Well, did you expect? You should try looking into a more reputable philosophical system.
I hear the Scientologists are accepting applications.
For the record I don’t want you to leave nor do I think you “would be better off dead”. You do know that the comment about holding your breath was typed with a smile, right? I think you are incredibly mistaken in your world view and philosophically naive but by all means keep posting. If you have a thick enough skin and are not hopelessly stupid maybe you will learn a thing or two. Even if you don’t come over to the side of goodness and light at least you will hone your rhetorical skills.
Because these “tenets”, at least as presented by you, seem to be little more than a howl of resentful outrage that governments don’t operate the same way that markets do.
Unfortunately for your cause, most people are already familiar with that unsurprising fact, and the easily understandable reasons underlying it. Therefore, most people get a little exasperated with your Objectivist faux-naif attempts to spin it as though it were some kind of shocking crime.
For one thing, you seem to conflate the concepts of markets setting wages and the government setting tax policy:
Employment markets set wages. Nobody is suggesting that the government should take over the task of relative pricing of various forms of labor. If you really do “create more value” for the economy (or for some part of the economy) than a garbageman does, or if your skills are simply in shorter supply than the garbageman’s, the market acknowledges that by setting a higher price on your labor. Yay, markets!
The government, on the other hand, is under no obligation whatsoever to reward you in its tax policies for the relatively high market value of your labor. There is nothing at all immoral about the government taxing you at a higher rate than the garbageman. The high salary you pull down is supposed to be its own reward, and the government isn’t obligated to show what you consider to be appropriate respect for your superior earning capacity by not taxing you more than lesser earners.
The proper job of the government is to use wealth contributed by individuals (not just rich ones, by the way) for various collective social needs. Those needs include things like alleviating poverty, and encouraging participation in the legal workforce by boosting the lowest-level incomes up to a decent standard of living. Yay, government too!
If this means that your net tax burden is positive while that of some of the lowest-paid workers is negative, so what? It’s the market that has the job of giving the highest financial rewards to the most financially valuable workers, not the government.
Complaining that the government doesn’t allocate tax burdens to reflect the relative value of your labor vis-a-vis that of the garbageman is like complaining that the fire department doesn’t deliver groceries. Well, no, it doesn’t; well spotted, Sherlock. It doesn’t do that, because that’s not its job.
The government, in its own self-interest, just needs to refrain from taxing you so much that you decide, “Fuck this socialist system, I’m gonna quit being a high-earning tax lawyer and go be a garbageman.” If taxes really were so progressive that they drove significant amounts of high earners away from high-income occupations into low-income ones, that would be counterproductive.
But that ain’t happening, nor anywhere close to happening, nor would it be anywhere close to happening under Obama’s tax plan. So your complaints about “taking money from the rich to give cash handouts to the poor” come across as simply pointless and tiresome.
This is probably a waste of effort but I offer it to Rand anyway just in case his heart isn’t two sizes too small:
Yeah, I am a bleeding heart liberal.
Well, I don’t necessarily disagree with much of what you say. I’m not opposed to progressive taxation on principle–I understand the declining marginal utility of the dollar and the ability to pay norm. I am, however, opposed to cash handouts to the poor that are financed by a blatant money grab from the rich, which is what Obama’s tax plan is.
This is where you and I part ways. I don’t think that government (especially not the federal government) should alleviate poverty–that should be left to private charities.
Well, your argument proves too much. Under the rubric you’ve outlined, It would be ok for the government to have a 100% tax on all incomes over $50,000 with some of the proceeds going to raising the income of everyone below $50,000 to that number. Now, I’m sure this is not what you meant, but you haven’t put a stopper on your formulation yet to prevent this from happening.
I never complained of that. That series of posts wasn’t about tax policy, it was just about capitalism in general.
That’s not true. People who invest for a living (as opposed to wage-earners) absolutely take taxes into account when making an investment (I know because I help them take taxes into account). When the rate goes up, the potential upside goes down without an offsetting reduction in the costs of the investment. Therefore, those investments that were just barely justified under the old rate aren’t made.
If you are a bleeding heart liberal, why not just donate to charities that help poor people? Why force me to give money so Obama can hand it out to the poor?
If someone doesn’t want to contribute to society, why should society contribute to them? (Of couse I believe that people who are born with mental or physical handicaps that make them unable to work should be taken care of by the government if their families are unable to, but this only describes a tiny minority of the poor.)
Also, as someone upthread pointed out, many of the people that will get cash handouts under Obama’s plan aren’t dirt poor like your links described, they just don’t make much money.
Forehead, desk.
Still waiting on you to provide examples of my “ignorance” or “stupidity” (and not just policy positions you disagree with).
You obviously don’t have a fucking clue.
I’m not poor. I’m solidly lower middle class. I’d probably be solidly middle-class if it weren’t for some of my own mistakes, but I’m not complaining about that.
But I’m 43 and it took me 43 years to get here. I spent years banging up against a good half of the bullets sinjin linked to, so I have empathy. You, however, have your wallet. And there doesn’t seem to be anything more important to you.
You have my pity.
Douche-bag.
Right. Because I’ve been talking about money so much and I’ve been the focus of anti-rich guy hate, that means that I’m all about money and don’t have anything else going for me. You’re an idiot.
Also, empathy is overrated. It’s basically just a willingness to accept other people’s excuses for being a loser based on your own past of being a loser. I want results from people, not excuses. And I think that people will rise to the occasion if their best is constantly demanded from them.
Typical.
I hope you never come upon hard times, but if you do … I hope it hurts. You deserve it. You are the worst kind of dick there is.
I’m done talking to you. You have no redeeming qualities that I can see.
Good day, sir.
You think it’s better to treat people like children by having empathy for them and giving them cash handouts because they are poor, which you believe isn’t their fault. I believe in treating people with respect and like human beings. I’m not going to pat their heads like a dog and tell them it’s not their fault. If they make bad choices then they get to live with the consequences, and if they make good choices they also get to live with the consequences.
I believe I have the more humanitarian philosophy.
Wow…you really are a cold SOB. Jesus.
But surely not everyone can do that? I’m not talking about limitations of “being a loser”, but of the structure of society. 10 people doing their best is admirable but there may not be 10 jobs, 10 promotions. An Olympic event is filled with the best people in the world at what they do, the cream of the crop - but only one will get the gold.
Is it because the others don’t do their best? If all the athletes on the field did their best, would each get a gold? No. Because the rules say the best person is the winner. Likewise, all people doing their best does not mean that all those people will “win” whatever it is they’re aiming for.
That you cannot see results from all people is certainly due to that some people aren’t willing to give their all. There’s an artificial cap created by the people who do do their best (or who are simply more talented, smarter, or naturally rather than purposefully skilled). But likewise there is a cap created by the very nature of society, one in which business is further molded by the market, that means rising to the occasion doesn’t guarantee you success. Society guarantees that for every person doing the best they can possibly do, many more than that one also doing their best will fail. We cannot look and say that those who fail do so because they do not give their all, nor can we say that excuses and results are two diametric opposites.
And I hope to god that Rand Rover means “loser” strictly financially. And some times, despite your best efforts, sometimes life fucks you over through no fault of your own. My father, for instance, lost his job right after we bought a house when I was little-his boss was committing insurance fraud, and Dad got laid off. Apparently, oh, well, I guess he was just a loser, right? (He got a new job about a year later, and all went well, but we still went through a lot of shit in the mean time).
Seriously, one can put out a hell of a lot of shit and STILL stay poor, and yet…still contribute. You say you get paid a lot more than a garbageman, Rand Rover, and yet, I’d say we need garbage collectors more than we need people like you. We NEED the menial wage earners, the farmers, the street cleaners, etc. I’m guessing you’re the type of person who treats cashiers, waitresses and customer service workers in general like shit.
You’re insanely selfish and ignorant, and I hope to god one day that all of this comes around and bites you in the ass, big time. And I have no doubt it will. Payback’s a bitch.
That’s because there doesn’t need to be a stopper to prevent this from happening. It isn’t going to happen, for purely pragmatic reasons.
What you say is perfectly true so far as it goes, but is not relevant to what I said.
What I said was that we are not anywhere close, and Obama’s proposed tax reforms wouldn’t put us anywhere close, to a situation where we might have a level of tax progressivity that “drove significant amounts of high earners away from high-income occupations into low-income ones”.
Your attempt to rebut that claim merely notes that changes in the tax code can produce changes in investment patterns. Well, of course they can, but that doesn’t in any way contradict what I said.
Like many Objectivist-type arguments, your line of reasoning is wholly dependent on unrealistic slippery slopes and unjustified inferences. For instance, we’re supposed to be concerned about the existence of any top-down income redistribution in the tax code because “OMG, the government could in theory decide to confiscate all income over $50K and flatline the Gini index! There’s no formulated stopper in the rubric to prevent that from happening!” Um, sorry, but this is not remotely scary, because it’s not even super-remotely plausible.
Likewise, you’re asking us to believe that a modest change in the tax code that will alter current investment patterns to some extent is somehow seriously comparable to making the tax code so ruthlessly over-progressive that it will cause wealthy tax lawyers to quit their jobs in droves to go become garbagemen. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, ridiculous.
And these hyperbolic and rather silly analogies, plus your personal disdain for poor people, appear to be all you’ve got in the way of argument. Okay, but with rationales that shoddy, you shouldn’t expect to convince anybody.
Another weak and illogical argument. You’re trying to make it seem as though there’s no middle ground between refusing to give poor people any financial assistance at all, and dehumanizing them with patronizing condescension. In reality, of course, it is possible to provide some help to those in need while still treating them “with respect and like human beings”. Clinging to this false dichotomy may make you feel good about your own opinions, but it isn’t likely to persuade anybody else that selfishness is really a “humanitarian” virtue.
Outta curiosity, what are the boundary conditions of this position? Let’s say that you don’t want to contribute to society–would it be acceptable for me to come over to your house, kick your ass, and take your stuff? Because the police are a society-funded organization.
If you believe that government assistance to the poor is a “far-out nutty thing,” then here is your example of stupidity.
Government assistance programs financed through a tax structure in which the primary burden is placed on the wealthy is a policy that has been virtually universally adopted by industrialized countries in every corner of the globe. You treat that concept like it is some Frankenstein experiment from the social policy lab, as opposed to an uncontroversial, universally accepted policy. The only serious disagreements on the matter come to what degree is reasonable in terms of taxes and handout.
You are free to disagree with the concept. I’m not calling you stupid because you have different views. I’m calling you stupid because you are ignorant of how the entire fucking world taxes the wealthy to help out the poor in some way or another, and you imply that such policies are a “far-out nutty thing.”
To put it another way, there are environmentalists who hate cars. Fine, whatever. But if an environmentalist were to say that cars are a bizarre, unheard of form of technology, they’d be dumb. You’re making the same fundamental error.
What does your philosophy have to say about those who remain poor through no fault of their own?
Of course we should worry about the upper limits on progressive tax policy, just as St. Ayn points out, the smart and talented may refuse to contribute any more to a society that denies them their just desserts. Which would be disastrous, of course. Why, just imagaine if the top execs of Lehman Brothers or Enron had withdrawn their talent and business acumen! Boy, we’d be in a pretty pickle then, huh? Huh?