Minnesota House bill proposes freezing city, county property taxes

orreljw wrote:

<quoted text>
The "liberal bastions ' are always the ones that have to clean up and save the economies your party continually destroys, we are in the middle of this on a national level where the dems have restored your destroyed stock market already. Soon, the corporations will wake p and understand unequivically which of the two parties has really been the business friendly party and which one is repeatedly destroying business in America. And just in case you are still too ignorant and stubborn to leatn anything, your side has been proven economically WRONG! The American public has learned more in the last 7 weeks than the past ten years, your days of relevence are numbered.

Wow, those are some pretty broad brush strokes and bold predictions. Care to back them up with something other than your opinion. Do you realize just how uninformed you appear when you suggest that one party or one person is primarily responsible for something as complex as economic calamity? I'm not interested in trading taunts or name calling, but to appreciate a well informed debate of specific policy, legislation and economic events. Care to offer up just how Republican's "destroyed the stock market", how the Democrats have saved the economy or how the republicans destroyed it.

Your completely unsupported assertions are not debatable. You may as well expect me to argue with someone claiming that the world is square.

Joe Merlot wrote:

<quoted text>
Wow, those are some pretty broad brush strokes and bold predictions. Care to back them up with something other than your opinion. Do you realize just how uninformed you appear when you suggest that one party or one person is primarily responsible for something as complex as economic calamity? I'm not interested in trading taunts or name calling, but to appreciate a well informed debate of specific policy, legislation and economic events. Care to offer up just how Republican's "destroyed the stock market", how the Democrats have saved the economy or how the republicans destroyed it.
Your completely unsupported assertions are not debatable. You may as well expect me to argue with someone claiming that the world is square.

Alright wise one, please point to ONE example in American history where the trickle down economic theory has paid off. You can't. It fails every time. The basic flaw in your theory is that if you put all of the money at the top of the pyramid, it gets banked. Get the money to the masses, it gets spent, and then only the corporations that actually provide good products and services survive based on demand, not based on government hand outs. It is sickening how your party is trying to take all of the rights away from the workers in this country based on budget lies and fearmongering while you can justify just handing over 700 BILLION dollars to the very people who have caused this mess. IF tax cuts to the wealthy actually creates jobs, we would have an excess of jobs available after the last ten years. Hey, newsflash, we don't. In addition to the unfair tax rates that punish the former middle class of this country, there are loopholes and deductions for the wealthy making it the standard to pay NO taxes. Please provide ONE example of a corporation that paid over 10% in taxes, you can't. It doesn't exist! You have NO MORE CREDIBILITY! Your party has proven it's true colors and YOU LOSE! Enjoythe next two years, I am sure after this, it will be the last power you ever hold in this country. We are educating those you contine to lie to.

orreljw wrote:

<quoted text>
Alright wise one, please point to ONE example in American history where the trickle down economic theory has paid off. You can't. It fails every time. The basic flaw in your theory is that if you put all of the money at the top of the pyramid, it gets banked. Get the money to the masses, it gets spent, and then only the corporations that actually provide good products and services survive based on demand, not based on government hand outs. It is sickening how your party is trying to take all of the rights away from the workers in this country based on budget lies and fearmongering while you can justify just handing over 700 BILLION dollars to the very people who have caused this mess. IF tax cuts to the wealthy actually creates jobs, we would have an excess of jobs available after the last ten years. Hey, newsflash, we don't. In addition to the unfair tax rates that punish the former middle class of this country, there are loopholes and deductions for the wealthy making it the standard to pay NO taxes. Please provide ONE example of a corporation that paid over 10% in taxes, you can't. It doesn't exist! You have NO MORE CREDIBILITY! Your party has proven it's true colors and YOU LOSE! Enjoythe next two years, I am sure after this, it will be the last power you ever hold in this country. We are educating those you contine to lie to.

First off, can you point to a post where I'm advocating trickle down economics. I guess you like argue with yourself, huh?

Secondly, there is very little other than partisan ideology in your post above. I'm not an ideologue; I'm a pragmatist who looks at each issue and considers all factors to come to a practical solution.

I'm not advocating trickle down economics, I'm simply pointing out that the level of taxation and spending in the US is unsustainable in an era where we are living in a global economy. The old practices of using domestic policy to "level the playing field" is out the window because we no longer have jurisdiction over large swaths of said playing field. Your ideology as well as it's counter part on the right need to change and we need to start figuring out how we are going to compete as a nationality in the global economy or we're going to be in a world of hurt. Did you not listen to the President (I would hope that he has some credibility with you) in his state of the union speach where he was referring to winning in the global economy and that we were going to have to be creative and make sacrifices to do so?

We can all sit back and fight about whether conservatism or liberalism is king and watch the world pass us by OR we pull our heads out of our collective a$$e$, drop the pettiness and personal attachments to our ideological dogma and figure out what to do.

I'm not going to be one of those igits that sits back and purports to have a silver budget that will fix everything, but I know this. Right now government is capturing over 30% of all income in the US and is spending nearly half of all income earned annually (through debt) and I know that's not sustainable. You cannot spend more than you produce and (out spending is approaching GDP) for very long and survive. So that's one problem that needs to be tackled. To demonstrate that I am NOT an ideologue that simply beats the no new taxes drum mindlessly without considering the circumstances, I actually support a tax increase (yes, that's right an increase) to resolve the SSI solvency issue. Again, being practicle, when you consider the level of cuts to maintain solvency and set them alongside a tax increase that would cost all SSI participants an average of $1.50 a paycheck, it's a no brainer.

People need to drop the ideology and petty partisan drivel and start using their god given abilities to apply reason and common sense.

Signed, Wise One.

Joe Merlot wrote:

<quoted text>
First off, can .......

For being a self proclaimed pragmatist, how do you continue to support the failed economic policies of the republican party? I tend to not beleive your sincerity there. Yes, I am partisan. I beleive the dems have the right course of action for our country, the repubs do not. There are countless examples of the damage their trickle down economics has caused, yet, though you claim to not support their ecoomics, you support them. Hmmm...and as far as us needing to curtail spending, I would normally agree with you, but NOW is very much NOT the time to do that. If you are serious about lowering our debt, you would not have supported the party who just GIFTED 700 BILLION dollars to the ONLY people in this country who does not need the assistance. Yet......
I know you will come back with your right side "tax cuts save jobs" rhetoric, but that too is a lie. Where are all of these jobs that this 700 billion is supposed to buy us? They do not exist. Where were all of the jobs the last TEN years of these tax cuts were supposed to produce? Not a single one of you has answered this question. Yet you continue to demonize the current administration that HAS produced jobs. Why can you not at least address the hypocracy of those policies you continue to advocate for here? If you want to support corporations and create jobs, you MUST create a buying PUBLIC. The wealthy having MORE money does not create jobs, it creates larger bank accounts for those who already have all the money while at the same time taking MONEY out of our society and out of our economy that would otherwise be spent, creating demand, creating what? JOBS! I wonder where the real solutions lie, in taking money out of our economy in an attempt to grow it, or putting money into our economy in order to grow it. Seems pretty logical to me, buit then again, I am a dem. We deal in truth and logic instead of rhetoric and lies.

orreljw wrote:

<quoted text>
For being a self proclaimed pragmatist, how do you continue to support the failed economic policies of the republican party? I tend to not beleive your sincerity there. Yes, I am partisan. I beleive the dems have the right course of action for our country, the repubs do not. There are countless examples of the damage their trickle down economics has caused, yet, though you claim to not support their ecoomics, you support them. Hmmm...and as far as us needing to curtail spending, I would normally agree with you, but NOW is very much NOT the time to do that. If you are serious about lowering our debt, you would not have supported the party who just GIFTED 700 BILLION dollars to the ONLY people in this country who does not need the assistance. Yet......
I know you will come back with your right side "tax cuts save jobs" rhetoric, but that too is a lie. Where are all of these jobs that this 700 billion is supposed to buy us?

I'm not familiar with the 700 bilion in give aways that you are referring to. Generally speaking, I absolutely recognize and agree that we need a buying public. I also recognize that Republicans (at least at the federal level) are doing little more than buying votes with large tax breaks to business as you are right that it has little impact on jobs these days. You can debate (and many have) Reganomics and there is a large body of contradicting research on that topic, but in the global economy we live in now it doesn't trickle down anymore (whether you believe it did or not in the past). That said, Democrats are guilty of the same and the notion that it's OK because they support a different demographic (working americans) is BS. The reality is that both sides have a narrow ideology that doesn't add up to a successfull US in the global economy and both continue to pedal to their bases and vie for power while neither side really has an answer for the future. In truth, Tea Party philosophy is actually the most viable (less government and more freedom for markets and individuals to compete and spur inovation and creativity), but even they are flawed in some ways.

I would love to hear how you think Keynesian (a nice word for European Socialism) economics positions the US for success in the global economy. I absolutely am flabbergasted by the arrogant american perception that we can dictate to the rest of the world and/or that we don't need anyone else to be survive. I absolutely cannot believe that people don't understand that as a nation we are dependant on exports to survive. People actually think that we can simply raise the cost of business domestically without consequence. Crusoe (another common poster) suggested in one post that we simply raise the minimum wage to some arbitrary high wage that would erase the working poor and make everyone middle class. I've had this conversation with others who've suggested we impose high tariffs on imports to make it more desirable for companies to buy US instead of foreign. They fundamentally do not understand that as a nation we produce way more than we can consume domestically and if we did something like that they would turn right around and tariff our products and tank our exports. The angry response when this is pointed out is, "we don't need them they need us, we can get by on our own". That is the "arrogant American" attitude. No, we can't get buy on our own and now live in a world were we must compete with other countries. It's a culture shock that people fundamentally just do not get. There are no silver bullet answers that I'm aware of, but I do believe sacrifices are going to need to be made across the board and neither side claiming that the other should be the only to feel the pain is reasonable (and that includes you suggesting that business and wealthy make all of the sacrifices).