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On September 20 2011 08:11 DoubleReed wrote:
You care about morality even if the economy goes to shit and nobody makes any money whatsoever? The government doesn't function and everything sucks? Please. The reason you're arguing with me is that you disagree that it is good economics, not morality. If you're making bad economic decisions because of morality then I think you don't understand that good economics can help everyone and give everyone a better standard of living.
Okay, rich person puts it into a bank so a poor person can get a mortgage. Or a poor person has the money and doesn't need a mortgage. Which do you think is more efficient? And efficiency is literally all that matters, because as you said, all money is spent.
I never said money makes money on its own. I said it's EASIER for the rich to become richer. It can be difficult next to impossible for the impoverished to make $1 million, but if you already have a billion dollars, then it's not that difficult to make $1 million. That's what I'm saying. That is the extent of what I'm saying. Do you agree?
Well I happen to believe you can have a functioning economy while not violating any moral standards. But my tendency would be towards true fairness. Simply because humans are way too flawed to truly be able to pick and choose who gets what. The simplest, most fair way to do things is to remove the government as much as possible while still maintaining a STRICT rule of law.
It's NOT just about your idea of what "efficiency" is. The world can't run on convenient stores, dude. Here's an example, should we put every cent in the country into the hands of the "poor" so they can spend it on the so-called "efficient" sectors of the economy? No? Ok, then how much? It's a sliding scale, and you're not qualified to decide where what money goes.
Yes it's easier to make $1 million dollars if you already have $1 billion. What you can't grasp is that it's easier to lose $1 billion if you already have $1 billion.
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These "representatives of the people" are nothing more than hired servants to the highest bidder. Is it any wonder that when adjusted for inflation, the average worker is making less now than they did 30 years ago while executive compensation explodes by hundreds of percent? In killing organized labor, they told us that they were protecting us from the evils of socialism and promoting fairness throughout. One can't help but feel that they're simply building a castle for the wealthy complete with moat.
I think you need to add some context to what you are writing. What you wrote in this paragraph I have quoted is little more than uneducated opinion rooted in your, obviously, biased support of the unions.
The average American worker earns less today than they did 30 years ago. The question is why. You assert that the "killing of organized labor" as the reason for the decrease in earnings. The real reason for the decrease in earnings has more to do with the loss of high tech and manufacturing jobs. 82% of the workforce in 2009 was service industry related. These are jobs at Best Buy, Wal Mart, McDonalds etc. Manufacturing and Tech jobs made up 8% of the work force. Less than 1% made up farming and agriculture. The remaining 9% accounts for unemployment. You tell me which field, on average, has the higher paid employees. Is it the service industry, or manufacturing and tech?
Where did all of our manufacturing jobs go? Why did they go? The simple answer is that companies believed it to be more profitable to produce their products overseas. They could pay their workers less money and pay the government less in taxes. (I have class in a few minutes but will continue this later tonight)
No good sir, it was not the killing of organized labor that is the reason for decreased wages. It is BECAUSE of organized labor and high taxes that we are now a country of consumers and not producers. Please stop spreading misinformation and 1/2 truths.
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Canada11450 Posts
Well only if you invest 1 billion into one enterprize alone. What's more realistic is it's much easier to lose $10M or $100M. But that's why being wealthy makes it easier to gain more wealth, you have deeper pockets, you can survive a failed business venture, ride out a bad economy and so on and so forth.
But if everything comes down to what is moral, I think the next question that would be reasonable is where does that morality come from? Is it absolute or relative and why should we follow it? Because moralness is a matter "You ought to... or ought not to..." So then given that we can choose to or not, what is our standard and what is our compulsion?
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Exactly. Billionaires paying the same percentage of taxes on a huge part of their income as someone who makes 20.000$ bucks a year is a problem of the system. No one who's reasonable just expects the government to take away the money of the rich and directly transfer it to the to the average american - but it's expected that the flaws in the system that allow indiviuals to accumulate astronomically high wealth while the living standards of the rest of your country are decreasing or stagnating at best get fixed. (and those flaws aren't constricted to taxes alone - but they make good examples because the imbalance is very apparent and easy to quantify)
Why shouldn't he pay (as a %) the same amount as somebody who makes $20 a year? That's NOT a given.
Are you under the impression that the standard of living isn't steadily going up? And please don't quote me some article from the New York Times that has like 3 points of data focusing on JUST average household income or something....
And when I say a coherent argument, I mean one that doesn't assume that any significant portion of the "rich" are greedy, slimy, criminals. They're not. No more than any other asshole in this world.
There have been tons of arguments in this thread (and the economy thread, and the republican nomination thread, and basically any other thread on politics) that fullfill your criteria. If you want to ignore them that's your choice, but don't expect people to list them again and again and again.
[/QUOTE]
I'm not going to read through 40 pages of idiocy. Especially considering the fact that I've NEVER heard a good argument for it and I doubt I'm going to find it on a sc2 forum.
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On September 20 2011 08:18 Holophonist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:11 DoubleReed wrote:
You care about morality even if the economy goes to shit and nobody makes any money whatsoever? The government doesn't function and everything sucks? Please. The reason you're arguing with me is that you disagree that it is good economics, not morality. If you're making bad economic decisions because of morality then I think you don't understand that good economics can help everyone and give everyone a better standard of living.
Okay, rich person puts it into a bank so a poor person can get a mortgage. Or a poor person has the money and doesn't need a mortgage. Which do you think is more efficient? And efficiency is literally all that matters, because as you said, all money is spent.
I never said money makes money on its own. I said it's EASIER for the rich to become richer. It can be difficult next to impossible for the impoverished to make $1 million, but if you already have a billion dollars, then it's not that difficult to make $1 million. That's what I'm saying. That is the extent of what I'm saying. Do you agree? Well I happen to believe you can have a functioning economy while not violating any moral standards. But my tendency would be towards true fairness. Simply because humans are way too flawed to truly be able to pick and choose who gets what. The simplest, most fair way to do things is to remove the government as much as possible while still maintaining a STRICT rule of law. It's NOT just about your idea of what "efficiency" is. The world can't run on convenient stores, dude. Here's an example, should we put every cent in the country into the hands of the "poor" so they can spend it on the so-called "efficient" sectors of the economy? No? Ok, then how much? It's a sliding scale, and you're not qualified to decide where what money goes. Yes it's easier to make $1 million dollars if you already have $1 billion. What you can't grasp is that it's easier to lose $1 billion if you already have $1 billion.
Okay, so I don't really see how that is violating moral standards. Hell, taxation in general violates the moral standard of "keep what you earn." THAT is a sliding scale and you're certainly not qualified to decide to make. Like I don't think you understand that "true fairness" can totally fucking suck for everybody.
Convenient stores? Who said anything about convenient stores? What the hell are you talking about? I'm talking about small businesses and mortgages just like you are. It sounds like you're just making generalizations about poor people, and it really doesn't help your argument at all.
I don't understand your second paragraph. I'm not suggesting anything close to socialism here. I don't know why you are acting like I'm being extreme. Almost any economist would agree that the most efficient sectors of the economy is the middle class, and the status of the middle class is hugely indicative of where the economy will go. If the middle class is horribly in debt (like they are now) then finding ways to inject capital into it will benefit the economy immensely.
The last statement is blatantly nonsensical so I have no idea what you're talking about.
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Canada11450 Posts
@Holophist
Then why bother debating? I find your tone and attitude altogether incompatible for a reasonable discussion.
But try 2 pages back:
On September 20 2011 03:53 Haemonculus wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 03:13 R3demption wrote:On September 20 2011 02:53 Craze wrote:
And the government allows you to donate to charity and write it off because they believe it is a good use of your money. How can you be so blindly zealous to a cause that you attack a man for giving away his money to people in need?
Warren Buffet is happy to pay more taxes while he lives, but he wants his wealth to go to the Gates foundation so that it can be used to further human development worldwide when he dies. He's a noble guy, and you attack him for it. He is very noble indeed. What I don't get is attacking the super rich bastards who horde all their money and don't donate to charities. Do I like this behavior? ABSOLUTELY NOT. They are selfish. But how can you believe in something that punishes someone just because they have a lot of money. Taxes that specifically target anyone based off of anything (race, sex, education, and even INCOME, is prejudicial in my eyes). What happened to the right to property? I don't like rich and greedy men, but those are life styles, not crime. And otherwise I know a lot of families who are suppppperrrr rich and who do a lot for charities and foundations and who support a lot of people with employment. But most importantly, if you keep passing tax laws that specifically target someone based on their income (e.g. Someone makes a lot of money, tax them more because it doesn't hurt as bad) then you open the flood gates to taxing everyone else based on external factors as well, which is not a pretty direction to go in and is not the power I would like to give to the government. On the point of "the government knows best what to do with our money": What? This is completely untrue. Hello? The best decision makers are the people, read some history books and you'll find this out. The only reason the Government exists is because the people have established it. As long as corruption exists (the cynical side of me says it will always exist) the Government will always fail to make better choices than the people would. But sometimes Government is the worser of two evils (its a safer way than anarchy). My sources: none. Not an economics major, just what was said are opinions and what I believe in. It has nothing to do with "punishing" rich people. It's a simple matter of practicality. Let's play a game. Let's say there's, what, 100 people arguing in this thread, k? Let's pretend that those 100 of us are the population of the United States. Let's also simplify things by pretending that as a nation, we have $100 total, as a representation of our entire national wealth. This $100 doesn't represent mere liquid assets, but includes all of our collective worldly possessions, property, land, etc. I'll be the richest. I have $40, and I represent the top 1% of the country. The next guy has say, $10, then the next 5, then maybe 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, etc etc. The poorer half of you, (so 50 of you), have $2.50 split up between yourselves. For simplicity's sake, we'll say you each have 5 cents. Now we collectively, as a nation, are $15 in debt, or we're spending $15 more than we have. I have $40 in my various assets. There are 50 of you out there with a whopping 5 cents to your name. Where are we going to pull money from? There were folks earlier in the thread jokingly implying that if you want to tax the rich, you should tax everyone, so why not tax first grader's lunch money? Fine, do it, but you'll collect jack shit. We could take EVERYTHING the poorer half of this country has, ALL OF IT. Not their money, but every goddamn thing they own on this Earth, and we'd still be over budget. When so many people are so poor, and so few few few people are SO rich, there just isn't anywhere else to get that money from. You can argue that we can make up the deficit entirely via spending cuts, but the amount of cuts we'd have to do is enormous. If I've got $40, and 50 of you out there have 5 cents each, why is it so unreasonable to ask that I chip in a little more? I mean, we could take allllll your money, and still be in debt, or we could take a piece of my money, and balance our shit. We could render a whopping 165 million people destitute, or we can raise taxes on a few hundred thousand people who proportionately have way way more than their fair share of wealth. There are only so many places we can get that money from, and it's sure as hell not the poor.
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On September 20 2011 08:24 Falling wrote:
Well only if you invest 1 billion into one enterprize alone. What's more realistic is it's much easier to lose $10M or $100M. But that's why being wealthy makes it easier to gain more wealth, you have deeper pockets, you can survive a failed business venture, ride out a bad economy and so on and so forth.
But if everything comes down to what is moral, I think the next question that would be reasonable is where does that morality come from? Is it absolute or relative and why should we follow it? Because moralness is a matter "You ought to... or ought not to..." So then given that we can choose to or not, what is our standard and what is our compulsion?
Yeah and it's also more realistic that you're only gonna make like $10k instead of $1m. Seriously dude? come on, this is a waste of time. Having money doesn't necessarily raise your EV when investing, it just changes the amounts, in BOTH columns.
Well, I personally believe that morality comes from God. But I don't expect other people to agree with me and I also don't expect our laws to directly come from the Bible. I'm a complete minimalist. I think the most moral thing to do is to stay out of people's lives as much as possible... from a government's standpoint.
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On September 20 2011 08:27 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:18 Holophonist wrote:On September 20 2011 08:11 DoubleReed wrote:
You care about morality even if the economy goes to shit and nobody makes any money whatsoever? The government doesn't function and everything sucks? Please. The reason you're arguing with me is that you disagree that it is good economics, not morality. If you're making bad economic decisions because of morality then I think you don't understand that good economics can help everyone and give everyone a better standard of living.
Okay, rich person puts it into a bank so a poor person can get a mortgage. Or a poor person has the money and doesn't need a mortgage. Which do you think is more efficient? And efficiency is literally all that matters, because as you said, all money is spent.
I never said money makes money on its own. I said it's EASIER for the rich to become richer. It can be difficult next to impossible for the impoverished to make $1 million, but if you already have a billion dollars, then it's not that difficult to make $1 million. That's what I'm saying. That is the extent of what I'm saying. Do you agree? Well I happen to believe you can have a functioning economy while not violating any moral standards. But my tendency would be towards true fairness. Simply because humans are way too flawed to truly be able to pick and choose who gets what. The simplest, most fair way to do things is to remove the government as much as possible while still maintaining a STRICT rule of law. It's NOT just about your idea of what "efficiency" is. The world can't run on convenient stores, dude. Here's an example, should we put every cent in the country into the hands of the "poor" so they can spend it on the so-called "efficient" sectors of the economy? No? Ok, then how much? It's a sliding scale, and you're not qualified to decide where what money goes. Yes it's easier to make $1 million dollars if you already have $1 billion. What you can't grasp is that it's easier to lose $1 billion if you already have $1 billion. Okay, so I don't really see how that is violating moral standards. Hell, taxation in general violates the moral standard of "keep what you earn." THAT is a sliding scale and you're certainly not qualified to decide to make. Like I don't think you understand that "true fairness" can totally fucking suck for everybody. Convenient stores? Who said anything about convenient stores? What the hell are you talking about? I'm talking about small businesses and mortgages just like you are. It sounds like you're just making generalizations about poor people, and it really doesn't help your argument at all. I don't understand your second paragraph. I'm not suggesting anything close to socialism here. I don't know why you are acting like I'm being extreme. Almost any economist would agree that the most efficient sectors of the economy is the middle class, and the status of the middle class is hugely indicative of where the economy will go. If the middle class is horribly in debt (like they are now) then finding ways to inject capital into it will benefit the economy immensely. The last statement is blatantly nonsensical so I have no idea what you're talking about.
No. Taxation doesn't violate the idea of keeping what you earn. Because we do recieve quite a bit of services from the government. Where it becomes particularly (and blatantly) immoral is where you take a larger percentage from somebody simply because they can afford it. Like I said before, there's no evidence that the rich use up more of the government services. In fact, they almost certainly use quite a bit less.
A convenient store is a small business. The point is you're basically implying (even if you don't mean to) that giving ALL of the money in the US to the low/middle class would be the best thing to do. It ain't.
The last statement was purposely nonsensical to point out how nonsensical your concept of how money makes money is.
I may be just about done replying to you now because you're saying some pretty dumb stuff.
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On September 20 2011 08:25 Holophonist wrote:Show nested quote +Exactly. Billionaires paying the same percentage of taxes on a huge part of their income as someone who makes 20.000$ bucks a year is a problem of the system. No one who's reasonable just expects the government to take away the money of the rich and directly transfer it to the to the average american - but it's expected that the flaws in the system that allow indiviuals to accumulate astronomically high wealth while the living standards of the rest of your country are decreasing or stagnating at best get fixed. (and those flaws aren't constricted to taxes alone - but they make good examples because the imbalance is very apparent and easy to quantify) Are you under the impression that the standard of living isn't steadily going up?
If you follow those silly statistics that define standard of living by asking if you can afford a refrigerator or not - yes it has gone up. If you actually compare the relations of overall growth in wealth of your whole nation to the growth in wealth of the average american - no, the majority of you only got a rather small part of the cake (if one at all).
Pretty good (though old) article of Paul Krugman (nobel price winner in economics) related to that topic containing more than "three datapoints" : http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/ForRicher.html
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Canada11450 Posts
On September 20 2011 08:29 Holophonist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:24 Falling wrote:
Well only if you invest 1 billion into one enterprize alone. What's more realistic is it's much easier to lose $10M or $100M. But that's why being wealthy makes it easier to gain more wealth, you have deeper pockets, you can survive a failed business venture, ride out a bad economy and so on and so forth.
But if everything comes down to what is moral, I think the next question that would be reasonable is where does that morality come from? Is it absolute or relative and why should we follow it? Because moralness is a matter "You ought to... or ought not to..." So then given that we can choose to or not, what is our standard and what is our compulsion? Yeah and it's also more realistic that you're only gonna make like $10k instead of $1m. Seriously dude? come on, this is a waste of time. Having money doesn't necessarily raise your EV when investing, it just changes the amounts, in BOTH columns. Well, I personally believe that morality comes from God. But I don't expect other people to agree with me and I also don't expect our laws to directly come from the Bible. I'm a complete minimalist. I think the most moral thing to do is to stay out of people's lives as much as possible... from a government's standpoint.
Ok that's fine. But I'd challenge you on that. I would argue there is no moral law in the Bible in regards to 'fairness.' There is a lot about justice. There are a few verses about a man should gain the reward of his labour (which would apply to both rich and the poor labour.) However, the vast majority of justice is concerned about taking care of the orphan, the widow, and the alien (foreigner). Three disenfranchised people, the triumvirate group that is discussed from Old Testament to New. There was the year of Jubilee where property accumulated would actually go back to the original family. Slaves could be free after a certain amount of time. There is a LOT of concern given to the poor and ensuring that the rich didn't amass power and wealth indefinitely. I'm not saying one should adopt a socialist system based on this, but I would suggest that a flat tax is not necessarily the only conclusion one could come to.
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On September 20 2011 08:29 Falling wrote:@Holophist Then why bother debating? I find your tone and attitude altogether incompatible for a reasonable discussion. But try 2 pages back: Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 03:53 Haemonculus wrote:On September 20 2011 03:13 R3demption wrote:On September 20 2011 02:53 Craze wrote:
And the government allows you to donate to charity and write it off because they believe it is a good use of your money. How can you be so blindly zealous to a cause that you attack a man for giving away his money to people in need?
Warren Buffet is happy to pay more taxes while he lives, but he wants his wealth to go to the Gates foundation so that it can be used to further human development worldwide when he dies. He's a noble guy, and you attack him for it. He is very noble indeed. What I don't get is attacking the super rich bastards who horde all their money and don't donate to charities. Do I like this behavior? ABSOLUTELY NOT. They are selfish. But how can you believe in something that punishes someone just because they have a lot of money. Taxes that specifically target anyone based off of anything (race, sex, education, and even INCOME, is prejudicial in my eyes). What happened to the right to property? I don't like rich and greedy men, but those are life styles, not crime. And otherwise I know a lot of families who are suppppperrrr rich and who do a lot for charities and foundations and who support a lot of people with employment. But most importantly, if you keep passing tax laws that specifically target someone based on their income (e.g. Someone makes a lot of money, tax them more because it doesn't hurt as bad) then you open the flood gates to taxing everyone else based on external factors as well, which is not a pretty direction to go in and is not the power I would like to give to the government. On the point of "the government knows best what to do with our money": What? This is completely untrue. Hello? The best decision makers are the people, read some history books and you'll find this out. The only reason the Government exists is because the people have established it. As long as corruption exists (the cynical side of me says it will always exist) the Government will always fail to make better choices than the people would. But sometimes Government is the worser of two evils (its a safer way than anarchy). My sources: none. Not an economics major, just what was said are opinions and what I believe in. It has nothing to do with "punishing" rich people. It's a simple matter of practicality. Let's play a game. Let's say there's, what, 100 people arguing in this thread, k? Let's pretend that those 100 of us are the population of the United States. Let's also simplify things by pretending that as a nation, we have $100 total, as a representation of our entire national wealth. This $100 doesn't represent mere liquid assets, but includes all of our collective worldly possessions, property, land, etc. I'll be the richest. I have $40, and I represent the top 1% of the country. The next guy has say, $10, then the next 5, then maybe 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, etc etc. The poorer half of you, (so 50 of you), have $2.50 split up between yourselves. For simplicity's sake, we'll say you each have 5 cents. Now we collectively, as a nation, are $15 in debt, or we're spending $15 more than we have. I have $40 in my various assets. There are 50 of you out there with a whopping 5 cents to your name. Where are we going to pull money from? There were folks earlier in the thread jokingly implying that if you want to tax the rich, you should tax everyone, so why not tax first grader's lunch money? Fine, do it, but you'll collect jack shit. We could take EVERYTHING the poorer half of this country has, ALL OF IT. Not their money, but every goddamn thing they own on this Earth, and we'd still be over budget. When so many people are so poor, and so few few few people are SO rich, there just isn't anywhere else to get that money from. You can argue that we can make up the deficit entirely via spending cuts, but the amount of cuts we'd have to do is enormous. If I've got $40, and 50 of you out there have 5 cents each, why is it so unreasonable to ask that I chip in a little more? I mean, we could take allllll your money, and still be in debt, or we could take a piece of my money, and balance our shit. We could render a whopping 165 million people destitute, or we can raise taxes on a few hundred thousand people who proportionately have way way more than their fair share of wealth. There are only so many places we can get that money from, and it's sure as hell not the poor.
To be fair I'm sure you can find more appropriate examples than this, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way. I truly believe there are significantly better arguments than that. I already replied to this one:
Seriously? You impose a higher tax PERCENTAGE on the rich because that's where the money is? You're already gonna get more from them because they HAVE more. Nobody complains about the rich losing more real dollars to the government... they complain about the higher percentages.
Where you're wrong is the implied idea that we have to tax somebody to get our shit together. False. We have to stop spending. That's all. How is it fair,moral, or even LEGAL to say to somebody "Well.... WE fucked up but YOU have to pay for it"?? How can you possibly support an idea like that? It boggles the mind that so many people share this view....
This is exactly why I don't want to read through the past 40 pages :/
What that guy said literally makes no sense. He's basically saying you'll get more out of your tax rates if you tax the rich... well.... no DUH! If you impose a 10% tax on a billionaire, you're gonna get more than if you put a 10% tax on somebody who makes 30k/yr and is living paycheck to paycheck. The question isn't whether you'll get more money from taxing the rich more, the question is whether or not it's RIGHT! By the way, just for the sake of pissing you (and everybody else) off, not only do I disagree with it morally, I also don't believe taxing the rich more will yield the positive results that a lot of people do.
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On September 20 2011 08:36 KiaL.Kiwi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:25 Holophonist wrote:Exactly. Billionaires paying the same percentage of taxes on a huge part of their income as someone who makes 20.000$ bucks a year is a problem of the system. No one who's reasonable just expects the government to take away the money of the rich and directly transfer it to the to the average american - but it's expected that the flaws in the system that allow indiviuals to accumulate astronomically high wealth while the living standards of the rest of your country are decreasing or stagnating at best get fixed. (and those flaws aren't constricted to taxes alone - but they make good examples because the imbalance is very apparent and easy to quantify) Are you under the impression that the standard of living isn't steadily going up? If you follow those silly statistics that define standard of living by asking if you can afford a refrigerator or not - yes it has gone up. If you actually compare the relations of overall growth in wealth of your whole nation to the growth in wealth of the average american - no, the majority of you only got a rather small part of the cake (if one at all). Pretty good (though old) article of Paul Krugman (nobel price winner in economics) related to that topic containing more than "three datapoints" : http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/ForRicher.html
I don't believe it's a bad thing if the poor get richer but the richer get EVEN richer.
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On September 20 2011 08:36 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:29 Holophonist wrote:On September 20 2011 08:24 Falling wrote:
Well only if you invest 1 billion into one enterprize alone. What's more realistic is it's much easier to lose $10M or $100M. But that's why being wealthy makes it easier to gain more wealth, you have deeper pockets, you can survive a failed business venture, ride out a bad economy and so on and so forth.
But if everything comes down to what is moral, I think the next question that would be reasonable is where does that morality come from? Is it absolute or relative and why should we follow it? Because moralness is a matter "You ought to... or ought not to..." So then given that we can choose to or not, what is our standard and what is our compulsion? Yeah and it's also more realistic that you're only gonna make like $10k instead of $1m. Seriously dude? come on, this is a waste of time. Having money doesn't necessarily raise your EV when investing, it just changes the amounts, in BOTH columns. Well, I personally believe that morality comes from God. But I don't expect other people to agree with me and I also don't expect our laws to directly come from the Bible. I'm a complete minimalist. I think the most moral thing to do is to stay out of people's lives as much as possible... from a government's standpoint. Ok that's fine. But I'd challenge you on that. I would argue there is no moral law in the Bible in regards to 'fairness.' There is a lot about justice. There are a few verses about a man should gain the reward of his labour (which would apply to both rich and the poor labour.) However, the vast majority of justice is concerned about taking care of the orphan, the widow, and the alien (foreigner). Three disenfranchised people, the triumvirate group that is discussed from Old Testament to New. There was the year of Jubilee where property accumulated would actually go back to the original family. Slaves could be free after a certain amount of time. There is a LOT of concern given to the poor and ensuring that the rich didn't amass power and wealth indefinitely. I'm not saying one should adopt a socialist system based on this, but I would suggest that a flat tax is not necessarily the only conclusion one could come to.
The tax code has nothing to do with taking care of the sick/dying and impoverished. And the problem I have with government programs isn't that they help the poor, it's that the government is absolutely terrible at doing it. It doesn't usually go to the poor, and when it does, it doesn't actually help them. It puts them in a vicious cycle which I've personally witnessed TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
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Canada11450 Posts
On September 20 2011 08:45 Holophonist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:36 Falling wrote:On September 20 2011 08:29 Holophonist wrote:On September 20 2011 08:24 Falling wrote:
Well only if you invest 1 billion into one enterprize alone. What's more realistic is it's much easier to lose $10M or $100M. But that's why being wealthy makes it easier to gain more wealth, you have deeper pockets, you can survive a failed business venture, ride out a bad economy and so on and so forth.
But if everything comes down to what is moral, I think the next question that would be reasonable is where does that morality come from? Is it absolute or relative and why should we follow it? Because moralness is a matter "You ought to... or ought not to..." So then given that we can choose to or not, what is our standard and what is our compulsion? Yeah and it's also more realistic that you're only gonna make like $10k instead of $1m. Seriously dude? come on, this is a waste of time. Having money doesn't necessarily raise your EV when investing, it just changes the amounts, in BOTH columns. Well, I personally believe that morality comes from God. But I don't expect other people to agree with me and I also don't expect our laws to directly come from the Bible. I'm a complete minimalist. I think the most moral thing to do is to stay out of people's lives as much as possible... from a government's standpoint. Ok that's fine. But I'd challenge you on that. I would argue there is no moral law in the Bible in regards to 'fairness.' There is a lot about justice. There are a few verses about a man should gain the reward of his labour (which would apply to both rich and the poor labour.) However, the vast majority of justice is concerned about taking care of the orphan, the widow, and the alien (foreigner). Three disenfranchised people, the triumvirate group that is discussed from Old Testament to New. There was the year of Jubilee where property accumulated would actually go back to the original family. Slaves could be free after a certain amount of time. There is a LOT of concern given to the poor and ensuring that the rich didn't amass power and wealth indefinitely. I'm not saying one should adopt a socialist system based on this, but I would suggest that a flat tax is not necessarily the only conclusion one could come to. The tax code has nothing to do with taking care of the sick/dying and impoverished. And the problem I have with government programs isn't that they help the poor, it's that the government is absolutely terrible at doing it. It doesn't usually go to the poor, and when it does, it doesn't actually help them. It puts them in a vicious cycle which I've personally witnessed TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
Ok, so then to properly debate I think I need an origin point of why we should value fairness as a moral law because of this:
On September 20 2011 08:40 Holophonist wrote:
This is exactly why I don't want to read through the past 40 pages :/
What that guy said literally makes no sense. He's basically saying you'll get more out of your tax rates if you tax the rich... well.... no DUH! If you impose a 10% tax on a billionaire, you're gonna get more than if you put a 10% tax on somebody who makes 30k/yr and is living paycheck to paycheck. The question isn't whether you'll get more money from taxing the rich more, the question is whether or not it's RIGHT! By the way, just for the sake of pissing you (and everybody else) off, not only do I disagree with it morally, I also don't believe taxing the rich more will yield the positive results that a lot of people do.
Well I don't understand how this can make literally no sense, when you follow it up with a no DUH! As in it's obvious Haem's correct. See Haem's premise is that we need money, we see where it is and we tax it. Which according to you, it would seem we found the solution according to its original premise.
You are operating from another framework- an ideology. But that makes it very difficult to debate (just as hard as the action-axiom and praexology guys) because the starting premise is everyone must be taxed fairly (as in the same percentage as opposed to fairly- according to how much they can actually afford.) And you are right because that's what's moral. So I guess now we need to know why fairness is such a moral imperative.
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On September 20 2011 08:52 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:45 Holophonist wrote:On September 20 2011 08:36 Falling wrote:On September 20 2011 08:29 Holophonist wrote:On September 20 2011 08:24 Falling wrote:
Well only if you invest 1 billion into one enterprize alone. What's more realistic is it's much easier to lose $10M or $100M. But that's why being wealthy makes it easier to gain more wealth, you have deeper pockets, you can survive a failed business venture, ride out a bad economy and so on and so forth.
But if everything comes down to what is moral, I think the next question that would be reasonable is where does that morality come from? Is it absolute or relative and why should we follow it? Because moralness is a matter "You ought to... or ought not to..." So then given that we can choose to or not, what is our standard and what is our compulsion? Yeah and it's also more realistic that you're only gonna make like $10k instead of $1m. Seriously dude? come on, this is a waste of time. Having money doesn't necessarily raise your EV when investing, it just changes the amounts, in BOTH columns. Well, I personally believe that morality comes from God. But I don't expect other people to agree with me and I also don't expect our laws to directly come from the Bible. I'm a complete minimalist. I think the most moral thing to do is to stay out of people's lives as much as possible... from a government's standpoint. Ok that's fine. But I'd challenge you on that. I would argue there is no moral law in the Bible in regards to 'fairness.' There is a lot about justice. There are a few verses about a man should gain the reward of his labour (which would apply to both rich and the poor labour.) However, the vast majority of justice is concerned about taking care of the orphan, the widow, and the alien (foreigner). Three disenfranchised people, the triumvirate group that is discussed from Old Testament to New. There was the year of Jubilee where property accumulated would actually go back to the original family. Slaves could be free after a certain amount of time. There is a LOT of concern given to the poor and ensuring that the rich didn't amass power and wealth indefinitely. I'm not saying one should adopt a socialist system based on this, but I would suggest that a flat tax is not necessarily the only conclusion one could come to. The tax code has nothing to do with taking care of the sick/dying and impoverished. And the problem I have with government programs isn't that they help the poor, it's that the government is absolutely terrible at doing it. It doesn't usually go to the poor, and when it does, it doesn't actually help them. It puts them in a vicious cycle which I've personally witnessed TIME AND TIME AGAIN. Ok, so then to properly debate I think I need an origin point of why we should value fairness as a moral law because of this: Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:40 Holophonist wrote:
This is exactly why I don't want to read through the past 40 pages :/
What that guy said literally makes no sense. He's basically saying you'll get more out of your tax rates if you tax the rich... well.... no DUH! If you impose a 10% tax on a billionaire, you're gonna get more than if you put a 10% tax on somebody who makes 30k/yr and is living paycheck to paycheck. The question isn't whether you'll get more money from taxing the rich more, the question is whether or not it's RIGHT! By the way, just for the sake of pissing you (and everybody else) off, not only do I disagree with it morally, I also don't believe taxing the rich more will yield the positive results that a lot of people do.
Well I don't understand how this can make literally no sense, when you follow it up with a no DUH! As in it's obvious he's correct. See Haem's premise is that we need money, we see where it is and we tax it. Which according to you, it would seem to found the solution to it's a original premise. You are operating from another framework- an ideology. But that makes it very difficult to debate (just as hard as the action-axiom and praexology guys) because the starting premise is everyone must be taxed fairly (as in the same percentage as opposed to fairly- according to how much they can actually afford.) So I guess now we need to know why fairness is such a moral imperative.
What are you even talking about with the fairness? Are you basically saying that you don't have to be fair in order to be moral? I'm not playing word games with you. I believe when you take money from somebody who earned it (most "rich people" have earned it), to give it to somebody else, that's wrong, immoral, unfair, unjust, whatever you want to call it. I don't agree with it. I don't see how anybody can agree with it. I'm not getting into an abstract quasi-theological debate with you because it's not my specialty and it's kinda pointless.
It makes no sense because it's used as an argument as to why it's fair to tax the rich more as a percentage, but he doesn't ever address the issue at all. He just says you get more money from the rich...
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aren't the rich people the ones that can just get up and leave though?
If you tax them too much they can go live somewhere else where they would get taxed less.
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I don't think anybody has properly answered my original question... my entire reason for being in this thread. How can you support the government taking more money from one person to give to another? If you think they've done something illegal, arrest them. If they took advantage of some loophole, fix it. Don't try to mend things with the income tax. Also, I would point out that when they take advantage of "loopholes", they are usually just bringing their tax rate down to a similar level as everybody else... which doesn't seem as evil or slimy as people like to suggest.
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On September 20 2011 09:00 Kiarip wrote:
aren't the rich people the ones that can just get up and leave though?
If you tax them too much they can go live somewhere else where they would get taxed less.
so do they have assets in the US you tax them then they cannot fully just not do business in the US it's too large of a market, we shouldn't be having a race to the bottom because then if taken to infinity we just let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and as wealth of small group become large and the wealth of the minority becomes small all it takes is one large hardship and shit like the French revolution occur.
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Canada11450 Posts
I'm talking about fairness because you keep talking about what people deserve, what people have earned. Which seems to be an argument for fairness. It certainly isn't the more realpolitik, what is the most practical way to raise funds.
Edit
Oh and no, I don't see fairness as having anything to do with morality. Apologies, but to me it's the child whining that such and such isn't fair and to which the answer was always, life is not fair. And it patently isn't. There are rich and there are impoverished. There are powerful and there are disenfranchised. I don't think we'll solve inequalities in the world and I don't think we should. I do think we should promote justice, but not fairness. Things like tax codes I see absolutely no value in keeping things fair. Businesses should remain competitive, the rich should enjoy being rich, and the poor can make a lot less (but justice might make a few adjustments). All of this remains the same with a progressive tax code.
/Edit
Are taxes to you inherently evil? I asked this before but are you a Austrian School of Economics guy or Anarcho-Capitalist. The state is inherently bad? Because when it comes to who earns or deserves this or that any wage earner, deserves their money. Rich or Poor. They made it, according to this argument they deserve it. If the argument is on deserving and fairness, then we can never tax ever. But if the state is necessary (even if it's a necessary evil) and it costs money, then money needs to be raised either through indirect or direct means.
Furthermore, taxing the rich and giving it to the poor is not an argument against progressive taxes, but an argument against a social safety net, specifically welfare which is one of the few places where money literally goes from wage earners to non-wage earners. In almost other cases, taxes, rich or poor go to pay for infrastructure and services that both use to varying degrees (roads, hospitals, law enforcement, military.) This is not going from rich to poor. That's when the practicals kicks in. Who can foot the bill- well sales tax is spread evenly, but can't cover everything, tariffs can hurt trade, so income tax became necessary during the world wars. But then it turns out, the rich can foot a greater bill then the poor. In fact you can even tax rebate the poorest bracket back and it won't make a difference to the budget because the poor makes so little. But note, this is the poor's money going back to the poor. Not the rich going to the poor. I make 7K at a low paying summer job, go to uni and get $6-800 back at the end of the financial year. Just pennies as far as the government is concerned.
Edit
And I'm starting to push into quasi-theological discussions because the root cause of the disagreement is based on an ideology, which if not discussed leaves us at an impasse. "It's immoral" vs "It's not a moral matter, tax where the money is"
In addition, I've yet to see anyone except you suggest the rich are always evil and slimy.
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United States43744 Posts
On September 20 2011 09:00 Kiarip wrote:
aren't the rich people the ones that can just get up and leave though?
If you tax them too much they can go live somewhere else where they would get taxed less.
This exact question was answered in a youtube video earlier, I believe by Buffet. The US is where the business is. If you wish to do business in the US they force you to pay tax in the US and because everyone wants to they go along with it. While the United States is the sole economic superpower in the world there is simply nowhere to go.
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EPT
