I have no issue in general with rich people and note your seeming assessment that all rich people have worked hard to get where they are and are ipso facto deserving of their money.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” ~Warren Buffet
The issue is not being rich. The issue is the rich skewing the playing field to keep themselves rich while ruining everyone else.
You can see here that the top 10% has pretty much doubled their growth over the last 40 years versus the median. Do you suggest the middle class just doesn’t work enough to join the top 10%? Go to the top 1% and the skew is even more dramatic.
Such an imbalance is bad for the country. Ideally there is a strong middle class and small rich and poor classes.
I am curious how it is you think the middle class just doesn’t work hard enough (or even poor people for that matter) such that the wealthy all clearly deserve what they have and the rest only have themselves to blame?
That isn’t really what I said, is it?
Whether the rich inherited the money, invented something they marketed on late night tv, or worked their asses through school is of little consequence.
They have money (one way or other)
Now they should pay an amount (a ‘fair’ amount) and here is where everyone will quibble over what fair is. Fair to me is pretty close to a flat tax rate. It isn’t one where the rich pay for everyone else who get the same benefits from the system.
I’ll go further, tax people on the services they use/want to use/or need to use.
I am middle class and am tired of taxes that reflecting not only upon me but also upon what I could be. I don’t want re-distribution of funds simply so the government can fund the certain things their districts put them in office for.
Congress is supposed to be a voice for the people (all people) but they haven’t really been that for a long ass time. They are a voice to:
Whomever they are indebted to
Whatever will get them re-elected
If that involves spending, taxing, lying or what have you then they will do it.
If the laws weren’t so demanding of critical thinking the common folks would have more power given over to them perhaps.
But we don’t all get the same benefits from the system.
The FCC licenses broadcasters. Everybody gets to receive those broadcasts, but your inventor now has a channel through which to market his product.
The government oversees patents and rules on trademark disputes. We all enjoy the fruits of innovation, but if your inventor is being harmed by cheap knockoffs or deceptive advertising, the government will step in to protect the source of his profits.
The Army Corps of Engineers is dredging Long Beach harbor. We’ll all be able to buy cheaper goods, but this will put downward pressure on manufacturing wages while allowing business owners to cut their costs and increase profits.
This is not vitriol for rich folks. I wish them continued health and success. I also recognize that they have benefited greatly from things made possible, in large ways and small, by the government.
For those conservatives lurking in the shadows, the simply reply to this is, no you’re not. And you haven’t been since 2000. None of us have been.
There is a budget deficit that needs to be addressed first. If there is a proposal to cut $400billion from the budget I’d love to hear it, and I’d love even more to see it enacted. Then, and only then, can the budget be further cut to allow for tax cuts.
And right there we cut to the heart of all this. The only thing the Tea Party is serious about is gaining power.
If what they really wanted to balance the budget, they wouldn’t need to run candidates, or get elected. They would put forth real ideas. They would meet with their representatives and senators. And then they would campaign to promote the policies they’ve championed, not the politicians.
There isn’t even a need for a political revolution, since the country hasn’t actually moved anywhere in any particular direction. There has been deficit spending for a decade now, and before that plenty more deficit spending.
So if they’re serious, they’d call for a halt to deficit spending, by increasing income and social security taxes. In conjunction with that, they can propose real and measurable spending cuts. Then, when the county is running a surplus, they can have the tax cuts they’ve earned.
Or said another way, you don’t get a pay raise until the company is running a profit.
emacknight, that the Tea Party doesn’t realize, or even understand, a number of important economic and historical facts doesn’t mean they aren’t serious. They are serious, just not about what you believe they should. I think the incredulous among us make a mistake by agreeing with what the Tea Party says their motives are for no other reason than that is what they’ve said, with ludicrously little regard for what they actually portray.
There can be no besides all the racism, bigotry, and otherwise nonsensical ramblings, because that is the Tea Party’s driving force. Add in a good dose of Christian-centric neo- and social-conservatism, and you have the Tea Party, laid bare in all its ignominy.
The Tea Party seems to be the very epitome of illogic and hypocrisy, but that’s only because motives continue to be assigned to them that they don’t actually possess. If you attribute an action to a false premise of course it won’t make any sense.
I find humor in the incessant discussions breaking down various economic philosophies into their individual components in attempts to further the notion of how out of touch the Tea Party is with America’s financial systems, as though if the arguments are made plain enough the Tea Party will have an epiphany and change its tune. To this I say take a couple of Tylenol and call me in the morning.
Unless the voters in this country open their eyes and recognize the Tea Party for what it is and takes seriously what it is really attempting to achieve, rather than waste time dissembling what it says it wants, it will remain the force it is today not only until they have brought about such tumult in this country that even Democrats are sorry a black president was elected, but until the foundation is laid to all but assure that the travesty of a black president in America never happens again.
I am no tea partier (I look like hell in a powdered wig). I have never found either party to do much in the way of reducing the Federal government’s size. There are cuts that could be made, but they will be painful to many. A good place to start is with Cato’s site dedicated to the subject:
Your noble concern for the welfare of the rich is touching, particularly when they’re simultaneously busy doing their absolute best to fuck you in the ass.
I love that at the top of the “coming soon” section is Defense, and Veterans Affairs at the bottom. As if to say, “we’d love to pretend to present spending reforms, but it would be death to our own funding.”
Then the sections they do have suggestions for making up but a fraction of the federal budget, let alone the deficit.
Digging a little deeper shows that their “spending reforms” are just their way of saying “privatization.”
“The Department of Transportation subsidizes and regulates highways, airports, air traffic control, urban transit, passenger rail, and other activities. But taxpayers and consumers would be better off if these activities were privatized, as has occurred in numerous other nations. Opening up the financing and operation of transportation infrastructure to the private sector would save money, spur innovation, and reduce congestion.”
What do I have the sneaking suspicion that when I click on any of the other “spending reforms” it’s going to say the same thing?
Let’s click on Housing:
“The Department of Housing and Urban Development engages in a range of housing and community activities that used to be the responsibility of local governments and the private sector.”
Health and Human Resources: “…this sort of aid should be provided by private charities.”
I’ve got a great money saving tip for the CATO Institute, fire all of your web developers and just put on your home page: “Our Solution: Privatize everything.”
It also doesn’t matter what scheme you prefer. As long as there is a deficit, there needs to be more taxes. Solve that then you can pretend to cut spending.
Actually, not if there’s only a small deficit- most economists say that a deficit = % of National GDP growth is sustainable. However, our current deficit is crazy high and not sustainable.
Sure, we need to cut pork, waste & mismanagement out. That’s only a small % of the budget. The getting rid of the War will cut more. Still, the taxes have to (mostly) go back up to their “normal” rates in order to have anything close to a balanced budget.
Defense is probably the hardest to carve through, and it is one of the proper functions of the Federal Government. They might lose some donations when they start listing what Defense cuts to make, but I am confident that they will still argue for cuts.
The site goes through each area, shows their growth, and digs into it. More content there than anything I have seen from the Republicans or Democrats on how to cut spending.
Yes - on some of the Departments they argue to simply kill them - HUD and Education are two of them. I agree with CATO, both of these areas should be handled at the State level.
Here’s an incomplete list of the cuts they recommend, which if implemented would cut the annual deficit by about 50%. You’d still need to find equivalent savings elsewhere. Many of these don’t seem to be cutting “waste” or “inefficiencies”. In fact, most of the “savings” look like they are merely devolving the programs downward, and sticking the individual states with the cost of running the programs.
I would love to see the Tea Party rallies talk about this list in detail. I would love if the Tea Party candidates published this list, spoke about it frequently, and defended it in debates:
**Agriculture; **
All agricultural and rural subsidies in the Department of Agriculture’s budget should be abolished
Food stamps, school lunches, and WIC— should be devolved to the states
Energy
-Department of Energy research activities should be terminated.
-The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Power Marketing Administrations should be privatized.
-Other Department of Energy’s activities are defense-related.and should be moved to the Department of Defense.
Education
-The Department of Education should be closed and its programs terminated; states should fund their own education programs.
**
Health and Human Services**
-Convert Medicare and Medicaid into consumer-directed health systems by replacing current programs with tax credits and vouchers.
Terminate the following programs, and have the individual states take them over: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Children’s Health Insurance Program
Foster care grants
Head Start
Low income energy assistance
Child support grants
Child care development grant
Substance abuse
Child care entitlement
**Department of Housing and Urban Development **
Close down HUD in its entirety.
End subsidies to Federal urban renewal and public housing projects, or public housing projects should be privatized or bulldozed.
-Federal rental assistance programs should also be ended
-Community development subsidies should be ended
Transportation
The Federal Highway Administration should be eliminated; state governments should plan their highway systems on an individual basis
The Federal Transit Administration should be eliminated.
Air traffic control should be removed from the federal budget, be set up as a stand-alone and self-funded agency.
-Amtrak should be privatized
It’s also the largest (depending on how you apply some of the discretionary spending), and given that it’s title is “defense” it has a damn lot of offense built into it. Oddly enough, the website sounds a lot like my wife: just last night she complained that I left the light on in the laundry room, stating that it wastes money. The light is a compact florescent, meanwhile that room had a running furnace, water heater, washer, dryer, water softener, and cable modem/router. Turning off that light is inconsequential to the big picture.
No question there. And kudos to them for even trying. I must ask though, does the Tea Party ever mentioned these cuts?
Ha, I love that. “How do we solve it? Move it to another department.” So instead of taxing it at the federal level, we’ll tax it at the state level. Until they decide to tax it at the municipal level.
ETA Note that I trying to attack you or these policies. I just need to point out that the $400billion pre-Obama deficit is going to require a lot more than saving money on printer cartridges. Which should still be done, but isn’t any where near enough.
Missed the edit window: I also want to point out that in most cases it doesn’t actually save anyone money if the federal government shifts it to the state government, or the local, or privatizes it to the individual.
I pay privately for garbage pick up. We could instead socialize it, and I’d pay something similar in taxes. Whether it’s local, state, or federal is irrelevant. Unless we decide “garbage collection is optional or unnecessary” money still needs to be spent.
So in the same theme, if the CATO Institute wants to be taken seriously, they need to be able to separate costs which they simply shift from public to private but remain whole.
Agreed - and I didn’t take your response as an attack. I don’t agree 100% with CATO either - I do appreciate that at least they are willing to list out what they would cut. I don’t know if any Tea Party candidates have made similar recommendations, and I don’t think there IS an official Tea Party set of planks to even review. Then again, where is the specific recommendations of spending cuts and tax increases from the two major parties? They problem with specific proposals is that once you list them, the other side just attacks your list. We provide a disincentive to making proposals during the election cycle.
The advantage to killing the Federal level operations is that some states could choose to NOT do anything in certain areas, and other states could choose to fully fund. Let each State decide how much it wants to subsidize housing, or whether to build projects, or whether to just give land to Jimmy Carter to use. We might see some better programs develop out in the field.
So why not pass a Federal garbage collection tax and service? Do you think that would be done better, smarter, cheaper?
I had private pick-up at one property. They came every two weeks, and it was nice and cheap. I was able to cut my costs by only having pick-up every other week. I had a one-time cost of building a better place to hold the garbage, and after that it was not much.
Now, the cost in the burbs is cheaper - but I am not paying someone to drive up a mile gravel road to my property for pick-up.
I agree that it would be interesting to see what CATO would recommend to keep around at a local level, vs. just kill.