Well, wouldn’t that be between a person and his God. and I’m tickled to delight that you’d advocate that it is the government’s role to make one good with God. Leaving aside even, the vast difference between helping voluntarily and having your money seized and handed to another.
Also, could you please answer the questions I asked you earlier?
Inherited wealth is earned at some point. The money has already been taxed and is a gift…not an income for a provided service. Why should a person be taxed for giving something away. Should the $10 bill you put in your nephew’s birthday card be taxable income for the tyke?
You mean people like my brother? He has six kids, pays no federal taxes, and still bitches and whines about his tax burden and votes for lower taxes. You okay with him losing his voice, too?
You are confusing investment with speculation, the crucial ratio between money invested with long term goals, and money bet in the stock market casino, on the hope that Amalgamated Widgets will go up tomorrow, and you can harvest a profit. Thats not investment, that’s speculation.
The people who lost their futures when their pension funds got raped? They were investing. Or so they thought. And the people who did it to them? Well, they scored, didn’t they, its their money, divine right of property, and all that.
I’m on the conservative wing of the extreme left, you might want to negotiate with me, I’m a reasonable enough fellow. Not like Der, who wants to send the rich folks straight to The Wall. Not the Pink Floyd Wall. The other one.
(Aside to** Der**: I know that isn’t what you think, but this is a tactical maneuver. By the way, who are you taking to the Trotskyist Ball? Going to enter the Proudhon Look-Alike Contest this year?..)
Yes. I am not advocating taxpayer status as precondition to participation as a way to skew the political outcomes. Let the chips fall where they may when we limit participation to stakeholders. (Naturally I suspect they may tend to fall toward a smaller government, lower tax regime, but that’s a fringe benefit).
Oh please.
Not sure. Depends, I suppose. I am surely inclined to treat Bill Gates more generously, seeing as he has put so much effort and money into good and worthy causes, most especially the effort to eradicate malaria. Not so much for the Koch Brothers, or Richard Mellon Scaife, who suck in ways numberless to man.
I’m arguing for the principles, the negotiations will probably be handled by somebody better skilled. I suck at negotiation.
(a) speculation as you’re defining it there is dis-incentivized under the current rules to a significant extent by taxing short-term (less than one year) capital gains at the marginal rate, not the lower long-term cap gain rate.
(b) The guy who buys and holds BRK or JNJ for six years (me) still gets punished by having to pay some cap gains on what clearly is not speculation;
(c) When public capital markets did not exist, I think you would find trade and income disparities were much worse than in today’s America. Think average Italian peasants in the time when the Medicis and their cronies were the only business game in town.
And negotiation . . . I thought that’s what I was trying to do when I said I’d be willing to keep paying 35% (grudgingly, and while arguing for a less top-heavy tax paying pyramid) for what is already a very, very large government that does all sorts of things I don’t love with my money. I just don’t particularly want that 35% to go even higher. That is hardly the let them eat cake position that some here seem to be erecting as a strawman.
The ghost of Thomas Paine will visit you next Fourth of July. He’ll be there to tell you that your political philosophy bites it.
I answered your question and I answered it honestly. I don’t want your deadbeat brother’s vote, even if it supports my favored policy outcomes.
Yes, it is much improved. We aren’t done yet. Smallpox is eradicated, and I rejoice, malaria is next, and I am hopeful. The children of the poor do not poison their tiny lives in coal mines, and I rejoice. But we are not done yet.
Well, now we’re getting somewhere! But you might want to make a deal with me at 45%, rather than hold out until the **Der Trihs **faction takes over, and makes it 75%. Just sayin’, is all.
Why stop there? Why not give everybody one vote, but if you turn in a tax return that shows you paid taxes on a hundred thousand dollars, you get ten votes? A million gets you a hundred votes. Seeing as how property is the fundamental right that rules all the other ones…
And I could say you might want to make a deal with me at my 35%, 'cause 75% of nothing is nothing. I’ve got enough accumulated to go off to the woods and raise chickens. I don’t want to do it just yet, but at 75%, f that. Telecommuting from the Argentine finca also beckons. The soak the rich crowd needs to remember that they need the “rich” – more than the rich need them . . .
Just sayin’.
No one said that other than you. What I said is that you don’t get to share the poker pot, let alone determine what your share is, when you didn’t ante up even a nickel.
Three Rights for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Right to rule them all, One Right to find them,
One Right to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Well, at least we won’t be hearing any of this “patriotic” crap from you. Refreshing. Cynical, morally bereft, but refreshing.
So you’ll invest all your money in Argentian bonds? Might want to think that over carefully. Or you could just leave it all here! We’ll keep an eye on it for you.
Says who? If all the rich have is money, then what else have they to contribute? We can replace smart rich people with smart poor people, I personally know dozens. So what do we need them for, if all they got is money? I suppose if Paris Hilton disappears from the public scene, maybe I’ll be the poorer for it, but I’m willing to risk that.
From the latest Harper’s Index:
I’m quite patriotic, but a country that would take 75% of my earnings to give to others would no longer be the America many Americans signed up for.
Which of the Founders, by the way, supported or enacted a system where non-taxpayers had the same vote as taxpayers?
Who was the guy who said that when a particular political union stops serving the needs of some subset of its members, it’s not only okay but may be necessary for that subset to walk away from the compact? That’d be Locke, one of the spiritual fathers of American independence.
Nah, the housemaid’s fine being paid in Kruggerrands (or would be). Mmmm, sultry Argentine housemaid . . . .
To my earlier point, I’m in the system and people in my income band (not rich, the truly rich don’t work) are a large part of what’s propping it up. I just think at some point the onus is on those who need people in my position, to stop doing things that incentivize us to walk away from the system and descend into the nihilistic solipsism that we’ve so far resisted.
I’m saying “Oh please” because it’s bullshit that you aren’t wanting to get your desired outcome by kicking some people out of the voting pool.
And he makes more money than I do and he pays no taxes, yet whines about how high taxes are. Ridiculous.