OT - How is your tea?

[roster]

..........
Now that I'm on this, very few Americans realize just how much they pay in indirect taxes. They are aware of the taxes on the gas pump and sales/income/property/etc. - taxes that are visible, but fail to realize that as the final consumer of products, they pay all pass-through taxes for everything.

My favorite example is a simple loaf of bread.
a) the farmer passes along property tax, fuel tax, materials and equipment tax, payroll tax, and all the taxes his employees pay (embedded in wages).
b) the mills pass-along all of a) plus their own as in a).
c) same for the bakeries, distributors and stores.

Just guessing here, but I suppose a $2 loaf of ordinary bread is over 25% taxes. How much for all other products you consume? Remember, hidden taxes are only progressive in that rich people buy more stuff than poor people. Just add that to your other taxes and you'll see you pay over 60% of your income in taxes.

.............

Very good post OldLincoln and very true in principle.

Thanks,

[DreamStalker]

I'm not a demonstrator (well sometimes on a sunny day in my own back yard! ), but I think a united public outcry is good now and then. An administration may try to ignore such, but behind closed doors they have to acknowledge a lot of people are dissatisfied and if they can organize now, they can also on election day.

As for people saying their taxes are lower.... what do you think happens when a company has their taxes raised by 5%? They pass it on to their customers, and if they operate on a 10% margin, they pass along 5.5%. So while you pay less taxes your cost of living goes up more than your taxes would have.

Now that I'm on this, very few Americans realize just how much they pay in indirect taxes. They are aware of the taxes on the gas pump and sales/income/property/etc. - taxes that are visible, but fail to realize that as the final consumer of products, they pay all pass-through taxes for everything.

My favorite example is a simple loaf of bread.
a) the farmer passes along property tax, fuel tax, materials and equipment tax, payroll tax, and all the taxes his employees pay (embedded in wages).
b) the mills pass-along all of a) plus their own as in a).
c) same for the bakeries, distributors and stores.

Just guessing here, but I suppose a $2 loaf of ordinary bread is over 25% taxes. How much for all other products you consume? Remember, hidden taxes are only progressive in that rich people buy more stuff than poor people. Just add that to your other taxes and you'll see you pay over 60% of your income in taxes.

Lets put it this way, a lot of people would be marching if the real cost of taxes were identified for every purchase. Government is not as dumb as people think, by hiding taxes in a pass-along form they can tax the daylights out of us and make you happy because you don't think it's you paying them. I guess the jokes on you now isn't it?

Brilliant! Let's eliminate all taxes and crooked politicians along with them.

With all the money we save on taxes (all 20-something percent of my income in my case) we can pay for personal body guards or private malitias or protection fees in the ensuing new Mad Max anarchical (is that a word?) tax-free paradise

Silly humans ...

[OldLincoln]

I wish you would have picked on some other "industry". Farming is probably the ONLY business that buys retail and sells wholesale. Everything they purchase is from other sources that are able to pass along their costs (the retail part). When farmers sell their commodities, it's at whatever the market price is at the time (the wholesale part).
They can't pass ANY costs on.

Den (grew up on a farm and live in farming/ranching country)

I understand what you are saying and that proves my point. The pass-along is embedded in the price for which they sell their goods. The current price may not allow much margin in the case of farmers, but if they had to absorb the cost of all the taxes they pay they would go broke much sooner than they are. The issue is that it DOES apply to all industries.

I have close relatives that were in farming and I still live in farming company (about 200 yards from commercial orchards).

[The Texan]

Ooo... Texan, aren't you afraid of being lynched for those sentiments in your home state?

LOL,
B.

Quite the contrary, I'm a registered Republican who, like thousands of others, thinks our party has gone off the deep end during the past 2 Republican administrations. Until the party rids itself of the likes of Carl Rove, Newt Gingrich and other radicals, I and a whole bunch of good moderate Republicans will not support the Grand Old Party, but will support an Independent. This BS of extreme right or extreme left is wrong and the people need to take a close look at just what their local politician stands for and dump the radicals of either party and put the average person back into office, not the career bottom feeder. By the way, the organizers of this so called "tea party" is known to be the extreme radical right, not a grass roots for true tax reform, as they want people to believe.

[Babette]

I liked the Astroturf analogy. Fake Grassroots.

Hey, why don't you take Karl Rove on a hunting trip? But don't miss like Dick Cheney did.

LOL,
B.

[Wulfman]

I wish you would have picked on some other "industry". Farming is probably the ONLY business that buys retail and sells wholesale. Everything they purchase is from other sources that are able to pass along their costs (the retail part). When farmers sell their commodities, it's at whatever the market price is at the time (the wholesale part).
They can't pass ANY costs on.

Den (grew up on a farm and live in farming/ranching country)

I understand what you are saying and that proves my point. The pass-along is embedded in the price for which they sell their goods. The current price may not allow much margin in the case of farmers, but if they had to absorb the cost of all the taxes they pay they would go broke much sooner than they are. The issue is that it DOES apply to all industries.

I have close relatives that were in farming and I still live in farming company (about 200 yards from commercial orchards).

I don't know how it is with orchards and some of the vegetable farmers, etc......I'm thinking along the lines of grains like corn, wheat, soybeans. Those farmers are at the mercy of the going prices at the time they decide to sell their crops and can't embed their costs into their selling prices. They either take what the elevator (buyer) pays or they can try to put it in grain bins and hope the price will go up.......and that depends on what their cash/credit situation is like with the bank and how soon they need to repay their loans.


Den

[yorkiemum01]

my tea is green

[roster]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/kevin_siers/

[roster]

Senator Burr's ATM comment is akin to insider trading … for the very, very stupid. Is there something in the Constitution that requires us to elect the very dumbest citizens to offices?
Richard Schmidt

Concord

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinio ... 68338.html

Richard was referring to this story:

When the banking crisis hit last fall, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr told his wife to take as much money from the ATM as she could. ............. He said he was so spooked after a briefing in Washington last fall that he called his wife, Brooke, back in North Carolina.

“Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take. And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday,” he said, according to an account in the Hendersonville Times-News. “I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”

........................
Entire article: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/ ... 66642.html

This is a Senator, one of a hundred, representing a country of over 300 million people?

[Babette]

Ah Rooster, great cartoon, great quotes. Thanks!
B.

[DreamStalker]

[Wulfman]

Senator Burr's ATM comment is akin to insider trading … for the very, very stupid. Is there something in the Constitution that requires us to elect the very dumbest citizens to offices?
Richard Schmidt

Concord

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinio ... 68338.html

Richard was referring to this story:

When the banking crisis hit last fall, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr told his wife to take as much money from the ATM as she could. ............. He said he was so spooked after a briefing in Washington last fall that he called his wife, Brooke, back in North Carolina.

“Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take. And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday,” he said, according to an account in the Hendersonville Times-News. “I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”

........................
Entire article: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/ ... 66642.html

This is a Senator, one of a hundred, representing a country of over 300 million people?

Rooster,

Last I heard, there was no IQ test for our elected representatives. All they have to do is get on the ballot and "appear" smarter, better qualified or more appealing than their opponent.

When it finally comes down to election day, most of the time we only have a choice between "dumb and dumber" (assuming they're not running unopposed). I keep asking the folks, where I vote, when the ballots are going to include "None of the above". Hasn't happened yet.

With regard to THIS story, I don't think we know the details of WHAT he heard that spooked him. Maybe the rest of his colleagues were also stocking up on "cash", too......
After all, some of them have been known to keep 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars in their freezer(s).


Den