Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences.

http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/02/10/the-federal-budget-is-not-like-a-household-budget-heres-why-8230/

Is there any way you could change the color of the replies from the last time we visited the site…another blog I read does this and I think it is awesome. Anything I’ve read (from a previous visit) is white, anything new is yellow.

1) Buffet’s earnings come mostly from capital gains which are taxed at 15%

2) 12/6% Social Security (actually now employees are only paying 4.2%) is capped after the first $100,000 income (meanwhile, we worry about Social Security going broke).

Now, if you want to look at how GE earned $5.1 billion in the US alone ($14+ globally) and paid $0 in taxes and got a $3.2 billion tax credit, that’s a lot more complicated:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html

Please don’t ask me to explain that, which is beyond my comprehension.

I would LOVE to enter your contest, especially since I have an AMAZING video (did I forget to mention I’m humble?) on budgeting with the Envelope System using cash (geared towards College students, but applicable to all ages) inspired by Dave Ramsey.

Here’s the problem: I can’t give you guys full rights to do whatever you want with my video/name. That terrifies the crap out of me, quite honestly. Anyway we can work around that? If so, I’d be honored to enter my awesome content.

~ Brian Freedman

To quote from JD’s post:

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His secret weapon? Same as mine: “Find a way to earn extra money to help fuel your debt pay-down.”
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http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/taxing-the-rich-over-time/

Yes, we discussed this on the post that first suggested threaded comments… any closer to solving this, JD?

Haha, would the fact that that sentence is missing a subject be considered ironic?

If we can get the numbers back as well, that would be even more perfect!

http://codeasily.com/css/style-ordered-list

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edit: the real nuisance is the cache system that shows you old versions of the thread instead of the freshest updates
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Re: national budget- It’s the first time in history we’ve cut taxes during wartime, which is terminal imbecility, but every fool seems to think that letting the rich keep more of their money will “create jobs” here instead of China or India or Switzerland– as if!! And Medicare is not “the cable bill”. Oh yes, I went there.

Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary

The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation.

ps the “stick tongue out” smiley looks like he’s laughing. I typed a “:” and a “P” but I get a laughing face. why oh why.