On September 20 2011 13:40 KiaL.Kiwi wrote: I know that my post comes 4 pages too late, but I felt that I needed to answer the post. Don't let yourself be distracted from your recent discussion by it ;D
On September 20 2011 09:50 Holophonist wrote: Like I said, the onus is on all of you to explain yourselves for implementing the system... or rather defending the people who did. You are the one who has to explain why your unfairness should be accepted.
I'd say because the need for them is written down in our (Germanys) constitution. Article 14 of it says "Eigentum verpflichtet. Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der Allgemeinheit dienen." which could be roughly translated into "property/prosperity equal/obligate responsibility. Usage of it should always consider/take into account the common good."
There are several reasons to approve progressive taxes, but the first and foremost is that our society is meant to be a society of solidarity. It's not only a question of economics, but of morality: The ones who are better off (for whatever reason) look after the ones who are off worse (for whatever reason) because a.) the situation of yourself is always temporary and could change to the better/worse and b.) because of the realisation that every individual fate is influenced by hunderts of external factors and some luck of the draw². No one is completly responsible for neither his success, nore his failures - and therefore everyone should give a amount of his wealth that doesn't hurt him to make the overall situation of all citizens better.
To put it another way: prosperity equals responsibility for your society because it is the framework of the society that allowed you to become wealthy in the first place, it isn't an achievement that you and you alone could be considered responsible for but rather was achieved with the help of the interaction of infrastructure, safety, laws and their enforcement, other people in other jobs, and so forth.
You could also take on the very pragmatic view, that a system which doesn't balance the wealth between people (though yours really doesn't as is proven pretty easily, while ours works at least a bit better) in some way will collapse at some point, when the poor/supressed masses will take their situation no longer and just flat out overthrow the current system.
Other imho weaker justifications for progressive taxes (that follow the assumption that they are unfair and therefore need a justification in the first place) argue that while income increases the marginal utility decreases and after some point is only invested into luxuaries so that it's fair to take some of the wealth which would be used for luxuaries and spent it on increasing the public good. In other words: every additional euro you earn becomes less useful to you - while the first ones actually assure your survival and the first thousands a good life, the next 100.000 are basically luxuary only.
I'm not so familiar with your constitution (though I'd be suprised I one couldn't find something similar), but I find all of the above completly reasonable. I'm pretty sure that I will have to pay the highest tax rate in a few years, but I don't mind because I know that I still will be wealthier than a rather large percentage of our society and because I know that the money helps others who didn't have the possibilites I had. It's nothing but self-evident that I will show myself responsible and support the framework which allowed me to be who I am in the first place.
² And if you still believe every human has a completly free will that he alone owns and is therefore responsible for all his success/failures himself you should get your head out of the 19th century and brush up on the last 150 years of philosphy, (neuro)psychology, and humanities.
It is just this sort of voice that is missing from the political dialogue in our country. I don't know if it's just because our country is so large or because it is so diverse, but there seems to be very little nationalistic concern for our common man. The prevailing attitude seems to be "I'm going to get mine, and when I get mine, fuck everyone else."
I used to be of a similar mindset and I think one of the turning points was when I was talking to an older man who was quite well off yet also was very liberal in his idea of public policy. I asked him how he got that way and he said he asked his grandfather (who was also wealthy) that same question. And his grandfather said if you don't take care of the poor and the less fortunate, they will come and take it anyway. And he said that stuck with him his whole life.
Look, nobody here is arguing that our government has made good choices with our money and nobody is arguing that these spending levels are sustainable. But the fact is, we are where we are. And we won't dig ourselves out of it if we refuse to pay for it. Somehow we've got it in our collective consciousness that we're entitled to ever declining tax rates which is much more dangerous in our situation, in my opinion, than feeling entitled to medical care and a modest stipend when we're too old to work. I've not seen any concrete numbers targeting a tax rate that is sustainable for budget income purposes. But I'd bet my life it's not lower than what we pay now.
I actually think there's a lot of truth to that. I strongly suspect one of the reasons the Communist revolution or any other revolution never occurred in western countries like the US and Canada (I'm sure others, but I'm more familiar with labour history of those two countries) was some very pragmatic conciliatory efforts in creating social safety nets, raising minimum wage, the legal recognition of unions, 8 hour day, 40 hour work day, enforcing safety laws (in the case of Canada, creating public healthcare.) There was some very serious civil unrest growing in the 20's to 40's, but also back in the late 1800's. These was headed off by moving closer to social democracy and pacifying Labour sufficiently. Cold War postering had and witchhunts did little to actually end the labour unrest.
History is rife with examples where if sufficient power and wealth is consolidated into the hands of the rich few, the lower classes will seek to overthrow. If it really is every man for himself, then it really, truly will become every man for himself.
Edit: re: Friedman video. I do actually agree with what Friedman's talking about, but a progressive tax system is not redistributive in absolute terms. That is progressive taxes do not prevent the rich from getting richer. And that seems to be the main fear of redistribution is that it will destroy incentives. But progressive taxes only flattens the curve a bit, but mostly brings up the bottom (by giving their taxes back). Income or wealth equality is not the goal, the desire, nor the result. It simply seeks to temper the harsher elements of pure, unregulated capitalism. But if you want to or can, you can make millions, even billions under a progressive tax system, you just end up paying a bit more. But your reward is the millions or billions you get to keep.
On September 20 2011 13:40 KiaL.Kiwi wrote: I know that my post comes 4 pages too late, but I felt that I needed to answer the post. Don't let yourself be distracted from your recent discussion by it ;D
On September 20 2011 09:50 Holophonist wrote: Like I said, the onus is on all of you to explain yourselves for implementing the system... or rather defending the people who did. You are the one who has to explain why your unfairness should be accepted.
I'd say because the need for them is written down in our (Germanys) constitution. Article 14 of it says "Eigentum verpflichtet. Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der Allgemeinheit dienen." which could be roughly translated into "property/prosperity equal/obligate responsibility. Usage of it should always consider/take into account the common good."
There are several reasons to approve progressive taxes, but the first and foremost is that our society is meant to be a society of solidarity. It's not only a question of economics, but of morality: The ones who are better off (for whatever reason) look after the ones who are off worse (for whatever reason) because a.) the situation of yourself is always temporary and could change to the better/worse and b.) because of the realisation that every individual fate is influenced by hunderts of external factors and some luck of the draw². No one is completly responsible for neither his success, nore his failures - and therefore everyone should give a amount of his wealth that doesn't hurt him to make the overall situation of all citizens better.
To put it another way: prosperity equals responsibility for your society because it is the framework of the society that allowed you to become wealthy in the first place, it isn't an achievement that you and you alone could be considered responsible for but rather was achieved with the help of the interaction of infrastructure, safety, laws and their enforcement, other people in other jobs, and so forth.
You could also take on the very pragmatic view, that a system which doesn't balance the wealth between people (though yours really doesn't as is proven pretty easily, while ours works at least a bit better) in some way will collapse at some point, when the poor/supressed masses will take their situation no longer and just flat out overthrow the current system.
Other imho weaker justifications for progressive taxes (that follow the assumption that they are unfair and therefore need a justification in the first place) argue that while income increases the marginal utility decreases and after some point is only invested into luxuaries so that it's fair to take some of the wealth which would be used for luxuaries and spent it on increasing the public good. In other words: every additional euro you earn becomes less useful to you - while the first ones actually assure your survival and the first thousands a good life, the next 100.000 are basically luxuary only.
I'm not so familiar with your constitution (though I'd be suprised I one couldn't find something similar), but I find all of the above completly reasonable. I'm pretty sure that I will have to pay the highest tax rate in a few years, but I don't mind because I know that I still will be wealthier than a rather large percentage of our society and because I know that the money helps others who didn't have the possibilites I had. It's nothing but self-evident that I will show myself responsible and support the framework which allowed me to be who I am in the first place.
² And if you still believe every human has a completly free will that he alone owns and is therefore responsible for all his success/failures himself you should get your head out of the 19th century and brush up on the last 150 years of philosphy, (neuro)psychology, and humanities.
It is just this sort of voice that is missing from the political dialogue in our country. I don't know if it's just because our country is so large or because it is so diverse, but there seems to be very little nationalistic concern for our common man. The prevailing attitude seems to be "I'm going to get mine, and when I get mine, fuck everyone else."
I used to be of a similar mindset and I think one of the turning points was when I was talking to an older man who was quite well off yet also was very liberal in his idea of public policy. I asked him how he got that way and he said he asked his grandfather (who was also wealthy) that same question. And his grandfather said if you don't take care of the poor and the less fortunate, they will come and take it anyway. And he said that stuck with him his whole life.
Look, nobody here is arguing that our government has made good choices with our money and nobody is arguing that these spending levels are sustainable. But the fact is, we are where we are. And we won't dig ourselves out of it if we refuse to pay for it. Somehow we've got it in our collective consciousness that we're entitled to ever declining tax rates which is much more dangerous in our situation, in my opinion, than feeling entitled to medical care and a modest stipend when we're too old to work. I've not seen any concrete numbers targeting a tax rate that is sustainable for budget income purposes. But I'd bet my life it's not lower than what we pay now.
Why do you think that raising taxes is the only way to dig ourselves out of the debt crisis we are in? I don't know about you, but when I run out of money I stop spending. Why can't we look at cutting government spending first and see where that takes us. Then I will listen to talks about increased tax rates.
Why can't we do both? What is it about the current budget that leads you to believe the current levels are anywhere near sufficient, even with very substantial cuts? When people in a pinch, they stop spending AND they look for extra opportunities to make money.
On September 20 2011 14:39 dontnerfterranagain wrote: Buffett is an accepted member of the "club", thats why he was given a 15% discount ticket on buying a bunch of goldman stock in 2008 after the crash, which goldmans stock recovered quickly and buffet made a ton of money.
Buffet is part of the new world order, or he is part of the elite ruling class. he knows he is already being double dipped, but he also knows that the new tax increase will not affect him. He is part of the super rich, and they will not have their taxes raised. This is all a trick and game by the new world order, whose objective is to raise taxes on upper middle class americans, anyone who makes between $250,000 and year to say 5 million a year. the new tax increase will not affect buffet or the super rich.
So they are playing with words. they are saying tax the rich, and what the mean is tax the middle class. they are going to wipe out their semi - close competition through taxes.
Goldman and JP morgan will still only be paying 1% corporate taxes.
Buffett is a NWO accepted club member, and they may have told him to come out and say this and help them pass the new middle class tax increase, use his good rep with american suckers
So it can't possibly be Warren Buffet actually meaning this? It must be a conspiracy by the "club". It is actually possible he thinks he should be taxed more, there are cases of people in extremely privileged positions saying that they maybe shouldn't be in such a safe position. For example there is a member of the House of Lords who consistently tries to get the House to become a wholly elected house even though that would probably mean he would lose his position.
Well good on that member of the house of lords, i know that the house of lords is an appointed position. That Joke of a politician, hypocite, John prescott recently accepted the position from which he criticized for years. Yes, the house of lords should be abolished. haha, I am reminded of this song whenever someone mentions the house of lords. Johnnys off to the house of lords
But no, its not possible that buffet means this. just because the house of lords member knows the group is a corrupt group of politicians, unelected and appointed by the establishment, doesnt mean warren buffet is actually genuine. He knows that this bill wont raise his taxes
On September 20 2011 15:04 Brutefidget wrote: 250k to 5 mil is upper middle class? If the "middle" class includes 95% of the country. That sounds pretty upper class to me.
Regardless of whether Buffett is a hypocrite or not, something has to be done about the growing wealth inequality in America. Otherwise, the rich will just have all the money and there will be no one to buy all the amazing goods they can make. So we expect somehow that if we let the super rich keep more of their money, they'll make new high-paying jobs (say six figures) that will effectively allow the wealth to be spread across a greater number of people? Why would they do that when they can make more money hiring cheap foreign labor and using cheap trade rates to import goods into America to take even more money from the middle class? What exactly is the theory behind the the idea that letting super rich people have all the money benefits everyone?
Yeah call it what you want, that income group is targeted. i was thinking about the difference between middle class and upper middle class.
the upper class is @ the top , top 2% as far as i was concerned. Im not sure where you get your stats from though.
On September 20 2011 13:40 KiaL.Kiwi wrote: I know that my post comes 4 pages too late, but I felt that I needed to answer the post. Don't let yourself be distracted from your recent discussion by it ;D
On September 20 2011 09:50 Holophonist wrote: Like I said, the onus is on all of you to explain yourselves for implementing the system... or rather defending the people who did. You are the one who has to explain why your unfairness should be accepted.
I'd say because the need for them is written down in our (Germanys) constitution. Article 14 of it says "Eigentum verpflichtet. Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der Allgemeinheit dienen." which could be roughly translated into "property/prosperity equal/obligate responsibility. Usage of it should always consider/take into account the common good."
There are several reasons to approve progressive taxes, but the first and foremost is that our society is meant to be a society of solidarity. It's not only a question of economics, but of morality: The ones who are better off (for whatever reason) look after the ones who are off worse (for whatever reason) because a.) the situation of yourself is always temporary and could change to the better/worse and b.) because of the realisation that every individual fate is influenced by hunderts of external factors and some luck of the draw². No one is completly responsible for neither his success, nore his failures - and therefore everyone should give a amount of his wealth that doesn't hurt him to make the overall situation of all citizens better.
To put it another way: prosperity equals responsibility for your society because it is the framework of the society that allowed you to become wealthy in the first place, it isn't an achievement that you and you alone could be considered responsible for but rather was achieved with the help of the interaction of infrastructure, safety, laws and their enforcement, other people in other jobs, and so forth.
You could also take on the very pragmatic view, that a system which doesn't balance the wealth between people (though yours really doesn't as is proven pretty easily, while ours works at least a bit better) in some way will collapse at some point, when the poor/supressed masses will take their situation no longer and just flat out overthrow the current system.
Other imho weaker justifications for progressive taxes (that follow the assumption that they are unfair and therefore need a justification in the first place) argue that while income increases the marginal utility decreases and after some point is only invested into luxuaries so that it's fair to take some of the wealth which would be used for luxuaries and spent it on increasing the public good. In other words: every additional euro you earn becomes less useful to you - while the first ones actually assure your survival and the first thousands a good life, the next 100.000 are basically luxuary only.
I'm not so familiar with your constitution (though I'd be suprised I one couldn't find something similar), but I find all of the above completly reasonable. I'm pretty sure that I will have to pay the highest tax rate in a few years, but I don't mind because I know that I still will be wealthier than a rather large percentage of our society and because I know that the money helps others who didn't have the possibilites I had. It's nothing but self-evident that I will show myself responsible and support the framework which allowed me to be who I am in the first place.
² And if you still believe every human has a completly free will that he alone owns and is therefore responsible for all his success/failures himself you should get your head out of the 19th century and brush up on the last 150 years of philosphy, (neuro)psychology, and humanities.
It is just this sort of voice that is missing from the political dialogue in our country. I don't know if it's just because our country is so large or because it is so diverse, but there seems to be very little nationalistic concern for our common man. The prevailing attitude seems to be "I'm going to get mine, and when I get mine, fuck everyone else."
I used to be of a similar mindset and I think one of the turning points was when I was talking to an older man who was quite well off yet also was very liberal in his idea of public policy. I asked him how he got that way and he said he asked his grandfather (who was also wealthy) that same question. And his grandfather said if you don't take care of the poor and the less fortunate, they will come and take it anyway. And he said that stuck with him his whole life.
Look, nobody here is arguing that our government has made good choices with our money and nobody is arguing that these spending levels are sustainable. But the fact is, we are where we are. And we won't dig ourselves out of it if we refuse to pay for it. Somehow we've got it in our collective consciousness that we're entitled to ever declining tax rates which is much more dangerous in our situation, in my opinion, than feeling entitled to medical care and a modest stipend when we're too old to work. I've not seen any concrete numbers targeting a tax rate that is sustainable for budget income purposes. But I'd bet my life it's not lower than what we pay now.
Why do you think that raising taxes is the only way to dig ourselves out of the debt crisis we are in? I don't know about you, but when I run out of money I stop spending. Why can't we look at cutting government spending first and see where that takes us. Then I will listen to talks about increased tax rates.
Why can't we do both? What is it about the current budget that leads you to believe the current levels are anywhere near sufficient, even with very substantial cuts? When people in a pinch, they stop spending AND they look for extra opportunities to make money.
I'm suggesting that there is enough fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending that there is no need to raise taxes. Personally, I would begin by getting rid of congress's private pension plan and put them on the same social security the rest of the country gets. What's good for the goose is good for the gander right?
I'm suggesting that there is enough fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending that there is no need to raise taxes. Personally, I would begin by getting rid of congress's private pension plan and put them on the same social security the rest of the country gets. What's good for the goose is good for the gander right?
Well that will account for .0001% of GDP. Come up with about 100,000 similar plans and you'll actually come up with a meaningful contribution.
On September 20 2011 13:40 KiaL.Kiwi wrote: I know that my post comes 4 pages too late, but I felt that I needed to answer the post. Don't let yourself be distracted from your recent discussion by it ;D
On September 20 2011 09:50 Holophonist wrote: Like I said, the onus is on all of you to explain yourselves for implementing the system... or rather defending the people who did. You are the one who has to explain why your unfairness should be accepted.
I'd say because the need for them is written down in our (Germanys) constitution. Article 14 of it says "Eigentum verpflichtet. Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der Allgemeinheit dienen." which could be roughly translated into "property/prosperity equal/obligate responsibility. Usage of it should always consider/take into account the common good."
There are several reasons to approve progressive taxes, but the first and foremost is that our society is meant to be a society of solidarity. It's not only a question of economics, but of morality: The ones who are better off (for whatever reason) look after the ones who are off worse (for whatever reason) because a.) the situation of yourself is always temporary and could change to the better/worse and b.) because of the realisation that every individual fate is influenced by hunderts of external factors and some luck of the draw². No one is completly responsible for neither his success, nore his failures - and therefore everyone should give a amount of his wealth that doesn't hurt him to make the overall situation of all citizens better.
To put it another way: prosperity equals responsibility for your society because it is the framework of the society that allowed you to become wealthy in the first place, it isn't an achievement that you and you alone could be considered responsible for but rather was achieved with the help of the interaction of infrastructure, safety, laws and their enforcement, other people in other jobs, and so forth.
You could also take on the very pragmatic view, that a system which doesn't balance the wealth between people (though yours really doesn't as is proven pretty easily, while ours works at least a bit better) in some way will collapse at some point, when the poor/supressed masses will take their situation no longer and just flat out overthrow the current system.
Other imho weaker justifications for progressive taxes (that follow the assumption that they are unfair and therefore need a justification in the first place) argue that while income increases the marginal utility decreases and after some point is only invested into luxuaries so that it's fair to take some of the wealth which would be used for luxuaries and spent it on increasing the public good. In other words: every additional euro you earn becomes less useful to you - while the first ones actually assure your survival and the first thousands a good life, the next 100.000 are basically luxuary only.
I'm not so familiar with your constitution (though I'd be suprised I one couldn't find something similar), but I find all of the above completly reasonable. I'm pretty sure that I will have to pay the highest tax rate in a few years, but I don't mind because I know that I still will be wealthier than a rather large percentage of our society and because I know that the money helps others who didn't have the possibilites I had. It's nothing but self-evident that I will show myself responsible and support the framework which allowed me to be who I am in the first place.
² And if you still believe every human has a completly free will that he alone owns and is therefore responsible for all his success/failures himself you should get your head out of the 19th century and brush up on the last 150 years of philosphy, (neuro)psychology, and humanities.
It is just this sort of voice that is missing from the political dialogue in our country. I don't know if it's just because our country is so large or because it is so diverse, but there seems to be very little nationalistic concern for our common man. The prevailing attitude seems to be "I'm going to get mine, and when I get mine, fuck everyone else."
I used to be of a similar mindset and I think one of the turning points was when I was talking to an older man who was quite well off yet also was very liberal in his idea of public policy. I asked him how he got that way and he said he asked his grandfather (who was also wealthy) that same question. And his grandfather said if you don't take care of the poor and the less fortunate, they will come and take it anyway. And he said that stuck with him his whole life.
Look, nobody here is arguing that our government has made good choices with our money and nobody is arguing that these spending levels are sustainable. But the fact is, we are where we are. And we won't dig ourselves out of it if we refuse to pay for it. Somehow we've got it in our collective consciousness that we're entitled to ever declining tax rates which is much more dangerous in our situation, in my opinion, than feeling entitled to medical care and a modest stipend when we're too old to work. I've not seen any concrete numbers targeting a tax rate that is sustainable for budget income purposes. But I'd bet my life it's not lower than what we pay now.
Why do you think that raising taxes is the only way to dig ourselves out of the debt crisis we are in? I don't know about you, but when I run out of money I stop spending. Why can't we look at cutting government spending first and see where that takes us. Then I will listen to talks about increased tax rates.
Why can't we do both? What is it about the current budget that leads you to believe the current levels are anywhere near sufficient, even with very substantial cuts? When people in a pinch, they stop spending AND they look for extra opportunities to make money.
I'm suggesting that there is enough fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending that there is no need to raise taxes. Personally, I would begin by getting rid of congress's private pension plan and put them on the same social security the rest of the country gets. What's good for the goose is good for the gander right?
So true and well said, Thats why Im voting Ron Paul, he says that the government is always inefficient in any act that it tries to do, and everytime we see our goverment do something, the spending is WAY up and he is proven correct.
We dont need to feed this corrupt government any more money, like the leftists are crying for. Probably so their community action group continues to get government stimulus money.
I'm suggesting that there is enough fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending that there is no need to raise taxes. Personally, I would begin by getting rid of congress's private pension plan and put them on the same social security the rest of the country gets. What's good for the goose is good for the gander right?
Well that will account for .0001% of GDP. Come up with about 100,000 similar plans and you'll actually come up with a meaningful contribution.
Yeah true, the place to start is overseas spending!! we need to stop all wars, abandon all bases that are not on US soil and bring all the troops home and spend that money back at home. that is where we need to start.
I agree with joe that the congress should not be treated so well and should be on bogus social security security ponzi scheme.
On September 20 2011 15:53 diophan wrote: Wow I shouldn't have tried looking at a political thread on TL. Just a bunch of libertarian kids from the suburbs.
Interesting, usually it is packed with leftists crying for more spending, they even have openly communist admins here.
On September 20 2011 15:53 diophan wrote: Wow I shouldn't have tried looking at a political thread on TL. Just a bunch of libertarian kids from the suburbs.
Interesting, usually it is packed with leftists crying for more spending, they even have openly communist admins here.
Naw, Ron Paul fanboys can be a handfull sometimes. And Keynesian economics completely opposes Marxism/Communism btw.
On September 20 2011 15:04 Brutefidget wrote: 250k to 5 mil is upper middle class? If the "middle" class includes 95% of the country. That sounds pretty upper class to me.
Regardless of whether Buffett is a hypocrite or not, something has to be done about the growing wealth inequality in America. Otherwise, the rich will just have all the money and there will be no one to buy all the amazing goods they can make. So we expect somehow that if we let the super rich keep more of their money, they'll make new high-paying jobs (say six figures) that will effectively allow the wealth to be spread across a greater number of people? Why would they do that when they can make more money hiring cheap foreign labor and using cheap trade rates to import goods into America to take even more money from the middle class? What exactly is the theory behind the the idea that letting super rich people have all the money benefits everyone?
Yeah call it what you want, that income group is targeted. i was thinking about the difference between middle class and upper middle class.
the upper class is @ the top , top 2% as far as i was concerned. Im not sure where you get your stats from though.
I wasn't saying that bracket was 95% of the country. I was saying that I figured the middle class would be just that; the people in the middle. I always hear the average income being around 50k, so I just thought 250k was not really middle class, and if you're making the middle class distinction include incomes of up to 5 million you'd have to compensate by including some really tiny incomes in your definition of middle class to keep it 'middle'. Hence the 95% (obviously not an exact known number, but an informed estimate.)
I honestly don't understand the argument that progressive tax rates will stop people from being motivated to accomplish things and progress. Do people not care to achieve greatness anymore? No one cares to do something amazing and be remembered forever if it's not accompanied by a huge paycheck? What happened to the Jonas Salk mentality of doing something great for people?
I also agree that it's dangerous for society to let a growing number of people be poor and a decreasing number of people be ridiculously rich. When things get dire, revolutions happen. I read an article a few months back on how the private bodyguard business is currently booming, with a lot of the customers being in the financial industry and high profile CEOs. They obviously know that they make enemies with what they do, and I just have to wonder why they continue doing it if their lives are threatened over it.
On September 20 2011 15:53 diophan wrote: Wow I shouldn't have tried looking at a political thread on TL. Just a bunch of libertarian kids from the suburbs.
Interesting, usually it is packed with leftists crying for more spending, they even have openly communist admins here.
Openly communist? You missed McCarthyism by about 60 years.
The fact is last year the top 1% of this country paid about 35% of national income revenues and the top 5% paid nearly 60% of tax revenues. So the people saying the "rich" don't pay their fair share, please elaborate on what "fair" is. Is it 60% of income? Why stop there, why not 90%? Almost 50% of households in this country do NOT pay an income tax whatsoever, is that fair?
On September 20 2011 16:00 fireballbren wrote: The fact is last year the top 1% of this country paid about 35% of national income revenues and the top 5% paid nearly 60% of tax revenues. So the people saying the "rich" don't pay their fair share, please elaborate on what "fair" is. Is it 60% of income? Why stop there, why not 90%? Almost 50% of households in this country do NOT pay an income tax whatsoever, is that fair?
Note that this is just state and federal taxes and doesn't include regressive taxes such as sales tax. Warren Buffett is advocating you not make that bar on the right lower than the others... which seems pretty reasonable.
On September 20 2011 15:39 dontnerfterranagain wrote:
On September 20 2011 15:04 Brutefidget wrote: 250k to 5 mil is upper middle class? If the "middle" class includes 95% of the country. That sounds pretty upper class to me.
Regardless of whether Buffett is a hypocrite or not, something has to be done about the growing wealth inequality in America. Otherwise, the rich will just have all the money and there will be no one to buy all the amazing goods they can make. So we expect somehow that if we let the super rich keep more of their money, they'll make new high-paying jobs (say six figures) that will effectively allow the wealth to be spread across a greater number of people? Why would they do that when they can make more money hiring cheap foreign labor and using cheap trade rates to import goods into America to take even more money from the middle class? What exactly is the theory behind the the idea that letting super rich people have all the money benefits everyone?
Yeah call it what you want, that income group is targeted. i was thinking about the difference between middle class and upper middle class.
the upper class is @ the top , top 2% as far as i was concerned. Im not sure where you get your stats from though.
I wasn't saying that bracket was 95% of the country. I was saying that I figured the middle class would be just that; the people in the middle. I always hear the average income being around 50k, so I just thought 250k was not really middle class, and if you're making the middle class distinction include incomes of up to 5 million you'd have to compensate by including some really tiny incomes in your definition of middle class to keep it 'middle'. Hence the 95% (obviously not an exact known number, but an informed estimate.)
I honestly don't understand the argument that progressive tax rates will stop people from being motivated to accomplish things and progress. Do people not care to achieve greatness anymore? No one cares to do something amazing and be remembered forever if it's not accompanied by a huge paycheck? What happened to the Jonas Salk mentality of doing something great for people?
I also agree that it's dangerous for society to let a growing number of people be poor and a decreasing number of people be ridiculously rich. When things get dire, revolutions happen. I read an article a few months back on how the private bodyguard business is currently booming, with a lot of the customers being in the financial industry and high profile CEOs. They obviously know that they make enemies with what they do, and I just have to wonder why they continue doing it if their lives are threatened over it.
well, middle class is pretty privileged. Its privileged enough to move out of the heavy crime areas and into the suburbs. When you make 50k a year, thats working class in my opinion. its a matter of opinion difference here i guess.
And No, people dont care to accomplish things when the government gets a huge chunk of the profits, its also raises the risk alot higher on any business endeavor. this is what Ron Paul argues, and I agree with him on that.
On September 20 2011 16:00 fireballbren wrote: The fact is last year the top 1% of this country paid about 35% of national income revenues and the top 5% paid nearly 60% of tax revenues. So the people saying the "rich" don't pay their fair share, please elaborate on what "fair" is. Is it 60% of income? Why stop there, why not 90%? Almost 50% of households in this country do NOT pay an income tax whatsoever, is that fair?
The reason the top 5% pays such a huge percentage of tax revenues is that they control such a HUGE percentage of the wealth. As a percentage of their total income rich people pay WAY less than the middle class mostly due to the ridiculously low capital gains tax and their ability to abuse our complicated deduction system.
Most of the people on the far left who advocate crazy things like forced wealth distribution are just mad for the same reason fixing systematic problems (which has not happened yet in this case) is never the end of any problem (see slavery). You don't get to create an incredibly biased and unfair system, establish a huge/entrenched advantage and then set the rules back to "equal opportunity" with that advantage intact without people crying foul.
In the end this is just one of those ways in which life isnt fair. It isnt right to leave current abusive policies in place but it also isnt right to forcibly appropriate all of the resources we feel make somebody "super rich". This all being said, there are some way more fair metrics that we can use for taxation and all of them end with the rich paying a lot more taxes.
EPT
