This is a big, big one in explaining each political party’s approach and why politicians can get away with voting against their constituent’s economic interests. This happens on both sides of the aisles, except that by-and-large the left is populated by voting blocks that exist primarily for constituent’s economic interests (labor unions) at least in terms of wage economics.
Historically tax revenues double every decade. Look at the actual numbers over the last decade.
Factually speaking, this isn’t quite true. I have made an issue of the uncouth and impolite society that people I oppose politically have created (and as only a small part of the overall damage that liberalism has done to American society, but seeing as how people around here find it easier to laugh off concerns about politeness and crassness than they do the more serious issues I’ve raised, it gets the most attention), but the damage is done and we’ve reached the point where society as a whole – conservative, liberal, non-aligned, apathetic, uncaring, young, whatever, is impolite and uncouth.
Thanks. I appreciate that. I hope that I respond in the same way, though sometimes…
Liberalism pretty much drives me nuts no matter what. 
Still, I do try to respond in a polite manner when people are polite to me.
“Unlike you guys, I actually think about stuff. Hey, no offense meant, of course, just being honest…”
QUOTE=Starving Artist;11476727] Liberalism pretty much drives me nuts no matter what. Still, I do try to respond in a polite manner when people are polite to me.
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Then sit down and shut up and do what the King and owners of the Incorporate States of the Americas tell you.
God you are so fucking literal.
The money doesn’t need to spent on contractors but it’s spent on SOMETHING. Boat Captains, Sails, ATVs, Surplus WWI Tanks for wargames at their ranch in Arizona, maintenance for their Alfa Romeo, Repainting the living room because the orange accent wall doesn’t really work with the creme color, poolboys, gardeners, plumbers.
The bottom line is that whatever the amount of their disposable income in any given year gets spent on people who provide services and provides jobs. That’s true of any economic transaction, any time you buy ANYTHING someone is getting paid to provide you a good or a service, that’s true whether it’s your Happy Meal at McDonald’s or a blow job from a hooker you met in Paris that they decided to import on the spur of the moment. When rich people spend their money it’s on services that people provide, sometimes some of that money goes to other rich people and sometimes it goes to poor people.
Starving Artist You ‘earn’ 10,000, you don't 'earn' 1,000,000 you game it.
I made roughly $10K working last month, and roughly $10K on my investments. I didn’t earn the latter $10K by any of your criteria - I didn’t even earn it by being smart, unless being smart means nodded when my investment advisor explains why I should buy that fund.
A CEO who got a $10 million raise because his buddies were on a compensation committee, despite the fact that the company lost money and the stock went down didn’t earn it either.
Some do. Do you want to tax the bozos more than the ones who did something?
The tax system should cause more or less equal pain to everyone - which means more from the rich. That seems fair to me.
I never meant to cover every criteria with which people can earn money. You earned the second 10K by putting your money to work for you. This takes (or should) a certain amount of intelligence and willingness to take a risk. You still earned the money, even if not by the sweat of your brow.
You don’t know that. Perhaps without his efforts, the company would have been in much worse shape and lost many more millions than it did.
Same answer. Besides, income is income. It’s none of your business how it was earned and it’s not for you to decide which type of earning is legitmate. As long as it’s legal, you should have no say in anything having to do with how it was earned or how it should be taxed.
A flat tax is more from the rich. 10% of a 5,000,000 income is 100 times more money than 10% of a $50,000 income.
Attempting to ascertain equal pain is a subjective call and is an attempt to create fairness artificially. It can’t be done, and it isn’t done. It’s just an excuse to rape the rich, made possible by the fact that most people aren’t rich but still have just as much voting power. Ask 98 out of 100 people if you should disproportionately tax the two remaining rich people and use the money to benefit them, and they’re going to vote, “Hell, yeah!” (or at least most of them will; there will be principles holdouts such as myself but we will be in the minority) , and the measure will pass by whatever margin defines the “Hell, yeah!” group. That still doesn’t make it right and it still doesn’t make it fair…unless by “fair” you mean the self-serving people who will benefit from it have decided it is.
Perhaps, someday, something will be done about this dreadful state of affairs.
You have to admit, when you have a situation where 2% of the population is rich and 98% isn’t, it’s easy to garner support for the kind of thinking that says, “Um, yeah…tax the shit out of those fuckers, it’s only right.”
Well, it ain’t right. It’s taxation by mob rule.
But of course, people don’t like to admit that, so they cook up reasons to mask their avarice, like “disproportionate societal benefit” and “equal pain” to try to mask what is in reality nothing more than a naked money grab made possible by the fact that the grabbers have the most votes.
Let me ask you this, Starving Artist, do you think there has been any fundamental change in enviornment or human nature as they apply to economics within the last 100 years or so? To put it another way, is there anything, excluding government policy, that would account for any large-scale shifts in economic performance or behavior?
If yes, what are the changes and what has their effect been?
A mob that calmly assembles at polling stations to commit acts of raw tyranny. Heavens! I clutch my pearls, I swoon…
We’re the people who ultimately own the government that backs their script, we’re the voters, we’re the society who gives that script meaning. Without us the script would be nothing but green cotton and wood blended paper.
Sorry, I just got back and am about to call it a night so maybe the late hour is affecting my powers of perception, but I don’t quite understand the question. If you’d like to try to rephrase it and be a little more specific I’ll try to get back to it tomorrow.
So, in essence, to punish the wealthy. That’s what I thought.
Lowering spending will do this? LOL! And people think the right-wingers are crazy.
Well, I’ll tell you the point I’m getting at, then maybe the question will make more sense.
You said there is no pool of wealth that we all draw from. However, it is possible to look at the past and current state of the economy as a pool; how much have we cumulatively earned, and how is that income distributed. The top 5% of earners bring in more than 5% of the income, obviously, but the recent trend is that income disparity is increasing. Compared to each other, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing. (At least, not yet.) My question is, to what do you attribute this change. Is it an anomaly, is it due to some factors outside our control, or is it due to policies enacted by the government? Be specific.
So can we take it away from you and give it to crack heads and high school dropouts?
This may come as a surprise, but some, if not most, CEOs actually do run their companies
It makes it better that the mob uses voting booths instead of torches?
That isn’t really how the monetary system, or the economy works. Unfortunately most people seem to think it is.
The government doesn’t “back their script”. At least not like you think. The government backs the dollar in the sense that it supports its use as legal tender and enforces contracts. The dollar retains its value so long as people trust that it actually represents a promise to deliver a dollar’s worth of labor or services. Money represents wealth - assets that produce value. It is not wealth in and of itself. If you simply decide to take money away from those who have created wealth (or take wealth away from the people with lots of money), you break the link between the dollar and the value it represents, that promise of value is voided and your money is worthless. Just ask the people of Zimbabwe.
Don’t distort what I said. Making them pay their fair share, to keep the country from collapsing is not “punishing” them.
Lowering spending enough to try to pay back our debts would do that; the government would be gutted, which would result in chaos. Which would also mean that it wouldn’t even succeed in paying off the debts. The fact is the Right has spent this country into a pit, screwed up the economy and allowed the wealthy to hog most of the nation’s assets. The damage is huge enough that the non-wealthy cannot pay to fix it; they don’t have the money anymore, the rich do.
Wasn’t the top tax rate on income over $400,000 91 percent in 1957?
Yes, that’s true.
And didn’t Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican president, refuse to push tax rate cuts for the high-income set?
Um, yes.
What’s our current top marginal rate? 35 percent.
If you’re so hot to return to the values of 1957, how can you possibly justify your defense of lower taxes for the richest?
What good conservative values are those again?
Perhaps you know of a better system of government than representative democracy? Allowing any interest group except the majority to determine the policies of the country is true tyranny.