The decline and eventual fall of the USA as world superpower?

[joeblast]

 

well, just because they're doing it way more and way worse doesnt mean we dont have a bigass problem ourselves...

[joeblast]

its long been a problem throughout history that governments spend more than they have, go into debt, spend WAY more than what they dont have, then lean on the citizenry to make up for their lack of being able to balance a checkbook.

 

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

If you are like most Americans, paying taxes is one of your pet peeves. The deadline to file your federal taxes is coming up, and this year Americans will spend more than 7 billion hours preparing their taxes and will hand over more than four trillion dollars to federal, state and local governments. Americans will fork over nearly 30 percent of what they earn to pay their income taxes, but that is only a small part of the story.

As you will see below, there are dozens of other taxes that Americans pay every year. Of course not everyone pays all of these taxes, but without a doubt we are all being taxed into oblivion. It is like death by a thousand paper cuts. Our politicians have become extremely creative in finding ways to extract money from all of us, and most Americans don't even realize what is being done to them. By the time it is all said and done, a significant portion of the population ends up paying more than half of what they earn to the government. That is fundamentally wrong, but nothing will be done about it until people start demanding change. The following is a list of 97 taxes Americans pay every year...

#1 Air Transportation Taxes (just look at how much you were charged the last time you flew)

#2 Biodiesel Fuel Taxes

#3 Building Permit Taxes

#4 Business Registration Fees

#5 Capital Gains Taxes

#6 Cigarette Taxes

#7 Court Fines (indirect taxes)

#8 Disposal Fees

#9 Dog License Taxes

#10 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)

#11 Employer Health Insurance Mandate Tax

#12 Employer Medicare Taxes

#13 Employer Social Security Taxes

#14 Environmental Fees

#15 Estate Taxes

#16 Excise Taxes On Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans

#17 Federal Corporate Taxes

#18 Federal Income Taxes

#19 Federal Unemployment Taxes

#20 Fishing License Taxes

#21 Flush Taxes (yes, this actually exists in some areas)

#22 Food And Beverage License Fees

#23 Franchise Business Taxes

#24 Garbage Taxes

#25 Gasoline Taxes

#26 Gift Taxes

#27 Gun Ownership Permits

#28 Hazardous Material Disposal Fees

#29 Highway Access Fees

#30 Hotel Taxes (these are becoming quite large in some areas)

#31 Hunting License Taxes

#32 Import Taxes

#33 Individual Health Insurance Mandate Taxes

#34 Inheritance Taxes

#35 Insect Control Hazardous Materials Licenses

#36 Inspection Fees

#37 Insurance Premium Taxes

#38 Interstate User Diesel Fuel Taxes

#39 Inventory Taxes

#40 IRA Early Withdrawal Taxes

#41 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)

#42 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)

#43 Library Taxes

#44 License Plate Fees

#45 Liquor Taxes

#46 Local Corporate Taxes

#47 Local Income Taxes

#48 Local School Taxes

#49 Local Unemployment Taxes

#50 Luxury Taxes

#51 Marriage License Taxes

#52 Medicare Taxes

#53 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare

#54 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you don't buy "qualifying" health insurance under Obamacare you will have to pay an additional tax)

#55 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income)

#56 Parking Meters

#57 Passport Fees

#58 Professional Licenses And Fees (another form of taxation)

#59 Property Taxes

#60 Real Estate Taxes

#61 Recreational Vehicle Taxes

#62 Registration Fees For New Businesses

#63 Toll Booth Taxes

#64 Sales Taxes

#65 Self-Employment Taxes

#66 Sewer & Water Taxes

#67 School Taxes

#68 Septic Permit Taxes

#69 Service Charge Taxes

#70 Social Security Taxes

#71 Special Assessments For Road Repairs Or Construction

#72 Sports Stadium Taxes

#73 State Corporate Taxes

#74 State Income Taxes

#75 State Park Entrance Fees

#76 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)

#77 Tanning Taxes (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)

#78 Telephone 911 Service Taxes

#79 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes

#80 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes

#81 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes

#82 Telephone State And Local Taxes

#83 Telephone Universal Access Taxes

#84 The Alternative Minimum Tax

#85 Tire Recycling Fees

#86 Tire Taxes

#87 Tolls (another form of taxation)

#88 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)

#89 Use Taxes (Out of state purchases, etc.)

#90 Utility Taxes

#91 Vehicle Registration Taxes

#92 Waste Management Taxes

#93 Water Rights Fees

#94 Watercraft Registration & Licensing Fees

#95 Well Permit Fees

#96 Workers Compensation Taxes

#97 Zoning Permit Fees

Yet despite all of this oppressive taxation, our local governments, our state governments and our federal government are all absolutely drowning in debt.

When the federal income tax was originally introduced a little more than 100 years ago, most Americans were taxed at a rate of only 1 percent.

But once they get their feet in the door, the social planners always want more.

Since that time, tax rates have gone much higher and the tax code has exploded in size.

Why do we have to have the most convoluted tax system in the history of the planet?

Why can't things be simpler?

In a previous article entitled "24 Outrageous Facts About Taxes In The United States That Will Blow Your Mind", I listed a number of reasons why our federal income tax system has become a complete and utter abomination that is entirely out of control...

1 - The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare's works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.

2 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. Imagine what our society would look like if all that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.

3 - 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.

4 - There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.

5 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.

6 - Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.

7 - In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.

8 - The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes.

9 - According to The Tax Foundation, the average American has to work until April 17th just to pay federal, state, and local taxes. Back in 1900, "Tax Freedom Day" came on January 22nd.

10 - When the U.S. government first implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority of the population paid a rate of just 1 percent, and the highest marginal tax rate was just 7 percent.

If it was up to me, I would abolish the income tax and shut the IRS down.

But neither major political party in the United States is even willing to consider such a thing.

So the monstrous system that we have created will continue to get even bigger and even more complicated.

We are literally being taxed into oblivion...

[thelerner]

 

 

That would be sad if it is true.

Ofcourse its not true. Don't you people have working BS detectors? Especially when finding evidence that agrees with your position spectacularly. https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-theres-a-plot-in-this-country-to-enslave-every-man-woman-and-child-jfk.319/

From site:

The claimed quote is:

Bunk from external source

“

There’s a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman, and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot.

” -

President John F. Kennedy 7 days before his assassination

 

 

It's often accompanied with this image (which I've annotated in yellow). Note the misspelling of "noble" as "nolbe" (this was fixed in later versions of the image)

 

 

The first step in debunking a quote is to find the original source. In this case the debunking is easy, because there is no original source.

 

Kennedy never said that. It's a made-up quote.

 

The quote does not exist in any book indexed by Google, or Amazon. Zero results. Compare that with the "Monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" quote, which gets over 1,520 results in Google books. This means the "quote" is so new that it's not even got into any conspiracy books yet. And not only is there no record of him having said it, there's no record of anyone even claiming he said it.

 

Seven days before his Nov 22 1963 assassination would be November 15th, 1963. On Nov 14th JFK gave a news conference: where he said nothing at all like that quote. That news conference is sometimes attributed to Nov 15th, as it appeared in the NYT the following day. Actually on Nov 15th, JFK gave two speeches.

 

The first was to the AFL-CIO labor organization, and was a generally upbeat assessment of American industry.

 

The second was the to Catholic Youth Organization, and is slightly closer in tone, but still nothing like what is claimed. The following is an actual quote from JFK in that speech, and is the only thing of record that he said that day that remotely resembles the claimed quote:

 

Content from external source

The world is engaged in the most difficult and trying struggle in its long history. All of the great epics which have torn the world for the last 2,000 years pale in comparison to the great ideological gulf which separates us from those who oppose us. It is our responsibility not merely to denounce our enemies and those who make themselves our enemies but to make this system work, to demonstrate what freedom can do, what those who are committed to freedom and the future can do.

 

 

The invented quote could possibly be an extreme corruption of this, but is more likely a paraphrasing of elements of the April 27th 1961 "conspiracy" speech that led to other mis-quotes:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/16...-by-a-monolithic-and-ruthless-conspiracy-quot

 

I did a little digging to try to find some possible origins of the "enslave", and the earliest usages:

 

Earliest full mention on Usenet: 4/10/2004

[zerostao]

could be thelerner, could be lee harvey oswald also acted as a lone gunman acting without anyone else knowing.

 

debunk this and listen closely beginning @ 1:38

 

 

[joeblast]

the more lesser known stuff I see about jfk, the more respect I have for 'im

[zerostao]

the more lesser known stuff I see about jfk, the more respect I have for 'im

he balanced the budget etc

[joeblast]

Taxes, Gold, Bitcoins....

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-26/irs-slams-bitcoin-retroactive-tax-rules-gold-next

 

 

Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,

 

Bitcoin tax rules finally came to the Land of the Free yesterday. And I have to imagine there are some not-too-happy campers this morning, if they even know about it.

 

Bitcoin taxes were inevitable. I’ve written about this numerous times, and have even gone so far as to predict that the government will probably mandate special Bitcoin reporting on foreign disclosure forms.

 

A number of other countries, from Germany to Singapore, have already issued their own tax rules on Bitcoin and related virtual currency transactions. And yesterday the IRS finally issued their own. (yeah, its a property item, but if you're paid in it, its taxable like currency, yeah, we can have our cake and eat it too.)

 

Here’s the quick summary:

1)

While a number of governments (including the United States to a degree) have officially pronounced Bitcoin to be a ‘currency alternative,’ the IRS disagrees.

 

2)

According to the IRS, Bitcoin is -property- and should be taxed as such… similar to, for example, a piece of rental property or collection of fine wine.

 

3)

This means that the sale of Bitcoins is taxable based on capital gains. If you bought Bitcoins at $1 and sold them at $501 several years later, you would have to pay long-term capital gains tax on the $500 difference, currently 23.8%.

 

4)

If you hold Bitcoins for shorter periods of less than 1-year, you can be taxed at ordinary income tax rates on your gains.

 

5)

To the extent that you mine Bitcoins as a trade or business, the Bitcoin income from mining activity is not only subject to income tax, but also self-employment tax.

 

6)

If you trade your Bitcoins for some other property that exceeds your cost basis, you are subject to tax. This is a huge ruling that effects all the ‘Bitcoin millionaires’ out there– early adopters who purchased Bitcoins at a dollar or less.

So let’s say you were one of the first Bitcoin adopters and bought 5,000 bitcoins at $0.05. Last year when Bitcoin was valued at roughly $1,000 in paper currency, you traded 250 of them for a brand new Lamborghini.

 

The IRS would say that you had a cost basis of $12.50 for those 250 coins. But you traded them for other property with a fair market value of $250,000. This means you have a taxable gain of $249,987.50.

 

Naturally, the US government is happy to go back in time and thrust all sorts of interest and penalties upon you if you didn’t comply with the law.

 

According to their ruling, “failure to timely or correctly report virtual currency transactions when required to do so may be subject to information reporting penalties under section 6721 and 6722.”

 

What’s most interesting about this new set of rules is what they might mean for gold.

If you’ve ever read Currency Wars (a fantastic book by my colleague Jim Rickards), you may recall early in the book when Jim suggests a potential outcome for gold.

 

Imagine– paper currencies go into freefall. Gold soars. Anyone who bought gold early sees sizeable profits (in paper currency)… at which point the government steps in after the fact and sets up new tax rules to confiscate a substantial portion of those gains.

 

Think it can’t happen? These Bitcoin rules certainly establish a precedent.

 

(Yes, we will have our cake and eat it too - and we'll also eat your cake, too. And here we thought zero interest was their big thing to screw savers...)

Edited March 27, 2014 by joeblast

[silent thunder]

I know for certain that it wasn't too long ago when Tennessee started requiring liability insurance. Auto insurance in the US is state-level.

Good to know. I thought there was a federal minimum requirement.

Thanks

[joeblast]

such a requirement would be past federal authority, but I'm sure if they really wanted to they'd skip the constitutional check...but they've already been in bed with the insurance companies elsewhere, so its pretty well covered.

[joeblast]

[ralis]

FBI is investigating 'high frequency traders'. This should be the beginning of more investigations into market manipulation of commodities, interest rates and other egregious financial crimes.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/fbi-high-speed-trading_n_5065622.html

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-31/fbi-said-to-probe-high-speed-traders-over-abuse-of-information.html

 

 

The insiders are able to move faster than you," Lewis said Sunday night. "They're able to see your order and play it against other orders in ways that you don't understand. They're able to front run your order.

Edited March 31, 2014 by ralis

[joeblast]

wow, seriously?? and here we always thought the hand that pulls the strings of the FBI also gave the implicit ok for these guys to frontrun every single order of every single client and successfully pull an "Office Space", skim pennies from billions or trillons of transactions, mess with the spot price, drive it up when wanted, slam it down Oops fat finger! when necessary too.

 

wait, that's assuming the left hand knows what the right is doing.

 

HFT should be SUPERLATIVELY ILLEGAL. damn near the entire market is HFT these days and any regular Joe who thinks he can get in on the stock market is just going to get robbed.

[joeblast]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-31/4-trillion-fake-euro-bonds-seized-vatican-bank

 

seriously, someone was trying to deposit 4 trillion in fake eurobonds into the vatican's bank??

 

that friggin place should be leveled and its marble returned to the pyramids. along with the gold capstones.

 

"Allegedly" against usury indeed. The money changers took over the church a long time ago.

Edited April 1, 2014 by joeblast

[joeblast]

Well...just so long as we're clear its graft, corruption, and cronyism (do I need to add collusion) that has cause this "wealth disparity"...there will always be wealth disparity. But when the data shows just a certain class of folks absolutely running away with the game and everyone else is flat at best...

 

---------------

I’ve written, over and over, that the most important divide in our wealth disparity was between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. For example, when I compared the evolution in investment income since the late 1970s, I often imagined a graph like this from the Economic Policy Institute, showing the 1 percent flying away from the rest of the country.

 

It turns out that that graph is somewhat misleading. It makes it look like the 1 percent is a group of similar households accelerating from the rest of the economy, holding hands, in unison. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

A few weeks ago, I shared this graph (from the World Top Incomes Database) showing how the top 0.01 percent—that’s the one percent of the 1 percent—was leaving the rest of the top percentile behind.

 

 

It’s even more egregious than that. An amazing chart from economist Amir Sufi, based on the work of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, shows that when you look inside the 1 percent, you see clearly that most of them aren’t growing their share of wealth at all. In fact, the gain in wealth share is all about the top 0.1 percent of the country. While nine-tenths of the top percentile hasn’t seen much change at all since 1960, the 0.01 percent has essentially quadrupled its share of the country’s wealth in half a century.

 

 

It turns out that wealth inequality isn’t about the 1 percent v. the 99 percent at all. It’s about the 0.1 percent v. the 99.9 percent (or, really, the 0.01 percent vs. the 99.99 percent, if you like). Long-story-short is that this group, comprised mostly of bankers and CEOs, is riding the stock market to pick up extraordinary investment income. And it’s this investment income, rather than ordinary earned income, that’s creating this extraordinary wealth gap.

 

The mainstream is finally starting to figure it out. From crony capitalistic corporate welfare (even the New York Times covered oligarch welfare last week) to the 0.01% problem. Now if the nine tenths of the 1% would stop complacently continue to tread water and challenge the oligarchs we might actually be able to change things.

 

 

 

---------------------------------

love having my promotions and bonus taken away from me so that the entire board of directors and entire executive group can take home multiple millions just in bonuses each year, nevermind all their stock options and base pay and all that.

 

let me rephrase that - it really pisses me off that tens of thousands of little people had this happen to them (well...those of us that kept their jobs, see,) so that this board of SOBs can have their 90, 100 million in "bonus money." cuz the stock market is doing great and all, so they deserve "all that profit they're making for the company"....(we'll just ignore all the parts of the business we've had to sell off in order to keep our balance sheet looking like its black)

Edited April 1, 2014 by joeblast

[joeblast]

FBI is investigating 'high frequency traders'. This should be the beginning of more investigations into market manipulation of commodities, interest rates and other egregious financial crimes.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/fbi-high-speed-trading_n_5065622.html

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-31/fbi-said-to-probe-high-speed-traders-over-abuse-of-information.html

My only fear with this is that HFT is just being set up as the scapegoat for the failures of the federal reserve.

 

All these articles, and then an FBI investigation.....Goldman going buck wild with it for years and now all of a sudden they are the bigest mouths against it...?

 

Hope that doesnt mean "pull it"

[zerostao]

http://thekeybiotics.com/video_toon.html

 

it is a commercial and also another "science" breakthru, so, buyer beware,

yet it is an interesting thing to consider imo

[silent thunder]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-31/4-trillion-fake-euro-bonds-seized-vatican-bank

 

seriously, someone was trying to deposit 4 trillion in fake eurobonds into the vatican's bank??

 

that friggin place should be leveled and its marble returned to the pyramids. along with the gold capstones.

 

"Allegedly" against usury indeed. The money changers took over the church a long time ago.

 

 

[joeblast]

http://thekeybiotics.com/video_toon.html

 

it is a commercial and also another "science" breakthru, so, buyer beware,

yet it is an interesting thing to consider imo

proof's in the pudding, I entirely agree about sugar. people think I am weird because there is no sugar whatsoever in my house

[ralis]

[Brian]

Once a successful alternative to trade is demonstrated, perhaps people will flock to it.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Brian

[joeblast]

you'll probably keep believing that so long as you keep believing we've had a capitalistic system, or actual free markets. the government figured out a long tie ago that capitalism wasnt the greatest for the government and that the progression to fascism comes entirely because of government actions. fascism is great for the government. and we all know what the government wants it'll drag everyone towards.

 

they made a lot of people believe exhaling was a pollutant, I mean, how far can we extrapolate these things.

[joeblast]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/jon-stewart-hft-its-not-american-its-not-even-capitalism-its-cheating

 

like Jon said,

 

"It's Not American; It's Not Even Capitalism. It's Cheating"

[zerostao]

"eviscerates our Nation's campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve."

[joeblast]

take away the unions' ability to spend like that too while we're at it - which should have been the appropriate response in the first place instead of them having to come up with some whacked response to keep the money flowing...reveal that for some stuff you know the courts are swayed, whether its creating fiction or creating law, whether its got to be sidestepped, jumped over, it'll just happen, constitutional or not.

[ralis]