Sure, but NOBODY in america is impacted in their ability to eat by their tax level: in fact, we give back through tax credits so that the poorest among us have a *negative* effective tax rate.

You are completely out of touch with reality if you believe that there aren’t tax-paying Americans who are suffering fundamental economic woes, such as hunger or malnutrition.

There have been a number of respondents who have indicated my point is the very one that Obama was making when he said “you didn’t build that”.  Meaning that it is the tax payers that built all of the infrastructure that helps make a great business great.  Or, at least that a successful business owes a part of their success to the current and previous tax payers that paid into the system.

Let’s assume that I accept this logic.  Using that logic should I then be thankful to all of the single celled organisms that existed in the past for evolving, eventually resulting in me being able to walk upright as a primate?  It just seems silly.

What about the failed businesses?  There are thousands of those every year that shutter their windows because they were a failure as a business.  Should the tax payers take credit for the failures as well?  I really don’t see this logic working for me at all.

And, Obama doesn’t exactly strike me as the kind of person that believes in taxpayers as much as he does big government.  Like most single parent politicians of his ilk he is looking to provide everyone with the fair minded parenting he never got as a child.  And, he intends to use an expansive government to provide just that.  Taxpayers are simply a means to an end for Obama.

You collectivists can get pissy with me all on your own now.  I’m going to do something successful now and blame it on myself.

The two lines I “expunged,” thus lacking in “integrity” according to you:

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Yes, for God’s sake, we’ve said this line 500 times. It’s what the discussion is about. I shortened the speech (with an ellipsis) to show all the surrounding context describing who made it happen.

“The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet, so then all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

You say: “Is that really how it happened? First, taxpayer-funded ARPAnet research then, voila – Etsy?”

Yes… that’s pretty much how it happened. The ARPANet was funded by DARPA (DoD). Merit Network was created through government grants. NPL and CYCLADES were created by British and French government research labs. TCP/IP were developed by DARPA. What…. exactly are you arguing against?

The government didn’t create Etsy, but it, along we We The People, created all the roads that lead to it. That’s the point of the speech. Etsy didn’t build the internet, and Romney didn’t build the roads. We all did — both the people and the government of and by the people.

Nevertheless, the President’s view of the gov’t as The Great Provider is MY opinion.

Your opinion that you’ve pre-decided on, but not supported by the speech.

And Romney pays a lower rate because the corps he runs pay a higher rate already, and his money is pre-taxed.  

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120716/NEWS10/120719825/high-speed-rail-test-just-around-the-bend

So the actual justice goal of taxation is to make the wealthy feel a bite? They go through life avoiding various hardships as a result of wealth, but by gum, we’ll make sure the government makes them suffer like the rest of us?

What an extraordinarily bizarre interpretation of that statement. The point is that people with less money may go hungry by paying a higher percentage of their income to taxes, not that anyone is calling for the rich to be ‘punished’. It’s this sort of knee-jerk emotional response that has turned economic debate in the US into fire and brimstone rhetoric.

Except, apparently, spellcheck.

“If you are successful somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet, so then all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

Below, what you actually call the “actual” section, truncated by you, expunging sentences. You got plenty of invective; not much integrity.

“Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. … The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

Nevertheless, the President’s view of the gov’t as The Great Provider is MY opinion. Not helped by statements like this (in the true actual statement): “Government research created the Internet, so then all the companies could make money off the Internet.” Is that really how it happened? First, taxpayer-funded ARPAnet research then, voila – Etsy? All because of The Great Provider? I understand the President can’t give a stem-winding history in each speech, but clearly, he’s glossing the gov’t for bequeathing the business world the web.

‘C.B. Macpherson was among the first to understand modern electoral politics—the two-party system—in terms of oligopolistic and duopolistic market practices. “Where there are so few sellers,” Macpherson wrote concerning political parties, “they need not and do not respond to buyers’ demands as they must do in a fully competitive system.” This means the parties, like oligopolistic firms, can “create the demand for political goods” and largely dictate the “demand schedule for political goods.” In Macpherson’s argument, a duopolistic party system in a modern capitalist society like the United States will tend to gravitate to providing a “competition between elites,” which are the driving force and “formulate the issues.” The basics in the political economy are agreed upon by the two parties and off the table for public debate or discussion.’

– from “The Bull Market: Political Advertising” by Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
http://monthlyreview.org/2012/04/01/the-bull-market

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/20/does_the_us_tax_its_billionaires_less_than_other_rich_countries?page=0,0

The winner was Abe Lincoln’s statement that he “cannot stand” America.

First of all, even Mr Romney is part of We The People, so he ‘did built’ the roads to Bain and elsewhere 

No, *he* didn’t, *we all* did.

Yes, he’s included in “we all,” but if someone on your construction crew says “I built that skyscraper,” you’re completely right to turn around and say “no, we build that skyscraper.”

Why the heck is this so hard to understand?

Secondly, the President’s ill-chosen words fall in line with his thinking that the gov’t is The Great Provider

What on Earth are you talking about? Where does Obama say that the gov’t (and not we the people/society) is “The Great Provider”? Where is this strawman speech you’re reading from? Where is Invisible Obama sitting when you’re hearing him?

Here is the actual section of the quote:

Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. … The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

If you yank Bill O’Reilly from out of your ears, do you hear him saying the the government built everything, or that the society that you live in did?

Stop arguing against a stupid strawman.

I’ve heard a repub talking point that actually the US has a highly progressive tax structure compared to most other industrial nations. Refutation?

(wikipedia sez ” For example, when refundable tax credits and other tax incentives are included across the entire income spectrum, the United States has the most progressive income tax code among its peer nations; although its overall income tax rates are below the OECD average.[11]“)

Joe Worker’s tax burden has a real affect on his life, Mitt Romney’s does not, unless you consider buying 9 yachts instead of 10 a serious hardship.

The RNC was held in a venue that was publicly financed and is publicly owned
They get about 18 million in public grants to fund the convention
Tampa spent millions in public dollars to prepare the city for the convention
50 million in public funds to pay for security

Over at Next New Deal, Jordan Fraade, Sarah Pfeifer and Jeff Madrick have a nifty back-of-the-envelope calculation estimating that for the public infrastructure costs alone—which total about $100 million for the arena costs and area improvement projects—each delegate would have to kick in $43,745 in order to accurately say “We Built It.” Checks can be made payable to the City of Tampa Bay and the US Treasury.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/169623/rnc-tampa-they-didnt-build#

And no citizen or corporation alone could build (and share) that infrastructure that we all use, never mind that corporations and the wealthy often are contributing much less in taxes than what they get back from infrastructure in return.  Next strawman?  Or do you get it now?

“I emerged from a snowbank, naked and helpless, alone in the Arctic, overcame wolves and polar bears to single-handedly conceive of and invent capitalism and electricity, before inventing the telecommunications industry and thereby the necessity for an ‘Angry Birds’ app !”

For an economic model so dependent on the concept of never-ending debt, you’d think that it’s practioners would be a little more aware of the debt they owe to others. But then, that’s what egomania, blind avarice and the neurotic hoarding of wealth will do for you.

Even without bothering to read the context of the ENTIRE rest of the speech which makes it plainly clear that the President was referring to individual businesses, but the shared investment that everyone in the country makes to provide a climate which made those businesses possible, one should at least read that quote and think “Hmm, that doesn’t make any sense at all on its own, there must be some missing context.”