Investing 102

[srh3trinity]

The taxation will be interesting. I am a recent graduate from Residency and practicing hospital medicine. I make a nice living. Doctors have taken a 30 percent pay cut or more from Medicare in the not too recent past. My education cost north of 200K and that has an impact on what I bring home. It seems as though there is a breaking point with taxes and your income. I can influence mine easily by how hard I choose to work. I work 16 plus hours a day now, but if this level of work pushes a person into a higher tax bracket, some of my colleagues will choose to work less hours and bring home about the same net dollars and spend more time with their family. If this happens, it will contribute further to the supply/demand issues we are going to have with physicians as baby boomers age. You are almost de-incentivizing hard work. I don't understand the thought of you make more, you should pay more.
Of course, if I become a government employee with Obamacare, I imagine I won't have much control over my tax bracket. It stinks to finally make some money and then the game changes on you in spite of your hard work.

[GregWeld]

A couple of words on "taxes".


It's not that ANYONE can or can't pay more percentage in taxes.... What we're "politically" talking about though is different:

Fundamental belief #1.

The government is better at spending your money than you are... therefore you should just go along with whatever the government has planned for your money. i.e., send more to China for debt service... pay for Obamacare... pay for Welfare... pay for more government "programs" etc.


Fundamental belief #2.


Let me earn as much money as possible (the American way) - pay a percentage of taxes to the government... let them do with it as they wish - let ME spend money on investing to make even more money... pay more taxes - and spend money buying STUFF which then the person selling it to me pays taxes... and he's making money so he's spending money so the guy he buys stuff from makes money and buys stuff from someone else... Each transaction there had a tax paid associated with it.

Fundamentally - nobody is really sure which way is "the best"... but I sure as hell know that when I'm making money and spending money... the economy benefits. Sending more interest payments to China... Taking care of the illegals in the emergency room... I'm not so certain about that. I look at EUROPE and see their socialist, high tax rate, get "free" everything way of government and I don't see that working so well for them.

The countries that do the best - are the countries that actually MAKE STUFF.... China being a shining example of an economy that has gone bananas because they're a manufacturing powerhouse! They went from making stick and twig brooms to making iPhones.... and we're now borrowing from them -- so we can give that iPhone to people that make NOTHING - do NOTHING - and employ no one.

[Bucketlist2012]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

A couple of words on "taxes".


It's not that ANYONE can or can't pay more percentage in taxes.... What we're "politically" talking about though is different:

Fundamental belief #1.

The government is better at spending your money than you are... therefore you should just go along with whatever the government has planned for your money. i.e., send more to China for debt service... pay for Obamacare... pay for Welfare... pay for more government "programs" etc.


Fundamental belief #2.


Let me earn as much money as possible (the American way) - pay a percentage of taxes to the government... let them do with it as they wish - let ME spend money on investing to make even more money... pay more taxes - and spend money buying STUFF which then the person selling it to me pays taxes... and he's making money so he's spending money so the guy he buys stuff from makes money and buys stuff from someone else... Each transaction there had a tax paid associated with it.

Fundamentally - nobody is really sure which way is "the best"... but I sure as hell know that when I'm making money and spending money... the economy benefits. Sending more interest payments to China... Taking care of the illegals in the emergency room... I'm not so certain about that. I look at EUROPE and see their socialist, high tax rate, get "free" everything way of government and I don't see that working so well for them.

The countries that do the best - are the countries that actually MAKE STUFF.... China being a shining example of an economy that has gone bananas because they're a manufacturing powerhouse! They went from making stick and twig brooms to making iPhones.... and we're now borrowing from them -- so we can give that iPhone to people that make NOTHING - do NOTHING - and employ no one.

As usual, you have a great way to make a point....

Well written and to the point...No B.S. and both sides of the coin. Let the reader decide what they believe...Good Job..

[realcoray]

Originally Posted by srh3trinity

The taxation will be interesting. I am a recent graduate from Residency and practicing hospital medicine. I make a nice living. Doctors have taken a 30 percent pay cut or more from Medicare in the not too recent past. My education cost north of 200K and that has an impact on what I bring home. It seems as though there is a breaking point with taxes and your income. I can influence mine easily by how hard I choose to work. I work 16 plus hours a day now, but if this level of work pushes a person into a higher tax bracket, some of my colleagues will choose to work less hours and bring home about the same net dollars and spend more time with their family. If this happens, it will contribute further to the supply/demand issues we are going to have with physicians as baby boomers age. You are almost de-incentivizing hard work. I don't understand the thought of you make more, you should pay more.
Of course, if I become a government employee with Obamacare, I imagine I won't have much control over my tax bracket. It stinks to finally make some money and then the game changes on you in spite of your hard work.

There is no situation in which you work less and bring home the the same because of tax brackets assuming the amount you work is tied directly to your income. You don't suddenly enter a 100% tax bracket.

Not to mention that tax brackets have only been going down for basically this entire century. The real reasons for supply/demand issues for doctors are varied, and the government certainly plays a part but you can't simultaneously say you should be taxed even less than you are now, and complain about medicare reimbursements that the government is basically putting on a credit card.

[GregWeld]

Okay --- so let's get back on INVESTING....


Politics will never be "settled"... and so far I've managed to live well regardless of who is in office, for some 59 years. In the end - it's the S.S.D.D.

[glassman]

Still, good info. No bashing, just mature opinions. WHICH IS WHY THIS IS THE BEST THREAD GOING!!!

Because without the beans (coin), we can't fart (make car stuff and drive faster etc)

Good luck all in the time to come, i'm a newb investor and am cautionly optimistic, cause we'll need it. I wish i could contribute more(data), but i is still gettin edjumakated...

Mike

[GregWeld]

Originally Posted by glassman

Still, good info. No bashing, just mature opinions. WHICH IS WHY THIS IS THE BEST THREAD GOING!!!

Because without the beans (coin), we can't fart (make car stuff and drive faster etc)

Good luck all in the time to come, i'm a newb investor and am cautionly optimistic, cause we'll need it. I wish i could contribute more(data), but i is still gettin edjumakated...

Mike

Yep Mike.... serves no point to call names - or make dumb statements. You just work with the info you have and plan a plan and work it. As things change you adjust. If you don't - you don't make it. In the end - everything will be fine... and we'll all make money IN THE LONG RUN - and that's the goal.

[GregWeld]

Stocks that would be hurt by Obama's preference for stiff regulations, such as banks, sold off sharply. And to make matters worse Wednesday, worries about Europe's debt crisis returned to the top of investors' what-to-worry-about list.

Add it all up and what you get is a "Molotov cocktail that created a pretty severe bout of selling," says Andy Busch, a public policy strategist at BMO Capital Markets.

To say the negative mood hurt stocks would be an understatement, as Wall Street was awash in red ink all day. The damage inflicted was severe. About $400 billion in stock market value vanished in the trading session, according to Wilshire Associates.

[bdahlg68]

So there are some people here wondering why some people might be a bit upset about taxing people that make over 250k / year. I am one one of the upset people and I'll try to explain a bit why even though I will fall under 250k. While my taxes are unlikely to change this year because most of my dividend investments are in a tax deferred account, my net worth took a pretty sharp stick in the eye today. Why? Because of all the examples Greg and others have mentioned. We have a huge amount of uncertainty. We don't have a plan. We don't know what taxes are going to look like for the next 4 years. We don't know how the fiscal cliff is going to be addressed. I can deal with a day down 2%. Unfortunately, there is a good chance to have lots of 2% down days with this uncertainty. And just in case you haven't connected all the dots, the Weld's of the world pull out first, and John Q Public's 401k pulls out last. So all those 401k's of people making under 250k per year lose a HUGE percentage of these market swings. And while people under 250k / year won't pay more taxes, you have a big drop in worth. And while those over 250k / year might pay a higher tax percentage of their income in taxes, the gap between these two groups tends to widen. Like Greg mentioned. Tax revenue is easy to generate when big money is moving. When its not, trouble brews and no tax plan is viable.

[Flash68]

I'll just say I'm not happy and leave it at that.

I'm with Todd on this (it happens sometimes ) positive thinking and just go about your business and control what you can control. That's all any of us can do.

This thread has dabbled in Real Estate and interest rate talk here and there so I'll share what I'm doing. The building my business has been in since starting in 2006 is being torn down soon for condos. So I negotiated a shorter lease end (he didn't care, he is knocking down the building soon anyway and would have had to compensate me somehow for an early term on his part) and wanted to control our destiny and timing vs getting a 60 notice to vacate or something like that in the next year.

I have liked where commercial real estate prices have been and now they have converged with insanely low rates. We are buying a commercial condo nearby with 50% more space than we need (to grow into) and it's a nicer building.

SBA loan, 10% down, combined interest rate in the 4's, and the price is 38 cents on the dollar of what the high watermark was in 2008. I like those numbers.