I’m not sure I understand this logic. A larger income always results in larger after-tax income, even if it moves you into a higher tax bracket. As Earthworm Jim said, the higher rate only applies to the additional income above the limit of the previous income.
Share it with the people over at MyRightWingDad.net.They’ll help you rebut it.
I’ll respond more to the ‘glurge’ part than the ‘right wing’ part.
I have a friend, I’ll call her ‘G’ (not really her first initial) who used to forward these to me all the time. Beyond that, G and I got along pretty well. So, on a particularly bad day when I got one of these, I simply sent to her a message, hooked to a ‘reply’ from that one, saying.
“G, I love you dearly, but if you ever forward me one of these political messages again, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
It fixed the problem, and she took no offense (that I know of) from it.
Point of diminishing returns. What’s more valuable, my time and leisure or whatever benefit will come from said venture (in this case, money)? As a simple example, I offer the weekend shift at my previous company. If you worked a weekend, the pay was $75/hr. That’s $1,300 for the weekend. Not bad, maybe worth it. But after taxes, it was more like $800 for the weekend.
You know what, I’d rather have the weekend off than work 12 days in a row. Don’t get me wrong, $800 is a good chunk o change - but it’s only money. Money comes and goes, but I’d never get that time back. I’d rather take my kids fishing or something.
That’s fine, but don’t blame high tax brackets for it. Even if this put you in a much higher bracket, the difference in pay would be about $40.
Best reply:
“Please don’t forward this sort of thing to me any more.”
If she protests or makes any sort of argument, say, “Please have the courtesy to abide by my wishes.”
Yeah, I know the best thing to do is ignore her but she is my sister and we kind of like to do this to give the other one a hard time.
I replied with this:
Despite the proclamations of various national documents, all men are not created equal, but they do have equal value. Natural laws dictate variations in intellect, physical ability, motivation, and compassion. Where one is born healthy, another may be blind. One may be born with great motivation and little compassion or little motivation and great compassion. In this there is no choice, only an understanding that we may possess an ability to develop. The world’s great religions counsel all to help your neighbors, yet we do not dare accuse them of advocating socialism. We the people empower the government to provide for the common good, yet when this entails providing for those less fortunate, some may rise up in acts of blatant hypocrisy and shout “No!” from their pulpits. Why only do privately what may be done better publicly? When the wealthy of a society get the idea that they shouldn’t have to help, when they are consumed by greed, excess and covetousness, when they lack empathy and compassion and grace, then they are in danger of losing their very humanity.
(If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F. Kennedy 1-20-1963)
And she followed up with this:
But we each have the right to choose whom we help and not to have money taken from our pockets and spent where others believe it should be spent. Many, many, many public programs FAIL MISERABLY and waste money that could actually do real good and really help those in need. Why should GOVERNMENT have the right to choose to where each individuals efforts are focused??? Where are our rights? How arrogant of these hypocritical, re-election seeking FEW to believe they know better than we??? My values should not be taken from me and squashed in the name of trashy politics (of ALL parties), political bureaucracy and the personal agendas of “politicians”! Our founding fathers used Christianity for the foundation of our country! If the “politicians” of today would cut the crap, the blind would be taken care of, the truly impoverished and hungry of which Christ spoke of WOULD be taken care of, we would be able to take care of our neighbor…and thank God, when the government doesn’t get their hands in it, it does happen!
Visit a Veterans’ hospital! Any one, any day of the week. (Government run health & medical care, at its best, right?) Walk through the halls, walk through the waiting rooms of the clinics, walk up on the wards. It is unconscionable! Next go to a church…Jewish, Lutheran, Catholic…any church or synagogue and ask them to tell you how the PEOPLE of their place of worship assist the sick, the poor, the downtrodden, the impoverished, the unfortunate. THEN talk to me! And don’t have the arrogance or audacity to NOT VISIT these institutions or you will continue to contribute to the suffering in our world!!! Just ask yourself, “To whom do I contribute my wealth, my time, my comfort?” (Do you volunteer in any soup kitchens, visit the sick in the hospitals, donate time or money to the Red Cross…especially in times of extreme crisis? Or do you just sit on your overweight butt on your soft, cushy couch in your climate controlled house with clean sheets and soft pillows and a refrigerator full of food and watch the suffering on your expensive entertainment center with surround-sound, blah, blah, blah, as it occurs and never pick up the phone? Do you feel good because you think your taxes are doing your part to relieve pain and suffering, (where ever those taxes are actually going!), so you’re off the hook? The money taken from you by the government NEVER goes to people or ares where it can do the most good! It has been PROVEN over and over again, and has been talked about so damn often… the waste of government, the failures of programs, the lack of success, the corruption, etc! by the politicians themselves! I could puke! They haven’t a fricken clue and and they keep asking for more! John Fitzgerald Kennedy, circa 1963, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Think about that, Teddy Kennedy!
She’s hopeless.
No, she’s not; that’s actually not an incredibly inane response.
Seems you want to beat her with facts and reason rather than “oh, shove off”, so you’ve got some work cut out for you, Hampshire. I think you’ve shot yourself in the foot by straying from the topic she initially presented, but if you want to continue her game…
Perhaps respond with “cite”. I think it’s rather well documented that the government, for all of its faults, does a better job taking care of people in poverty than the mish-mash of private and religious-based efforts that existed back in the day when the poor were shoehorned into tenements and breastfeeding babies died because their mothers were malnourished. So lay down a “what do you mean by ‘many public programs’?” and ask her to pull out facts and cites.
At the moment she’s laying down all this “think of the troops” guilt-trip attempt. That’s easily ignored (unless you want to search out stats on how much of the DoD budget goes to health care and how much goes to tanks, and ask her why we should have to choose between the two).
The corporate system just exploits labor, it doesn’t reward it. Those who get the rewards aren’t doing any work, they’re just parasites who live off the labor of others. Then what happens when their greed causes their plantation systems to fail? they want that same working class to bail them out.
The idea that there is any kind of correlation between wealth and hard work is laughable. Corporotacracy is a serf system.
So you believe wealth represents hard work, and not luck, a network of people who have inordinate access to wealth because their ancestors seized it by violence or deceit, favoritism, or corrruption? Interesting.
I’m sure that in some cases wealth does represent hard work. I’m much less sure that it is so in the majority of cases. Few people work harder then immigrant dishwashers – certainly not the CEOs of auto companies, for example.
What you’re saying is apples and oranges. Most people on this board would probably think my salary makes me wealthy and I work my ass off, but I don’t do menial labor. I manage and lead people and essentially herd cats from other organizations to meet the overall goals of my organization. That IS hard work. To get there, I paid my own way through college working from the time I was 14 in a fish store–not a tropical fish store, but a place that was a combined market, smokehouse and fast food place. Lots of dirty jobs (in fact I recommended it for the “Dirty Jobs” show). It taught me how to show up for work on time, take crap from people ( a skill EVERYONE should learn, but few bother to–its easier to complain), save money and most importantly, it taught me I did NOT want to do that for the rest of my life. So I improved myself, worked my ass off and got an engineering degree that, again, I paid for. Now make pretty good money.
Do CEOs work hard? Yes. Similar to me, they work long hours, do manage and lead (though I agree I’d dispute some of their effectiveness). Do you think they walk right out of college and “poof” their CEOs? They worked their way up. Did they have a leg up do to the schools they went to and the contacts they made? Sure, but lots of people go to Harvard. Some end up as CEOs, some as the Unibomber. I think luck has little to do with success generally.
The argument used is a specious hijack of an actual economic principle.
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The original argument is called Pareto optimality, which states, “a state of allocation of resources in which it is impossible to make any one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off”.
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There is one catch though, and that is, it’s only true if the market is competitive and efficient, and that’s where it all falls apart, and where you can engage Ms. Palin and the people who circulate this rubbish.
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Economic Wealth = Land + Labour [+interest on Capital]
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The two main components say, that you can only produce Economic Wealth, if you can freely apply your Labour, to freely available Land.
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There is no such thing as freely available Land in most parts of the world.
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All Land has had is rights of use sold to people and therefore it’s a monopoly, and this is where all wealth inequality comes from.
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What you require, is a Pareto improvement.
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“For instance, if a change in economic policy eliminates a monopoly and that market subsequently becomes competitive and efficient, the monopolist will be made worse off. However, the loss to the monopolist will be more than offset by the gain in efficiency, in the sense that the monopolist could hypothetically be compensated for its loss while still leaving a net gain for others in the economy, a Pareto improvement.”
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So how would one stop Land being a monopoly?
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If you charge Rental on the Economic Value of Land, and use that Rental for Public Purpose, or redistribute it equally as a Citizens Dividend, that would take away the current economic incentive to monopolise Land rights.
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At the same time, you can remove all other taxation in the market like Wages, Corporate Profits and Intellectual Property, which is in line with what Ms. Palin wants to achieve as well, and which will create more demand for product.
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Employment will go to 100% and there will be a shortage of labour in the market to meet demand. Wages will rise naturally to attract better quality workers to achieve higher efficiencies.
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The idea of charging a Rental on the Economic Value of the land is called Georgism, based on the economic philosophy of Henry George, an American politician and economic philosopher, as put forth in his economic treatise, “Progress and poverty”.
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He called in Land Value Tax (LVT), but this was before “Tax” had became a swear word, and technically it is Economic Rent of the communities property, and not a Tax.
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:rolleyes: Oh, someone please do us all a favor and close this thread.
Not feeling enriched?
OK, thread closed.