Ok, I looked it up. He's some politician in Texas with big ambitions. His tax idea would only be "voluntary" in that people could choose to go down to a new 20% flat tax rate, or "volunteer" to keep paying a higher rate. I'm sure loads of people would volunteer, so that would work a treat...

NOT.

Funny....I here various rich Democrat-supporters saying over and over again that they don't pay enough taxes...saying stupid shit like "My Secretary pays more than me..." blah blah blah. OK....Sooooooo.....freakin MAN UP and pay what you BELIEVE is a fair tax on yourself, if you don't think you are paying enough, morons!

But any DISINGENUOUS LYING ASSHOLE that is going to make a thread such as this to suggest that Perry's tax plan is ONLY a "voluntary" tax is just that: A disingenuous Lying Asshole. Perry has recently come out with a flat tax proposal, which has nothing to do with a "voluntary" tax. Please cite and post a link to Perry advocating that all taxes should be voluntary, idiot.

Krellin, please do what I did and look up what Perry is saying. He is not talking about the choice to pay tax *at all* being made voluntary. He is using the term "voluntary" though in terms of his plan.

He's also taken up the birth certificate issue, because he wants to make sure everybody is 100% positive that he's a racist douche, and not just unsure.

In other news..Herman Cain has expressed that he is pro-choice. Watch his nutso supporters turn on him in 3....2.....1.....

Not like it matters. Neither of your main parties offers a reasonable choice. One set of corrupt, immorral money-grubbing corporate suits vs the other set of corrupt, immorral money-grubbing suits.

Yeah except one of these sets wants to crush unions, women, the unemployed, the retired, the sick and pretty much everyone under their heel while the other set of suits gives us a fighting shot at survival. I'm not rich enough to pretend that the two parties are identical. The differences matter. Sarah Palin does not = Barney Frank.

Excuse me, but it's 'Parry' with an "A" for America.

@Atom
and asshat.

@Putin - Yes, there is a difference between Sarah Palin and Barney Frank. Sarah Palin is an attention hungry idiot who just regurgitates what she hears, and Barney Frank is a double talking idiot who should be investigated for what he did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I'm not rich either, but class warfare arguments just don't cut it. The argument that big bully corporations are the cause of all of America's problems forgets the biggest bully of them all, big government run by either the left or right. Government is there to make sure nobody cheats and the truely needy are helped, not make sure of equal outcome.

Thanks, that's even less interesting than the usual anti-government/"class warfare" buzzword fest.

Naturally, because it's the government's fault that bankers decided to securitize mortgages, and that financial institutions decided to overleverage. Because as all know whenever the market screws up, it's the government's fault. The market never gets the blame, the government never gets the credit. Your anti-government talking points got old a long time ago.

Frank became Finance Chair in 2007, which was after the housing bubble burst. He had nothing to do with the crisis. And Fannie & Freddie aren't to blame for the mortgage backed security bonanza, they were a relatively small player in that market. Before Frank, there was absolutely no attempt to regulate them. But see you people will even blame the government for attempting to regulate anything so there's no reasoning with you. If there is any government entity whatsoever, no matter how nominally government, you conservatives will always claim it's to blame for everything. Never mind all the obviously greedy and short-sighted crap the banks and corporations are doing, and that Freddie & Fannie simply adjusted their practices to keep up with what was already the business model of other lending agencies, it is and will always be *big gubmint's* fault.

They get tax loopholes, we get unemployment, but it's not corporate America's fault, it's government somehow.

You have gotten it all wrong...

The 'Perry'-tax, or more correctly, the 'Perry6006'-tax, works like this:

- Every Monday, all actiive players on Webdiplomacy.net get a 1 -pts deduction
- These D-pts are added to the 'Perry6006'-account
- This has already been in place for over a year's time, and noone has noticed anything yet...

"In 2003, while the ranking minority member on the Financial Services Committee, Frank opposed a Bush administration proposal, in response to accounting scandals, for transferring oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to a new agency that would be created within the Treasury Department. The proposal, supported by the head of Fannie Mae, reflected the administration's belief that Congress "neither has the tools, nor the stature" for adequate oversight. Frank stated, "These two entities ...are not facing any kind of financial crisis ... The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."[62] In 2003, Frank also stated what has been called his "famous dice roll":[63] "I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness [in the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] that we have in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidised housing." - wikipedia. Sure, Frank had nothing to with it, ha, ha, ha.

I never said that corporations are without blame, they obviously have made some poor business decisions that while increased revenue in the short run were unsustainable. We agree there. However, the idea that Fannie & Freddie were not involved is uninformed. Who do you think creates all of the underwriting standards for the big bank lenders? The big banks are really just servicers of the mortgages, and then because those loans have government backing of some sort they are rated higher in quality then they actually are. True, the investment world acted like a kid in a candy store at that point and should be held accountable for their short sightedness. To think that Fannie and Freddie "simply adjusted their practices to keep up" is just plain wrong. They started it at the direction of Presidents from both parties for a couple decades. The banks wrote mortgages that they already had a buyer for in Freddie & Fannie, therefore Freddie& Fannie provided the drug to the banks at the direction of government trying to nudge business in the "correct" direction. The dealers(Fannie, Freddie, and FHA), users(banks, investors, and overleveraged borrowers), and the suppliers(well intentioned but flawed big government) are to blame for their part.

The tax situation is a separate argument, but who creates the tax code? I guess that you could argue that corporations buy favors from politicians to make rules that benefit them in the tax code, but if government wasn't in the position to try and engineer the economy as they see fit, then those loopholes wouldn't be there would they?

The tax code does need to simplified, it has become not only a source of revenue for the Federal Government but also a tool to encourage and discourage certain behaviors. The Perry plan adds to the complication by presenting another option, so I don't like it. I like the idea of a flat tax with an exemption for all income earned below the poverty line, nobody pays taxes on the first $30K they earn for example, but the current code needs to be thrown out. Even a flat national sales tax with a prebate for everything under the cost of living would be preferrable so long as it replaced all income taxes.

No, no, no. Sales taxes are *regressive*, income taxes are *progressive*. You should transfer taxes from sales taxes to income taxes, not the other way around!

That is why if you instituted a sales tax, the prebate would be necessary. For the sake of simple numbers, if the poverty line for a family is $30k a year and the sales tax is 15%, then a family would be taxed $4500 throughout the year on basic needs. Put in a monthly prebate of $4500/12=$375. It would still be *progressive* in that those that spend the most would would have highest effective tax rate. Spend $30k, you pay no taxes. Spend $40K you pay 15% of $10k or $1500. Spend $60K you pay $4500k and so on. Those that make more generally spend more, and those that don't spend either save or invest which helps encourage lending and growth.