When these sorts of things have been left entirely in the hands of private charity, history shows us that they generally do a piss poor job of it. People die. They starve. They get sick and die in the street.
As I see it, for every one JXJohns who realizes that it is in his best interests to help feed and clothe those more unfortunate than himself, there are 9 Rand Rovers who don’t give a farthing to the poor, and just wish they would get out of the way of their BMW’s and die quietly as they go about their $500/hour jobs.
The intelligent wealthy learned some time ago that if they want to hold onto their perks, and not get their heads stuck on a pole in the village square, it behooves them to part with a few coins to the rabble. Because many of the idle, non-intelligent rich did not want to give up a few coppers from their pile, the intelligent rich have forced them to. The less-intelligent rich do not like this, but they don’t realize that it is saving them from open revolt.*
this idea stolen from some SDMB poster, but I can’t remember who. And he wrote better than me too, Dammit.
But it’s still taxes, right? Small town or federally-based, you’re still paying into a pool along with other people.
I’m with you regarding poorly managed programs. I think that pisses everyone off. But what if the federal program IS working? What if they revisit the bad programs and make them more effective (as Obama has stated he wants to do)? Are you against it then?
True, eliminating the Department of Defense would be a huge savings in the federal budget. But some would say that we should hang on to it, even though it’s not meeting its intended goals, and possibly do something to make it better at attaining goals.
It’s taxes being effectively spent. do you really think that some guy or gal in DC can really determine the needs in Des Moines, better than their counterpart in the Iowa State Government? I’ve worked with both the Feds and the State. I’ll take my chance with a local any day to know what is going on locally.
I begrudgingly have few issues with programs that work and can show positive benefit to society as a whole. I’m not interested in making a list of what like and don’t like so don’t bother.
Politicians say a lot of things. Once he lives up to a few of his campaign promises, I might even support him. Raise taxes and cut spending? Who can argue with that? Raise taxes, raise spending, and then replace bad programs with something new and equally bad? = issue. We’ll see.
I think that what can be considered acceptible living and support standards for the poor is a human rights issue - and thus not one that varies by region. (Regardless of whether Des Moines decides that its poor are perfectly happy freezing and starving to death - not to say it would.) So it seems to me that at the least it’s reasonable for standards and oversight to be set and handled at the federal level. (Implementation can be composed of locals, of course.)
I wasn’t. I was trying to paint you as someone who thought we should eliminate all of the government programs that aren’t meeting their goals. Sometimes, instead of eliminating the program, the proper response is to help it meet its goals, or change what they are.
I have to wonder if attacking Joe the Plumber is the right move. Never mind all the conservatives banding together to defend him, but would this possibly play in people’s minds as “snobby Democrat viciously assaults common working man”?
Remember the old Beatles song The Tax Man? Part of it went “the tax Man says nineteen for me and one for you”. At the time the Beatles were paying more than 19 shillings of every 20 in taxes. For certain 95% is an outrageous tax rate. The people paying 36% should count their blessings and not complain.
Imho 50% would be a fair deal for anyone making more than $2,000,000 per year. At least until the national debt is paid.
For at least the past 20 years the deck has been stacked in favor of the very wealthy. It’s time for the breaks to go the other way for a while.
There probably are few charitable organizations in this country which operate on less than 10% of their cash flows. Some skim off 80% or more. Medicare operates on about 4% of its cash flow. The government often does a good job.
I can think of several regions of this country which have large scale needs and few if any well-off people to fund charitable persuits. Areas hit by widespread industrial decline, regions which depend on logging (which have been hard-hit economically in recent times), and Indian reservations are examples.
I’m not trying to be a Republican hack, but the argument makes sense. Let’s say a small business owner employs 10 people each making $30k/yr, but the business makes a million dollars in profit. So, we raise the taxes on the business owner making that million. Fuck him, right? He can afford it.
But, when it comes time to decide on a better health insurance program for his employees, pay raises, bonuses, Christmas parties, hiring new employees, a new HDTV for the break room, other job perks, etc., then doesn’t that millionaire now have less money to use to invest in his business, thereby hurting these $30k/yr guys?
So, isn’t the tax policy taking from the $30k/yr guy just like the rich business owner?
Most businesses clearing 1 million in profit are going to be incorporated for a start, and the owner-director isn’t going to just take 100% of the profit personally. Businesses of small-to-medium size are set up in a structured way so the owner is paid a salary at a lower tax bracket, taking advantage of a whole host of various deductions, offsets and structures available to them. They are able to do just fine.
Honestly, I’m getting pretty sick of the supply side myopia getting trotted out in this thread, which makes all kind of quasi-flat-tax style arguments for the “socialism” of basic progressive taxation. The claim that there is any significant or non-trivial disincentive is grossly exaggerated, and no empirical data has been proffered to substantiate the points being asserted, beyond some hand waiving which conflates progressive taxation with socialism. To those people, please read some basic political economy primers, and economic literature.
Obama is simply allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and providing tax relief focusing on the middle class. That’s not an undeserved “handout” by definition - and the wealthy are still doing very, very well under this structure and business environment.
Somebody worked out on another forum that even if Joe’s deceitful representations were true about his capital, and he went on to buy the business, at most the business would get a taxed approx $900 pa more - and this was more than offset by superior arrangements for health care, assuming that he refuses to use all the various offsets available to him to claim business expenses.
The only half-way decent argument made that I read, although it was surrounded by a lot of nonsense, was that it does matter what the corporate marginal rate is compared to other countries is in an increasingly globalised economic environment. Yes, we do have to pay attention to capital flight etc.
Fair enough, it’s been attempted several other times, so I thought I’d put it out there again.
Which is just as an inaccurate portrayal of my beliefs.
I believe I started the conversation about setting, making, and re-evaluating goals first. I also added removing programs that don’t work and replacing them with something that can/will.
Deaf ears. There is little empirical evidence because most people keep their tax plans, profits and losses, etc private. I certainly don’t offer up my books at the end of the year for the think tanks to analyze. My business is mine, and I have already mentioned exactly what jtagain is stating regarding having less money to spend as a result of a tax increase. I’ll just work with the accountant to figure out how to offset it and in the end, the feds wont get those increased tax revenues, my charitable givings drop and this whole argument is moot.
Here’s the thing. I donate plenty of money to charity organizations of my choice. But you can’t donate to infrastructure. You can’t donate to energy research and development (or if you can, I haven’t found it–please point me in the direction of a good charity for that one!). There are plenty of things that the government does that we can’t really do by ourselves, and frankly I don’t trust most people to have everyone’s best interests at heart. I think that we’d suffer if many of these programs were left solely to voluntary charity funding.
The repubs gave tax breaks to the wealthy over and over. They have changed the bankruptcy laws to favor the monied. They have taken the wealth from the bottom 90 % and given it to the wealthy ,who do not actually need it. They have distorted our system to favor the wealthy so much that they have crippled the engine that makes it go. Now the rich say they do not want to have a more fair system.
It is mine . They gave it to me and I am not giving it back. Great attitude.
I read a convincing (to me) article a while back, discussing the difficulty of achieving true improvement in most social programs - poverty, education, etc. However, it said if you analyzed developments over the past 8 years, the one result they have unquestionably achieved is to increase the wealth of the wealthy. Went down quite a line of issues/programs, noting they consistently did not seem to achieve their stated goals. But if you adopted the assumption that they were intended to make wealthy folk wealthier, they were booming successes across the board.
Sorry I don’t have a cite, and undoubtedly phrased that poorly.
It is possible that we will never be able to lick some of the toughest social problems, under either the conservative/Republican or liberal/Democrat policies. The poor will always be with us, etc. But my personal preference is to pursue policies that don’t appear to be quite so directly aimed at making the rich richer, and increasing the gap between the haves and have nots.
Right now, conservative pundits are falling in love with Joe as a powerful symbol. Is there any way to tell right now if that symbolism is resonating with the general public outside of the traditional Republican base?
If you take the time to listen to the conversation between Obama and Joe, listen to what each of them said, and then read the first page of this thread, I think the answer will be obvious.
But maybe I’m wrong, I’m going back to SNL for now, maybe start a new thread on that question tomorrow.