patrick.net

I want MORE AND MORE of the GOP race.

I want every channel dedicated to this internecine civil war 24x7.

I want blood and gore on the floor.

I want billionaires spending their entire fortune to inflate Super PACs to obscene levels. Frankly right now they aren't spending nearly enough, maximize the Citizens United effect and just make it official that Richie Rich decides who sits in the White House, and it's best if it's one of their own.

Set that money free into the economy instead of cluttering up your swimming pool. Put people to work selling the GOP as the One True Path to America Ascendant. Yeah that would be great stimulus. Just create an entire class whose job is year-round election worker.

jerrypap says

My biggest challenge every step of the way has all been related to onerous and typically nonsensical government restrictions - regulations, taxes, and a thousand other government policies that sometimes make it near impossible to get ANYTHING done.

I'm coming to the conclusion that much government regulation is the way that the 1% prevents you from competing with them.

All in the name of the public interest, of course. See this for some examples:

http://www.gresham.ac.uk/print/1789

leoj707 says

rootvg says

I want to see what happens when Republicans take the Senate and White House in November, leaving the largest state in the nation completely without majority representation in either the executive or legislative branches of the Federal government. Most Californians don't yet understand what that will mean but they're about to find out.

Oh, many Californians understand what that would mean, just many Republicans do not.

*hint* - reread the OP pic

This happened during the early days of Bush 43. Republicans decided carrying California was no longer necessary (Florida, Texas, Georgia and the Carolinas became big enough, Electorally speaking) and they thumbed their noses at us. It's gonna happen again.

Re: illegal aliens.
The millions of illiterates working here drives entry level and blue collar wages down.
None of them will ever create any innovation or improvement of production or anything leading to an economic benefit. They are the modern equivalent of slaves, who only benefit the employers/slave owners.
In Mexico, just 33% of adults have finished high school. The percentage is lower among illegal aliens coming to the USA.
They only create profit for the employer/slave owner. The fancy restaurant in Manhattan serving pasta with octupus and bone marrow for $38/plate can afford to pay higher wages to kitchen staff. But, they push the slaves to produce ever more plates ever faster, making the fancy restaurants vastly more profitable.
All of the guys I know who hire illegal aliens cheat everywhere they can themselves in their own businesses and affairs.
I live where there are tons in all types of employment.
If they could vote, they would be Democrats. They get tons of freebies here.

Vicente says

I want MORE AND MORE of the GOP race.

You deserve a pin...

PockyClipsNow says

I won't be donating to patrick.net again until this becomes a REAL ESTATE ONLY site.

Pnet should set up as LLC non-profit 501c..

thunderlips11 says

Let's say an elite Neurosurgeon performs many brain surgeries, and teaches dozens of med students, saves a hundred lives. Over the course of two years, he makes about a million dollars in salary.

If a NS invests cash and property say $100K and builds a $1M business (investment) and sells his/her interest.. his gain is long term capital gains at 15%. His previous income earned is already taxed as personal income tax rates 35%..

Income is one thing capital assets are another..

Yes, taxed at ordinary income...

thunderlips11 says

He is taxed at 35%
Let's say a Hedge Fund invests $300,000 to buy a mansion. Two years later, for market reasons mostly beyond his control, the mansion is sold for 1M.
He's taxed at 15%.

The rental income before its sold, gets allocated to the partners and taxed at 35% ordinary income... later if they sell.. the gains allocated to each partner and recognized as a gain it may be loss. either way.. THEY BOUGHT an CAPITAL Asset.

thomas.wong1986 says
No he gives up his wealth, by paying cash for an interest in ownership.. it may or may not have any gain and mayhave losses.

No, he doesn't "give up" his wealth. He passively invests money with the hope of a big return taken from the work of other people.
But anyway, he also gets to deduct 100% of his losses from his gains. You forgot that part.
..

On capital stock its limited to $3000 per year not 100% against gains and carry over residual losses in future years .. not much to crow about. yes,, they GIVE UP THEIR wealth because they pay in CASH... Talk to the VCs and their investors who lost their shirt on Sylandra or any other failed start up or public company.. and there are many.

My biggest challenge every step of the way has all been related to onerous and typically nonsensical government restrictions - regulations, taxes, and a thousand other government policies that sometimes make it near impossible to get ANYTHING done.

I'm coming to the conclusion that much government regulation is the way that the 1% prevents you from competing with them.

All in the name of the public interest, of course. See this for some examples:

Very interesting. There seems to be a lot of truth to your statement above.

sack says

But the dividends have already been taxed once as corporate tax, taxing it again is probably netting the government more than your 35% (which I doubt many of us are paying).

This is pure pro-rich meme horseshit.

The non rich wage earners get their income quadruple mega taxed by this logic. After all they pay a sales tax, gas tax, state tax, property tax, federal income tax, etc. all on the same salary.

Yes, Your right. 50% of the poor do not pay any direct income tax. But the poor pay a lot of indirect taxes. Many of the poor have cell phones, And line phones. A lot of taxes are paid there. Many of the poor have cable TV, And Dish TV. A lot of taxes are paid there. A lot of poor people drink and smoke, A lot of taxes are paid. A lot of poor people own cars. The poor people pay for car insurance tires gas and traffic tickets,A Lot of taxes are paid there. One of the reasons why people are Poor, Is that they spend All their money every month. The Poor people in this country help to support the Govt. And the Rich....

rootvg says

There's something else going on here that no one's talking about, which is the level of change technology has forced on workplaces and the incredible level of technological illiteracy that's out there especially among the younger Baby Boom set and then in less well off, less well educated parts of the country.

I don't know what you do about that. Maybe you can't do anything.

If you accept that technology will keep improving and doing more and more work with less and less people then you have to accept and plan for a future where there are few if any low/no skill jobs and even the middle skill level jobs have been greatly diminished.

Ideally this could be done through social welfare programs that would guarantee a certain minimum standard of living + shortening the work day and work week so that more people would be able to get work at all to get "nice things". Their free time could be spent with their families, hobbies, or leisure activities.

If this sounds crazy, remember this: early last century the 60 hour work week was the norm and wages were far lower. Today the work week is 40 hours AND the wages are higher. The 40 hour work week has held steady for going on 100 years yet productivity has increased greatly since then, particularly around the 1970's. That is one of the reasons why may have seen me harping on wealth disparity and wages from time to time. The productivity gains that should have been more fairly distributed amongst the general population have instead been going to the rich.

Many people have incredible ideological bias against this sort of thing to put it mildly, and arguments in a public setting are usually framed in the manner of "I AINT' SUPPORTIN' NO WELFARE QUEENS!!!" or even "DUDE JETSONS WAS A CARTOON AND THIS IS REALITY STFU!!!". On top of this the rich have turned themselves into a rentier class so that they may get bigger and bigger pieces of the wealth over time. So right now its looking like we won't see any of that happen in our lifetimes. That may change but I doubt it.

If anything I'd say that we're headed towards a full blown 3rd world fascist state if the political and the economic trends of the last few decades are anything to go by.

That's the thing. In a perfect economy there would be NO jobs.

What people need are goods and services, not "jobs." If everything was automated, no one would need to "work."

That's doesn't mean we'd just sit around on the couch all day. We'd just do stuff that was fun. We'd make artwork and sell it to each other, explore the world, play golf, watch sports, etc.

clambo says

So Patrick says I am the guy on the left. If you know a person on Sec. 8, food stamps, SSI, who is NOT a Democrat, give me his email and I will paypal him a few dollars as a reward.

Go to any rural town in Middle America and say hi to the first person you meet. Odds are you'll owe him a few dollars.

thomas.wong1986 says

On capital stock its limited to $3000 per year not 100% against gains and carry over residual losses in future years

You can write of $3000 per year if you don't have any gains, but it is not limited to $3000 per year.

That is, if you have $100,000 in losses in year 1, you write off $3000 in year 1. If in year 2, you have $150,000 in gains, you only pay 15% of $53,000 in taxes for year 2.

Voting Democrat = Voting Replublican, there is no difference! both parties are corrupt, both parties will sell you out for personal gain! All our representatives have 1 thing in common! they are all rich, and people like pelosi, bush, obama uses insider information for personal gain! Our system will crash because people are more focused on pointing the finger @ Republicans or Democrats, rather than the main problem. Democrats (in CA) are puppets to the public sector unions! Republicans are more interested in saying anything to keep them in power, but doing nothing at all! Everyone in the wellfare system should be put to work in order to get paid! if they can't walk give them an office job, if they can give them a job with cal trans cleaning up the freeways! Put them to work! But no, they stay at home watching their big screens, using their cell phones while collecting their checks!
Obama is killing this country, and the next president will do exactly the same! we are just voting on who we think will crash our system the slowest! Sad times we are living in, but it can and will get worse!

AlfonsoM says

Republicans are more interested in saying anything to keep them in power, but doing nothing at all! Everyone in the wellfare system should be put to work in order to get paid! if they can't walk give them an office job, if they can give them a job with cal trans cleaning up the freeways! Put them to work!

OK, I can see the point of making people work for unemployment checks, but only half time so they still have time to look for a job. So I created a thread about that idea:

http://patrick.net/?p=1210453

Welfare is not the same though. I think it's technically called "Aid to families with dependent children" or something like that, and having those children around means the person getting the check would probably have to pay more for childcare than they would get from working. So in a sense, people on welfare are already working -- in child care for their own children.

So in a sense, people on welfare are already working -- in child care for their own children.

Parenting is definitely a full-time job. That's why I have no problem paying higher taxes than people with children.

"March 21 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s largest campaign donors last month included employees of Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records."

Bankers are equal opportunity

God Bless America.

Welfare is not the same though. I think it's technically called "Aid to families with dependent children"

That's Life long help! I know several illegal alien families who get wellfare, one of these families needed more money, so their 17 year old daughter got pregnant twice from 2 different men! just for the increase in government aid! I understand giving help when they need it, but life long help is breaking this state (CA). Every year more and more people get fanancial aid of some type! My wife was asked if she wanted to apply for (WIC)? she never asked for it? she never even knew what WIC was? They also told her that they can manipulate the numbers so she will qualify? Sad now they are trying to make people more dependant of the government! which means more tax money from all of us! SICK! SYSTEM!

Nomograph says

Total bullshit.

The crap people spew out here is nothing short of amazing.

Yeah, my guess is that this is entirely fabricated.

Ha! This has image has been spreading around Facebook this week. I'm glad to see it made its way here. The truth hurts, doesn't it?

And I'm not saying that the Democratic Party is without fault. They are also owned by the 1%.

I just think this image nails the Republican Party.

I think there's a lot of truth to that image.

But to be fair, a lot of Democrats are saying to the guy on the left, "why don't you stupid fucks vote for smart guys like us?"

That's stupid too, no? Most businesses don't call their customers stupid.

Wow, I had lunch with a couple of ambitious and financially literate friends yesterday and laid out the scenario in the graphic for them.

They said "Yes! That's exactly how it is. Screw those morons. Let them vote to keep themselves poor! Why do you care?"

I said if we continue to anally rape idiots like that, eventually there will be some revolution.

They replied that they would easily be able to escape the revolution, and again urged me to just take advantage of their prejudices and anger to lower my own tax rate, make them into my slaves, etc etc. They went on to explain how Steve Jobs just borrowed against his own stock options, because he knew that when he died his heirs would get to reset the cost basis of those options to the current market value, because the 1% has so thoroughly corrupted our tax laws, ha ha. And that the 99% would never figure it out, because they are simply too stupid and angry, and just don't understand the basic math that will prevent them from ever joining the 1%.

I'm definitely convinced that that graphic is truth.

They went on to explain how Steve Jobs just borrowed against his own stock options, because he knew that when he died his heirs would get to reset the cost basis of those options to the current market value, because the 1% has so thoroughly corrupted our tax laws, ha ha. And that the 99% would never figure it out, because they are simply too stupid and angry, and just don't understand the basic math that will prevent them from ever joining the 1%.

Right off, since when would strangers you spoke with know what Steve Jobs and his lawyers did in private ? Sounds like all conspiracy talk..

Second, he had no stock options, he gave it all back. So he couldnt assign or transfer it. If he did have options and assigned/tranfered/sold his right, Apple Board of Directors would have to approved of it and it would be disclosure item with the SEC and since it would go to his trust..

Lastly, Steve Jobs (Grantor) and heirs (beneficiary) dont have control over his estate assets, its under the control of the Trustee who values the assets, files the tax return, and distributes the income and assets.

" I had lunch with a couple of ambitious and financially literate friends yesterday "

ambitious .. yes.. literate... no ...

Is that what people on University coffee shop do all.. how to con the guy on the street... yea... real great area (Fortress - Palo Alto) to raise your kids !

AlfonsoM says

I know several illegal alien families who get wellfare, one of these families needed more money, so their 17 year old daughter got pregnant twice from 2 different men! just for the increase in government aid!

Every institution or program can and will be abused to an extent, after all not all people are good.

If however the institution or program on balance, despite some who will abuse it for personal gain, is beneficial to the whole of society in terms of money spent, social effects, and morality then it should still be supported right?

If you want to argue the opposite then fine, I guess we should get rid of the police and military and hospitals, hell all governments too right?

They replied that they would easily be able to escape the revolution, and again urged me to just take advantage of their prejudices and anger to lower my own tax rate, make them into my slaves, etc etc.

Those "friends" are real scumbags.

jerrypap says

My biggest challenge every step of the way has all been related to onerous and typically nonsensical government restrictions - regulations, taxes, and a thousand other government policies that sometimes make it near impossible to get ANYTHING done.

I'm coming to the conclusion that much government regulation is the way that the 1% prevents you from competing with them.

All in the name of the public interest, of course. See this for some examples

But likewise its perhaps more true that a lot of those regulations keep you, me, and others safe from any number of harmful or potentially harmful materials and situations. We live in a world that is absolutely chok-full of man-made chemicals and substances. Organizations like the EPA and OSHA constantly monitor and re-classify the zillions of things we're around all day everyday.

Think about it this way: It wasn't too long ago that asbestos, PCBs, lead in both paint and gasoline, and 1000's of other everyday chemicals and materials were used extensively and are now either regulated, banned, or re-classified with proper handling and exposure guidelines, none of which would have existed without forms of regulations.

thomas.wong1986 says

Right off, since when would strangers you spoke with know what Steve Jobs and his lawyers did in private ? Sounds like all conspiracy talk..

Second, he had no stock options, he gave it all back

Actually, Steve Jobs did not give it all back, and those guys were right about the reset in cost basis:

"David S. Miller writes that when Facebook goes public later this year, Mark Zuckerberg plans to exercise stock options worth $5 billion of the $28 billion that his ownership stake will be worth and since the $5 billion he will receive will be treated as salary, Zuckerberg will have a tax bill of more than $2 billion making him, quite possibly, the largest taxpayer in history. But how much income tax will Zuckerberg pay on the rest of his stock that he won't immediately sell? Nothing, nada, zilch. He can simply use his stock as collateral to borrow against his tremendous wealth and avoid all tax. That's what Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, did, reportedly borrowing more than a billion dollars against his Oracle shares to buy one of the most expensive yachts in the world. Or consider the case of Steven P. Jobs who never sold a single share of Apple after he rejoined the company in 1997, and therefore never paying a penny of tax on the over $2 billion of Apple stock he held at his death. Now Jobs' widow can sell those shares without paying any income tax on the appreciation before his death — only on the increase in value from the time of his death to the time of the sale — because our tax system is based on the concept of "realization." Individuals are not taxed until they actually sell property and realize their gains and the solution to the problem is called mark-to-market taxation. According to Miller, mark-to-market would only affect individuals who were undeniably, extraordinarily rich, only publicly traded stock would be marked to market, and a mark-to-market system of taxation on the top one-tenth of 1 percent would raise hundreds of billions of dollars of new revenue over the next 10 years."

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/02/08/2310218/the-zuckerberg-tax

tts says

Those "friends" are real scumbags.

You'd probably say they're smart and pleasant people if you met them in person. But I was kind of shocked that it was perfectly fine with them to let angry stupid Republicans screw themselves over so that the rich could enjoy unfairly low tax rates.

tts says

If however the institution or program on balance, despite some who will abuse it for personal gain, is beneficial to the whole of society in terms of money spent, social effects, and morality then it should still be supported right?

who said anything about getting rid of police or hospitals? you take things to the extreme, then I should also! You said that all those people that abuse the system for personal gain benefit our society by spending the money, well hell! lets give all those people double or even triple the amount they take, in that way our society will also benefit a lot more! by your logic this will work! Right!
What i'm saying is that this system can work, if done correctly, by taking the proper measures to prevent fraud! sure it will never be perfect but once fraud is detected then it should be stopped! that is way to logical for our system! we promote fraud by not stopping it!
I really don't care if someone believes me or not! I just don't care, but try searching in youtube for EBT Cards and you will be amazed!
http://www.youtube.com/embed/NzspsovNvII

Thank you patrick for your work on this site!

And then if you still have a loss, you can deduct $3,000 of that loss from regular income forever until it's all deducted away. I know TurboTax has been having me deduct $3K per year for a huge loss I had in the dot-com bubble for, oh, about a decade now.

Ok so now its Capital Stock ... And you have a problem with this ? Was it some stock insanely overvalued like Ariba back in 1999! 150x future earnings... would you buy LinkedIn today at 1000x future earnings.. did you learn anything?

Yes PE does count for something....

Actually, Steve Jobs did not give it all back, and those guys were right about the reset in cost basis:

OK lets say. Jobs Ellison and Z all had vested options, all approved by board of directors to get a loan and disclosed to the SEC (given)

My comments: So what ? They secured the loan with the options to the lendor.

Eventually in order to pay the loan off, they will have to sell stock along with the taxes...

But here is the catch from your linked article... the new game to increase govt revenue upfront taxes...That is, the govt couldnt wait until taxpayer sell the shares to pay for the loan. In this case stock only, but the reality is stocks go up one year and down the next.. but the IRS gets their cut of the action as your holding it and saving it for the future. Would you apply the same rule on homes even during a housing bubble mania. Clearly not..

"According to Miller, mark-to-market would only affect individuals who were undeniably, extraordinarily rich, only publicly traded stock would be marked to market, and a mark-to-market system of taxation on the top one-tenth of 1 percent would raise hundreds of billions of dollars of new revenue over the next 10 years."

If your asking about Mort Z.. i say he may "off himself" if he borrows and his stock tanks ... wouldnt be the first time that happened with rich to rags story..

Or consider the case of Steven P. Jobs who never sold a single share of Apple after he rejoined the company in 1997, and therefore never paying a penny of tax on the over $2 billion of Apple stock he held at his death. Now Jobs' widow can sell those shares without paying any income tax on the appreciation before his death — only on the increase in value from the time of his death to the time of the sale — because our tax system is based on the concept of "realization."

Again, his assets and all the claims to his assets including any lendor who provided a loan secured by stock will get valued by the excutor of the trust (independent party). They will value the assets including the stock and report that to the IRS. The trust later distributes the income and corpus. After that estate tax rules kick in.. i dont recall if its 30-40% tax.

The sum of the story is this: our tax code is ridiculously biased in favor of unearned income, at the expense of working people.

Invest wisely.. or dont invest at all... it has nothing to do with tax code..

Or are you going to be the first person to buy Facebook stock at $ xxxxxxxxx/share and a Price Earning multiple of 100,000 times future earnings.

This Thread is about senseless left wing politics rather than facts...

Throw some meat to the masses.. they want their 10 lbs of flesh.

The guy on the left (get it, the left?) is most likely a unionized government employee.

The guy on the left is not even remotely like any government employee I ever met. But he is exactly like most hard-core Republicans in the 99%.

I have to admit that Honest Abe's complaints about everyone except the people who are killing his American Dream make Abe seem exactly like the guy on the left.

They are in your way Abe! They are killing your dream. They prevent competition by using regulation and and skew the rewards in favor of themselves by using the tax code. You don't really have a chance in America to profit from your own labor until the playing field gets leveled out.

You're your own worst enemy Abe. I'd like for you to have a good life, but you have to free your mind first. Leave your hates behind and look at the facts: unearned income is taxed at such a low rate that no matter how hard you work you will never catch up to the very rich, not in 100 lifetimes, and you will have to bid against them for housing, education, and every other thing you want. And they have to do no work except keep the tax code corrupted in their favor.

tts says

sack says

But the dividends have already been taxed once as corporate tax, taxing it again is probably netting the government more than your 35% (which I doubt many of us are paying).

This is pure pro-rich meme horseshit.

Yeah, when shown a fact/logic for which people have no answer, make a claim that it is fecal matter of some animal. Classic.

The non rich wage earners get their income quadruple mega taxed by this logic. After all they pay a sales tax, gas tax, state tax, property tax, federal income tax, etc. all on the same salary.

Sales tax and gas taxes are consumption tax, and even the rich pay the same. More you consume, more you pay.

State and federal taxes are applicable on corporate profits too... If I
make a corporate as a sole proprietorship, I get taxed only once... all my earnings are considered to be my wages and taxes accordingly.

Instead if I invest in a company, the company gets taxed at corporate rates (which I believe is higher than personal taxes, but I am no tax expert), and then when I take my earnings out (dividends), I get taxed again -- on both state and federal level.

So don't you tell me that only the poor (btw: really poor

tts says

This is pure pro-rich meme horseshit.

Yeah, when shown the fact logic for which people have no answer, make a claim that it is fecal matter of some pasture animal. Classic.

Sales tax and gas taxes are consumption tax, and even the rich pay the same. More you consume, more you pay.

State and federal taxes are applicable on corporate profits too... If I
make a corporate as a sole proprietorship, I get taxed only once... all my earnings are considered to be my wages and taxes accordingly.

Instead if I invest in a company, the company gets taxed at corporate rates (which I believe is higher than personal taxes, but I am no tax expert), and then when I take my earnings out (dividends), I get taxed again -- on both state and federal level. So don't you tell me that only the poor pay 4 times the taxes (btw: really poor i.e people with less than 50K hardly pay any state/fed taxes) pay -- even the rich pay that (and no, I am not rich).

The second thing is every one talks about the rich paying just 15%, but if you are really honest and you are making around 100-150K, I doubt you will be paying much more than 15-16% either ( effective tax rate for married filing jointly without any other deduction like mortgage etc. If used, it reduces the income tax paid much much lesser than the 15%).

I can understand taxing more on capital gains, but to say dividends needs to be taxed further is something I dont agree with. Furthermore, with Obamacare, there is already another 4% that will be taxed on earnings above 250K, add the expiring tax breaks that will make the rates 20% (or 18% if held for more than 5 years). Effectively, the rich will be paying close to 25% of their earnings.. If you are not rich and you claim to be paying more than the rich, i.e. 25% federal tax (effective rate), then you need better tax professional.