• Changing RCF's index page, please click on "Forums" to access the forums.

The fiscal cliff

Do Not Sell My Personal Information
It's time to open up more ways to increase revenue. Legalizing marijuana and Internet gambling is a good start. This will in turn reduce the amount we spend fighting the 'war on drugs'. Mandate tax revenue from both to go towards the deficit.

Get rid of the wasteful spending as well.
 
It's time to open up more ways to increase revenue. Legalizing marijuana and Internet gambling is a good start. This will in turn reduce the amount we spend fighting the 'war on drugs'. Mandate tax revenue from both to go towards the deficit.

Get rid of the wasteful spending as well.

The war on drugs give them excuses they need to implement new police state measures. They will never let it go.
 
The war on drugs give them excuses they need to implement new police state measures. They will never let it go.

The war on drugs is the domestic military complex. No war on drugs means every city doesn't need a swat team, helicopters, drones, tazers for every officer. There would be less need for surveillance, less software systems with tracking capabilities. Harder to illegally search vehicles, people and property if the "smells like weed" or "I see a bong" excuses are taken away. The officers wouldn't need Robocop armor pulling people over for speeding tickets.

Not going to happen, the feds will fight it tooth and nail.
 
The war on drugs is the domestic military complex. No war on drugs means every city doesn't need a swat team, helicopters, drones, tazers for every officer. There would be less need for surveillance, less software systems with tracking capabilities. Harder to illegally search vehicles, people and property if the "smells like weed" or "I see a bong" excuses are taken away. The officers wouldn't need Robocop armor pulling people over for speeding tickets.

Not going to happen, the feds will fight it tooth and nail.

They'd still be able to bust people for harder stuff.
 
They'd still be able to bust people for harder stuff.

Yes, police and ATF would still go after other drugs.

Looking at New York City, over 50,000 people were arrested there in 2010 for minor marijuana possession, which was 15% of all arrests. The FBI's crime stats showed 12.4 millions arrests in 2011. 1.5 million of those were for drugs, and 49.5% of those were for marijuana. One arrest every 42 seconds in the nation for pot.
 
Yes, police and ATF would still go after other drugs.

Looking at New York City, over 50,000 people were arrested there in 2010 for minor marijuana possession, which was 15% of all arrests. The FBI's crime stats showed 12.4 millions arrests in 2011. 1.5 million of those were for drugs, and 49.5% of those were for marijuana. One arrest every 42 seconds in the nation for pot.

An interesting figure would be the amount paid in fines for those arrests. I'd be curious to see how much the fines off-set the expenditures.

One of the funniest stats I've ever seen is speeding tickets increasing 400% between 2000 and 2011. I'm sure revenue has nothing to do with that, they're strictly trying to make the streets safer.
 
one big aspect of the "fiscal cliff" is the expiring Bush tax cuts. Obama spoke about that today

However, he also repeated a longstanding demand from well before the election that Republican opponents to any kind of tax increase relent to the will of the White House and the Senate, and now the American people as well, on letting tax rates increase on income over $250,000.

Nobody in either party wants the middle class, identified as families making less than $250,000 a year, to see taxes increase at the end of the year when lower rates set during the administration of former President George W. Bush will expire, Obama said.

"That makes no sense. It would be bad for the economy," he told a White House gathering of what aides described as middle class Americans. "Let's extend middle class tax cuts right now. Let's do that right now. That one step would give millions of families, 98% of Americans, 97% of small businesses, the certainty that they need going into the new year."

Noting the Senate previously passed a bill to extend the tax cuts to the middle class, but not income over $250,000, Obama said "all we need is action from the House."

"I've got the pen," he said, reaching into his pocket to hold one up as the crowd applauded. "I'm ready to sign the bill right away. I'm ready to do it."

and

Obama campaigned on having wealthy Americans contribute more to deficit reduction efforts, and administration officials say the president will veto any package that extends the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000.

"I've already signed a trillion dollars' worth of spending cuts. I intend to do more, but if we're serious about the deficit, we also have to ask the wealthiest Americans to go back to the rates that they paid when Bill Clinton was in office," Obama said last week on the campaign trail.

72% of those exit polled election night are in favor of this. Instead, we get this

Boehner and Republicans oppose raising taxes on anyone, and instead back a broad reform of the tax system that would lower rates further for everyone while eliminating some deductions and loopholes.

That't the same plan that just lost the election and completely ignores the fact that it also raises taxes on people, only it hits middle class people instead of wealthy people. What should congress pass, the plan that won the election or the plan that lost the election. The tax increase on the wealthy is only a return to the tax rate when Clinton was president. When Clinton was president we had the largest peace time expansion in the nation's history and balanced the budget. Certainly it has been proven that that tax rate isn't excessive.
 
The economy was doing a hell of a lot better under Clinton, so comparing tax rates during a good economy and our less than 2% growth economy are apples and oranges when comparing federal tax rates.

Obama saying he signed $1T worth of tax cuts (that he now wants to undo so sequestration doesn't actually occur) and wants to do more cutting is ironic.
 
shouldn't we be talking a bit more about this? 46 days and counting for congress and the president to stop us from falling over the cliff.
 
on raising taxes on the wealthy

"Never in 60 years of managing money have I come up with an idea and had someone say 'I'd do it but the tax rates are too high'." - Warren Buffet

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/14/investing/buffett-fiscal-cliff/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

I think he is being dishonest about taxes not effecting business decisions. Do taxes not effect your business decisions? How about environmental regulations?

He hooked his cart to Obama's horse and has to go for the ride. He can't backpedal now. His corporations have hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers and accountants to figure every legal way to pay the least amount of taxes. Which running those businesses, they absolutely should.

While he praised Obama for ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage, he something further must be done to address rising health care costs.

Didn't ObamaCare fix this? Wasn't it in the bill, somewhere around page 1,600?
 
Nazi Germany was a police state. This isn't a police state.

It may not be right now in the physical sense, but it is becoming more so in the technological sense every day. Cameras read your license plates going through a toll plaza, GPS in your cell phone pings your coordinates through towers, cameras in most public buildings, private businesses and along highways and public roadways. Credit card swipes show a physical history of your location. IP addresses show where you go gon the internet. Facial recognition technology when going through airports and sporting events. GPS aren't the only satellites in space. If they can find a three story building in Afghanistan, don't think that those cameras aren't pointed towards America, too.
 
on raising taxes on the wealthy

"Never in 60 years of managing money have I come up with an idea and had someone say 'I'd do it but the tax rates are too high'." - Warren Buffet

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/14/investing/buffett-fiscal-cliff/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

That's a bit absurd. Someone that makes 250K-500K a year has it much differently than him. A person is allowed to pay voluntary taxes. Why doesn't Buffet cough up a billion and recruit some of his friends if he want's to pay more.


The government has a SPENDING problem. The tax increase is nothing more than a symbol so they can say "we taxed the rich!" It will also quicken the crash of the economy by taking more money away from the people. Instead of coming back to the people and asking for more, they should gut the government of its redundant programs, fraud and waste. Let they people keep THEIR money so they can spend and invest and lead us back to a reovery.
 
It's time to open up more ways to increase revenue. Legalizing marijuana and Internet gambling is a good start. This will in turn reduce the amount we spend fighting the 'war on drugs'. Mandate tax revenue from both to go towards the deficit.

Get rid of the wasteful spending as well.

I agree with stopping the war on drugs. I also agree with allowing internet gambling.

We do not have a revenue problem. Our federal receipts are back to pre-recession levels +/- 2% depending on 2012 estimates. We have a spending problem. We are continuing to spend almost $1 trillion more than we were per year before the recession.
 

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Video

Episode 3-13: "Backup Bash Brothers"

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Spotify

Episode 3:11: "Clipping Bucks."
Top