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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 31 2012 07:25 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 07:24 Risen wrote:On October 31 2012 07:22 sam!zdat wrote:On October 31 2012 07:17 Risen wrote:On October 31 2012 07:16 sam!zdat wrote:On October 31 2012 07:15 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:On October 31 2012 07:08 sam!zdat wrote:
when you have a crisis of overaccumulation the last thing you need is more investment I know you read Marx, but I am losing the plot here. What exactly is your vision of an ideal society even? Everyone just sitting around reading? no, that's the first step. you read books so that you can have a vision of what you want society to be. We just chase wealth for wealth's sake and we have a vulgar, debased culture because of it Explain? Look around you. Everybody is trying to sell things, all the time. you can't have art, or anything else, without somebody slapping corporate logos on it. you can't learn anything interesting or noble or excellent without somebody asking you "what product are you going to market." Everything is advertising, you absorb it into your ideology, you think that buying all this stupid shit from these stupid corporations will make you happy, really it just breaks and you throw it away and buy something else useless and shiny and plastic next year to keep the whole cycle going. Walk down the street and ask yourself, how much of the stuff that's going on here is actually useful? How much of it is just people convincing each other that what they are doing is useful? How much of it is consumption just to show off how much you can consume? Why do people work so much? Technology advances, and we work MORE, and HARDER! What the fuck? It's only because we've convinced ourselves that we have to have all this trash. According to American standards, I'm pretty much straddling the poverty line - but I live like a fucking Merovingian king of something. We have no perspective. What's wrong with the situation you have come up with? Is there some sort of purpose you have in mind for the human race? As far as I can tell we don't really have any purpose besides the ones we create for ourselves. yes, but which one do we want to create? Is it this fucking corporate theme park? I hope not, because that's damn pathetic. I'd like to make a civilization worth being proud of, and I'll tell you right now it doesn't involve any marketing consultants. edit: Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 07:25 mynameisgreat11 wrote:
samzdat, you've seen "They Live", right? no what is that edit: See, what you guys don't realize is that I consider myself a cultural conservative. By which I mean, the whole thing has been going downhill since we stopped teaching everybody Greek and Latin and reading Plato. Catholicism has its moments but protestantism is just banal, and atheism is the worst
I have never been so offended! It's people like you that make it impossible for me to become President. 
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On October 31 2012 09:12 DoubleReed wrote:
I think I'll try to steer this back toward high tax rate.
In the period of 1940s-1970s, where America was the most prosperous with unprecedented growth, we had an extraordinarily high top income tax, usually around 70% but went as high as 90% sometimes.
I'm not even suggesting going up that high. A 50% tax would be fine. What people did back then was instead of taking home a huge salary from their corporation, they simply left the money in the corporation, and grew the business, creating jobs. They simply took a smaller income. High Income Taxes encourages the wealthy to be job creators, rather than just be big spenders which is less efficient. That just seems to be how it works. The fact is that America's wealthy has rarely been as greedy as they are right now.
The fact is we need more revenue. And the wealth disparity is destabilizing our economy. And we have super-low taxes historically. If you wouldn't want to raise taxes on the wealthy now, then I'm not sure what circumstance you would raise taxes on the wealthy.
And in fact that's basically what we're seeing from conservatives now. Taxes are never low enough. Ever. No matter what.
It frustrates me Obama and the Democrats won't run on this. Stop playing defense. Explain to the middle class why higher taxes is necessary. IT's a credit that so many Americans don't want to take from the rich but Democrats need to stand up and demand it.
I think a big reason people aren't so enthusiastic about Obama is exactly that he isn't fighting for this. He took us one step closer to the single payer health care that even Clinton couldn't do and now Romney might win and stop that because Democrats aren't angry enough about the rich taking everything from the middle class to say what needs to be said.
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On October 31 2012 09:54 jdseemoreglass wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 09:23 farvacola wrote:On October 31 2012 09:12 DoubleReed wrote:
I think I'll try to steer this back toward high tax rate.
In the period of 1940s-1970s, where America was the most prosperous with unprecedented growth, we had an extraordinarily high top income tax, usually around 70% but went as high as 90% sometimes.
I'm not even suggesting going up that high. A 50% tax would be fine. What people did back then was instead of taking home a huge salary from their corporation, they simply left the money in the corporation, and grew the business, creating jobs. They simply took a smaller income. High Income Taxes encourages the wealthy to be job creators, rather than just be big spenders which is less efficient. That just seems to be how it works. The fact is that America's wealthy has rarely been as greedy as they are right now.
The fact is we need more revenue. And the wealth disparity is destabilizing our economy. And we have super-low taxes historically. If you wouldn't want to raise taxes on the wealthy now, then I'm not sure what circumstance you would raise taxes on the wealthy.
And in fact that's basically what we're seeing from conservatives now. Taxes are never low enough. Ever. No matter what. Yes, this is pretty much exactly correct. No, it's not correct at all. It's a simplistic theory which has been created after the fact to justify a pre-existing normative philosophy. First of all, you can't have job creation without demand to meet the additional production, and so reducing spending in order to induce "more efficient" job creation is nonsense. The whole theory is nonsense, jobs aren't produced magically by how we choose to spend wealth, they are induced by the creation of wealth. But the more important point here is this: Where is that 50% of taxed income going? It's going to the government, which is guaranteed to be a less efficient use of resources and will result in even less job creation than either spending or corporate reinvestment.
Granted, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to simplistic theories; the perspective from which you and your respective school of thought argues is necessarily narrow, lest it fall apart at the seams, unable to bear the weight of reality. Look, we get it. You can't understand the basic tenets of deductive economic reasoning; the graphs, charts, and models are confusing and oftentimes only tangentially applicable to reality, though to understand them as discrete truth-bearing units is to not understand the point of their use at all. In any case, we are not discussing magic, we are discussing measurable changes in market behavior given certain stimulus or contraction from the government side. Simply laying on the populist "the government never does it better" tripe like Ann Coulter doesn't change the fact that history and the nature of certain socio-economic structures provide ample evidence that government interaction in the marketplace can induce positive effects. (See the New Deal. And if you think you've a leg to stand on in arguing against that, I wouldn't even bother).
You say that one cannot have job creation without demand, yet fail to acknowledge any possible stratification in marketplace dispersion of capital, as though health insurance providers, supermarket chains, and equity consultants all exist in an egalitarian corporate superstructure, immune to the specificity of their respective markets. I suppose one could pretend that simply "the creation of wealth" is all that matters, but to ignore where that wealth goes is to pretend that the magician plays no games of sleight of hand. And yes, large-scale analysis almost always falls victim to at least some sort of inclusion of a normative justification or metric; whats more worrisome is when someone is unaware of this.
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Every time farvacola responds to me, it looks like this.
Paragraph 1: (wholly unnecessary) Ad hominems, inexplicable non sequiturs, criticisms of Republican straw men or advocates which I never even mentioned.
Paragraph 2: A string of regurgitated leftist jargon ie. "stratification of dispersion of capital" which does absolutely nothing to address the points that I actually made in the post he's quoting.
What I'm left with is this ball of rage he feels towards right-wingers and I have no idea what to do with it, so I usually ignore it.
I will respond to the last point you made though, since that is at least slightly relevant to my post. A normative philosophy is a goal, and an understanding of economics is necessary to know the proper and most effective means to that goal. Taking the backwards route, trying to come up with some economic theory which justifies your pre-existing normative beliefs, means you don't really care about achieving your stated goal, you simply care about justifying your world view or enjoying the emotional benefit of your stated intentions.
Economics is not a normative science. If I could describe economics in one word, it would be: trade-offs. You have to have a reasonable assessment of the consequences of policies and the trade-offs which occur with every decision if you actually want to achieve your normative desires. Rejecting that a trade-off exists or rejecting the actual consequences of policies because it does not align with your ideology is unproductive.
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But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever.
Edit: "Jobs aren't created by the way we spend wealth, they are created by the creation of wealth."
Hmm... that's also a simplistic way of thinking about it, ignoring incentives and ignoring how spending wealth creates wealth. It seems to me like you're using two different definitions of the word wealth here. One meaning individual income, and the other being economic growth.
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On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever.
There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated.
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On October 31 2012 11:21 jdseemoreglass wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever. There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated.
No no, you misunderstand. I want you to describe a situation where you would raise taxes on the wealthy. It's not a strawman. I'm asking for an explanation.
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Does anyone find it strange that the Romney campaign office turned disaster relief place is in Wisconsin? Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey.
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On October 31 2012 11:25 ticklishmusic wrote:
Does anyone find it strange that the Romney campaign office turned disaster relief place is in Wisconsin? Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey.
It is easier to get people to donate stuff that weren't affected by the storm? Seems logical to have donations from another location then shipped in.
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On October 31 2012 11:25 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:21 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever. There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated. No no, you misunderstand. I want you to describe a situation where you would raise taxes on the wealthy. It's not a strawman. I'm asking for an explanation.
If there were insufficient government revenues to provide education, or insufficient government revenues to provide subsistence to the poor, or insufficient government revenues to pay for other basic government functions such as law or defense, AND there were not other sectors in which government waste could be cut, then I would support raising taxes. And not raising simply on the "wealthy," whatever that means, but according to a consistent progressive tax rate on the country as a whole.
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On October 31 2012 11:25 ticklishmusic wrote:
Does anyone find it strange that the Romney campaign office turned disaster relief place is in Wisconsin? Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey.
I think it's easier to run logistics in a place not being battered with a deadly storm?
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On October 31 2012 11:30 jdseemoreglass wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:25 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:21 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever. There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated. No no, you misunderstand. I want you to describe a situation where you would raise taxes on the wealthy. It's not a strawman. I'm asking for an explanation. If there were insufficient government revenues to provide education, or insufficient government revenues to provide subsistence to the poor, or insufficient government revenues to pay for other basic government functions such as law or defense, AND there were not other sectors in which government waste could be cut, then I would support raising taxes. And not raising simply on the "wealthy," whatever that means, but according to a consistent progressive tax rate on the country as a whole.
Errr... you don't think the progressiveness of the tax rate should have anything to do with wealth disparity?
And there are insufficient government revenues to pay for education. That's stateside, but it's still true in a lot of states.
And it's also rather strange that you didn't say anything about what's happening with the actual economy. Is that irrelevant?
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On October 31 2012 11:28 ThreeAcross wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:25 ticklishmusic wrote:
Does anyone find it strange that the Romney campaign office turned disaster relief place is in Wisconsin? Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey. It is easier to get people to donate stuff that weren't affected by the storm? Seems logical to have donations from another location then shipped in.
Never mind the fact that won't help anything just hinder it. Why didn't the campaign just post links to the Red Cross etc.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
I don't even think we should be looking at raising tax rates at the moment, we should be looking at reforming the tax code. Effective tax rate is the problem. And on that note, what would be wrong in making deductions progressive (?) as well? Say, you make $50k a year, you can have a mortgage-interest deduction up to amount, if you make 500K a year, you can have a deduction up to amount, and if you make over 1 million a year, you don't get a deduction.
Just an example.
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On October 31 2012 11:36 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:28 ThreeAcross wrote:On October 31 2012 11:25 ticklishmusic wrote:
Does anyone find it strange that the Romney campaign office turned disaster relief place is in Wisconsin? Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey. It is easier to get people to donate stuff that weren't affected by the storm? Seems logical to have donations from another location then shipped in. Never mind the fact that won't help anything just hinder it. Why didn't the campaign just post links to the Red Cross etc.
That one's easy. You don't get the political capital that you receive when linking to your own propaganda site.
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On October 31 2012 11:36 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:30 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:25 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:21 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever. There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated. No no, you misunderstand. I want you to describe a situation where you would raise taxes on the wealthy. It's not a strawman. I'm asking for an explanation. If there were insufficient government revenues to provide education, or insufficient government revenues to provide subsistence to the poor, or insufficient government revenues to pay for other basic government functions such as law or defense, AND there were not other sectors in which government waste could be cut, then I would support raising taxes. And not raising simply on the "wealthy," whatever that means, but according to a consistent progressive tax rate on the country as a whole. Errr... you don't think the progressiveness of the tax rate should have anything to do with wealth disparity? And there are insufficient government revenues to pay for education. That's stateside, but it's still true in a lot of states. And it's also rather strange that you didn't say anything about what's happening with the actual economy. Is that irrelevant?
1) I don't care about wealth disparity. I care about the functions of government being fulfilled, and I don't think redistribution is one of them.
2) We have PLENTY of revenue to pay for education. But it's getting diverted to wasteful programs, pensions, etc.
3) What in the actual economy would you like me to comment on?
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On October 31 2012 11:40 jdseemoreglass wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:36 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:30 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:25 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:21 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever. There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated. No no, you misunderstand. I want you to describe a situation where you would raise taxes on the wealthy. It's not a strawman. I'm asking for an explanation. If there were insufficient government revenues to provide education, or insufficient government revenues to provide subsistence to the poor, or insufficient government revenues to pay for other basic government functions such as law or defense, AND there were not other sectors in which government waste could be cut, then I would support raising taxes. And not raising simply on the "wealthy," whatever that means, but according to a consistent progressive tax rate on the country as a whole. Errr... you don't think the progressiveness of the tax rate should have anything to do with wealth disparity? And there are insufficient government revenues to pay for education. That's stateside, but it's still true in a lot of states. And it's also rather strange that you didn't say anything about what's happening with the actual economy. Is that irrelevant? 1) I don't care about wealth disparity. I care about the functions of government being fulfilled, and I don't think redistribution is one of them. 2) We have PLENTY of revenue to pay for education. But it's getting diverted to wasteful programs, pensions, etc. 3) What in the actual economy would you like me to comment on?
You realize wealth disparity in and of itself causes economic and social problems right? The French revolution did not happen because some people just decided the guillotines were not getting enough use.
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On October 31 2012 11:43 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:40 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:36 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:30 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:25 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:21 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever. There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated. No no, you misunderstand. I want you to describe a situation where you would raise taxes on the wealthy. It's not a strawman. I'm asking for an explanation. If there were insufficient government revenues to provide education, or insufficient government revenues to provide subsistence to the poor, or insufficient government revenues to pay for other basic government functions such as law or defense, AND there were not other sectors in which government waste could be cut, then I would support raising taxes. And not raising simply on the "wealthy," whatever that means, but according to a consistent progressive tax rate on the country as a whole. Errr... you don't think the progressiveness of the tax rate should have anything to do with wealth disparity? And there are insufficient government revenues to pay for education. That's stateside, but it's still true in a lot of states. And it's also rather strange that you didn't say anything about what's happening with the actual economy. Is that irrelevant? 1) I don't care about wealth disparity. I care about the functions of government being fulfilled, and I don't think redistribution is one of them. 2) We have PLENTY of revenue to pay for education. But it's getting diverted to wasteful programs, pensions, etc. 3) What in the actual economy would you like me to comment on? You realize wealth disparity in and of itself causes economic and social problems right? The French revolution did not happen because some people just decided the guillotines were not getting enough use.
And economic and social problems cause wealth disparity.
Which came first, the hen or the egg? Circular argument.
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On October 31 2012 11:43 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 11:40 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:36 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:30 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:25 DoubleReed wrote:On October 31 2012 11:21 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 31 2012 11:18 DoubleReed wrote:
But your determination that government will always be less efficient than the private sector does not acknowledge the tradeoff. Not to mention that the blanket statement is empirically untrue.
Again, I must ask if you believe there is ever an instance where higher taxes on the wealthy is necessary. Ever. There are dozens of instances when higher taxes are desirable. I don't even know how to respond to this straw man. How did people get this notion that I am an anarchist or something? I'm getting tired of arguing against ideas I've never advocated. No no, you misunderstand. I want you to describe a situation where you would raise taxes on the wealthy. It's not a strawman. I'm asking for an explanation. If there were insufficient government revenues to provide education, or insufficient government revenues to provide subsistence to the poor, or insufficient government revenues to pay for other basic government functions such as law or defense, AND there were not other sectors in which government waste could be cut, then I would support raising taxes. And not raising simply on the "wealthy," whatever that means, but according to a consistent progressive tax rate on the country as a whole. Errr... you don't think the progressiveness of the tax rate should have anything to do with wealth disparity? And there are insufficient government revenues to pay for education. That's stateside, but it's still true in a lot of states. And it's also rather strange that you didn't say anything about what's happening with the actual economy. Is that irrelevant? 1) I don't care about wealth disparity. I care about the functions of government being fulfilled, and I don't think redistribution is one of them. 2) We have PLENTY of revenue to pay for education. But it's getting diverted to wasteful programs, pensions, etc. 3) What in the actual economy would you like me to comment on? You realize wealth disparity in and of itself causes economic and social problems right? The French revolution did not happen because some people just decided the guillotines were not getting enough use.
It's not the inequality that matters, it is the absolute standard of living of the poor.
Caring about the bottom is compassion, caring about the top is resentment. Revolutions should not be inspired by resentment, but they quite often are.
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On October 31 2012 11:36 Souma wrote:
I don't even think we should be looking at raising tax rates at the moment, we should be looking at reforming the tax code. Effective tax rate is the problem. And on that note, what would be wrong in making deductions progressive (?) as well? Say, you make $50k a year, you can have a mortgage-interest deduction up to <this> amount, if you make 500K a year, you can have a deduction up to <this> amount, and if you make over 1 million a year, you don't get a deduction.
Just an example.
Aren't the ideas of Romney at least closer to that than Obamas? I mean, closing loopholes in the tax-system for especially the high income groups seems at least closer to that, than letting tax reliefs run out. Sure, he pleads his case for a flat federal tax, but closing the loopholes is something a lot of people have asked for.
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