The Ant and the Grasshopper..... A must read
 

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

THE CLASSIC VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the
ant is a fool and laughs, and dances, and plays the summer away. Come
winter, the ant is warm and well fed. Grasshopper has no food or shelter,
so he dies out in the cold. ..................................

THE MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a
fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the
shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the
ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and
starving. CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering
grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a
table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can
this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is
allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the
grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing... "It's Not Easy Being
Green." Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house
where the news stations film Jesse's group singing "We shall overcome."
Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's
sake. Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant
has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an
immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share." Finally,
the EOC drafts the EEAGA, "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act,"
retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing
to hire a proportionate number of green bugs, And, having nothing left to
pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation
suit against the ant. The case is tried, before a panel of federal judges
that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The
ant loses the case. The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up
the last bits of the ant's food, while the government house he is in,
which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because
he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The
grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now
abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once
peaceful neighborhood.

That is too depressing because it CAN HAPPEN!

What do you mean can. It does happen every day.

you should see what happened here when that ran a few years ago. !

Geez...sad but TRUE:( :( REAL TRUE:mad:

Aint it the truth......:( :D

The only good thing about it is that the ant moved to the next field, started over again, made an entire new home and living, and this time sheltered more from the watchful eyes of the gov't by investing in "alternative" food products and energy credits.

This is what successful people do, you cannot stop the producers of this country-no matter how hard the libs try:cool:

It's amazing that the Libs just can't see the truth, you see they believe anyone who is successful did it at the expense of others not from their own hard work. Most Libs I know are either high all the time and living in another world or they are bitter and blame someone else for keeping them down. Now that may start something(hehe)

That's a "how true" story if I ever heard one.
Also sounds like the grasshopper was on welfare at the end.

A Liberal is a person that feels they owe a debt to society, but they want to pay for it with your money! :mad:

I think I saw that on the news the other night.... Might have been the resin I was working with for 2 hours in the closed garage?

I'm a "Lib" and yes it does happen. But I'm pretty sure ENRON was run by Republicans. Not to mention a few Bank scandals.:eek: People are people. If you have Money & know the "Loopholes" of taxation you will get to keep it. Middle class America Pays a higher percentage of taxes than any other socio-economic class. What is YOUR tax bracket?

I want to see "workfare" and I want to see it now dammit!!! I am just about going to blow my stack if I see another 35 year old, 320 pound, lazy, dirty slob in front of me in the grocery store with a cart full of steak and shrimp and Pepsi and Oreos and Fritos and then he whips out his booklet of food stamps!!! This piece of $hit should have to report every day (yes, saturdays and sundays too) to town hall, city hall, fire hall or wherever and be ready and waiting for a tax paying working stiff like me to call down there and order two or three of those lazy SOBs to come over to my house and do whatever I need done. Mow grass, rake leaves, paint my trim, clean my gutters, seal my driveway, wax my boat..........no wait, nobody touches my boat but me.

Anyway, I can find plenty of work for these "poor unfortunates" so they might be able to work off a few of those calories that I paid for. I'd work the slobs so hard they would go find a real job just to keep from having to go to my house!!

There's just no reason why a guy my age (or younger) should sit in front of the library all day on the little park bench and watch all the people go by that pay his freakin' way through life. At the end of his busy day, he goes back to his smelly flop-house and has a shrimp cocktail while he plants his big a** in front of the Oprah show. Just pisses me off to no end!!!

The way the bracket sheet reads to me is that:

1) High income earners pay 36% of their income in federal taxes.
2) All earnings over a couple hundred grand reduce their itemized deductions by the overage meaning that high income earners get to deduct less of their deductible stuff.
3) High income earners do not get to deduct any childcare credits even though it still costs them to care for their children just like any other bracket.
4) High income earners are not allowed to put pretax money in an IRA (roth or traditional) and must utilize conventional investments (they can use employee sponsored 401ks).

So how is it that middle class America pays a higher percentage of their income out in taxes? I'm not following that statement very well.

Liberals have a right to be liberal. Conservatives have a right to be conservative. I often get lost in the logic of either party when it goes to extremes. But if we are talking numbers and math (which I'm competent with both), I don't understand how anybody could say that a high income earner pays less percentage-wise OR volume-wise...


Example: Take a guy who makes $5M in income in a given year.

If he lives in Tennessee, he will pay 6% Hall taxes on all unearned income unless it is in an FDIC bank account.

He will pay the whole set of brackets and will be in the 36% in a hurry, after which every dollar forfeits 36 cents in federal income taxes.

He will get to claim a dependent or two, and the standard deduction for each, but he would need more than $175,000 in itemized deductions to get over the bar and claim any to offset taxes (cause all over a couple hundred lessen his deductions by 3%). This joker will pay SCADS of income tax, somewhere around 35%+.

They guy making $45k will maybe pay what, $5,000?? That's around 11 percent.

I don't see the argument here.

THEN we get into a whole different zone:
The $45k guy clocks out and goes home. Sleeps well.

The $5M guy leaves the office at 8pm, eats a quickie with the kids, and spends the rest of the evening reviewing his strategies and business plans. Checks his sales logs and quote sheets. Emails his reps and sets up his to-do list for morning. Sleeps fitfully, sometimes waking and writing himself notes about ides he had in his sleep. Wakes early, showers, reviews paperwork, pays bills, lines up his banking for the day (or does it online), and leaves for a breakfast meeting before getting to the office.

I don't make $5M. I do make enough to be taxed heavily. I also rarely get a nights' sleep without "working" a substantial portion of the night. I pay property taxes on several businesses and several residential pieces. I pay F&E taxes at several locations, I pay Social Security (which supposedly I get some back someday), Medicare, and Federal Taxes. I pay TN Hall taxes. I get virtually no deductions at all. I pay a lot of taxes. I have close friends who make a decent living who pay less than $5k in federal taxes a year.

The argument that the high income people don't pay enough taxes is lost on me. I don't understand it. If you somehow tax the deep pockets even more then where is the incentive for these guys to take the risks, live the never ending life of a business owner?

Rox, you are a business owner. Obviously, you are currently being harassed by a conservative lynching mob, but putting that aside, how can you argue that the middle man is getting taxed too heavily?

Who thinks we need a flat rate tax system? I have seen charts that say that a straight 15% tax rate system with nothing but personal exemptions and standard deductions would provide 30% MORE tax revenues than we currently get. And FROM that, assistance organizations can use different criteria for determining who needs help on a local (state/city) scale. A tax form would have a place for your gross income, amount put into a pretax retirement account, number of dependents, and number of dependents disabled or under 18. Then you look at the chart and pay the tax. I like it.

I, for one, can't understand why Bill Gates can't deduct mortgage interest if he wants to. Why does it matter that he makes a bozillion dollars in a year. I think he should still be able to deduct everything anybody else can... A level field. Would make things easy.,

Agree with you 100% Mcollinstn, especially the falt tax argument. I have seen the similar number crunches that point toward more income for the govt. with a flat tax. Plus, you can wipe the whole IRS. Don't want to see the workers in the IRS loose their jobs but, hey, thats life and they are costing us a bundle.

Mccollinstn, I too agree with you 100%. There should be a Flat tax. Then even the ones who make money the "underhanded" way would still be paying their fare share. If it was done by sales tax on everything including houses cars, etc. . But their are ways around the percentage tax now, such as having your business buy your house, cars, boats, Va-ca homes. At the end of the year the "taxable income" is greatly reduced.

5.5 mil....... as my father told me once when i complained about paying alot of taxes...." if you didn't make it , you wouldn't have to pay it "....I thought about it a second and realized I'm doing OK regardless....

Did you ever notice that the non-workers and such ALWAYS complain about the higher income guy who works his ass off!!

I'm not a higher income guy. Just a guy with a small business, auto/tk repair, and I work much harder and many more hours then I did working for someone else. Then I would punch out, go home and really not think about work thill 8:00 the next morning.

NOW, business is always on my mind. Always thinking about how to "Do Better" and spending time, late hours, on the books.

I think the key words here are, "Do Better". The harder I work now the more I, me personally benefit. And not always monetarily. [spelling] Working at your own business you don't have to worry about losing your job and some PIA boss. You're the PIA boss.

I pay, TOO MANY TAXES and the new word, "FEE's".

Off soap box.

Anybody can make money or save on taxes by using illegal methods. We can all start a fake business in Delaware and let it buy our boat and not pay any sales tax on it.

We can all have a business buy all or part of our house and deduct its use for the operation of the business, even if the business loses money.

Just cause we can do it doesn't mean that it is legal or will withstand an audit.

I see lots of boats with DELAWARE across the stern that have never been to delaware.

I know people driving cars that were purchased by their business but the car never gets used for business usage.

And on and on.

This has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats. Tax fraud is a criminal act. We all look to reduce our tax burdens but just cause a guy makes big money doesnt give him the ability to twist the tax codes. If he does so, it is not a result of qualifying for some benefit, just means he is a crook.

My ex bro-in-law is a good example. Has probably paid half the taxesd he should pay over the last ten years via hiding or underreporting his income.

The current tax laws are in NO WAY that I can see more fair to the big $$ earner.

Democrats and liberals should still be dancing a jig cause the big earner still gets taxed unnecessarily while the lazy a$$es pay virtually nothing. The Liberal gripe that the big money should be taxed more is confusing to me. Sounds like whining.

And I don't speak "Whine-ese". :)

Enron, worldcom and all the other cheating co. did so in the Clinton admin. the wanted stock prices to rise so they could cash-in on their stock opts. They were paper tigers and knew Clinton didn't care just give me a robust econ and let the next guys sort it all out. Enron did donate alot to Bush(and all politians) but Bush is busting them anyhow.
Libs are saying Bush is after oil in Iraq, how much oil did Bush 41 get? None!!!!

Enron !!! Did someone say Enron ?? Oh I see You mean The "sweetheart" deal between Enron Corp. and India – brokered with the help of Al Gore and Bill Clinton during the controversial trade junkets in the mid-'90s –the one that ultimately soured and sped the energy giant's collapse, analysts say.

After investing more than $1 billion to help build a huge power plant near Bombay, Enron had problems it's last year getting paid for power generated by the plant – even after sources say former President Clinton lobbied Indian officials on Enron's behalf during his April visit to India.

Desperate, Enron chairman Kenneth L. Lay fired off a letter to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee threatening legal action to recover claims of up to $5 billion related to the Dabhol Power Co.

A month later, Lay called Commerce Secretary Don Evans, pleading for help with the nightmarish project.
The next day, Enron stunned Wall Street by announcing its first loss in more than four years. In the third quarter, the Houston-based energy giant hemorrhaged $618 million.

Enron's once-high-flying stock nose-dived, robbing many of its workers of their retirement nest eggs, and the company filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history