I'm getting really tired of advocates of the "free market" who'd have nothing to do with it....

[Postman]

like the kind of people I work with...

I'm a postal worker who works alongside of some people who advocate for republican party policies yet here they are, working in a Unionized, quasi-government job that provides them with job security (a priceless benefit especially now), a living wage, generous health benefits, vacations, holidays and sick time....

With the "free market" being soo damn great.....I always scratch my head and ask why they just don't give all that socialism up and go work for Wal-Mart.....

[The Gunslinger]

1. Exactly

I come from a small town in PA where many Republicans collect welfare, unemployment, social security, medicare, medicad, and cry about socialism all of the time.

[Postman]

2. Ignorance is a requirement to be a "conservative"

The problem is the tax burden has shifted to the poor and middle class from the top elite. Working people have a right to complain to a certain extent but many fail to see the class warfare being conducted on us from the top.

[fuggbush21]

9. Tax burden on the poor?

I'm slightly confused by this. My taxable income is $26,000 a year. I got back twice what I paid in taxes this year.

So what burden is that? I paid NO taxes. Can someone please explain to me how I am carrying the tax burden? I'm not trying to be facecious or anything, I'm genuinly curious how you've come up with that.

[Postman]

10. The tax burden is not limited to income taxes..

Your FICA taxes were doubled under Ronald Reagan in order to pay for his tax cut for the wealthy. Where as those above the salary cap paid no more FICA taxes.

[fuggbush21]

11. Are you sure?

According to this

http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2009/01/historical-federal-tax-rates-by-income-group.html

Tax rates in all classes have changed drasitcally since the 80's. Every bracket now pays less then what they did then. If you scroll further down, you'll see that tax rates for the average family, has been in a steady decline since 1980. From 12% in 1980 to less then 6% in 2004.

So how where lower and middle class taxes doubled, when they dropped?

[girl gone mad]

13. They sure didn't drop under Reagan.

The only problem with this analysis is that it is historically inaccurate. Reagan may have resisted calls for tax increases, but he ultimately supported them. In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year.

In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.

In 1984, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act. This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar-sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion.

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again. Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first 2 years. And the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 raised taxes still more.

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200310290853.asp

[girl gone mad]

12. Do you buy groceries?

Pay rent?

How about payroll taxes?

Income tax is not the only one that counts.

[fuggbush21]

14. Yes to only 1 of those.

But what does rent have to do with taxes? That is something set up by the person your renting from, not the government.

[Ikonoklast]

15. I used to be a landlord, and my real estate tax burden was figured

into the amount I charged. That included the taxes paid for the local schools, the county levies, and my personal incomes taxes levied on the income derived from the rents paid.

Every year as my taxes increased on my rental property, I passed those increases onto the people renting my property.

Yes, you help your landlord pay his tax liability. Indirectly, but it still comes out of your dime.

[zeos3]

24. How can you answer yes to only 1 of those?

If you have a "taxable" income of $26,000 you're paying FICA.

Do you not buy anything, ever? Food, gas, clothing, etc?
Do you rent or own a place or do you live with family?
Are you listed as a dependent on someone else's tax return?

I'll have to check how much the tax code has changed because I remember paying income taxes several years ago when I was making less than $20K per year.

[Chemical Bill]

26. Your electric bill has a tax.

Internet too. Gasoline is taxed. You pay sales taxes.

Bill

[thunder rising]

3. Heard a Teamster declare, "If he's not Republican, I'm not voting for him," to his shop steward.

I am a consultant so I'm not a Teamster, but I have let them know I would if could. After that declaration, I looked at him and he shrugged his shoulders ... go figure.

[zeos3]

25. Same story

A friend of mine owns a bar where more than half the customers are construction workers and in a union. They complain when Faux News isn't on the TV and all of them are pissed that Obama won the election. Go figure...

[FreakinDJ]

4. Its like Drug Dealers who recruit kids to sell drugs for them

They wear lots of Gold Jewelery, drive a Big Fine Car and elude them into thinking "If you break the Law like me you can be rich like Me"

Reality being - they got "Punked their first trip to the big house" the car belongs to some one else and they won't live to see their 1st million

[Deja Q]

5. "I scratch my head and ask why they just don't give all that socialism up and go work for Wal-mart"

:applause:

:yourock:

K&R

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. Which probably leaves them scratching their head. They don't get it, EVER!

[TomClash]

6. On the flip side

A lot of Free-marketeers who work on Wall Street shoved this crap down my throat for two decades. Now they sucking down TARP money like there's no tomorrow and they don't really see the irony or hypocrisy.

Good post.

[progressoid]

8. I hear a similar hypocrisy here in farm country.

Republican farmers bitching about welfare programs while cashing their crop subsidy checks. :eyes:

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. Not to mention that the USPS consistently LOSES money

In a free market environment, there would be no post office, period. It operates at a loss.

[Postman]

17. And by law cannot operate at a profit....

it must break even (when it does). Any and all excess above expenses goes to the Federal government.

[CANDO]

18. Any union member anywhere is in a socialist organization

As well as any business involved with an "association". Agricultural collectives are socialist also. The problem is cognitive dissonance. People buy into the bullshit without understanding a few things about our world. The thing about propaganda is that it works.

[Nay]

19. had a neighbor who was a big Pub asshole. Came to find out he had a

severely disabled daughter in a state home in KY so he could avoid putting out the $50-100,000 per year it would take to put her in a "free market" place. Bastard. He sure didn't mind making the rest of us pay for his daughter.

[urgk]

20. Try asking them where their model is.

I have free market friends too and none of them are able to come up with an example of a viable, world-scale free market society. They say that, hypothetically, a truly free market sorts itself out and all of the usual spiel, but can't cite an example of that kind of thinking producing a successful, sustainable country.

They also tend to be people who think they've made it on their own. As if somehow they just popped into existence, and immediately began earning a living wholly independent from anyone else's help. When I ask about the Chinese and Irish who built the railroads, the Africans who built the South, the minimum wage workers who cleaned the hotel rooms so they could interview for jobs, they get strangely quiet.

Try asking this too - If a mass move in taste on behalf of the American public -- let's say, a nation-wide, unvoiced decision that "acid washed" isn't what we want in a pair of jeans -- is considered a sort of market factor, then why isn't the decision of the people as voiced through a freely-elected government treated the same way? Why isn't a law that we've collectively agreed upon through our representative democracy just another market factor, rather than being regarded as some outside force? If we can decide slicked back hair is out and the market is supposed to deal with it, why can't we collectively decide that, unregulated, free-market-supported greed, is just no longer in fashion?

I guess my question is -- why should we all accept the premise that there *is* such a creature as a "free market?"

[Postman]

21. Excellent.

You wrote-

Try asking this too - If a mass move in taste on behalf of the American public -- let's say, a nation-wide, unvoiced decision that "acid washed" isn't what we want in a pair of jeans -- is considered a sort of market factor, then why isn't the decision of the people as voiced through a freely-elected government treated the same way? Why isn't a law that we've collectively agreed upon through our representative democracy just another market factor, rather than being regarded as some outside force? If we can decide slicked back hair is out and the market is supposed to deal with it, why can't we collectively decide that, unregulated, free-market-supported greed, is just no longer in fashion?


........outstanding observation.

[mistertrickster]

22. Mega-dittos. I work at a community college. Same deal . . .

We're part of the hated big government program.

Nevertheless, we've got all these RepubliCONs inveighing about how we need lower taxes and government out of our lives.

Hypocrisy--thy name is Republican.

[Coffee and Cake]

23. Wal-Mart is a corporate welfare queen.

According to Shopping for Subsidies, Wal-mart has received over a billion dollars in subsidies from state and local governments and that may be the tip of the ice-berg. Its really not a good example of free markets, despite Conservative rhetoric.

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/wmtstudy.pdf