No. I agree that the government should treat all citizens equally. What any given citizen chooses to do or is able to do is a different matter.
I have said nothing about your motivations.
If the government imposes injustice that’s bad, but citizens ought to be free to do it to one another?
Is there a non-pejorative connotation for “suspicious”?
What do you mean by treating all citizens equally?
Say there are N citizens and the government needs M dollars for some good cause. Which of these is treating all citizens equally?
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Charging each citizen M/N dollars?
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Charging each citizen a percentage of their wealth or income so that the total comes out to M?
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Deriving a measure of the value of money, so that each citizen suffers a roughly equal amount of pain from the tax?
All could be considered as treating all citizens equally, and all represent radically different taxation policies.
Depends on the specifics… In this case, though, I don’t see that expressing a political opinion translates to doing an injustice to someone.
If I steal your wallet, that’s an injustice. If I print a pamphlet or make a movie, that is not.
I don’t know what to say other than that I expressed no opinion about what your motivation was. And I wasn’t trying to imply anything, either.
So long as it fits neatly within your definition, no. Is it your opinion that wealth is no advantage in this regard? Or is it your opinion that such advantage is justified? Or that nothing can, or should, be done about it?
Stealing my wallet is just plain dumb. Thomas Paine printed a pamphlet and helped spark a revolution; to this day, reading *Common Sense * makes my hair stand on end. He was poor when he did so, and died poor and forgotten. The “Rev” Moon publishes the Washington Times, which is to journalism what leprosy is to skin. So, there is considerable variety, not quite so cut and dried as you make it out.
Well, something along the lines of "Sorry, 'luc, mispoke there, used “suspicious” when I meant “skeptical”. The natural rejoinder would be “Think nothing of it! More tea?”
Is that so difficult?
This isn’t exactly true. While in the general macro sense this is generally true: given a constant supply of money, less of it out of circulation makes the rest of it more valuable; it is not true, however, that the economy overall benefits.
For the ME mentioned earlier, which you elude to with the loaning of funds, it is more advantageous for all the money in the given economy to be loaned out an invested. Idle money not doing anything (at the very least should be sitting in a bank deposit) will not benefit the economy. In fact, if enough money is sitting in a mattress, it will actually depress the economy because the cost of borrowing will be inefficiently high.
In response to the given discussion, (I haven’t been able to better read this or any other thread because I’m traveling), I don’t believe in wealth redistribution for redistribution’s sake. I do believe in societal safety nets, but I want that to be a last ditch alternative, and definitely not comfortable, or even a planned resource.
I believe you are correct. Reducing the money supply does increase the value of the remaining money, but it does not necessarily benefit everyone. Because, as you correctly state -
Debates that focus on the question “how can we get M with the minimum in impact on citizens and the economy”, then we are (by default) arguing about how to treat citizens equally. Once we start saying “some citizens are rich, and they must have got that way from exploiting the poor”, then we have made the assumption that some citizens should not be treated equally.
Taxation should not (in my view) be used for social policy. It’s like what they say about tests.
Some people are more successful than others. Their success fuels a better economy and benefits the rest of us. Thus we need to be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
To the extent that we are using taxation and transfer payments to reduce disparities in wealth, we are subsidizing failure, and taxing success. Some of this is unavoidable, but we ought to minimize the impace.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s better to be rich, of course. Let me reiterate what I said above, and clarify a bit. Believing as strongly as I do in the 1st amendment, I’m inclined to be wary of any attempt by the government to prevent citizens from expressing their opinions. In the particular case you are trying to make, I can’t really say whether it’s a good idea or not until you tell me exactly what you want to do. The range of options are quite broad. From my own standpoint, I’m not inclined to brainstorm such options as I don’t see that there is a problem.
I’m not following you. Rev Moon is rich and Paine was poor*. Would their ideas have been any better or worse if their economic situations were reversed? I don’t want the government coming between me and someone who is trying to express a political opinion to me. Whether that person is Tom Paine, Rev Moon, Michael Moore or Bill O’Reilly, it doesn’t matter.
I used the word correctly, and it’s clear in that sentence that the “suspicion” is directed at the idea, not the person holding that idea. Furthermore, had I said “skeptical”, that could have been misconstrued in exactly the same way.
*For the record, I don’t actually know that to be true, but I’ll take your word for it. Doesn’t really matter, from my standpoint, wrt to the issue we’re discussing anyway.
I fail to see where I said anything about the rich being exploitive. Not everyone in favor of progressive taxation believes this. I think Bill Gates’ dad argued against the Bush tax cuts, for instance. You might think, for instance, that J.K. Rowling should pay a larger percentage of her income in taxes than a middle class person without thinking she exploited anyone. I’d think anyone except the most radical IP should be free person would have a hard time arguing she is exploitive in the least.
In addition, a policy having the minimum impact on citizens might not have the minimum impact on the economy, and vice versa. And my point is that it is not clear what is meant by treating all citizens equally. A flat tax for $1,000 will have very different impacts on me and my daughter. Is charging us both the same amount treating us equally?
I was at the top bracket during the bubble, and I don’t recall it making me work less. I assure you, I’d be happy to be at that bracket again, even if we restored the horrid old tax rates. Do you seriously think there are people who will quit and go fishing because the tax rate on their millions would go up by a percent or two? To 95%, sure, but that is not being proposed by anyone.
And I said, tax is always social programs. Cutting taxes for the rich and cutting assistance to the poor is as much a social program as increasing taxes for the rich and aiding the poor more. That you prefer a policy doesn’t keep it from being a social program.
I don’t think so; the key word there is “added”. I think that even if the total value is equal, the cumulative effect of the ME would grow with the number of transactions. More concretely, a single transaction with a profit of $10K shows exactly a $10K profit (no ME); 10,000 transactions of $1 profit apiece each create some wealth – and this is key – which is compounded as it forms some portion of subsequent transactions.
I fail to see where I said you did. It was in the OP.
What does “IP should be free” mean? (I don’t mean to be snarky, I don’t understand.)
Yes, I read that. My point is that discussions that take it for granted that citizens ought to be treated equally are fine. Those that don’t, aren’t.
BrainGlutton was advocating going beyond what even Edwards proposed. And I suspect any taxation scheme that seriously redistributed wealth (if that is the purpose of class warfare) is going to go well beyond “a percent or two”.
Targetted tax cuts (and targetted tax increases) are certainly social programs. But that does not mean that all taxation is social engineering, which is what I was talking about. It is a matter of what the tax program is intended to bring about. “Soak the rich, because it’s no fair!” is a social program. “Quit killing the goose that lays golden eggs” is somewhat less so. “How can we extract the necessary funds for government with minimum impact” less even than that.
Regards,
Shodan
Backing up a bit here, I’ll join this party in progress …
Is “Class Warfare” a useful polemic even if one views the current tax code as insufficiently progressive (or even retrogressive)? Is polarization along perceived economic lines likely to be a productive rhetorical device?
I tend not to think so. First off many of the top 5% do not percieve themselves to be “rich” … oh upper middle class maybe, but not rich. The very top know it, but for the rest of that top 5% their perception is that they need their income to pay their bills and are busy saving away for kids’ college educations and for their retirement. They don’t feel rich to themselves. These people would percieve more taxes as taking away from what they need. Only a very few are so well off as to be able to live off of investment income, at least before 65 plus.
Of the rest of America, many believe that they will soon be in that top 5% and really don’t like the thought that what they will make will be taxed away from them.
As to the rest of it … my head quickly spins. We help the economy by spending (so that people have jobs producing the goods we buy). And we help the economy by saving (so that money is invested in companies and available to borrow by companies in order to expand and give people jobs). And doing one means that we can’t do the other.
Seems to me that the real issue is having an economy that keeps jobs in the country and that attracts money from the rest of the world. That means a well educated and creative workforce that creates product (be they items or ideas) better than elsewhere. That means a country with a lifestyle and tax structure that attracts the world’s best and brightest to call America home while taxing enough to allow us to do what it takes to be proud of ourselves as a nation rather than ashamed of the suffering that we allow, and to invest in our shared future.
Again, “class warfare” does not accomplish those goals. It is a bankrupt rhetorical device.
Newsweek has an article up on the nascent movement in Congress to tax the super-wealthy. Some snippets:
I don’t think Buffet is any danger of losing that bet.
[ Moderator note ]
Since it appears that we can have a productive discussion on this topic, after all, the restrictions on insulting people outside the SDMB and the restrictions on referring to ideas as poorly formed (i.e., dumb) are lifted.
If it appears that the thread is going to go back into the silliness of the first dozen or so posts, the restrictions will be re-applied, although I doubt that will happen.
[ /Moderating ]
You read what I wrote and this is what you think I said? Honest engine? Because it kinda looks like you are paraphrasing my point as an absurdity, and thereby evade engaging it. Not only is that not what I said, its not on the same planet as what I said.
Well, then, I reckon you’ve got me all figured out.
“Honest engine” ?
Yeah? What? What?
Well good, but I don’t understand why you responded to me with it. As for Intellectual Property, just as some think all software should be free, some are against copyright. There might be some who think Rowling should give back all the money she made, besides those few, I don’t see how she could be called an exploiter. But she still can pay higher taxes.
But all three options treat all citizens equally, under their definition of equal. So even someone whom you think is being terribly unfair might truly believe that he is being scrupulously fair.
The gap was lessening under Clinton - that was redistribution while there was a vibrant economy. Mild wealth redistribution does not have to hurt the economy. Taxing hedge fund managers at normal rates won’t hurt the economy. And minimum impact for who? The few rich or the many not so rich? Is it, for example, more important for every person to have enough to eat, or for hedge fund managers to get taxed at 15%? That’s not a direct choice, of course, but it represents the philosophical question at the heart of this.
'Luc- re “honest engine”:
Well … what you’ve done is take an old fashoined saying that was perhaps somewhat racist (although no kid who ever uttered it really thought of it that way) and pc’ed it. The actual saying is “honest injun” and traces its origins aways back
I don’t why, but your doing that sort of give me a chuckle. No offense meant.
None taken. Speaking as one who is inordinately proud of a smattering of Cherokee blood.