Who are the 47%? Not a bunch of free-loaders.

Comments

[KG]

OK. Am I hallucinating? I thought I read comments earlier on this post. Ed, did Bubba, polifrog, Spag, et al finally blow up the comments section?

[Andrew Brod]

Another illustrative graph, showing the age profile of taxpayers.

[Ed Cone]

KG, this is a fresh thread -- you may be thinking of last night's post on the topic.

[Collards]

Such as.........

"Actually, Rush Limbaugh said he may as well be Elmer Fudd. Bubba, Guarino, Davenport, Klan Frog, CP and the rest of the local losers will finally come to understand Jesus was gay and God is a liberal."

Fec

[justcorbly]

What amazes me is how many people collecting Social Security or using Medicare tell pollsters that they have never used a government program. Just who did they think all that money from their paychecks was going to?

I started collecting Social Security last year, and I certainly know where that money comes from. Even if my income taxes went up.

The thing is, though, that the right seems to think that Romney's or Obama's kids start out with no more of an "equal opportunity" than the kids of the single mom who cleans houses for $20,000 a year. Even if they think that's not true, they don't care. The paper assurances of the Constitution and the law soothe their souls.

[Bill Yaner]

Romney's "off the cuff" comments about those not paying income taxes is a wonderful glimpse of the man behind the mask. We don't get that kind of view much these days, but when we do, it behooves us to listen carefully to the heart and soul of the filthy rich and how they see the needs of those who "don't take responsibility" for their needs.

What a mess this Republican Party has become.

[Fec]

Collards, I owe you a finely crafted local micro brew.

[sittinginthemiddle.]

"Such as.........

"Actually, Rush Limbaugh said he may as well be Elmer Fudd."-FEC

Hilarious when the corn fed far left start quoting Limbaugh.
And yes that would be government provided corn.....

[sittinginthemiddle.]

"I think that what we're going to have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective at all," Obama says. "I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution -- because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot." Barak Obama

This from your Der Leader, now march in lockstep little Parasites.

[Mick]

Ah, a Hitler/Nazi reference and disparaging remarks about a vet amputee all in a couple days! CP is definitely going to have to put "former" in front of his current handle.

[sittinginthemiddle.]

"Ah, a Hitler/Nazi reference and disparaging remarks about a vet amputee all in a couple days!"- Mick

Mick, try to get your lies straight. I made no disparaging remarks about any vet amputee. One of your brethren Loones referenced their father into a post I had made. As for the Hitler/Nazi remark, if memory serves he believed that government should control everything just as our current president. Normally if one can't discern what the root of the problem is it's because they never look in the mirror.
Now, keep in step.

[Spag]

So both Romney and Obama agree that there are groups of people who don't pay their fair share of taxes. What's the the big deal?

[CP(Worst Person on the Internet)]

Sam, I think it's a got something to do with how the respective candidates would want to use the additional revenue from the group whose share they would like to increase.

[Brian Clarey]

It's exactly like Hitler.

[Thomas]

What are Loones?

[Mick]

"Big talk from a typical Parasite behind a keyboard. I suppose the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

What lie would that be?

[Mick]

Of Course CP (formely the worst person on the internet) said it best.

""Typical Parasite" + "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" = "your old man is a parasite". At least own up to your own words, or was there some other logical relationship between those two phrases that somehow escaped me?"

You disparaged a deceased, vet, amputee. Anything else you'd like to add? Or have you said enough.

[Andrew Brod]

"So both Romney and Obama agree that there are groups of people who don't pay their fair share of taxes. What's the the big deal?"

It certainly is a mystery why Spag gets accused of drawing false equivalence.

[Andrew Brod]

...equivalences.

[Spag]

And there it is! Right on cue! The old fallback "false equivalence" argument. I actually knew that would be the response when I wrote it and Brod was exactly the suspect I had in mind.

Here's the false equivalency: Barack Obama is a DEMOCRAT who thinks the rich don't pay their fair share. Romney is a REPUBLICAN who thinks people who pay no taxes aren't paying any share.

DEMOCRAT does not equal REPUBLICAN, so yes, it was a false equivalency. It always is when the same rules are applied to liberals.

[Andrew Brod]

Yeah, we got it the first time. But thanks for explaining it again.

However, you did alter it this time, didn't you? Previously, you said that Romney doesn't feel that a group of people (which everyone knew was the poor) were paying "their fair share." Now you've edited that. What you said the first time is more accurate: Romney feels that it's unfair for the poor to be paying so little in taxes. That's a very different (one might even say very un-equivalent) viewpoint from Obama's.

Y'know, there is a way you could avoid having people throw the false-equivalence argument your way: Stop drawing false equivalences.

[Spag]

Nice try, Andrew. The 47% aren't per se "poor". In fact, it's not even close.

I didn't change the meaning of anything. Both men believe that there is a GROUP of people (notice that it doesn't have to be the SAME group) don't pay a fair share of taxes. Romney thinks one group takes without giving, and Obama thinks one group doesn't give enough.

[Ged]

Letters from the 47% via Andrew Sullivan

[polifrog]

A couple of thoughts.

Many of the 47% Romney references are the subsidy dependents that litter the American economic landscape. They are not impoverished but are nonetheless dependent on our government. From the non competitive GM, to all-global-warming-all-the-time NPR, to the school in which Brod endeavors to protect the funding of his own job, the 47% Romney references is a vastly larger voting block than the impoverished stereotype liberals seems to have embraced.

One of the attacks on Romney to questions his morality. How can a moral person denigrate half of the US?

But if Romney is somehow immoral for noting that dependency on government has risen under Obama, then, it must, conversely, be moral for Obama to grow the numbers of government dependents.

I and most Americans reject that. There are few better measures of Obama's failure than the steadily increasing numbers of Americans that become statistics on the various forms of government assistance. Democrats seem to look upon those numbers measures of success. Look at GM, Fannie & Freddie, Fisker, and the pride that radiates from Democrats when they point to the growing numbers of people they "help".

That is not success, and more importantly, it is not moral. There is no morality in not endeavoring to decrease the number of government dependents. But what is truly wicked is to look upon our swelling rolls of dependents as a form of success.

Second thought. Many of the individuals who make up Romney's 47% understand what is described above and further understand that they are there because of Obama. They desire success for themselves and reject being told by Democrats that they should feel good about their dependency.

Real Americans know that the smug dependency sold by Democrats is fundamentally immoral, fundamentally unAmerican, fundamentally Democrat, and fundamentally enabling our current depression.

And many of those real Americans are part of Romney's 47%.

[Ged]

Actually, republicans are just as much to blame for "growing" the 47% as the democrats are.

"Republicans backed refundable tax credits and expanded entitlement programs under George W. Bush. About half had no tax liability because of standard deductions and personal exemptions designed to exclude subsistence levels of income from taxation. The rest received tax breaks including the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, an exclusion of combat pay and tax benefits for older Americans such as the partial exclusion of Social Security benefits from income."

[polifrog]

GED:

Actually, republicans are just as much to blame for "growing" the 47% as the democrats are.

Newt did well, but on the whole Republicans less to blame than Democrats. There is no parity, though.