Go get 'im, Ron! 
I do not think anyone who makes millions earned the money. Nobody is worth that much. They’re the mooches. If you make millions, YOU’RE the mooch. Get your hands of mine, buddy.
I cannot understand this idea. If I sell a million widgets for a dollar each, you are saying that somehow the amount I made is in and of itself the same as stealing? Where is the line? If I make 100,000 I can say I made it. But If I make 2,000,000 doing the exact same thing then I have to say I stole it or mooched it? How can you say something like this?
Because money is not created by any one person operating in a vacuum without the aid of others to help him get all that money. What about the worker in the widget factory who works his ass off to make widgets for you to sell at a tremendous profit?
What about the salary I paid that worker for his effort? Remember, that while money is not created in a vacuum, it is also not created by uncompensated slaves.
Depending on how much those workers are paid (often merely a pittance-look at corporations like Wal-Mart, for example), it’s not much of a difference.
It is all the difference in the world. I’m sorry, I know some people are poor and in bad financial shape (I was once). But this does not mean that their agreements to work for a particular wage is the same thing in any sense as slavery. Unless you can connect that dot, equating high wages for capitalists with theft is simply ignorant.
Oh geez…
It’s not a burden. I’m sure most of the rich are happy paying taxes on a million dollars per year, I would be. Just not at an unreasonably high percentage is all.
Why should it be unfair to be rich afterall, isn’t it something we all strive for? Since they’re already paying WAY more than everyone else, even at the same percentage, and they use minimal services compared to the poorer of us why SHOULD they pay more? It’s like a penalty for being successful. You do realize that the rich play an influential role in the success of the economy, don’t you? They buy all sorts of things that you and I have jobs making, they pay for new homes that you and I build, they hire people to work for them, they keep currency circulationg through the economy, and when things get tight for them things get tight for everyone else.
You can’t have a strong economy without having a strong upper class, so be happy that the rich are happy and keep them happy. I make my living because I work for a rich person who owns a company building other stuff for other rich people. If they didn’t have the money to burn, I’d be sitting home.
Really? What is this magical number, at which all the wealthy stop whining for tax cuts? You may have your arbitrary tax rate, as do I, and we both think they are reasonable. All I can say is that, until taxes are abolished all together, some of the wealthy somewhere will demand further reductions.
Even in high-tax rate countries (like Sweden and Denmark) there are still rich people? How do they manage to avoid confiscatory levels of taxation? Simple, they own most of it in offshore assets, beyond reach of their IRS people. Capital is mobile, and knows no boundaries…so if you decide to soak the rich, the rich will just pack up and leave. Take British rock stars…amny of them live on the Isle of man, with its low tax rates. In my view, there is no solution for he deficit problem that the USA faces…the only way out is to reduce spending…but politicians don’t care…they are like King Louis XVI (“apres moi le deluge”). Hell, the Democratic party just spent >100$ million on a stupid , meaningless convention…do those guys “care” about the deficit?? Nah…thats for their grandchildren.
Another point…everybody wants to soak the rich…but what about “non-profit” corporations? Take Harvard University…portfolio value "22$ billion! And they don’t pay a dime!! :eek:
Until we become rich (by our def) and have to pay the taxes I don’t think we can actually define what is reasonable. So, until that happens, I will state that they should pay the same percentage as I do.
No-one will ever stop complaining, however, if they see that they are treated fairly I reckon they will not complain nearly as much.
What reason do you give for taxing the rich at a higher percentage other than ‘they can afford it’?
I don’t think you can legally avoid taxes just by moving assets offshore. In the U.S. in fact, even if you are a non-resident citizen, you have a tax obligation. That is the price you pay for being a U.S. citizen. If they want to renounce their citizenship and all that goes with it, they can be my guest.
I wasn’t aware that the Dems were spending taxpayer money (although I suppose there are some matching funds involved). Do you have cite for this? Are the Republicans spending any less? Can you remind me what the surplus was when Clinton left office and what the deficit is now?
I am curious how you made this calculation to arrive at this conclusion. Care to enlighten us?
It’s not a penalty for being successful. It is a price that you pay for having all the benefits of a society that allowed you to benefit handsomely. Take away that society, and the rich would certainly lose a lot more than the poor would.
Sure they do. That’s because they have most of the money. (In the U.S., the top 1% already has some huge percentage of the wealth. According to this page, in 1995, they owned 40% of the wealth, almost as much as the 44% they owned in 1929 and considerably higher than what they owned in between (27% in 1949, 31% in 1969, 20.5% in 1979, and 36% in 1989).
However, it does not necessarily follow that the most productive tax policy is to reward them with low tax rates.
what calulation are you referring to? Individual wealthy people clearly rely less on govnt support than others (not referring to corporate welfare here). If that statement isn’t true, prove me wrong.
Again, it’s a give and take situation, - why should the ones that give the most be taxed the most? You take from the wealthy and the wealthy turn around and pass that on to the poorer. By burdening those that employ and support the poorer of us you indirectly burden the poor.
Show me any proof that higher tax rates for the wealthy benefit the poorer of us.
Sorry my friend…But that is not the way things work around here. You can’t just make any old statement and say “prove me wrong.” As for not referring to corporate welfare, well how convenient!
As for the rest of government support, I expect a calculation showing exactly how much benefit the rich person got from the various public services like roads, the educational system, etc. Please show all work. 
Bullshit. Again, you have failed to present any evidence that this is the case. And, we have evidence from the 1980s as I noted in above links that “trickle down” economics produces a pretty pathetic trickle. (Here…see esp. Fig 2, with the raw CBO data itself here (Table 1C).)
Also, money that ends up in the hands of the poor is almost immediately spent, which stimulates the economy and soon puts it into the hands of the rich anyway (since as noted, the top 1% alone have 40 cents of every dollar in this country).
And, the rich haven’t “given” anything. They didn’t give away their labor for free. They were compensated for it. Very well compensated. Almost certainly excessively compensated in proportion to their contribution.
Well, they clearly benefit the poorer in a direct sense because they raise more revenues for the government and thus allow it to leave more money in the hands of the poorer. And, as I have also noted, there is zero evidence from the 80s or 90s to suggest that tax cuts for the wealthy do good for the middle and lower classes or that tax hikes for the wealthy (within reason) have any ill effects on the economy.
I don’t know about that. The upper classes in the poorest of 3rd world countries do quite well for themselves, but ask yourself: would you rather be at the bottom of the econominc ladder in the US, or in Bangladesh? The poor have plenty to lose.
But I’m more curious about something else. You have often stated that the rich owe a large part of their success to being part of this society, and so must expect to pay back more. (You, in fact tend to sidestep the fact that the rich DO pay more, and clearly want them to pay proportionally more, but let’s ignore that for now.) On the other end of the scale (ie, the poor end), what do you think a person owes to society in order to reap the benefits of that society? How much welfare does a person deserve for no other reason than being born here?
Why does a person of your obvious intellect insist on doing this. You complain about a logical mistake on anothers part while commiting the same or a closely related one yourself.
Clearly ignoring corporate welfare introduces errors into any calculation of who gets the result of governmental largess. But insisting that roads and education are the criteria by which others benifits should be judged is the exact same error. Do you admit, or not, that wealth transference takes up the majority of government expenditures? I know you’ve seen the numbers, do you think that most of government’s money has been spent on infrastructure or social engineering? Or do you count social security and welfare as infrasturcure in the exact same sense as roads?
Look, the fact is that both the rich and the poor garner benifits from the large government. Probably the rich garner more. I’m not sure this would be evident from an overview of government expenses, but they don’t show things like regulations shutting down competition, or side benifits from requiring certain products over others.
The problem with both is that neither is without unintended consequences You cannot say we need more taxes without saying that we need more corporate welfare. You cannot say we need to cut spending without saying that we should cut welfare.
Glad to help you increase your understanding.
Nobody can sell a million widgets by themselves. People have to design and build the machiens that make the widgets, they ahve to run the machines that make the widgets, they have to feed, house and clothe the people that make the widgets and the machines that deliver the widgets. Somebody has to deliver the widgets. Somebody has to keep accounts of all the transactions involving the widgets.
Now, some people, usually the apologists for the multi-millionaires, would say that the people who make the widgets are wonderful saints who deserve their millions and all the comforts and goodies that come with them, and that the people who bus their tables and mow their lawns and care for their children are filthy scum who deserve to live on rice and beans when they can get that, packed six to a one-room apartment, with health care provided only by the local emergency room.
I don’t see it that way. I think the widget-maker is just the person at the point of a complex web of social interrelationships that makes his or her ability to be a widget-creator possible, The claims of small minority of being independent saintly bundles of wonderfulness are just con jobs, just like the claims that those who wash dieshes and mow lawns are scum is another kind of con job. Like your major religions, people are all pretty much the same.
I’ve read a lot of posts on this board extolling the virtues of capitalism but I’ve never read any praises fulsome enough to erase the searing ugliness and nastiness of economic inequality from my mind. If you want to understand, here’s all you have to do: open your eyes.
:eek:
Why should we not? The they provide for the welfare and security of all. Who ( outside of a Road Warrior fantasy or 2 ) wants to live in a nation where a significant portion of the population have nothing to lose? The safety net provides stability which, along with our highly skilled workforce, helps us prosper. And who prospers the most? Rich people. They owe.
???
We certainly could cut a lot of spending in Iraq without cutting welfare and extra tax revenue could go to paying off the national debt without throwing more bones to any corporations.
Are you counting the legal system as “corporate welfare”? Think about it… how rich would Bill Gates be today if Microsoft had never been able to enforce its copyrights?
I think 2sense answered this pretty well. I’ll also point out that while social security may “transfer wealth”, it does so in a rather complex way. In fact, libertarian/conservative groups were recently trying to claim that it is a regressive system overall (as an argument for getting rid of it). While I have my doubts about whether they are really correct, it is a complicated calculation since it involves intergenerational transfers amd depends strongly on the assumptions one makes for the discount rate of time. There are also some issues such as the fact that rich folks tend to live longer on average than poor folks and so on.