We don’t have a monarchy where one person decides what you owe. And even if we did, the odds that YOU would be king are pretty low. Instead we have a republic. Tax rates are worked out by our representatives. Your belief that progressive taxation is unfair doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t try to make people pay what they owe. They owe what the law says they owe. Governments enforce the laws (more or less).
My 2 cents.
Yes. They are the people who have benefited the most, burden society the most, and owe the most.
Ah, that’s your…creative interpretation of my past statements that if someone has something you need to live and is willing to let you die in order to extort as much money as possible for it, you would be justified in resorting to force. No; you do not have the moral right to condemn people to death to line your pockets.
Such as any time someone uses their possesion of more money or some other needed resource to enforce their will. Especially in the type of society you want to set up, where the wealthy will be free to reduce the general population to serfdom with threats of “obey or starve”. Just because you refuse to acknowledge the existence of other forms of coercion than the government doesn’t make that so.
Oh, please. You simply have the typically parasitic libertarian attitude that you have the perfect right take from society and never give anything back in return. You want all the benefits of society, but you don’t want to pay for it.
Is this sarcasm? Forgive me if I’ve been Whooshed.
The federal government does quite well administering health insurance, thank you very much. Much, much, much, much, much better than private insurers.
Really? They burden society the most?
How exactly do libertarians wish to “take from society and never give anything back in return”? Libertarians tend to believe that they should have to work for their money. Working is a way of contributing to society. So your statement is hyperbole at best, but even if it isn’t hyperbolic, you still need to explain what you’re really saying.
Yes. They use the most resources, do the most damage, coerce the most people.
But not a way of contributing to the government that is keeping society running. Their demands that all sorts of things that the government does be taken care of instead by private charity is among other things a noble sounding way of saying they want other people to pay for the social services that keep society from falling into chaos, while reaping the benefits for free. Of course, it won’t actually work because charitable contributions just aren’t that high.
The most wealthy people might do the most damage and coerce the most people only because they have more power than the average person. If you had as much power as Bill Gates, you would magically end up coercing tons of people and damaging various individuals and groups just by doing what you think is best. Does this mean you deserve to be taxed at a much higher rate? I don’t buy it.
And what about the idea that wealthier people tend to contribute more to society?
Are we talking about the most extreme forms of libertarianism here?
One flaw I find in many discussions over the merits of the free market is that moralistic terms like “greed” and “liberty” are used to gloss over the nuances of individual actions. There are some things the government can do really efficiently, other things it can do only somewhat efficiently, and other things it just sucks at doing. Here, you throw out the phrase “…the government that is keeping society running”.
We are arguing over how much government action is needed to keep society going, what is just for the government to do, and so forth. If you are arguing against a sort of anarchist libertarian view, then I tend to agree with your views. But talk of how the government “keeps society going” isn’t going to justify, say, a progressive tax or free universal college education.
I’m sorry, but you have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t need a monarch to decide how much you spent to provide a particular service to a particular person when you can just look at the receipts, so to speak. If it costs $100,000,000 per year to maintain the roads you don’t just arbitrarily decide how much each person has to pay, you find something that has a strong correlation to the wear and tear caused (like petrol usage) and pass a tax that reflects that cost.
The politicians decide by fiat how much money they expect you to pay them, and this is automatically a legitimate decision, because they’re the government. Got it. :rolleyes:
Prove it. Provide evidence that shows that someone who earns 10 times more than you doesn’t use the same amount of government services, doesn’t use 10 times more, but uses exponentially more than you, such that a flat tax rate cannot reflect the increased cost suffered by society due to their existence.
It is I who should ask forgiveness. Sarcasm is lowly speech. The point is that the US private sector has exactly that inefficiency in its private health system. Even though a wasteful public sector is the article of faith for small-government ideologues.
Please note:
I see no reason to buy that. As far as I can tell, they contribute less. They are primarily parasites upon the people who do contribute; taking money to enrich themselves, and generally taking the credit for the accomplishments of the people who do the actual work.
Libertarianism is an extreme movement. And no, that is hardly the most extreme.
A flat tax? A flat tax proportionately hurts the less affluent far more; they live much closer to the edge.
And the simple fact that they HAVE so much money is a major burden on society. The money they have, the rest of us don’t have; that’s a burden. And a major one; the top few percent of the wealthy have most of the money, and they expect the rest of us to support them.
And you believe they contribute less because…? They tend to be better-educated and work more difficult jobs. If you think it is easy to be Steve Ballmer, you’re wrong. If he repeatedly made terrible decisions he would not be where he is.
What do you mean, “support the wealthy”? They support themselves by paying for what they need. They earned their money.
Your whole framework seems to be based on the idea that rich people are just corrupt boobs who somehow got into a position of power such that they could make tons of money. Is this actually what you believe?
Is there a cite that explains this conclusion? Hacker notes the assertion that it’s not apples-to-oranges, but then doesn’t seem to specifically counter it–i.e., something like, “…but when we account for payroll taxes…” I couldn’t find a cite, and Hacker just seems to hand wave away the point. And I couldn’t find the CBO study he references, though it may have been under my nose. Those reports are thick.
Please. We’ve just had our economy crash due to people demonstrating that you can easily ascend to the top and be an incompetent fool or sociopathically greedy. Nor does sitting on top of thousands of other people who do the work while you take the profits and the credit qualify as contributing much.
No; other people earned their money for them. Other people build and invent and create; they take. The general public is supporting the wealthy, because more and more of the tax burden has been shifted to them in order to replace the slashed taxes of the wealthy.
As a rule, yes. Being a corrupt parasite or simply inheriting your money is the main way to become wealthy. The people who actually accomplish things typically get little in return for it. Hard work and competence matter little; it’s connections, ruthlessness and how rich your parents were that really matter.
I definitely agree with you here. But it is hard to complain about it because the colloquial meaning of the word theory has taken such a right turn from its scientific counterpart. Good theory is not just some sort of simplified slush cooked up by people disconnected from the “real world”. So I try to fill in a little where I think people are interested. I thought more people would have been interested in the collective action problem, but perhaps I just articulated it poorly.
I can’t get that upset over the misuse of the word theory because my discipline has been burdened with the name “rational choice”. I can’t even begin to tell you how much irritation and confusion have been caused by the disconnect between normative (colloquial) rationality and positive (economic) rationality. I really wish we could just change the name to shmational choice or something.
Hey Der Trihs, what percentage of millionaires do you think inherited significant amounts of money from their parents?
This seems to be a surprisingly difficult question to answer. The amount of wealth one inherits is private information. There seem to have been a few studies, but they are all based on self-reported data. My gut tells me that a lot of Big Lebowskis come up in those surveys.
Also, Der Trihs, your view of rich people as parasites is just absolutely and obviously ridiculous.
Let’s look at a hyopthetical example. Richy Rich is the sole stockholder of a corporation, and the corporation owns a manufactring plant. So, the plant makes something, sells it, the plant pays its expenses (including wages of its workers), and the rest of the cash goes to Richy Rich.
You are looking at the situation as if there would be more money for the workers if Richy Rich wasn’t there to siphon off all of the profits. However, if Richy Rich didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a plant in the first place–Richy Rich’s ideas and/or money went into creating the plant, or Richy is the relative of someone whose ideas and/or money created the plant. In the second case, Rich’s receipt of the profits is no less legitimate, it’s just one instance of the principle that a person can do whatever they want to with their property (so, Richy’s relative can leave the stock to Richy).
After Katrina…Barbara Bush said the residents are underprivileged anyway so being housed in a football stadium will be working out very well for them.
Repub Congressman Baker…We finally cleaned up the public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it but god did.
Heritage Foundation after Haiti Quake’
In addition to immediate humanitarian aid ,US response to the earthquake in Haiti ,offers opportunities to reshape Haiti.s disfunctional government and economy as well as improve the public image of the United states in the reason.
Never one to pass up a business opportunity.
The reason people think repubs hate poor people is because they do.
Has anybody ever told you you have an excessively cynical, pessimistic view of the world?
And an increasingly realistic one.
Unless you’re talking about a small group of billionaires (in which case you’re still only half right), you’re now scaling a marble wall with bare hands. Exactly how can you justify the belief that skill and hard work matter little?