wouldn't have to keep up a duplicitous front for the general public. It's not like they're actually fooling anyone anymore.

Gregg
3-10-11, 2:06pm
I'm actually a pretty loyal listener, but have long had the impression that the brass put themselves in an ivory tower, not unlike most of academia has done. If it weren't for the fact that they DO accept public funding it wouldn't be that big a deal. Some will be quick to jump in with the claim that only a few percent of NPR's budget comes from such funding. If that is true then I have to follow Alan's lead and question why they don't cut the cord and drop the public funding along with the guise of neutrality. Maybe its just too scary to think about the "value" of the programming being determined by the listeners through their support (or lack thereof) rather than esoteric voices that drone of how "valuable" and "essential" such a viewpoint is.

creaker
3-10-11, 3:26pm
I'd like to see public funding for NPR cut - primarily to free NPR from the strings that comes with that funding. Except for the issue that public radio in rural areas is much more dependent on government funding and streaming internet is much less an option. A lot of people would get cut off.

I don't agree with the way they are trying to cut funding - currently Sesame Street is just as targeted as NPR is.

Alan
3-10-11, 4:03pm
I don't agree with the way they are trying to cut funding - currently Sesame Street is just as targeted as NPR is.

When the government began funding public broadcasting, there were not many options available in the media marketplace. That doesn't hold true these days. I would think that quality shows such as Sesame Street would thrive within a purely commercial venue just as easily as within a public one.

Why do these media outlets require public money?

bae
3-10-11, 4:20pm
How much federal funding does NPR receive these days?

creaker
3-10-11, 4:40pm
When the government began funding public broadcasting, there were not many options available in the media marketplace. That doesn't hold true these days. I would think that quality shows such as Sesame Street would thrive within a purely commercial venue just as easily as within a public one.

Why do these media outlets require public money?

Sesame Street would not be the same saturated with commercials - and I don't think a commercial free "pay" version would thrive.

But I'm not qualified to speak on the options available - I don't know what's out there for children's/educational programming these days. I don't have cable or over-the-air TV.

creaker
3-10-11, 4:54pm
How much federal funding does NPR receive these days?

Interesting - according to wikipedia NPR receives no direct funding from the federal government. About 1.5% of NPR's revenues come from Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants. So it's actually pretty small. CPB itself got about $420 million for fiscal year 2010.

It appears what would primarily be defunded are public radio stations, which carry NPR as part of their programming.

loosechickens
3-10-11, 10:37pm
What would be hurt most severely is radio in rural areas, as in many remote areas, NPR is virtually the only radio available, certainly the only radio with news coverage, although even in those very rural areas, you can usually find a preacher on the air preaching on a religious station.

Where we are for example, at the moment, in the desert of southern AZ, we are able to get NPR and one station on the Tohono O'odham Indian nation, which has music, local reservation news, etc., but no national coverage. There are no "over the air" tv stations that will come in.

And, surprisingly, there are a lot of areas of our country, still, just like this. And for those areas, especially if you don't have the money for something like satellite TV or internet connections available, your local public radio station is often the door to the outside world.

loosechickens
3-10-11, 10:57pm
I had to laugh a bit......while conservatives are sure that NPR and PBS have a liberal bias, the liberals are just as sure that they are biased toward white males from corporations and government......

"Public media news programming frequently comes under attack — and not just from conservatives. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal watchdog group, found last year that the majority of guests on programs including PBS NewsHour, The Charlie Rose Show and Washington Week were white men who spoke for government agencies or corporations." (From USA Today)

So I suspect they must be doing something right.......when you've got BOTH sides thinking you're biased toward the other side, it's likely that you ARE managing to provide relatively objective programming.......

iris lily
3-11-11, 12:49am
loose, I think it's possible that NPR is quite a bit more liberal than PBS.

I watch a little PBS but most things I watch are not politicial (well, I watch bit sof Wahsington Week now and then) nor do they have clear cultural messages in their history/socieal programming. PBS strikes me as doing a much better job at being mainstream than does NPR. But NPR I know, inside and out. We've got radio going in our house most all the time. And it is liberal.

creaker
3-11-11, 8:30am
I don't know how any media outlet that provides commentary, which is subjective, can maintain a label of being objective. Providing viewpoints from both sides (which I hate - one of peeves with all media is this underlying assumption they push that there are only ever two sides to any issue), may be more balanced, but it isn't more objective.

iris lily
3-11-11, 9:40am
I'm thinking that the NPR board really wanted to get rid of V Schiller last fall over the Juan Williams incident, just like V Schiller had been wanting to get rid of Juan Williams for a long time.

She chose the wrong time to boot Williams. The NPR Board (or whoever she reports to) chose the right time to get her to resign to counter the bad decision she made in the fall with Juan Williams.

loosechickens
3-11-11, 1:40pm
Well, NPR is on most of the time at our house as well.....we wake up to Morning Edition, spend our afternoons listening to All Things Considered, hardly ever miss Talk of the Nation, Diane Rheims, or Science Friday.........nap every afternoon to Marketplace (lie in bed and rest and listen), not to mention some of the fluffier things such as Prairie Home Companion, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Car Talk, This American Life, etc., so I think we are surely as constant a listeners as you, Iris Lily.

And you know something funny? LOTS of time, I am gnashing my teeth because I think they are giving far too much weight to the corporate or Republican view of issues.

So, I think it really IS in the eye of the beholder. We liberals are listening to it and thinking they are giving too much weight to conservative ideas and viewpoints, and you conservatives are thinking it is way liberal. Which tells me that since we all hear with a subjective ear, regardless of our attempts to not do that, NPR is probably doing a good job of being as close to objective and complete on issues as humanly possible.

You hear the commentary that talks about the more liberal viewpoint and think, AHA.....LIBERAL, and I hear the commentary talking the more conservative viewpoint and think, AHA.......NPR is just getting too conservative......

YET.......when they do surveys of which listeners or watchers of various media outlets are most factually and accurately informed about issues, NPR and PBS are right up there at the top. So, they ARE doing their job of accurately reporting the news whether I think it is slanted more conservative than I would want and you think it is slanted more liberally than you would want.

we are full members of four NPR stations, in the areas where we spend much of the year, and when we travel, if we are in an area for even a few weeks, we send at small donation to whatever the local NPR station is. Recently we were in Yuma for two weeks, so we sent in $25 to KAWC to help out the small local NPR station that the folks at AZ Western College manage to keep alive in that area.

ApatheticNoMore
3-11-11, 1:50pm
I'm somewhat sympathetic to what would be a truly left-wing/liberal argument to keeping NRP around and yes even funded. That they provide an alternative to corporate funded stations in what is afterall a corporate controlled world. I mean corporations hold almost all the cards, so some dissident voices are nice. Hey, but give more of the airways to non-corporations and maybe it won't matter :)

But people in rural areas being terribly deprived of news period without NPR radio as an argument .... um only if they don't have internet also! And maybe also have no magazines, and no newspapers etc.! But it might be a little more work to get news this way? (at this point I tend to give up on the human race entirely, I mean if it's always that lazy ...)

From a fiscal perspective, yes running deficits is completely out of control, but NPR is such a small drop in the bucket it seems as to be hardly worth bothering about as a fiscal issue.

Now as far as *PBS* being too mainstream, oh I can see that. I've watched the news hour several times only to see what I unequivocally regard as some of the most important issues in the world that week totally ignored so that they can focus on process over substance such as: "does this move make Obama appeal to centrists?" etc. Boring (the newshour is nothing if not boring :)), and also at bottom USELESS stuff (or should I say fluff) it is. That's not what really matters. I don't listen to NRP (I listen to music in the car, no talk of any sort).

bae
3-11-11, 2:00pm
You can get a perfectly good shortwave receiver for very little money, and then listen to all sorts of nifty programming, even if you don't have internet.

LDAHL
3-11-11, 2:53pm
I say shut off the federal funding and let NPR/PBS fend for themselves in the media jungle with everyone else. Surely there are other federal programs that could use the four hundred million or so for more useful purposes, or we could even apply it toward the national debt. There must be market niches out there that would be willing to pay full price for what they’re selling, perhaps even more readily if they drop their ridiculous pretense of objectivity. If there’s a place out there for Rachel Maddow, there’s a place for Terry Gross.
As to the underserved area argument, that’s always been true on any number of counts. I’d be more concerned about getting them better access to hospitals than tedious Garrison Keillor monologues.

Alan
3-11-11, 3:14pm
From a fiscal perspective, yes running deficits is completely out of control, but NPR is such a small drop in the bucket it seems as to be hardly worth bothering about as a fiscal issue.

And that's why we have fiscal issues. Every waste of public money has someone defending it or rationalizing that "that expense isn't so bad".
It's no wonder the Democrats can only come up with $6B (probably more like $4.7B according to the CBO) to cut from a budget of $3.7T (which already is larger than annual revenues).

loosechickens
3-11-11, 4:21pm
Well, it's less than comforting to read that the planned GOP budget plan literally guts our tsunami warning system, etc........hey, who needs warnings of tsunamis, right?

When they start slashing away at our incredibly bloated military budget, that has us spending more than almost all the countries of the world put together, THEN, I'll agree with cutting things like PBS and NPR, but not until.

The whole cuts from the budget that both Dems and Republicans are looking at almost totally come out of the 12% of the budget that is discretionary spending. If we cut EVERY single one of those discretionary budget items, it wouldn't even come close to dealing with the deficit. But we can't even LOOK at the sacred cow of the military/industrial complex that puts hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars every year in corporate profits into the hands of the super rich and powerful.

Until we start looking at the huge tidal waves of spending involved in the military, not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars that corporations like Halliburton, KBR and Marriott suck up in Afghanistan and Iraq, THEN I'm willing to look at that several hundred million........

We seem to want to balance the budget on the heads of the helpless, elderly, poor and isolated......just don't touch anything that pours billions into the coffers of those who already have the most of everything.....

starting to rant here.....must be time for my nap. ;-)

Reyes
3-11-11, 6:23pm
We liberals are listening to it and thinking they are giving too much weight to conservative ideas

Not this liberal:-) I am a frequent listener and and as a liberal find the station quite liberal:-)

peggy
3-11-11, 9:47pm
I say shut off the federal funding and let NPR/PBS fend for themselves in the media jungle with everyone else. Surely there are other federal programs that could use the four hundred million or so for more useful purposes, or we could even apply it toward the national debt. There must be market niches out there that would be willing to pay full price for what they’re selling, perhaps even more readily if they drop their ridiculous pretense of objectivity. If there’s a place out there for Rachel Maddow, there’s a place for Terry Gross.
As to the underserved area argument, that’s always been true on any number of counts. I’d be more concerned about getting them better access to hospitals than tedious Garrison Keillor monologues.

Apply it to the national debt? Naw, i vote we give the uber rich another tax break. After all , the poor rich are suffering so... The poor Walton family , in this economy, after all, will have to forgo...well, nothing really, but we can pretend. We can pretend the super wealthy are just waiting for this tax break to reinvest in...well, their own wealth, which they of course should not be taxed on, (even though I am taxed on every penny I make) because they are the poor rich....and on and on....

ApatheticNoMore
3-12-11, 4:40am
Of course in a marketplace where the whole marketplace itself does not compete in the marketplace, asking NPR or PBS to is of course just well ok but ..... What do I mean? Trillions of dollars were floated by the FED to keep corporations all over the world afloat in this recession (I posted that link before). Almost the entire U.S. housing market is currently government based (loans originating through government entities are over 80%). The Fed is currently doing 600 billion in qualitative easing (what this means is creating money out of thin air). What will happen *IF* this stops as it is scheduled to, nobody knows. The head of Pimco said this was suppressing the risk free interest rate (on government bonds) by 1.5%. Is that true? Who knows, I don't do those calculations :P. If so it would be massive.

But I argue some benefits of funding these on narrow not wide (wide = the whole system is ridiculous) grounds, and made an argument for funding them because they could provide an alternative to a corporate world view. That corporations and government are often aligned, of course (see above). But this isn't always a given. Of course it is possible NPR and the like would be better off themselves free of all government funding. I don't know. The problem with this world is everything takes money :). Haha, but you do have to see how deep the strings go, how even non-profits are depending on big money etc.

LDAHL
3-12-11, 11:15am
Apply it to the national debt? Naw, i vote we give the uber rich another tax break. After all , the poor rich are suffering so... The poor Walton family , in this economy, after all, will have to forgo...well, nothing really, but we can pretend. We can pretend the super wealthy are just waiting for this tax break to reinvest in...well, their own wealth, which they of course should not be taxed on, (even though I am taxed on every penny I make) because they are the poor rich....and on and on....

Ah yes, the “property is theft” argument. Everything belongs to the collective, and private wealth not confiscated by the collective is in effect stolen from its true owners. The basic theory behind General Secretary Stalin’s extermination of the Kulaks and President Obama’s health care initiative. Or as Michael Moore recently put it, “We have a right to your money!”

The classic argument against this line of reasoning is that its implementation redirects creative energies away from wealth-creating activity toward political rent-seeking. The recent idiocies at the upper levels of NPR show us what happens when a self-regarding elite is isolated from reality by all that federal, state and foundation money. You wind up with a collection of modern Marie Antoinettes, as arrogant as they are stupid.

Gregg
3-12-11, 12:40pm
In my area I find the actual public radio station to be liberal. It is not directly based at the university, but very closely associated and so takes on the general slant of the school, which is not surprisingly liberal. The programming that comes from NPR proper has, IMO, a liberal slant when it comes to most social issues (abortion, gay rights/marriage, etc.). I don't mind that because I tend to have the same slant. In coverage of more hard line issues I've only noticed that interviews tend to be conducted with parties on one side of issues more than other(s) in the national programming. On any given day that can swing either way, but it does feel like there are a few more interviews with liberal candidates/representatives/spokespeople overall.

Alan
3-12-11, 1:10pm
I don't think the overall slant comes from the guests interviewed as much as it does the slant of the questions asked and the comments made by the NPR staff. Has anyone listened to the Diane Rehm show?

I try not to.

The Storyteller
3-12-11, 4:06pm
I don't think the overall slant comes from the guests interviewed as much as it does the slant of the questions asked and the comments made by the NPR staff. Has anyone listened to the Diane Rehm show?

I try not to.

I don't much listen to any talk radio (or radio of any kind) now days, but Diane Rhem is a terrible example to use for those who would paint NPR as leftist. She invites folks from all sides, all the time, her friday News Roundup always includes a bona fide, generally very articulate conservative.

Alan
3-12-11, 4:10pm
I don't much listen to any talk radio (or radio of any kind) now days, but Diane Rhem is a terrible example to use for those who would paint NPR as leftist. She invites folks from all sides, all the time, her friday News Roundup always includes a bona fide, generally very articulate conservative.

I haven't kept count, but a 2005 study showed she booked 22 liberals for every 5 conservatives, although that wasn't my point.

iris lily
3-12-11, 4:40pm
I don't think the overall slant comes from the guests interviewed as much as it does the slant of the questions asked and the comments made by the NPR staff. Has anyone listened to the Diane Rehm show?

I try not to.

Agreed, and I so seldom listen to her show because I tend to listen later in the day. But she is so clearly liberal that I wonder that our SLN colleague Loosechickens cannot see that. Interesting.

And I agree with Gregg that it's not only the social slant of some programs but the choise of topics to cover. A couple of summers ago, I swear, it was "let's play violins for prisoners" month. There were (it seemed) mutiple shows about prisons and prisoners and their rights. That is a liberal interest show.

And then our local station has an interview show where the host talks to any number of representatives from do-gooder organizations. They are free and wish to promote their org, after all, but that gets tiresome, hearing about foster kids aging out of the system, lack of funding in after school programs, formerly homeless who now work in a large urban community garden, etc. How's about some programs on local landlord's rights, living simply in the city (I think there's a book with that title!)
the African American Republicans in thie city, etc.

peggy
3-12-11, 5:30pm
Ah yes, the “property is theft” argument. Everything belongs to the collective, and private wealth not confiscated by the collective is in effect stolen from its true owners. The basic theory behind General Secretary Stalin’s extermination of the Kulaks and President Obama’s health care initiative. Or as Michael Moore recently put it, “We have a right to your money!”

The classic argument against this line of reasoning is that its implementation redirects creative energies away from wealth-creating activity toward political rent-seeking. The recent idiocies at the upper levels of NPR show us what happens when a self-regarding elite is isolated from reality by all that federal, state and foundation money. You wind up with a collection of modern Marie Antoinettes, as arrogant as they are stupid.

Oh baloney! :doh: How come it's called "confiscation" when the uber wealthy are asked to chip in a fair share for all the incredible benefits they receive from living in this great country, and it's just called "taxes" when I have to pay?
Where oh where do you see ANYONE advocating confiscating any one's wealth? No one here is advocating taking all the rich folks money and giving it to anyone else. That's a straw man argument and designed to distract. There's no collective trying to confiscate any one's money. It's called TAXES! It's what I and presumably you pay on what we earn.
Let me ask you this. Do you pay taxes? Do you pay taxes on your earned income? I know I do. If you don't I can certainly see why you would take the attitude that the super rich shouldn't pay any on their earned income. If you do, why don't you think we should ask those who BENIFIT THE MOST pay at least their fair share?
It never ceases to totally amaze me how anyone can sit there in their modest 2 bedroom, stretching a dollar to pay the bills and help the kids through college and say "Yes! Tax breaks for the rich! That's what we need!"

And you know what? Maybe that NPR guy's assessment of the far right/tea party folks wasn't that far off. Stalin and Obama? Really? Gee, I"m surprised you didn't throw in Hitler, and communist, and everything EVIL AND WICKED, and Nigeria, and 'he ain't one of us'!
You know, just because you don't understand the details of, and how the health care reform works doesn't make it Stalin-like. It just means you don't understand it. And actually that's what the right is betting on, cause when the various provisions start to kick in, as some have already, most people will see that it benefits us all.
Sorry Iris, I know you are tired of hearing about things that benefit us all, and maybe help your neighbor (what a bore!) but that's just life in a civilized society. ;)

bae
3-12-11, 5:36pm
"Fair share" is such a loaded term, isn't it?

loosechickens
3-12-11, 11:02pm
I said that I didn't find NPR to be liberal, when we were discussing their news coverage. I find their straight news coverage in programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered to be really objective. Diane Rheim has an opinion and talk show. I totally agree that Diane Rheims herself is liberal....she makes no secret of that, although she has both liberals and conservatives on her show as well as scientists, etc., on shows that aren't even political. We listen to her program sometimes, depending on what is being discussed, but mostly why I don't listen all the time is that whatever is the matter with her voice that requires her to speak so slowly, just drives me nuts. I keep finding myself mentally trying to drag the words out of her mouth.

we saw her in person once, and she seemed nothing like the mental picture I had of her....she turned out to be very petite, slim, blonde and much younger than I thought.

While we're all busy arguing as to whether NPR is liberal or not, and forgetting the OP completely......it took Glenn Beck of all people to call O'Keefe on his dishonesty, and to show that the spliced video of the NPR guy was wildly inaccurate, and was spliced together by O'Keefe to make Schiller appear to have said stuff that he didn't say at all, and even stuff opposite to what he said.

For example, when you consider the unedited tape, where Schiller was supposedly amused that the website of the people he is meeting promotes "acceptance of Sharia" worldwide, he is actually amused at something totally unrelated, and the tape was edited to appear as though he was amused about the acceptance of Sharia.

And when Schiller was supposedly calling the Tea Party "seriously racist", he was actually quoting a REPUBLICAN ambassador who said that. But, again, O'Keefe edited the tape fraudulently to give the impression that Schiller himself said that. Just as two examples.

If there is anyone here who is dishonest, fraudulent and despicable, it's not NPR, nor Schiller, but that darling of the right, the totally dishonest O'Keefe, who ends up being exposed by Glenn Beck. You couldn't write this stuff as comedy, I guess.

When one raving conservative is calling out another raving conservative as a liar, it's time to just throw up one's hands, because the end is surely near........

loosechickens
3-12-11, 11:14pm
Iris Lily, if you want to consider programming about U.S. prisons, prisoners' rights, abuses, etc., and the abysmal record of U.S. prisons to actually accomplish their mission, I'm not sure what that should be a "liberal issue". One would THINK it would be quite a conservative issue as well.

The U.S. incarcerates a larger percentage of its citizens than virtually any other country on earth, including some of the totalitarian dictatorships. We spend incredible amounts of taxpayer money (which one supposes that conservatives should care about), far more than other countries, yet we have the highest recidivism rate in the world, something around 60%, and some other countries with more enlightened and effective penal systems have recidivism rates in the single digits.

Even if a conservative doesn't give a rat's *ss about the human beings that are imprisoned, they certainly should care about the hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds that go into these extremely ineffective systems.

But perhaps conservatives really don't care about those things......funny, because it's all they seem to talk about.....getting taxes lower, spending less taxpayer money, etc., yet here is this HUGE prison industry that sucks more and more of the taxpayers' money for worse and worse results, and somehow THAT is a "liberal issue" to you? Sorry. I don't get it at all.

It's a subject that would be well worth some research on......trust me.......since our families' experience, my eyes have been opened to that huge and complex money suck, the increasing positions of private, for profit companies sucking onto that teat, and the prison industrial complex that is sucking money right out of your pocket, Alan's pocket, Bae's pocket and everybody else who calls themselves a conservative, just as much as it's sucking it out of liberals' pockets, abusing the prisoners in the system, creating more embittered, emotionally crippled prisoners released back into communities to offend again and go back in through the revolving door, or even worse, paying many, many thousands of dollars a year to warehouse people rather than rehabilitate and treat mental and substance abuse problems, provide job skills, etc. and actually FIX the problems.

Just from our own experience, I could curl your hair with stuff......our prison systems are second only to the military/industrial money suck.

iris lily
3-13-11, 10:31am
Iris Lily, if you want to consider programming about U.S. prisons, prisoners' rights, abuses, etc., and the abysmal record of U.S. prisons to actually accomplish their mission, I'm not sure what that should be a "liberal issue". One would THINK it would be quite a conservative issue as well.

The U.S. incarcerates a larger percentage of its citizens than virtually any other country on earth, including some of the totalitarian dictatorships. We spend incredible amounts of taxpayer money (which one supposes that conservatives should care about), far more than other countries, yet we have the highest recidivism rate in the world, something around 60%, and some other countries with more enlightened and effective penal systems have recidivism rates in the single digits.

Even if a conservative doesn't give a rat's *ss about the human beings that are imprisoned, they certainly should care about the hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds that go into these extremely ineffective systems.

But perhaps conservatives really don't care about those things......funny, because it's all they seem to talk about.....getting taxes lower, spending less taxpayer money, etc., yet here is this HUGE prison industry that sucks more and more of the taxpayers' money for worse and worse results, and somehow THAT is a "liberal issue" to you? Sorry. I don't get it at all.

It's a subject that would be well worth some research on......trust me.......since our families' experience, my eyes have been opened to that huge and complex money suck, the increasing positions of private, for profit companies sucking onto that teat, and the prison industrial complex that is sucking money right out of your pocket, Alan's pocket, Bae's pocket and everybody else who calls themselves a conservative, just as much as it's sucking it out of liberals' pockets, abusing the prisoners in the system, creating more embittered, emotionally crippled prisoners released back into communities to offend again and go back in through the revolving door, or even worse, paying many, many thousands of dollars a year to warehouse people rather than rehabilitate and treat mental and substance abuse problems, provide job skills, etc. and actually FIX the problems.

Just from our own experience, I could curl your hair with stuff......our prison systems are second only to the military/industrial money suck.

ah, right on schedule. I knew the prison thing would push your buttons.

jp1
3-13-11, 11:22am
ah, right on schedule. I knew the prison thing would push your buttons.

So does your response mean that you agree with Chickens? I can only assume so since you didn't address any of the very real issues that she raised.

Alan
3-13-11, 11:40am
Iris Lily, if you want to consider programming about U.S. prisons, prisoners' rights, abuses, etc., and the abysmal record of U.S. prisons to actually accomplish their mission, I'm not sure what that should be a "liberal issue". One would THINK it would be quite a conservative issue as well.

The U.S. incarcerates a larger percentage of its citizens than virtually any other country on earth, including some of the totalitarian dictatorships. We spend incredible amounts of taxpayer money (which one supposes that conservatives should care about), far more than other countries, yet we have the highest recidivism rate in the world, something around 60%, and some other countries with more enlightened and effective penal systems have recidivism rates in the single digits.

Even if a conservative doesn't give a rat's *ss about the human beings that are imprisoned, they certainly should care about the hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds that go into these extremely ineffective systems.

But perhaps conservatives really don't care about those things......funny, because it's all they seem to talk about.....getting taxes lower, spending less taxpayer money, etc., yet here is this HUGE prison industry that sucks more and more of the taxpayers' money for worse and worse results, and somehow THAT is a "liberal issue" to you? Sorry. I don't get it at all.

It's a subject that would be well worth some research on......trust me.......since our families' experience, my eyes have been opened to that huge and complex money suck, the increasing positions of private, for profit companies sucking onto that teat, and the prison industrial complex that is sucking money right out of your pocket, Alan's pocket, Bae's pocket and everybody else who calls themselves a conservative, just as much as it's sucking it out of liberals' pockets, abusing the prisoners in the system, creating more embittered, emotionally crippled prisoners released back into communities to offend again and go back in through the revolving door, or even worse, paying many, many thousands of dollars a year to warehouse people rather than rehabilitate and treat mental and substance abuse problems, provide job skills, etc. and actually FIX the problems.

Just from our own experience, I could curl your hair with stuff......our prison systems are second only to the military/industrial money suck.

As a conservative, I believe that there is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

In regards to the justice and prison systems in this country, I find it hard to feel bad for people who know the consequences of their actions and yet choose to ignore reality. I've never understood the mentality which says that everyone is a victim of something and cannot be expected to actually use judgment, common sense and social norms to regulate their actions.

Why do we incarcerate more of our citizens than other countries? Maybe it's because we apply different standards to our citizens than others, or maybe it's also because we, as a society, have less impulse control or a lesser desire to adhere to societal norms. I think there may be elements of both, although the recidivism rate you mention speaks more to the latter.

When you mention the abysmal record of prisons to accomplish their mission, I would disagree. No institution can regulate an individuals impulses, they can only serve as a reminder that specifc activities result in specific consequences, and in that sense, they work wonderfully for the vast majority of the population.

iris lily
3-13-11, 12:06pm
So does your response mean that you agree with Chickens? I can only assume so since you didn't address any of the very real issues that she raised.

I don't think that most prisonors can be rehabilitated with money whether public or private money. It takes a whole lot more resources than that including, and especially, non-tangibles. For those who make it on the outside, they've got either enormous inner strength (and very few've got that) or family/social support resources or both.

It's not about throwing more money at the problem or even the same amount. There is value in keeping people locked up and away from their victums. When they are incarcerated they are not in my neighborhood clouting cars or holding me up at gunpoint. That is a valuable service that the prisons offer to me and my neighborhood. Sure wish it cost less, figure out how to do that and I'm there. But keep them out of my neighborhood and if ya'll wish to pull them into living next door to you, go for it.

As an aside we've got, in my neighborhood, a legal trick where we get restraining orders for proven perps to stay out of our neighborhood boundaries when we can't get them locked up. Or else (and this is the ususal case) they've been locked up for 3 months but get back out on the streets. If they've plagued us too much they aren't allowed back within our borders and if they are picked up here, they get sent back to jail. I don't think it's worked well beyond one time, but still, it is SOMETHING since these bozos bounce in and out of jail.

But NPR programs about prisoners and their rights and angst about such is a liberal interest and part of the relentless liberal programming of NPR.

loosechickens
3-13-11, 12:48pm
Ah....Iris Lily and Alan....speaking of "predictable responses". Honestly, I suggest that both of you really do some studying regarding our prison systems. I think you will be quite surprised when you are actually armed with facts, as opposed to subjective viewpoints as to who the prisoners in our systems are and how effective our various systems are at their mission, unless you count their mission as creating a huge industrial complex sucking money right out of your pockets for indifferent, if not downright miserable results, for the expenditure of far more money than far more effective prison systems.

But.......sing lalalalala if you like. I've actually been involved in at least the Federal system, (and one corrupt county system where Federal prisoners are contracted to be kept while awaiting trial in the nearby Federal courthouse), and, boy have my eyes been opened. I'm not going to argue about it with you, but do suggest that you really do some studying on the issue.

Start by asking a few simple questions, say? Why did our Federal prisons hold less than 20,000 prisoners a couple decades ago and hold nearly a quarter of a million, 250,000 today? Has Federal crime increased tenfold? What has been the role recently with large private corporations such as Correctional Centers of America or GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut before the various misadventures that plagued such organizations as Blackwater, necessitating "name changes" even if nothing else changes). While you're at it, you might investigate the complete boondoggle of Federal halfway houses, contracted out to private corporations like Spectrum Properties, sucking billions of taxpayer dollars to do little but enrich the corporation bigwigs and stockholders.

You haven't got a clue. Truly. And just looking into the Federal system will lead you into a world of muck, and the Federal system is generally recognized as being among the best run in the country, as compared to state and local systems.

It's a cash cow, in the same way that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been a cash cow for corporations like Halliburton, its subsidiary, KBR and Marriott.

If you want to consider this a "liberal" issue, forgive me, but I believe you are being very foolish. Because even if you care nothing for the human lives involved, one would think that you would care for your own pocketbook.

loosechickens
3-13-11, 12:55pm
Here's just a hint of someplace to look......can anyone spell "lobbyists"? Then, you're on your own......

From Wikipedia:

"CCA and The GEO Group are major contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C. based public policy organization that develops model legislation that advances tough-on-crime legislation and free-market principles such as privatization.

Under their Criminal Justice Task Force, ALEC has developed and helped to successfully implement in many states “tough on crime” initiatives including “Truth in Sentencing” and “Three Strikes” laws. Corporations provide most of the funding for ALEC’s operating budget and influence its political agenda through participation in policy task forces. ALEC’s corporate funders include CCA and The GEO Group. In 1999, CCA made the President’s List for contributions to ALEC’s States and National Policy Summit; Wackenhut also sponsored the conference. Past cochairs of the Criminal Justice Task Force have included Brad Wiggins, then Director of Business Development at CCA and now a Senior Director of Site Acquisition, and John Rees, a former CCA vice president.

By funding and participating in ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Forces, critics argue, private prison companies directly influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences.[26] The legal system may also be manipulated more directly: in the Kids for cash scandal, Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp, a private prison company was found guilty of paying two judges[27] $2.6m to send 2000 children to their prisons.[28][29]"

Alan
3-13-11, 1:18pm
I'm not at all sure that privitization equals corruption, although I'm absolutely certain that it is not necessary for the government to run everything.

We have a serious problem within segments of our society having to do with the breakdown of the nuclear family and the resultant anti-social behaviors which result. People who are raised in that environment make up the bulk of our prison system population. It's not the fault of corporations. It is not the fault of lobbyists. It's not my fault. It has everything to do with institutions which achieve political power from enabling societal degradation in hopes of creating dependance and the resultant voting blocs requried to maintain that power.

Call me foolish if you want, you've called me worse, but I'm certain you're looking at this situation from the wrong perspective. The one that has historically enabled the conditions which lead to the problem.

loosechickens
3-13-11, 1:26pm
Nope, I'm looking at this situation from being unwillingly involved in it up to my unwilling armpits, and discovering the reality of at least our Federal prison system (and at least one of the very corrupt county systems it contracts with to hold Federal prisoners awaiting trial), being very, very, very different from everything I thought about it before, what you think about it now, and how almost invisible this prison industrial complex feeding immense amounts of money into the pockets of the greedy with few Americans even having a clue.

I'm not going to argue it Alan. Because I'm not arguing the societal ills that cause prison populations to swell, I'm saying that it is a corrupt system, has become a huge profit magnet at the cost of innumerable lives, is sucking up more and more of our population, costing more and more money, and at absolutely abysmal levels of effectiveness. Something that liberals and conservatives alike should be appalled at and want to see changed. And that's my last word on the subject. I've had to involve myself over the past five years into this world that I never even really knew existed, had to look at it up close and personal, and what I saw made me feel literally sick.

bae
3-13-11, 3:57pm
Loosechickens - what is the breakdown of offenses attributed to those in the Federal prison system?

Ah, on edit, I found it:

Drug Offenses: 100,073 (51.3 %)
Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 29,748 (15.2 %)
Immigration: 21,577 (11.1 %)
Robbery: 8,486 (4.3 %)
Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 6,823 (3.5 %)
Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 9,986 (5.1 %)
Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 5,409 (2.8 %)
Miscellaneous: 1,877 (1.0 %)
Sex Offenses: 9,029 (4.6 %)
Banking and Insurance, Counterfeit, Embezzlement: 858 (0.4 %)
Courts or Corrections: 611 (0.3 %)
Continuing Criminal Enterprise: 516 (0.3 %)
National Security: 102 (0.1 %)


So, ~62.5% are in for drug or immigration offenses. Seems like there may be an easy fix there...

loosechickens
3-13-11, 6:55pm
One huge driver in the Federal system for the explosion of inmates was the disparity between sentences for crack cocaine and powder cocaine, and SOME attempt is being made to address this huge disparity in sentencing. When crack cocaine started being a problem, "law and order" forces managed to muscle through tremendous sentencing guidelines.....the same amount of powder cocaine (used mostly by whites, the middle class and professionals) resulted in sentences of several years, and a similar amount of crack cocaine (used mostly by minorities and the poor), often resulted in sentences of 30-40 years. That is one big one.

Efforts have been made to address the disparity, but crack cocaine offenses still result in about eight times longer sentences for the same amount of drugs, I think is the last I read.

In the prison where our relative was, a low security Federal prison in Miami FL, I used to wait in the visitors room with an elderly woman, who came every week to visit her son. When he was twenty years old, he got involved in using crack cocaine, got addicted, and allowed himself to be used to transport the drug in order to get his own supply. He had no criminal record, had never been arrested, but when he was caught transporting, at age 21, he was given about a 40 year sentence (for an amount of drug that had it been cocaine in the form of powder, would have given him a sentence of a few years). He was, at that time, in 2009, 54 years old.

He is her only child, and through the years, as he has been transferred to several different prisons in the Federal system (as you serve more years of your sentence for a non-violent crime, you are transferred from higher security prisons, to medium security and finally to a low security Federal prison for the last few years). Her husband died, she followed her son to this prison, the last one, as he is due to be released in 2012. He will be 57 years old when he is released.

One wonders what kind of a life this man, who went in at age 21 for an offense that had he been a well to do, white professional, dealing in powder cocaine as an addict, might have ended up in a sentence of drug rehab or probation, and at worst a short sentence, will have on the outside. He will at least have his elderly mother, but no real job skills, of an age where employment will be difficult to obtain, and not having worked enough to be eligible for Social Security when at retirement age. Who wants to bet on his success?
Who wants to add up what dollar amount keeping this guy in prison for close to 40 years has cost?

The Feds are dealing with the illegal problem (those illegals who have committed criminal offenses in the U.S. (or outside the U.S. in some cases) by contracting with private prison contractors to operate private prisons to hold them. Our relatives two cell mates that were with him in Miami FCI, one from Colombia in for a drug charge, and one from Honduras who was an ordinary seaman on a cargo vessel that was detained by DEA off the coast of Honduras and found to be carrying cocaine, and who was then charged in the U.S. (I'm not sure how that works, to be able to arrest and charge someone in international waters, but that's beyond the scope of this), have now both been transferred to a new low security prison that has been built in a rural part of Mississippi, and operated by CCA, the private prison contracters.

I correspond with both these men, and this new, private prison sounds like a really terrible place, far below the standards of the Federal prison in Miami, in food, access to outdoors, treatment by guards, etc. But......these are all prisoners from other countries, few have family in the U.S. or any visitors (neither of these two men has ever had a visitor, we would go and visit them, but in the Federal system, you cannot visit any prisoner you did not know before they were sentenced), there is no one to really check on their treatment, they are just forgotten in this private prison, until their terms are over at which point they will be deported.

Certainly our failed "war on drugs" has mostly spawned a huge prison/industrial corporate moneymaking machine, and large, large numbers of our prisoners have been caught up in this sytem.

I might point out your statistics to folks, since our stereotype of prisoners/convicts/felons in this country seems to be that they consist of violent, dangerous, hideous rapists, murderers, etc., yet the huge majority of prisoners are in prison for completely non-violent offenses, in sentences that are longer than most other countries, with much less attempt at rehabilitation or thought toward success when released, etc.

Honestly, it almost makes me sick to even talk about it. Because there was a time when I didn't think all that differently from Alan, Iris Lily, Idahl, and even Peggy. But once you actually delve into it, it's an ugly cesspool, and the ugliest of the cesspool is not even the people in prison for crimes, it's the huge monolithic money sucking machine that costs this country tremendously, gives extremely poor results, and wrecks untold lives in the process.

iris lily
3-13-11, 7:24pm
Non-violent crimes affect real victims, they lead to good people moving out and neighborhood decline and further inner city decay and poverty.

Property break-ins and thefts and car cloutings and the like are hardly innocuous crimes. A steady diet of them, and a population of regular perpetrators of those crimes, has ruined many areas here.

As far as drugs go, I've said here many times sure, legalize it all, that's fine, but correspondingly don't expect me to pay for any do-gooder programs to address the human misery that occurs with that. IF the same level of human misery occurs, well, that's great because we've saved ourselves some money by eliminating 1/2 the prison population.

bae
3-13-11, 7:30pm
It would probably be far cheaper for the Federal government to hand out unlimited amounts of cocaine, heroin, and other such substances for free, much like government cheese, than to deal with funding the prison and criminal justice system.

The production cost of the substances, if the market wasn't distorted by the substances being illegal, would seem to me to be very very low.

This would remove the motivation for criminal activity to fund the next fix. Ruthlessly punish any crimes committed under-the-influence, and within a few generations, I suspect natural selection would take its course.

mattj
3-13-11, 8:26pm
www.leap.cc (http://www.leap.cc) One of these guys is coming to town this week to speak.

loosechickens
3-13-11, 11:19pm
Just for the historical record, for most of our history, heroin AND cocaine were completely legal, as was marijuana. Most of our real "drug problems" have come about since drugs were criminalized, just as Prohibition brought about the ascendancy of organized crime dealing in alcohol after it was criminalized and there were huge profits to be made.

It might help were we to look at other developed countries and how they handle the problems around drugs. Many seem to look to treat them more as a public health issue than a criminal issue, with an emphasis on addiction counseling, rehabilitation, education, etc.

In the case of the son of the woman I waited with in the visitors' waiting room each week in Miami, one had to think that even the finest of drug rehabilitation and treatment, repeated as necessary even, plus other assistance to reach for a productive future as a taxpaying citizen would have been far, far cheaper than it's been to keep this man in prison for all of his adult life. We, the taxpayers are probably way up in the millions of dollars at this point that has been expended in the past 35 years or so, keeping a young drug addict at 20, led by addiction into working for his dealers incarcerated for that period of time. Somehow, it's hard to think that there isn't a better way.

Iris Lily, I do not disagree at all that non-violent crime certainly does not mean victimless crime, only that our stereotype of convicts as murderers, child sexual predators, rapists and other violent criminals does not describe the huge percentage of prisoners, as bae's statistics illustrate for the Federal system. It certainly does not mean that there are not victims of their crimes, OR that they might not deserve a term in prison. However, a recidivism rate of 60% in prisons when some countries manage to have recidivism in the single digits ought to tell us that we might be spending huge amounts of money and not getting good results for it, and might be well served to shine a bright light on this huge prison money machine and see how we could get better value, turn lives around where possible and get better bang for our buck, so to speak, even if you don't care a fig for the prisoners themselves and think every one of them deserves everything that happens to them.

LDAHL
3-14-11, 8:51am
Oh baloney! :doh: How come it's called "confiscation" when the uber wealthy are asked to chip in a fair share for all the incredible benefits they receive from living in this great country, and it's just called "taxes" when I have to pay?
Where oh where do you see ANYONE advocating confiscating any one's wealth? No one here is advocating taking all the rich folks money and giving it to anyone else. That's a straw man argument and designed to distract. There's no collective trying to confiscate any one's money. It's called TAXES! It's what I and presumably you pay on what we earn.
Let me ask you this. Do you pay taxes? Do you pay taxes on your earned income? I know I do. If you don't I can certainly see why you would take the attitude that the super rich shouldn't pay any on their earned income. If you do, why don't you think we should ask those who BENIFIT THE MOST pay at least their fair share?
It never ceases to totally amaze me how anyone can sit there in their modest 2 bedroom, stretching a dollar to pay the bills and help the kids through college and say "Yes! Tax breaks for the rich! That's what we need!"

And you know what? Maybe that NPR guy's assessment of the far right/tea party folks wasn't that far off. Stalin and Obama? Really? Gee, I"m surprised you didn't throw in Hitler, and communist, and everything EVIL AND WICKED, and Nigeria, and 'he ain't one of us'!
You know, just because you don't understand the details of, and how the health care reform works doesn't make it Stalin-like. It just means you don't understand it. And actually that's what the right is betting on, cause when the various provisions start to kick in, as some have already, most people will see that it benefits us all.
Sorry Iris, I know you are tired of hearing about things that benefit us all, and maybe help your neighbor (what a bore!) but that's just life in a civilized society. ;)

Assuming for the moment that these super-uber-mega-ultra-rich creatures are paying less than their “fair” share, what would be the appropriate IRS haircut? At what level does wealth become excessive enough to require class enemy treatment? President Obama’s $250K/couple may be defining plutocracy down a bit, but you must have some number in mind.
And you can call me ignorant and racist all you like. But why call me Iris?

ApatheticNoMore
3-14-11, 12:30pm
Assuming for the moment that these super-uber-mega-ultra-rich creatures are paying less than their “fair” share, what would be the appropriate IRS haircut?

Taxing capital gains like regular income (at those rates)? Everyone who gets their income from working is already paying those rates, so I guess people whose money comes from earned income are already being treated like class enemies.

dmc
3-14-11, 1:23pm
Taxing capital gains like regular income (at those rates)? Everyone who gets their income from working is already paying those rates, so I guess people whose money comes from earned income are already being treated like class enemies.

Short term capital gains are taxed the same as income. If your going to tax long term capital gains the same way, are you going to allow an adjustment for inflation?

Why don't we just do away with all the deductions. No mortgage, charity, child care, ect. And lets have more people actually pay something, even if its a small amount. I read that something like 47% don't pay anything. What about there fair share?

And its time to cut off NPR. There is really no reason for the government to fund it anymore.

freein05
3-14-11, 1:27pm
How about qualified dividend income. I work very hard counting my dividend income but for all of my hard work it is only taxed at 15%. Now is that class warfare when the investor class is taxed at 15% for all of their hard investing work. I did get a paper cut the other day.

Alan
3-14-11, 1:31pm
Taxing capital gains like regular income (at those rates)? Everyone who gets their income from working is already paying those rates, so I guess people whose money comes from earned income are already being treated like class enemies.
Capital gains are not indexed for inflation: the seller pays tax not only on the real gain in purchasing power, but also on the illusory gain attributable to inflation. The inflation penalty is one reason that, historically, capital gains have been taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. In fact, Alan Blinder, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, noted in 1980 that, up until that time, “most capital gains were not gains of real purchasing power at all, but simply represented the maintenance of principal in an inflationary world.”

peggy
3-14-11, 1:36pm
Well there you go LDAHL. Several good suggestions for fair share taxing. Tax their income like they tax my income. That's a good start. And yes, we could do away with some of the deductions. If everyone paid fairly, according to their income, then everyone could pay less, percentage wise.
And the note to Iris was, well, for Iris. I think she knew that. ;)

dmc
3-14-11, 1:40pm
How about qualified dividend income. I work very hard counting my dividend income but for all of my hard work it is only taxed at 15%. Now is that class warfare when the investor class is taxed at 15% for all of their hard investing work. I did get a paper cut the other day.

Your allowed to send in extra if you want.

If you want to raise taxes on dividend income its fine with me. Just let me know in time to shift my investments around.

dmc
3-14-11, 1:48pm
How about qualified dividend income. I work very hard counting my dividend income but for all of my hard work it is only taxed at 15%. Now is that class warfare when the investor class is taxed at 15% for all of their hard investing work. I did get a paper cut the other day.

And lets do away with the $3000 loss maximum. If I make 100,000, I get to pay taxes on 100,000. If I lose 100,000 I can only take a $3,000 loss. Of coarse I can carry over, but I may not live that long.

We can all find things we don't like about the tax code. The fair way would be everyone pay the same percentage starting after a certain amount. No deductions ect.

But it will never happen.

ApatheticNoMore
3-14-11, 2:52pm
Yea well the inflation argument, inflation is already so unfair in it's effects that it's hard to make a big deal out of that. I mean think about who is really hurt most by inflation, do you think it's someone with a hedge fund managing their cash, or someone who barely makes enough to save anything and so puts small amounts in a bank account because they don't dare risk what little they've accumulated in the stock market?

And how is the interest on that bank account (money market account, CD) taxed? Is it taxed at 15%? Heck no, it's taxed as regular income. But if it's your average bank account it's not even paying enough to keep up with inflation.

(Not only that but current inflationary policy leads to deliberate suppression of that bank account interest though it sure pushes up stocks). And who do you think the beneficiaries of inflation are: hint the banks, all those banker bonuses etc.. So if your argument was the central bank should be managed to minimize inflation, that makes a lot of sense. But worrying about inflation being particularly unfair to one party and never mind that it's also equally unfair to dozens of others, meh, but I suppose you could try to take into account inflation on capital gains AND bank interest (the only problem is if you did the whole CPI would get even more politicized now than it is and it would be even more of a joke). And there's still qualified dividends, I don't know what argument anyone could possible have against the fairness of treating them the same way as regular income.

freein05
3-14-11, 3:05pm
Your allowed to send in extra if you want.

If you want to raise taxes on dividend income its fine with me. Just let me know in time to shift my investments around.

A little off subject. We rented a place below the snow line in the Mother Lode on a Golf Course/Country Club for a month. It was fun and my golf game has not improved since I last golfed 15 years ago.

I do think most personal deduction should be eliminated. Including my property tax deduction and the interest deduction for those who financed their home. I would also eliminate the incentive to have kids deduction.

DMC I do have to write a nice check to the IRS this year but I will not pay one cent more then I owe.

dmc
3-14-11, 3:19pm
DMC I do have to write a nice check to the IRS this year but I will not pay one cent more then I owe.

I'm just saying if you feel your "fair share" isn't enough , feel free to send in some extra. I'm sure our politicians will have no problem spending it. :)

Zigzagman
3-14-11, 11:40pm
Assuming for the moment that these super-uber-mega-ultra-rich creatures are paying less than their “fair” share, what would be the appropriate IRS haircut? At what level does wealth become excessive enough to require class enemy treatment?

http://i1007.photobucket.com/albums/af197/Foxfoot_photos/class%20warfare/tlG0Y.jpg

Lainey
3-15-11, 12:14am
awesome chart, zigzagman. I'd be interested in a link to the source. Thanks.

iris lily
3-15-11, 12:28am
oh please, surely by now we can refer to them as Obama tax cuts. I will channel PDQ as follows:

Bush isn't President. Get over it.

bae
3-15-11, 12:56am
Anyone have a chart showing what portion of federal income tax receipts are paid by people in various income ranges?

Zigzagman
3-15-11, 1:07am
oh please, surely by now we can refer to them as Obama tax cuts. I will channel PDQ as follows:

Bush isn't President. Get over it.

LOL - You are correct, Iris. I think the biggest copout so far by our fearless leader. However, Gitmo is a close second.

Peace

Zigzagman
3-15-11, 1:26am
Anyone have a chart showing what portion of federal income tax receipts are paid by people in various income ranges?

Pretty easy to find and admittedly most taxes are paid by the uber-rich. But it's common sense that most of any income tax cut will benefit those that are paying it. You can't reduce taxes on someone who isn't paying any. You simply cannot not get blood from a turnip. The top 1.4 million taxpayers need the remaining wage slaves to support their habits and lifestyles. Maybe if workers made more money they would pay more taxes?

Peace

Zigzagman
3-15-11, 1:38am
awesome chart, zigzagman. I'd be interested in a link to the source. Thanks.

Sure - http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/tax_breaks_infographic.html

The attack by the right on spending is just a coverup to cut social services all the while keeping a hands-off approach on military spending. The right just despises "entitlements" - don't you just hate that word?

Peace

Gregg
3-15-11, 1:31pm
The top 1.4 million taxpayers need the remaining wage slaves to support their habits and lifestyles. Maybe if workers made more money they would pay more taxes?

Peace

While I don't agree with the idea that everyone outside the top 0.5% is a "wage slave" I would support more income, or more accurately more spending power, for the large majority of workers. Most of us have agreed over the years that wealth is not a zero sum game. By extension that rule has to apply to all income levels if it applies to any one of them. One problem is that if everyone's wages go up then all we end up with is inflation so no one is actually better off even though they have more dollars. It always seems to lead back to the same old question, how do you (in the collective sense) propose to boost the masses without TAKING something from anyone? Ultra high net worth individuals have the resources to leave. Start taking from them and many will simply relocate. I would, too, in that position. Time to start working on opportunities for the middle and lower classes. I heard the President, just a few days ago, talking again about reducing dependence on foreign oil. It's not just him. Most people have seen Jon Stewart's clip of every president since Nixon promising an energy policy. Duh. Maybe its worth looking at finally coming up with one and creating ten or fifteen million good jobs in the process. Multi-tasking dollars, what a concept.

LDAHL
3-15-11, 5:26pm
While I don't agree with the idea that everyone outside the top 0.5% is a "wage slave" I would support more income, or more accurately more spending power, for the large majority of workers. Most of us have agreed over the years that wealth is not a zero sum game. By extension that rule has to apply to all income levels if it applies to any one of them. One problem is that if everyone's wages go up then all we end up with is inflation so no one is actually better off even though they have more dollars. It always seems to lead back to the same old question, how do you (in the collective sense) propose to boost the masses without TAKING something from anyone? Ultra high net worth individuals have the resources to leave. Start taking from them and many will simply relocate. I would, too, in that position. Time to start working on opportunities for the middle and lower classes. I heard the President, just a few days ago, talking again about reducing dependence on foreign oil. It's not just him. Most people have seen Jon Stewart's clip of every president since Nixon promising an energy policy. Duh. Maybe its worth looking at finally coming up with one and creating ten or fifteen million good jobs in the process. Multi-tasking dollars, what a concept.

I like what Kevin Williamson had to say on the subject:

Just as supply-siders are naïve to think that tax cuts are going to magically empower us to grow our way out of this mess, progressives are naïve to think that there is some magically delicious pot of Lucky Charms at the end of the IRS rainbow that is going to get us out of this in some kind of obvious or straightforward fashion.

Capital is sensitive — it just wants to be loved! — and it will go where the love is, where it can be fruitful and multiply. Setting trillions of dollars’ worth of it ablaze on the altar of Washington’s self-importance every year is not going to get it done, and there simply aren’t enough rich people for us to pillage or enough loot to make it all work. We have finally, as the lady predicted, run out of other people’s money

www.nationalreview.com/articles/262045/there-aren-t-enough-millionaires-kevin-d-williamson?page=2 (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262045/there-aren-t-enough-millionaires-kevin-d-williamson?page=2)

ApatheticNoMore
3-15-11, 6:01pm
and there simply aren’t enough rich people for us to pillage or enough loot to make it all work.

I think it's kind of the other way around. Tell me how were bank balance sheets made whole again? (well honestly they haven't been entirely, but to the extent they have been ...). But it's not pillage when the banks do it.

loosechickens
3-15-11, 10:06pm
Well, I might agree about the rich and taxes, except that I spent most of my younger years armpit deep in the very, very well to do, right up to and including the uber wealthy, and those folks were paying Federal income tax rates DOUBLE or more what they pay today....most were in the 70% and over tax brackets.....and I'm telling you, they weren't fleeing the country, and those tax rates didn't keep them from having big yachts, homes all over, Rolls and Ferraris, million dollar horses and a lot of other stuff.

It's almost laughable to hear those wealthy folks acting as though raising the top tax rate from 36% to 39% would beggar them. How short memory is. Especially when many of them got rich when tax rates were more than double the present rates, and the ones that were already rich had no trouble staying up there in the thin air of extreme privilege as well.

Most of the gains of the past thirty years have gone directly to the top few percent, who are laughing all the way to the bank at how good they've got it, at the same time they whine and manage to convince large numbers of wage slaves to vote to keep giving them more, more, more. It's almost funny.

bae
3-15-11, 10:50pm
There was a difference, Loosechickens, between the nominal rate back then and the effective rate.

For a true apples-to-apples comparison, you'd have to look at effective rates.

A smidge more taxation on me, and I'd seriously entertain ideas of relocating 5 miles away to Canada, where I'd be paying a bit less, and get real health care out of the deal, and not have so much money wasted on bombs. I already have a couple of nice spots picked out :-)

loosechickens
3-16-11, 12:33am
Well, won't the U.S. trim quite a bit from you when you leave? I agree that nominal rates and effective rates are two different things, yet we have that same difference at today's rates...nominal and effective rates are two different things, yet you still have the factor that the highest income tax bracket used to be 70% or more (sometimes up to 90%), and that highest income tax bracket is now something about 36%.

What taxes really wealthy people ACTUALLY pay, is another big can of worms....wasn't there a big kerfluffle when VP Cheney's tax records showed that on an income of millions, he actually only paid about 12% in Federal income taxes?

Heck, just ourselves......with having sold off and rebought equities 31 days after the sale, after the crash in 2008, we harvested a LOT of paper capital losses that we'll be using to shelter our capital gains for quite awhile, we only pay taxes on half our stock dividends......and with tax exempt investments and limited partnerships, etc., we save even more....and now that I'm 65, I'm worth "two people" as a dependent.....the privileges keep coming.....we'd pay MUCH more in taxes if ours was "earned income" at a salaried job. Yet, believe me, the money spends the same, even though we don't have to work for it.

Back in those old days when highest tax brackets hit 70-90%.....our biggest clients were the folks in the highest bracket. When Wayne Newton had a horse with us, every hundred thousand dollars spent on him in training fees and out on the show circuit, really only cost him ten thousand dollars, if he was writing that stallion off as a breeding animal.

so..they spent a lot of the money on not so legitimate "businesses" that would have gone to the tax man..........so it still comes down to the fact that the rich are whining still, even though their taxes are MUCH, MUCH less than they were before, and much less than in periods when they were making and accumulating money despite those high rates.

It if weren't so cold in much of Canada and so dark in the winter with the short days at those latitudes, I'd entertain the thought myself.....not for the tax breaks, but because we know a lot of Canadians and really, really like every one of the ones we know, and I think it's a lovely country, and I do admire their attitude of caring for all their citizens such as in the matter of access to health care.

If you decide to sell your Orcas Island property when you leave, let me know.....we have a couple really wealthy friends who would love a nice, big island property up there.

Alan
3-16-11, 7:44am
Just out of curiosity, what is the moral theory under which the government can lay claim to 70% or more of a person's income?
Additionally, at what income level should tax credits, which are offered to everyone, be denied for no other reason than a desire to take money away from the people who have it?

I've honestly never understood the rationale.

LDAHL
3-16-11, 12:16pm
Just out of curiosity, what is the moral theory under which the government can lay claim to 70% or more of a person's income?
Additionally, at what income level should tax credits, which are offered to everyone, be denied for no other reason than a desire to take money away from the people who have it?

I've honestly never understood the rationale.

I think the basic argument would be that that a large portion of wealth is generated due to the social capital (physical infrastructure, rule of law, education and basic cultural attitudes) that makes it possible to work, risk and invest. Call it the “No man is an island” theory. Since so much wealth is owed to the existence of this pool of social capital, it is considered morally acceptable to require a portion of income to be reinvested back into that pool.

Of course, the counterargument is that government is not necessarily the main source of social capital: and that while we may feel a moral obligation is owed society, that does not mean that we owe a moral debt to government as one of many instrumentalities of society. In this view, government exists for practical reasons, not moral ones. Saying you owe a moral obligation to pay a high level of taxes is like saying you have a moral obligation to change the oil in your car regularly. There may be consequences if you don’t, but its not an ethical imperative.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. I think we all benefit to some extent from our existing social capital, part of which we access through government. Some reasonable degree of taxation would seem to be ethically supportable as one of many obligations a person owes the society he lives in. On the other hand, I think it’s a mistake to equate government with society at large and assume we owe most of what we are and have to government. I also think its morally indefensible to use taxation as a weapon against people we disapprove of or as a social engineering tool.

ApatheticNoMore
3-16-11, 12:29pm
I think the basic argument would be that that a large portion of wealth is generated due to the social capital (physical infrastructure, rule of law, education and basic cultural attitudes) that makes it possible to work, risk and invest

Honestly it's not just due to social capital, in some cases it's all due to direct transfers to the rich :P (the banksters). But also it's not just due to social capital, some of it is due to natural capital that is non-renewable and that we'll never get back.


I also think its morally indefensible to use taxation as a weapon against people we disapprove of or as a social engineering tool.

So would you agree that the mortgage interest deduction is immoral? As a weapon against renters and a social engineering tool to get people to buy houses? Me, I just think it's extremely unfair and biased toward the rich, but I don't use moral terminology lightly. I mean honestly if I went around decrying the mortgage interest deduction as the height of immorality all the time I'd be so hyperbolic and moralistic that noone would take me seriously anymore, even when I started talking about say torture being immoral. I merely say it is unfair.

You can define "people we disagree with" very broadly but if your talking about taxation on say non-renewable and polluting resource use, it's not really about "people we disagree with". It's about internalizing externalized costs (read environmental costs). Because if pollution is produced the cost is pushed on to the vast majority but the benefit captured by a few.

Alan
3-16-11, 12:46pm
I think the basic argument would be that that a large portion of wealth is generated due to the social capital (physical infrastructure, rule of law, education and basic cultural attitudes) that makes it possible to work, risk and invest.


In a nation of equal opportunity under the law, shouldn't that mean that everyone is treated the same? Or is there an economic theory that says that those who work, risk & invest more successfully than others must be penalized for their accomplishments?



Saying you owe a moral obligation to pay a high level of taxes is like saying you have a moral obligation to change the oil in your car regularly. There may be consequences if you don’t, but its not an ethical imperative.


And isn't the push for "social justice" simply attempting to force a perceived moral obligation onto one group in favor of another? I've heard the concept of "redistribution of wealth" bandied about as an ethical imperative to the point that many believe it is a government's duty to make it so.


I think it’s a mistake to equate government with society at large and assume we owe most of what we are and have to government. I also think its morally indefensible to use taxation as a weapon against people we disapprove of or as a social engineering tool.

Agreed, and this is the root of my original question which I still hope to hear an answer from someone making a case for just that purpose.

loosechickens
3-16-11, 1:38pm
of course, in the past thirty years or so, we HAVE been engaged in a massive "redistribution of wealth".........to the very people who already have most of it. Who are using that wealth to gain access, influence legislation, and bend the rule of law ever more in favor of making it easier for them to continue redistributing even more of it to themselves.

and a lot of people, who are manipulated into supporting stuff that works directly against their own interests, usually by emotional issues unrelated to this big redistribution of ever more wealth to the already wealthy, help them do it.

I don't have any trouble understanding the rich using their money and power to try to game the system to tilt ever more in their favor.....I don't like it, I don't agree with the morality of it, but at least they are working in their own self interest. Where I have the problem is understanding how many ordinary people are happy to assist them in their endeavors, emptying their own pockets ever more in the process.

it's quite possible, even probable that rates such as the 70-90% highest brackets of the past may have been too high, but the level to which they have dropped is definitely too low (although if you ask a person in those "high" brackets of the thirties, you'll hear a constant litany of literally having the food taken from their mouths............

Just as the 55% inheritance tax bracket may have been unfairly high, but rather than doing away with taxing that "windfall" to the beneficiaries, as we would tax any other "windfall" coming their way, like lottery winnings, etc., the answer might be better to tax as ordinary income, rather than try to do away with the tax altogether. Because the inheritance tax has been helpful to the society at large, for increasing charitable giving by the wealthy, for slowing down the accumulation of massive amounts of capital in the hands of just a few families, and for taking the burden of coming up with that needed tax money and keeping it on the shoulders of those most able to pay it without difficulty, as opposed to sucking ever more from those struggling in the middle class.

JMHO

LDAHL
3-16-11, 1:52pm
Honestly it's not just due to social capital, in some cases it's all due to direct transfers to the rich :P (the banksters). But also it's not just due to social capital, some of it is due to natural capital that is non-renewable and that we'll never get back.



So would you agree that the mortgage interest deduction is immoral? As a weapon against renters and a social engineering tool to get people to buy houses? Me, I just think it's extremely unfair and biased toward the rich, but I don't use moral terminology lightly. I mean honestly if I went around decrying the mortgage interest deduction as the height of immorality all the time I'd be so hyperbolic and moralistic that noone would take me seriously anymore, even when I started talking about say torture being immoral. I merely say it is unfair.

You can define "people we disagree with" very broadly but if your talking about taxation on say non-renewable and polluting resource use, it's not really about "people we disagree with". It's about internalizing externalized costs (read environmental costs). Because if pollution is produced the cost is pushed on to the vast majority but the benefit captured by a few.

There might be times when you defend corporate bailouts, of the transfer of a large part of GM's carcass to the UAW, but that might (arguably) be justified on the practical rather than moral grounds of trying to preserve a functioning economy.

I would certainly agree that environmental protection is a public good, although we probably be at odds over the extent to which the tax system should be used to discourage certain forms of energy and the extent to which "the many" actually benefit from the existing energy infrastructure. I would also argue that most natural resources require a social capital base in terms of technology and property rights to transform them into what I would understand as wealth.

I agreed with John McCain when he wanted to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction. I think it is a form of social engineering indefensible on either ethical or practical grounds. However I think you're laying it on a bit thick when you say everyting we think is wrong is the "height of immorality". I would reserve epithets like that for cannibalism or the designated hitter rule.

LDAHL
3-16-11, 2:00pm
In a nation of equal opportunity under the law, shouldn't that mean that everyone is treated the same? Or is there an economic theory that says that those who work, risk & invest more successfully than others must be penalized for their accomplishments?



And isn't the push for "social justice" simply attempting to force a perceived moral obligation onto one group in favor of another? I've heard the concept of "redistribution of wealth" bandied about as an ethical imperative to the point that many believe it is a government's duty to make it so.



Agreed, and this is the root of my original question which I still hope to hear an answer from someone making a case for just that purpose.


I think we're essentially in agreement. I think we should try, however clumsily in an imperfect world, to push for equality of opportunity. I think its a mistake to push for some vision of equal outcomes because of the repressive nature of most of the tools that have historically been deployed to that end.

freein05
3-16-11, 4:28pm
With our current debt problems I do not think there is anyway you can balance the budget with cuts alone. There will have to be tax increases they should be progressive with those making more money paying a higher percentage of their income but everyone should pay something. I would also like to see most if not all of the deductions eliminated both personal and corporate. If that were done there may not be a need for a tax increase because actual tax revenues would probably increase enough to reduce the deficit.

loosechickens
3-16-11, 8:27pm
" I would also like to see most if not all of the deductions eliminated both personal and corporate. If that were done there may not be a need for a tax increase because actual tax revenues would probably increase enough to reduce the deficit." (freein05)
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I find myself tending to agree with eliminating a goodly number of the loopholes, favorable treatment of some types of income, etc. At this point in our lives, we pay consideraby less Federal income tax than a person with a similar amount of earned income from a job would pay.

Because of deft use of a tax provision that allowed our broker to sell most of our equities after the 2008 crash, invest the money in similar stocks in the same sectors, (i.e., selling Coke, buying Pepsi, selling Halliburton buying Schlumberger), so as to not miss a bump upward in the markets for the next 30 days, then after 31 days, selling those purchases and rebuying most of the original equities. That neatly "harvested" a BIG amount of paper capital losses that we can now use happily to protect our capital gains from taxation for quite a long time. Since most of these were long term hold dividend stocks, this little facet in the tax code allowed us to "enjoy" the capital losses, without actually permanently incurring them. Since we'll probably never sell those stocks, unless the companies are doing badly, because we hold them for the dividends, our kids will probably inherit them, yet we'll have been able to shelter lots and lots of capital gains from taxes over these next years because of that tax code provision.

We pay taxes on only half our stock dividends, have investments in some limited partnerships and tax exempt municipal bonds that have favorable tax treatment, and since one of us is over 65, (me), I count as "two people" for a standard deduction.

All those ways that our income is treated differently (and more preferentially) than income earned by being out there working, should really be changed in our tax code. Our money spends exactly the same as a ditch diggers or any other worker, yet, without even working, we pay less. What is fair about that?

It's not fair, but since that wealthy top few percent earn most of THEIR money in the same way, the tax code has been designed to tilt the playing field in their direction, and those of us ordinary people who live on investments, albeit at a much lower level, are carried along on the coat tails of a policy that wasn't made for us. In fact, the policy was made so that the rich can continue to get richer, while the middle classs continued to be squeezed.

If you're poor, there are services (because those in power don't want the poor rising up and revolting), and if you're rich, or can arrange your life to live as though you were, the system is nicely fixed in your favor, but if you're an ordinary American, getting up every day, going out and working your butt off, for the last thirty years or so, you are the ones who get few of the breaks, and pay a higher amount of tax on the same amounts of income than the very wealthy.

Yet, probably half of those middle class people seem to support this redistribution of wealth to the richest among us, quite happily, and even vote for the people who make that nicely tilted playing field for the rich even less level. They wonder why they seem to be doing so much less well than they did years ago, but blame the wrong "enemies", and cozy right up to the folks who are busily pulling the money right out of their pockets, IMHO.

Obviously, those of you who are conservatives here will not agree with that assessment, but that's how it seems to me, from my vantage point. And the system gets less fair, and the "equality of opportunity" becomes even less every day. There was a time, not so long ago, where America was the country where an ordinary person could really get ahead and become rich. And that still happens, for a talented few. But in recent years, ordinary people in America have stayed stratified at the levels of their parents, or even fallen behind them, and social stratification is actually more in the U.S. than it is in Europe, which was the original place of social and economic stratification, yet has now been surpassed in that dubious accomplishment, by the United States of America.

I think people realize that they are being conned, they realize that things have slipped, but they are really kind of confused as to why and who to blame. And there are no end of loud voices giving them scapegoats, and emotional issues for them to coalesce around when voting, so they don't notice what is really happening.

It used to bother me a lot more. These days I'm almost to the point where if the American people can be so easily propagandized as to give away ever more to that top few percent, (and me, albeit almost by accident, since I'm certainly not the intended beneficiary of the rules designed to benefit the richest), who am I to worry about them?

ApatheticNoMore
3-17-11, 2:21am
Because nobody really understands all the scams out there. I know about the federal reserve and the trillions floated to protect business as usual. That I know about.

But I didn't know about using a broker to avoid capital gains. This is not because I don't have investments. It's because I've always managed them myself. Who knew there were all kinds of games you could play if only you had a broker, I guess it's fools who follow John Boggle and invest in index funds or on their own because brokers are "a waste of money".

To think the only deduction I've ever taken in my life is very small amounts for education expenses. Ha, and the only "welfare" or "entitlements" I've ever received in my life is 6 months of unemployment (yea I've used schools and visited national parks but that's not generally considered either "welfare" or "entitlements"). And the tax code tells me things like I'm too rich to invest in a traditional IRA (but I have a Roth), the state of CA says I'm too rich to get renters credits, and yet I can't afford to buy a house where I live either and so therefore don't get a mortgage deduction. No kids, and so of course I'm not taking a deduction there. Because I don't itemize (nothing to itemize) I can't subtract my state taxes from my federal taxes even though I live in a state with very high state income and sales taxes. I find out my parents pay a fraction of what I do in state income taxes because the state doesn't tax social security (plus prop 13 means they barely pay property taxes either).

dmc
3-17-11, 8:46am
It seams strange to me Loosechicken's, that you say taxes are not high enough, yet you use every way possible to avoid them yourself. I guess you really just want other peoples money.

At least if your taxes are lower, maybe you can send NPR a little extra.

LDAHL
3-17-11, 12:11pm
It seams strange to me Loosechicken's, that you say taxes are not high enough, yet you use every way possible to avoid them yourself. I guess you really just want other peoples money.

At least if your taxes are lower, maybe you can send NPR a little extra.

I have heard liberals sneer at Tea Party types who feel government is too intrusive for cashing their Social Security Checks.

I have heard conservatives invite liberals who want tax rates to rise to make voluntary contributions to the Treasury.


I’m not sure either attitude is justified. Trying to get the best deal you can from a system you’re forced to participate in doesn’t strike me as all that hypocritical.

loosechickens
3-17-11, 12:54pm
"It seams strange to me Loosechicken's, that you say taxes are not high enough, yet you use every way possible to avoid them yourself. I guess you really just want other peoples money.

At least if your taxes are lower, maybe you can send NPR a little extra." (dmc)
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We pay our taxes according to the rules as set out, dmc.....and count every dollar that comes to us, even if it's someone paying my sweetie fifty bucks to help them with their solar system. That fifty bucks, paid in cash, goes right into the books and is shown on our taxes as miscellaneous income.

We take the deductions available to us, just as a person with a mortgage takes the mortgage interest deduction, or an earned income tax credit. Just as a person with children takes the deduction allowed for dependents. We pay a broker, who is also a certified financial planner, and he manages our money with an eye to tax advantage. That is his job.

As one poster said, many believe that "brokers are just out to get your money", "manage your investments yourself", "just invest in mutual funds", etc., and that's fine if people want to do that. The most important lesson I ever learned from my father was that you learn most from your enemies....but the SECOND most useful thing I ever learned from him is "no one ever goes broke making a profit, and don't be afraid to pay for professional advice, commissions and fees if your bottom line is improved enough to pay them and still make as much or more profit than you could make doing it yourself".

Our broker has been our broker for more than twenty years, and was my father's broker during his lifetime. His son, who is a CFP has joined him, and over the years, they have honored their mission statement to us "we don't do get rich quick, we specialize in growing wealth, slowly but surely", and they have performed in spades. Virtually every year, we can deduct their fees and after all costs, will still have beaten the market by a good amount, and through such rough waters as the 1987 crash, the tech bubble in 1999, and this big crash in 2008, their steady advice and steering of our little ship has meant that we came through all of them in much better shape than most, and recovered quickly.

Over the years, they have proven to be worth every penny we have every paid to them, and we have ended up far more wealthy than we ever could have had we taken care of our money, and tried to grow it ourselves. Others may feel differently, but I wouldn't try to take out my own appendix, defend myself in court, OR manage my own money, when the option is to pay a competent professional whose business it is to think about those things 24/7.

Perhaps the difference between me and many of you conservatives who defend these perks in the tax code designed to tilt the playing field ever more in favor of the rich......I will vote for the people who will take those tax perks away, even if the ones they eliminate are ones that favor me.

I would prefer to see more fairness to the people who go out and WORK for their money. I don't believe it is fair that my income, passive in nature, and not requiring any sweat from MY brow, should be taxed at lower rates.

I will vote for what I think is best for society, not for what serves my own best interests. And the past thirty years of Republican policies , with the steady redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy is not a healthy thing for a democratic society, in my opinion. Almost all the gains in wealth in the last few decades have found their way into the pockets of those with the very most money, and the process continues......

As a member of the "investor class" in however modest a manner, the rules and laws that Republicans make sure to pass for the interest of the fat cats also help us. But I don't vote for them. I'm an unwitting and sometimes unwilling beneficiary of their "largess". And, yes, I will take all legal deductions, just as I count every penny of even miscellaneous income scrupulously on my tax return. As others do with the deductions available to them.

We become members of any NPR station in the country where we spend more than a month or so. Currently, we are members of two in southern CA, two in AZ, one in NV, and just dropped the one in Miami, because we don't expect to be back there for awhile. When we are in an area for just a few weeks, or up to a month, we send maybe a $20-25 donation to whatever NPR station we listen to in that area. We just did that this past month for the little NPR station in Yuma AZ, that is operated out of AZ Western College.

We have supported PBS and NPR for many years.....PBS not so much because most of those years we didn't have TV, but we've pretty much supported NPR stations all over the country since the seventies. And since we've been living in the RV and living nomadically, sometimes that has meant full memberships in as many as half a dozen NPR stations a year.

Nice try, though.

Edited to Add: Thank you LDAHL, for this....."I’m not sure either attitude is justified. Trying to get the best deal you can from a system you’re forced to participate in doesn’t strike me as all that hypocritical."

That is our feeling as well. We don't agree with the tax code as forumlated, giving us lots of advantages, and are willing to vote for the people who would change it, even if our own tax advantages disappeared. But until it is changed, we will accept the advantages to us. Just as others accept the advantages that come to them of mortgage interest deductions, etc.

ApatheticNoMore
3-17-11, 1:18pm
People "inherit" brokers? (user brokers their parents had and so on) I mean whoever heard of such a thing? Wow, the rich really do live in a whole rarefied world of their own don't they? They take bizarre tax deductions you had never heard of involving gaming capital losses. They inherit brokers!

Really though my background is so solidly middle class to the core (not lower class, white collar college educated middle class), I was aware of very little of this. I'll take notes of course, might even find a way to use a tax avoidance scheme someday :D. But who knew?

Keep in mind I will vote for taxes when I think they are necessary too. I've voted for local taxes going to public transit. I'll vote for Jerry Browns plan to deal with the CA budget, even though it keeps existing increased tax rates as they are currently. The thing is I also actually PAY these taxes! I don't have any magical tax avoidance schemes that somehow exempt me (oh I have a 401k, such a well hidden tax avoidance game that is). I will say, I'm a lot more skeptical of what the federal government spends our money on than the localities and states and even they have their flaws.

LDAHL
3-17-11, 1:35pm
Perhaps the difference between me and many of you conservatives who defend these perks in the tax code designed to tilt the playing field ever more in favor of the rich......I will vote for the people who will take those tax perks away, even if the ones they eliminate are ones that favor me.



In fairness, blaming conservatives for warping the tax code glosses over half the problem. There are plenty of democrats pushing for breaks for various interest groups, regions, industries, unions etc. and looking to use taxation as a way to force the economy into directions they find congenial, such as cap and trade. Witness the Obama Administration's creative use of refundable tax credits to grant "tax refunds" to people who don't pay taxes. The last comprehensive reform of the Tax Code happened under Reagan, and the best ideas I've heard in the intervening years about making it fairer and simpler have come from the likes of Steve Forbes and Paul Ryan.

There are plenty of panderers on both sides of the aisle, and postulating fat cat conspiracy theories strikes me as a gross oversimplification of a political culture that views taxation as a tool for rewarding friends and punishing enemies rather than a means of raising revenue.

loosechickens
3-17-11, 1:49pm
ApatheticNoMore.......anyone who holds individual stocks could have taken advantage of that tax provision, but people who manage their own money are often not aware of the complexities of the tax code because they don't make it their fulltime business to manage money. Not that they couldn't do what our broker did, but that they might not be aware of their ability to do so.

If all you hold is mutual funds, I don't think it would work, as mutual funds buy and sell stocks all the time, and you have no control over their trades. Our broker did nothing after the crash with the few mutual funds we hold, only sold and rebought individual stocks. And the reason he didn't just sell and then hold the money in cash for the 31 days, but invested it instead in similar companies in the same sectors, and in our same equity mix of sectors, was to protect in case of a big resurgence in the markets in that period, so that we were still invested. At the end of the 31 days, he re-evaluated, we sold most of the new purchases, but not all, and rebought the original companies. Some we left alone, and kept the new company.

It allowed us to "harvest" the capital losses that those original stocks had suffered in the crash, and when we rebought the stock, our new "cost basis" was a far lower number. Now if we were going to sell those stocks anytime in the near future, it would not have been a good thing to harvest those losses, because as the stocks regained their value over time, there would be a huge capital gain were they to be sold.

But these particular stocks are stocks that we hold long term, for dividend income, and will probably die holding them, leaving them to our children, whose "cost basis" will be set at the price the stock was worth on the date that we died (actually you can pick among several dates, death or six months later, I think), so whatever gain has occurred during the period between 2008 and when we die and the kids inherit, will be protected because the "cost basis" will start over again at that date.

Is it fair? I don't think so. It certainly favors those who live on investments, and certainly favors that kind of income over that people earn by working hard at their jobs. But that is what has happened in this country.....slowly but surely, almost unnoticed by most, the playing field has been tilted more and more to the top few percent (and those of us who ride on their coat tails in some ways) and more and more against the ordinary person. Who realizes that something has happened, who sees that conditions for the middle class have not improved over the past thirty years since serious attention has been being paid to that long term plan to consolidate power among the very wealthy in this country. It's effects are being felt, but as yet, especially since people are being handed handy scapegoats to blame....."those illegal immigrants", for example, "liberals" for another, the process continues and is even accelerating because as more and more laws and regulations favor corporations, stockholders, the wealthiest, they become even more powerful, have even a bigger piece of the pie, and can more easily bend the regulations and laws into the directions that favor them.

The days of the "robber barons" are back.....we just don't realize it yet. And few of us are real students of history, so the process occurs over and over. Watching the successful attempts to break unions in the public sector, which have already been broken for the most part in the private sector.......will eventually bring us back to the conditions that created the first unions in the first place, total exploitation of the workers.....and the pendulum will begin to swing back again.....we hope. Although at some point, if enough power is concentrated, we may find that we have actually lost our abilities and rights to effect those changes, and We the People, has disappeared. JMHO

LDAHL
3-17-11, 1:52pm
Really though my background is so solidly middle class to the core (not lower class, white collar college educated middle class), I was aware of very little of this. I'll take notes of course, might even find a way to use a tax avoidance scheme someday :D. But who knew?



Aren't you making a virtue out of ignorance here? Surely a white collar college educated fellow such as yourself is capable of grasping the intricacies of loss carryforwards. All you need to do is download and read an IRS publication or two. You don't require high (or even moderately) priced talent to look after your legitimate interests.

loosechickens
3-17-11, 2:06pm
"People "inherit" brokers? (user brokers their parents had and so on) I mean whoever heard of such a thing? Wow, the rich really do live in a whole rarefied world of their own don't they? They take bizarre tax deductions you had never heard of involving gaming capital losses. They inherit brokers!"
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My background is completely middle class, ApatheticNoMore, and my parents, being children of the Depression, were very serious savers, never had debt, lived below their means, etc., and saved and invested. My father grew up really poor, in a small town in WV, went to work for a grocery chain as a bag boy at the age of 14, supported his mother until he married and his sister's were old enough to take over, and worked his way up as stock clerk, assistant manager, manager, supervisor, assistant general superintendent, and by the time he retired, was in charge of nearly 60 large supermarkets. Yet, he never really made all that much money.....at that time it was a field with very large responsibilities, but not that great of salary.

He died at 69, but my mother lived until she was 91, and was able to be comfortable during her retirement because of their savings ways, which she continued. When she died, I received a modest inheritance.Although we had already provided for our own retirement by by saving and investing, living simply, not having debt, etc., and allowing our savings to grow over the years, that inheritance, while providing a degree more comfort, was not actually needed for our wellbeing.

Because my father liked and trusted his broker, we chose him to manage our savings as well. it's not a matter of "inheriting a broker", it's a matter of finding a broker you can trust, who will manage your money to your advantage, and not necessarily to his or hers, over time. Our broker makes decisions that will work for us, as opposed to his own short term profit, because his outlook is long term, and a client who finds the broker looking out for the client is a satisfied client, who in the end, over the years, will be more profitable to the broker than if he took short term advantage.

In all the thirty years that my sweetie and I have been married, there was not a single year when we were working that our income even came close to the median income in the U.S. We lived in a rural area of PA, and even professional jobs there paid far less than in other areas. We were able to amass our net worth by living far below our modest means, saving and investing, putting every principle that can be found on these forums to work. Raised a big garden, put up food, I made most of our clothes that didn't come from yard sales and thrift stores, never had a car payment because we paid cash for older cars, paid off a mortage that was 2 1/2 times our annual income in five years by living on one modest income (and even paying extra on the mortgage on that one) and taking the entire other person's modest income and paying it onto the principal of the mortgage, then continued to pay that large percentage of our income into investments. there were years when we made $20,000 and lived on $8,000 of it and saved the rest.

You're speaking as though we are from some kind of wealthy family, yet both our families were decidedly middle class, and we are as well. we have amassed a net worth that puts us way up there, yes, but practically any person on these boards, with reasonable health, a regular job and an ability to self discipline and save, could have accomplished the same thing.

When we walked out the door over 18 years ago, we never touched our retirement savings, just left them grow, and lived extremely frugally as nomads, worked for our needs, and even managed to add to those retirement savings, which continued to grow. Eventually, those savings produced enough income for our modest life, so we mostly retired. With the addition of the modest inheritance from my mother, we are more comfortable, but did not need that contribution for our frugal life. We still live below our income now.

It's why I'm here.....because I believe in the principles that this Simple Living forum espouses, because I KNOW from my own experience, and from the experience of my parents that it works. Not because somehow I was born rich or made a huge pile somehow. From day to day choices, choices that we still make today. Because even though we have the net worth to support a more lavish lifestyle, we still live in a very simple manner, still shop in thrift stores, still do all the things we advocate here on these boards.....

Quite honestly, if you make too much money for a regular IRA, you make more money than the median income in this country, a better position than we have been in for our adult lifetime. Long term and careful adherence to the Simple Living philosophy, strong self discipline, and educating yourself as to mazimizing your abilities and knowledge might be worthwhile for you as well, in amassing net worth. And as IDAHL said, you can avail yourself of knowledge without paying anyone if you choose.

ApatheticNoMore
3-17-11, 2:13pm
Oh I'll note the broker stuff. Use it? Hmm, probably just continue with mutuals right now.

I definitely think the wealthy (some of them anyway) get their handouts. I mean just the ton that has been given to the banks and all the while the regulatory lapses that many argue caused the problems in the first place have not been fixed. A Democratic president with initially a Democratic congress and they were not fixed. I don't blame liberals, I just don't think there ARE many real liberals in existence (maybe socialist Bernie Sanders or something, at least he broke the Fed news). Most of the Democratic party is just playing the same game as the Republicans, maybe a tad better on economics but then just as bad on wars and torture and civil liberties and still in bed with the bankers etc etc., so that voting for most of them feels like voting against my interest indeed. As for "illegal immigrants", I do think they suppress the wages of low wage workers and take some jobs from them. It's an economic argument, when you flood the labor market what happens to wages? McDonald's or Starbucks or whatever will always still pay at least minimum wage and not deal under the table because large companies of that sort would never get away with it. But lots of smaller companies do get away with it. It's a flooding the labor market principle just as much as outsourcing. You outsource jobs to cheap labor in China, you in-source jobs to illegal immigrants that will work for nothing here (who are they going to complain to?). And it's all about cheap labor. So anyone who argues that illegal immigrants couldn't possibly lower wages is almost too Politically Correct to manage to follow an economic argument it seems. That you can't even mention the issue because there's enough people willing to let their fascist flag fly at the first opportunity (not saying on this board but in the larger society), yea well, people go around with barely hidden aggression that they project on to the political arena (not use in a constructive way to solve political problems but just turn into pure destruction) and that's what fascist tendencies are. Sigh ....

loosechickens
3-17-11, 2:47pm
If it's any comfort to you, ApatheticNoMore, my father never went to college, although my mother did graduate from the state university in West Virginia. While my husband is college educated, and has a master's degree, I never went to college at all. I ran away and got married at a very young age, enthralled with a glamorous and handsome guy, and had two children by the time I was nineteen years old. That marriage, while interesting and adventurous, and high in income, never produced any net worth, because my husband could spend it way faster than even he could make it, spitting me out after fifteen years for a cutie barely older than our kids, and no money. I never began to amass savings until after my divorce in 1975, and when I married my sweetie in 1979, found another tightwad and we steamed ahead at a great rate, despite modest incomes, from then on.

I am pretty much self educated, being of a personality that has always considered learning to be a lifetime process and have had little difficulty with leading a life of self education. I've been a compulsive reader my entire life, have a curious mind, and have no difficulty holding my own with far more educated people. But the net worth has come from nothing more than huge effort in the savings deparment, a willingness to live very simply and small day to day decisions.

If I were living in southern CA now, and had an income that was large enough to prevent me from qualifying for a traditional IRA, but wanted to be able to save more, I'd probably be living in a studio apartment, having roommates, trying to find a position as a resident manager at a small apartment building of just a few units where I could have reduced or free rent while still being able to hold a job, or look for a long term caretaking position or some other option that would allow me to reduce my housing costs considerably below average. For example, I know a guy in Malibu who lives in a tiny cottage on the estate of a well known sports figure. He pays a very small rent, but provides security of someone living on site (servants do not live in and the owner of the place is away most of the time), and pinches himself every day as he rides his motorcycle up into the hills overlooking Malibu to this beautiful estate, paying less rent than he would pay in a small studio apartment most places in CA.

We've always lived in unconventional ways, but ways that minimized the costs of our living. Even now, when we are in southern CA, we are in a beautiful resort with indoor heated pool, outdoor pool, large hot tub, gym, tennis courts, pottery studio, beautiful landscaping, AND it only costs us $400 per month. Of course, you have to be willing to live in an RV, AND not wear a bathing suit in the pool, but it's an inexpensive place to live in a very expensive area.....and live really well, I might add...... ;-)

I've got to get outta here....my fingers are getting sore, and you guys have probably long since quit reading......

kenh
3-17-11, 6:32pm
No, Loose, I read to the end; enjoyed hearing more details of your history.
This discussion also shows how important investing is for a simple lifestyle, but also how complex and unfair the taxation of unearned income is. It makes a political conundrum for some. I hope we can soon do away with all income taxes and simply tax sales and services (service mean stock transactions as well). Simply causes fairly!

Also Loose, I would like to hear if good luck and good health were as important to your success as determined simple living and good investing obviously were.

Zigzagman
3-17-11, 7:29pm
House Passes Bill To Defund NPR (http://www.businessinsider.com/house-npr-and-pbs-2011-3)

How's that Tea Party GOP working out for ya??

Peace

creaker
3-17-11, 8:13pm
House Passes Bill To Defund NPR (http://www.businessinsider.com/house-npr-and-pbs-2011-3)

How's that Tea Party GOP working out for ya??

Peace

I though this was just weird - it's almost like blacklisting.

I wonder if other products bought with federal funds will also be targeted if they are considered too slanted to the left?

loosechickens
3-17-11, 8:35pm
"Also Loose, I would like to hear if good luck and good health were as important to your success as determined simple living and good investing obviously were." (kenh)
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absolutely, kenh.....absolutely. I've gone on over and over on these forums that no one EVER "makes it all on their own", because even if they didn't have direct help, they had the "wind in their sails" of many, sometimes invisible things that helped them to achieve success.

Good health, good luck, being born into a family who valued a work ethic, taught financial responsibility, had respect for critical thinking skills, whether you had medical and dental care when needed as you were growing up, access to good schools, a respect for learning was mirrored to you by role models in or out of the home......any number of things that if you hadn't had them tucked in the back pocket of your "life bank account" you might not have succeeded no matter how hard you worked.

this country is full of people who have worked their butts off all their life, not been the beneficiaries of that "natural capital" of health and luck, have suffered chronic illnesses, accident, bad luck, children with medical or developmental problems that took enormous amounts of time and money.

in the end, you need all those things, usually......the things you can control, such as working hard, making good financial decisions, practicing self discipline in matters large and small, AND a huge portion of those extras that the Universe just hands you, such as what I've described above.

However, even with good luck, health, good family values of thrift, respect for learning and thinking, etc., unless that is coupled with the hard work and good decisions, it's unlikely to end with good results. For success, one needs both.......the individual effort and the unseen and often ignored bursts of unworked for "wind in the sails" that many middle class people take for granted.

But never think that just hard work and good decisions is all it takes. That "luck" in many ways is very important, too. And both my sweetie and I acknowledge a great deal of that "wind in the sails" to go along with the hard work and good decisions. Definitely.

iris lily
3-17-11, 10:56pm
House Passes Bill To Defund NPR (http://www.businessinsider.com/house-npr-and-pbs-2011-3)

How's that Tea Party GOP working out for ya??

Peace

You know what, I don't mind that NPR is losing its gubmnt funding.

People, we've got to cut down on spending. That means everyone has to suffer. NPR is not an essential service. I love NPR, I'll write checks, they will have to cope with loss of tax dollars.

iris lily
3-17-11, 10:58pm
I though this was just weird - it's almost like blacklisting.

I wonder if other products bought with federal funds will also be targeted if they are considered too slanted to the left?

oh hell yeah, let's hope so anyways.

LDAHL
3-18-11, 9:20am
House Passes Bill To Defund NPR (http://www.businessinsider.com/house-npr-and-pbs-2011-3)

How's that Tea Party GOP working out for ya??

Peace

So far, so good.

Gregg
3-18-11, 10:27am
Also Loose, I would like to hear if good luck and good health were as important to your success as determined simple living and good investing obviously were.

There is an old quote, attributed to Seneca: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity". I can't imagine anyone who embodies that more than LC. She's living life on her terms because she prepared for it and has taken advantage of opportunities when they came about. Regarding health, people can certainly have bad luck, but good health comes from taking care of yourself (more preparation), not from blind luck. We all know the steps to take to at least minimize the risks or the impact when something does happen. An ounce of prevention is worth a trillion pounds of healthcare. From what I know LC didn't sit around and wait for anyone to give her anything. That should be a good lesson for all of us. If you are proactive and put yourself in a position to succeed the odds are good that you will, but no one, including the government, will do it for you. Back to that pesky notion of personal responsibility...

Zigzagman
3-18-11, 11:19am
Back to that pesky notion of personal responsibility...

A Republican codeword for "Do as I say, not as I do". It reeks of “social Darwinism" .

I am an admirer of Loose and also love to hear her experiences. She is an excellent communicator, has empathy. and seems to "get it".

The NPR fiasco is nothing more than those on the right, who now control the purse strings, ensuring that a progressive point is as diminished as possible. I thought one of the purposes of government funding was to promote a society and values which were considered important. I think NPR provides that service and extremely well.

Oh well, at least we will still have "Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, and Funniest videos" and Faux News. Life in a center-right society is depressing. When will the social revolution start?

Peace

Alan
3-18-11, 12:33pm
1The NPR fiasco is nothing more than those on the right, who now control the purse strings, ensuring that a progressive point is as diminished as possible.

We used to call that propaganda. If we'd prefer to call it a progressive point, I'd still wonder why the public should fund it.

loosechickens
3-18-11, 12:37pm
Thank you Gregg.....for the kind words. I'm a big believer in "preparation meeting opportunity", although I also am acutely aware sometimes of how many advantages I had when I started the process, such as things we've mentioned above, such as middle class upbringing, having had dental care as a child, access to medical care when needed, taught a work ethic, and money handling skills. I know that there have been lots of points in our lives when plain, old fashioned good luck helped us along, and times when only perserverance and hard, dogged work at making good daily decisions are what made the difference.

you guys won't have me around yapping at you today about my favorite ranting points.......we're about to leave our beautiful little BLM spot here in the desert outside Ajo AZ, and head across the Tohono O'Odham Indian reservation with a planned stop in Sells AZ where the tribe runs the Desert Rain Cafe, specializing in traditional Indian foods, such as mesquite flour, tepary beans, cacti in various guises, blue corn, etc. Delicious food.......then on to a night in the parking lot of a casino near Tucson, so we can run into Tucson and see some old RVing friends now off the road, hit Trader Joe's for groceries, maybe have a Barnes and Noble fix, then head down around Patagonia and into the Chiracahuas for awhile.

We've had ample opportunity to see everybody's tax dollars at work here outside Ajo, as the Border Patrol and their "prey" have been playing cops and robbers all around us in the middle of the night all week. And in the daytimes, the helicopters fly slowly down and around all the folds in the hills, and when we see them stop and circle, we know it's only a few minutes until the dirt road comes alive with the procession of Border Patrol vehicles and the "cage" van they transport folks in.

Actually, the BP guys say that travel is WAY down compared to previous years, mostly due to better interdiction close to the border because of the virtual fence, drones, etc., and the jobs situation here in the U.S., so many fewer folks heading north for work. However, the ones bringing in the drugs that Americans are sucking up are still doing a good business.

But....getting woken up at 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. every night gets old after a bit, no matter how beautiful the desert is here, and how good the birdwatching....plus, we're starting to long for a bit of "bright lights, big city" and hear that Tucson has a new Ethiopian restaurant we haven't tried yet....

getting ready to stow the dish and start the engine...........more from the next location, hopefully.....

bae
3-18-11, 2:02pm
We've had ample opportunity to see everybody's tax dollars at work here outside Ajo, as the Border Patrol and their "prey" have been playing cops and robbers all around us in the middle of the night all week.

...

But....getting woken up at 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. every night gets old after a bit, no matter how beautiful the desert is here, and how good the birdwatching...

I hear you there. I took my mother over to the mainland and back yesterday for a painful medical procedure. We took our boat, to minimize the travel time and make it easier on her. On the way over and back, every military jet out of Whidbey Naval Air Station decided to use my boat as a practice target, and buzzed us at high speed and low altitude, producing huge amounts of noise each time. Not very helpful for a restful journey for my mother. I should have brought the 37mm flare rifle...

loosechickens
3-18-11, 9:42pm
yeah, bae.....between the Border Patrol playing chase 'em, the smugglers sneaking around on the dirt road without lights (you could hear the wheels crunching the gravel even without the lights), it wasn't all that restful......then in the daytime, add in the A-10s and other planes from the Barry Goldwater gunnery range north of Ajo flying by....... ;-) And, just as your boat was, the RV out there in the middle of nowhere makes a great practice target.....we are used to having the fighter jets go over us, sometimes upside down, WAY lower than I am sure is legal....but young guys are young guys, and I'm the mother of a pilot myself, so..........

tonight, we ended up on the Indian reservation boondocked at the intersection of Rt. 86 and 386 (the road up to Kitt Peak)....as we passed by today, we called up to the observatory to see if they had any cancellations for their "star party" tonight, and they didn't, but they had two cancellations for tomorrow night, so we'll wait. It's hard to get tickets for their program, because they only take a few people each night to look through telescopes, etc., and people make reservations for months in advance....we can never do that because we never have any idea where we'll BE months in advance......

very dark skies here, many miles from anything, and a beautiful, about full moon tonight.....don't know how adversely the full moon might make star viewing tomorrow night, but couldn't ask for a better location than here to watch the moon......

It's almost scary to see how much "taxpayer dollars on the hoof" is evident down here in southern AZ, especially since because of the recession and lack of jobs, and unfriendly atmosphere toward the Mexicans in AZ, traffic is only a trickle compared to what it's been in past years.......even the Border Patrol guys recognize it's more and more "good guys" chasing fewer and fewer "prey", but it's provided a huge number of jobs in this area, and the influx of money has revitalized places like Ajo....there's a big, new BP complex between Ajo and Why and when we drove by there this morning, there were well over a hundred cars in the employee parking lot.......

Hope your mom is o.k.

edited for a danged typo......

ApatheticNoMore
3-19-11, 2:39pm
As for the whole luck versus effort debate. On some level it's probably unresolvable. It it: how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, or which came first the chicken or the egg, or what is the sound of one hand clapping. You can say cancer is probably x% lifestyle, and y% environment, and z% genes. But nobody really knows why one individual develops cancer and another doesn't. You can try to isolate the variables on a macro level, you can't necessarily say much of anything about the cause on a micro level.

Now if we're talking about the U.S. politico-economic system: you can quite easily argue that the top 1% or less have great advantages in their favor, the top .01% even more so, etc. (and even then they'll be some individual outliers). But for an example less extreme it's really hard to say. And it is probably psychologically healthier to think that you are in control of your life than that it is luck and circumstances. I believe it's what is called "attributional style" in psychology. The optimal "attributional style" is to attribute all good things in your life to your own effort and all bad things in your life to outside forces, bad luck, etc. (attributional styles are NOT rational - and I suspect some who are so eager to attribute their success to their own effort actually have this attributional style. Well it's not rational, but hey it's psychologically optimal).

And I'd think regardless it's psychologically healthier to think that you control the direction of your life (and this tends to go along with: and so do others or else you are making special exceptions for yourself which tends to be pretty darn arrogant IMO). So am I arguing it's psychologically healthier to be a conservative than a liberal? Well, American conservativism tends to have a lot of really weird cultural fetishes like militarism, bit of authoritarianism etc., that I don't tend to regard as psychologically healthy at all! But possibly psychologically healthier to be a libertarian than a a certain type of liberal.

But really people take all sorts of political positions for all sorts of reasons many of which are pathological, but you can't always tell that from the position taken. And you don't have to base liberalism on whether we have control over some degree of our success or not. You can base it on: although we have some degree of control over our fate this is helped a lot by public institutions like colleges etc. and even say social security (hey not having to take care of elderly parents can allow a lot of additional freedom in going ahead and taking control and making something of your life). You can base it on: although we all have some degree of control over our fate, the rich have become self-reinforcing at this point (money is used to buy political advantage which is used to lock in unfair advantages legally. I mean again I can't ignore what banksters have done to this country). You can base it on: no human being should go hungry in a rich country/on a rich planet/whatever. Even lazy good for nothings, still have a certain dignity by virtue of being human, and should not be left to starve. You can base it on: people actually perform better when given a social safety net than when left to fall between the cracks. You can base it on: people are healthier in a society with more equal distributions of income (there's some studies on this).

But you know it's actually the psychological aspects of this that interest me MUCH more than the political (boy am I on the wrong sub-forum :)). It's how taking certain attributional positions actually contributes to more or less healthy psychological functioning etc. and while I don't think you can get from here to: people who take x position politically are healthier (because again we have no idea what drives people to take their positions), I think you can get to: taking a certain political position *because* you believe life is mostly luck, has ramifications psychologically. Now I fully expect my open ended explorations to degenerate into: "see, like Apathetic says, liberals are really just neurotic". But I can't stop thinking for that reason.

Gregg
3-21-11, 9:19am
A Republican codeword for "Do as I say, not as I do". It reeks of “social Darwinism"[I] .

Surprise, surprise Zig, I disagree. Aside from the fact that I'm not a Republican I just don't see how anything in this country is going to improve until its citizens start to take some responsibility for their own actions. We can take the discussion to the silly extremes where it sometimes ends up, but to avoid that I will concede that no, most people can't build their own interstates or stand an army or provide supplemental retirement income to a 1/4 of the country. Your statement seems to put personal responsibility in the context of an all or nothing proposition. My position is simply that, because of the freedom we have in the US, citizens are responsible to do what they can to improve their own quality of life. When you reach the point where individuals can not provide whatever service for themselves (infrastructure, national security, etc.) that is where government action should begin.

What most citizens CAN do is pick up a book instead of watching "Dancing With the Stars" or take a walk around the block after dinner or learn the technique of self-screening for cancer... Most people CAN be more proactive doing something that will improve their own lives quicker and more efficiently than the government can ever do it. Those are just my examples, everyone will have their own ideas on what constitutes "improvement", but the point is that almost everyone can do something. It is those who can't that need and deserve our help, not those who won't.

Zigzagman
3-21-11, 10:37am
My position is simply that, because of the freedom we have in the US, citizens are responsible to do what they can to improve their own quality of life. When you reach the point where individuals can not provide whatever service for themselves (infrastructure, national security, etc.) that is where government action should begin.

What most citizens CAN do is pick up a book instead of watching "Dancing With the Stars" or take a walk around the block after dinner or learn the technique of self-screening for cancer... Most people CAN be more proactive doing something that will improve their own lives quicker and more efficiently than the government can ever do it. Those are just my examples, everyone will have their own ideas on what constitutes "improvement", but the point is that almost everyone can do something. It is those who can't that need and deserve our help, not those who won't.
In reference to NPR and it's funding, I think it is pretty obvious that it is more a political issue than a budget issue. I just have never bought in to the idea that people mooching off the government is a big problem (after all it is our government). Everything the government does should be for the benefit of the people - not corporations, or campaign contributers. I think it is a small issue when considering the really large issues our society faces. I think codewords like "personal responsibility" are nothing more than a distraction for mean-spirited dialog.

Peace

Alan
3-21-11, 10:59am
In reference to NPR and it's funding, I think it is pretty obvious that it is more a political issue than a budget issue. I just have never bought in to the idea that people mooching off the government is a big problem (after all it is our government). Everything the government does should be for the benefit of the people - not corporations, or campaign contributers. I think it is a small issue when considering the really large issues our society faces. I think codewords like "personal responsibility" are nothing more than a distraction for mean-spirited dialog.

Peace
I disagree with that assessment. When our government has to borrow 40% of every dollar spent, leaving the bill to be paid by future generations, it's well past time to apply the brakes. The political question is, where can we cut funding that has the least impact on the voters?

In my market, there are 4 NPR radio stations and 3 CPB television stations, with each carrying pretty much identical programming. Since it has been determined that the major impact of cutting federal spending for their support is the possibility of some percentage of those stations going away, I'm not sure that anyone (at least in my market) will be affected by a loss of their content. If that is the case, what possible reason could we have to continue supporting them at the levels we currently do?

On your thoughts regarding the "codewords" of "personal responsibility" as "mean-spirited dialog", I'd have to strenuously disagree. While having nothing to do with the context in which you use it, I'd strongly suggest a look at Elbert Hubbard's "A Message To Garcia", for a more generalized view of the concept as it applies to individuals. Perhaps then you'll see what many of us mean when we use the term.

ApatheticNoMore
3-21-11, 12:21pm
Aside from the fact that I'm not a Republican I just don't see how anything in this country is going to improve until its citizens start to take some responsibility for their own actions.

The problem with this from a political perspective is that it's always applied to some poor someone on welfare or something. Those who CRASHED THE WORLD ECONOMY (although it was always on an unstable foundation to begin with and will be, until we start caring about sustainability) got away with it, in fact were bailed out for it (and how many people are now suffering economically because of it, are taking unemployment because of it etc..). Yes I do know the Federal Reservee also had a role in this in causing the crisis (and of course the Federal Reserve is the bailouts).

The repeal of Glass Steagall has widely been blamed for the current crisis. Unless I missed the news or something, it hasn't even been reinstated. Not only did they cause the crisis, get bailed out for it, THEY WILL DO IT AGAIN!!! It's not that I believe our ability to regulate such things is perfect, it's just that we're not even TRYING!


My position is simply that, because of the freedom we have in the US, citizens are responsible to do what they can to improve their own quality of life.

What most citizens CAN do is pick up a book instead of watching "Dancing With the Stars" or take a walk around the block after dinner or learn the technique of self-screening for cancer...

The problem with the little people (the vast majority) taking care of themselves is that the vast concentration of money is outside of their hands (and yes it's gotten worse). But yes they can do the things you mention and spend with an eye toward what they are encouraging in the world etc.. The vast quantity of money being outside their hands is a serious strategic disadvantage though.


Most people CAN be more proactive doing something that will improve their own lives quicker and more efficiently than the government can ever do it. Those are just my examples, everyone will have their own ideas on what constitutes "improvement", but the point is that almost everyone can do something. It is those who can't that need and deserve our help, not those who won't.

I also suggest they start grassroot groups.

Gregg
3-21-11, 1:35pm
The problem with this from a political perspective is that it's always applied to some poor someone on welfare or something.

You might have just hit on the root of the entire problem; viewing everything from the "political perspective". There are lots of filtering options available (free market, humanist, cost/benefit, etc.) so why do we allow our representatives to frame everything in that political perspective with every decision geared simply toward what slant will produce favorable results at election time? I think I just became an advocate of term limits.

Zigzagman
3-21-11, 2:02pm
I think I just became an advocate of term limits.

I'll drink to that!! How about real campaign finance reform? $5.3B was spent on the 2008 elections - that is insane.

Peace

loosechickens
3-21-11, 2:35pm
Newsweek has a new piece out which shows that we have a long way to go to improve Americans' grasp of the issues, factual information, as opposed to divisive political viewpoints, from whatever perspective....... very, very interesting article of what happened when 1,000 Americans were asked to complete a quiz with just some of the questions on it that immigrants must pass for citizenship, and nearly 40% of us couldn't do it.

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/20/how-dumb-are-we.html

a couple points that seemed germane....one that touches on the question of the wisdom of defunding NPR and going, instead with "market forces", especially when comparing our performance on general knowledge of national and international affairs, compared to many other countries:

"Another hitch is our reliance on market-driven programming rather than public broadcasting, which, according to the EJC study, “devotes more attention to public affairs and international news, and fosters greater knowledge in these areas.”

and one section that seemed very hopeful to me:

" For years, Stanford communications professor James Fishkin has been conducting experiments in deliberative democracy. The premise is simple: poll citizens on a major issue, blind; then see how their opinions evolve when they’re forced to confront the facts. What Fishkin has found is that while people start out with deep value disagreements over, say, government spending, they tend to agree on rational policy responses once they learn the ins and outs of the budget. “The problem is ignorance, not stupidity,” Hacker says. “We suffer from a lack of information rather than a lack of ability.” Whether that’s a treatable affliction or a terminal illness remains to be seen. But now’s the time to start searching for a cure."

I found the whole discussion both interesting, and while it certainly makes us, as a country, taken as a whole, remarkably ignorant on areas that directly affect our lives, is hopeful in the sense that when factual information IS supplied and people are truly informed, most Americans are much more able to agree on rational solutions to problems, as opposed to the huge and deep political divide that seems what's happening today.

edited to add: for those who might be inclined to want to test their own ability to pass the citizenship test, here's a quiz from the Newsweek site that touches on some of the questions that would be on the test, so you can test yourself and also see the results from when the test was administered to 1,000 native born Americans:

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/20/take-the-quiz-what-we-don-t-know.html

edited to add......I'm now through the quiz (got only one question partially wrong), but was discouraged that 63% didn't even know how MANY Supreme Court justices there were, and of course, I guess if they were asked to name them, we'd probably be down in the single digits......and that nearly half of us couldn't identify the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution as the Bill of Rights, or that the Constitution itself is the highest law in our land. And that 67% of us can't identify what the economic system of the U.S. is......

What did people LEARN in school, anyway? ye gods........I'm getting a bit discouraged.

LDAHL
3-21-11, 3:32pm
a couple points that seemed germane....one that touches on the question of the wisdom of defunding NPR and going, instead with "market forces", especially when comparing our performance on general knowledge of national and international affairs, compared to many other countries:

"Another hitch is our reliance on market-driven programming rather than public broadcasting, which, according to the EJC study, “devotes more attention to public affairs and international news, and fosters greater knowledge in these areas.”

I don't see this as a very strong argument in favor of taxpayer-funded media. If NPR were gone tommorrow, wouldn't its audience turn to other sources, many of them operated for profit? Just because there's a lot of junk out there, doesn't mean there aren't more civilized market niches available. Losing NPR wouldn't mean more people gravitated toward Spike.

bae
3-21-11, 3:35pm
As I asked a few pages ago, does NPR receive a significant amount of funding from the Federal government these days?

When I looked at their web site, they indicated it was a very small portion of their budget, so isn't this fund/defund NPR business just kabuki theater?

loosechickens
3-22-11, 12:55am
yes, bae....yes. About the only place that the government money matters is that small, local stations, mostly in rural areas, DO get some competitive government grants, and often in those rural areas, NPR is one of the few sources of news on radio, and/or any quality programming. The money that goes directly to NPR is miniscule, although the competitive government grants that go to small, local access stations, usually hosted by a community college or other nonprofit sort of organization, do supply one in five dollars of the operating costs of those small, mostly rural station.

NPR in "general" could easily make up the very small amount of money they get from government, by private donations. But the small, local stations, competing for grant money to purchase programming from NPR would be hit hard. Not everyone can afford internet access or satellite radio, or is even aware of such things as shortwave.

Of course, the whole thing IS Kabuki theater. The thing is that NPR has only about 10% more "liberal" listeners than it does "conservative" listeners, and nearly a third of NPR listeners and members ARE conservative in their political views, slightly more than a third are liberal in their political views, and the rest more or less apolitical or somewhere in the middle as independents, but like Planned Parenthood and ACORN and others, NPR has been in the gunsights of certain groups on the right for a long time, and all it takes is a "crack in the facade" to get the wolves howling around the cabin once again.

To the folks who think that Fox News is "fair and balanced", anything else looks hopelessly biased to the left, IMHO. Personally, I like seeing the studies that show that NPR does an excellent job of informing their listeners factually and in more depth than most outlets, as having your listeners well informed factually would seem to be a valuable goal for a news source.

The thing about most of the proposed budget cuts......they could cut every single expense that is discretionary in the entire budget completely out, and it wouldn't be a drop in the bucket......until we look hard at the fact that the U.S. spends, on its military, 46% of all the money that is spent in the world by all countries put together, and the terrific bloating of our military budget, not to mention subsidies to the oil industry, agriculture and lots and lots of corporate "welfare", it's not going to make any difference.

creaker
3-22-11, 7:59am
As I asked a few pages ago, does NPR receive a significant amount of funding from the Federal government these days?

When I looked at their web site, they indicated it was a very small portion of their budget, so isn't this fund/defund NPR business just kabuki theater?

NPR makes most of their money from public radio stations subscribing to NPR, and they get a larger percentage of their money from CPB, especially rural stations with a smaller private donation base. Part of the bill is banning public radio stations from using government funds to purchase NPR.

And public radio stations are the primary vehicle for indirectly fundraising for NPR.

The thing I find interesting is they can get away with banning government funding being used for a particular corporations products because they don't like what it says.

Gregg
3-23-11, 1:20pm
With our without government funding there has always been a significant difference between public radio and commercial broadcast venues. The link between people and their public radio station is, in most cases, direct. Listeners donate directly to the station at whatever level they deem appropriate. Commercial broadcasts rely on advertising revenue which increases or decreases along with a program's perceived ability to move the advertiser's product. The public supports the advertisers who in turn support the shows.

There seems to be a little chicken/egg paradox in commercial radio. Does a program attract advertisers because they appeal to that advertiser's core customer group or does the advertiser push to develop the program as a venue to reach that group? I'm guessing the programming probably comes first in most cases with any spinning for advertiser's sake coming later. Either way, the public support channels directly through the advertisers before it reaches the program production staff.

I don't think the difference between public and commercial broadcasting is really valid anymore. IMO they are simply different products produced to appeal to different markets. Over the years corporate sponsorship of NPR programming has grown by leaps and bounds. Per wikipedia: 26% of the NPR 2009 budget came from corporate sponsorship in return for the warm and fuzzy "underwriting spots". Kicks the crap out of 2% from federal funding, eh? Macfound.org is now routinely joined by ADM. A more just, verdant and peaceful world thanks to geo-politics and GMOs can't be far behind. I will continue to support NPR through my local stations for the same reason most others do, because I like the programming and think it has merit. At the same time anyone who beats a drum saying that NPR has somehow kept it's virginity in tact is, IMO, purely delusional.

loosechickens
4-2-11, 12:37am
No wonder the manipulators and propagandists can gin the people up into a froth about things, when the average person is so incredibly ignorant of the facts. I want to bang my head against walls. How did we BECOME so ill informed? Has it always been this way? I am beginning to lose faith in humanity, I swear.....too busy watching American Idol or catching soundbites from talk shows to actually inform themselves.

"In a CNN poll of American adults released Friday, the median guess on what percentage of the federal budget goes to public broadcasting was 5%. With a $3.55 trillion budget last year, that would put funding for the CBP at approximately $178 billion.

In reality though, that's not even close.

The CPB received about $420 million last year from the federal government, making it roughly one one-hundredth of one percent, of the overall budget. That means that the median response was about 424 times higher than the actual amount of federal funding that went to public broadcasting last year.

Further, 20% of respondents thought CPB funding made up over 10% of the entire budget, including 5% who said it made up at least half.

Those findings comes as Congress continues to debate pulling all funding for public broadcasting, including NPR. Fake-pimp and sting video maker James O'Keefe released a video in March that showed an NPR executive bashing Fox News and the Tea Party, a video whose release helped fuel the push to defund NPR.

The survey also underscores how clueless Americans are about where the budget goes in general. For example, Americans on average thought foreign aid took up 10% of the budget; it really makes up about 1%.

The CNN poll was conducted March 11-13 among 1,023 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 3.0%.

Ed Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported CPB's portion of the federal budget as approximately one-tenth of one percent. It is in fact approximately one one-hundredth of one percent."

bae
4-2-11, 12:51am
And yet, this is probably the easiest time in history to become informed. Go figure.

JaneV2.0
4-3-11, 9:05pm
"Further, 20% of respondents thought CPB funding made up over 10% of the entire budget, including 5% who said it made up at least half."

Hard to choose which skills were weaker here--math or logic.

Alan
4-3-11, 9:50pm
I just took a look at the entire poll and for those of you who haven't, it's pretty interesting: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/03/31/rel4m.pdf

Although it only surveyed 1,023 people and was seemingly limited to somewhere in the south, it did show that men had a more realistic opinion of CPB/NPR funding than women, and Republicans/Conservatives scored slightly better overall than Independents/Moderates. For some reason Democrats/Liberals were not counted in the results, nor were non-whites. I wonder why? Perhaps a targeted audience?

Another interesting thing was that of the 40% who thought CPB/NPR funding was between 1-10%, an equal number thought it should remain the same. I'm not sure which group is goofier.

freein05
4-3-11, 10:38pm
Alan said: "Democrats/Liberals were not counted in the results" We know everything already and pollsters know better then to ask us.

Alan
4-3-11, 11:09pm
Alan said: "Democrats/Liberals were not counted in the results" We know everything already and pollsters know better then to ask us.

Yeah, maybe that's it. Or maybe not, it's hard to say.

It does make me wonder how many people they had to call to get the results they were looking for, but maybe that's just me.

Gregg
4-4-11, 9:53am
http://www.wqub.org/media/NPR%20Profile%20stats%202009/NPR%20demographics.pdf

That's an interesting breakdown of the NPR audience. Median age is 50. Slightly more male listeners (54%/46%). Fully 65% have a college degree. Average income is 160% of national average, 2/3 are married, more jobs, less kids that average. The striking stat to me is race: 86% identify themselves as white. Hmmm.

The unanswered question is that of political affiliation. No mention of it in this report. I would have assumed a liberal audience, but then I would have also guessed more females, lower average income (although maybe still above average) and a lot more diverse ethnic base.

stuboyle
4-6-11, 6:02pm
I wonder if our perceptions of NPR/PBS have changed more so than NPR/PBS has changed. I think you can comfortably say that NPR/PBS is not conservative but does that automatically make them liberal? In many eyes today, it does.

If they have programming about science and the arts, does that make them liberal? To some it does.

If they interview someone in the gay community about gay rights does that make them liberal?

If they do a program about evolution, does that make them liberal?

Alan
4-6-11, 6:10pm
If their average listener has an income of 160% of the national average, do they require public funding?

stuboyle
4-6-11, 6:15pm
If their average listener has an income of 160% of the national average, do they require public funding?

Touche!

loosechickens
4-6-11, 8:15pm
In answer, Gregg, to your question about political leanings and affiliations of NPR listeners,

"According to 2008 MRI data, the audience divides itself roughly into thirds with 27% reporting themselves as conservative, 26% as middle of the road, and 34% as liberal. (The percentages do not add up to 100%; not all participants answered the question or replied within the parameters reported here)."

Gregg
4-8-11, 10:22am
LC: in my experience, and looking at my peer group members that are NPR listeners, I think that percentage breakdown is probably about right. Outdated perception rather than analytical observation would have lead me to guess the audience is more heavily skewed left. I'm still somewhat put back by the thought that 86% of listeners are white, although that shifts dramatically within certain programs. I suppose that if you consider 72.4% of the US population is white (2010 census) that figure mellows a little bit. It would be interesting to study how the advertisers, err...underwriting supporters target the different program audiences through their sponsorship. I bet it falls right in line with how they spend money in commercial media outlets.