I think most people would draw a distinction between “saving for retirement” and “investing/becoming capitalist”.
In that it’s something of a distinction without a difference in anything but intent, you’re not wrong. Most people nonetheless do not think of it the way you’re describing it.
That’s sort of my point. So we have multiple threads bashing the investor class, pissed off that they are getting richer, and looking to eat into their earnings. But at the same time, those same people want to help the middle class achieve retirement.
So we have favourable tax policies that help; for example 401k’s and deferred taxation. And once reached retirees need a favourable environment to live off their savings.
What ever policies we implement to go after the “investor class” will ultimately swing back around and hit retirement planning the hardest. Higher taxes on capital gains will eat into your mutual funds. Higher taxes on dividends will mean you’ll earn less during retirement. Put those two policies together and you force middle class workers to have to save more of their current income, or work past their retirement goal.
There are two main differences between retirement and the “investor class”
And with all that money saved, many retirees die and leave it to their family. That could easily be millions. Again, we have a situation where well meaning individuals want to go after the rich, and tax inheritance, but fail to realize that the middle class are far more depended on it.
I wouldn’t - I got two advanced degrees and then got a great job at a company where neither I, nor anyone I know, knew anyone.
I can’t imagine my colleagues wanting this trade either. Nothing is more valuable than a good education (people can come and go, succeed or fail, leave you behind, whatever - but no one can take your education from you). I wouldn’t mind having some connections, and I do try to network - but my skillset is the basis of my success, and of that of the people I know who do well.
That may not be the case for the very, very top - I’m sure they rely on connections to a large degree. But you don’t need any connections at all to make 6 figures in your late 20s or early 30s, and that is surely enough to have a good living.
Just out of curiousity, why do you automatically associate “corporate” with “the wealthy”. A lot of middle class and working class people work for corporations. Are corporate taxes also not a tax on those employees?
Well technically they’re not a direct tax as they’re borne by shareholders. Having said that, I totally agree with the concept that continued high corporate tax rates (far in excess of other countries) is perhaps the most direct means of ensuring the continued outsourcing of American jobs.
**Will the disparity of weath distribution destroy America?
**
No. It’s the attempts to redistribute wealth through government programs that will destroy America. It’s already doing it.
After 250+ posts into this thread, you might want to (I don’t know) defend your bare assertion?
I know, it’s a crazy idea, but it just might work.
Those efforts during the 1930’s helped prepare the United States to win the Second World War. In 1944 the top tax rate was 94 percent. Unemployment was 1.2 percent.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213
Moreover, the Government school lunch program was created by President Truman in 1946; this classic example of welfare program - aka Clothahump’s hated “wealth distribution” that is destroying America - was needed to bolster the US Military.
The problem before this America-destroying welfare came about, was that many men were turned away from military service because of problems stemming from childhood malnourishment. When people tell you that no one starved as a result of the Great Depression… remind them of this.
To Clothahump… if we were to eliminate welfare programs, we would almost immediately go back to having legions of malnourished kids. We’ve had that problem before and no country on Earth that lacks a welfare system is NOT plagued by it.
Also: I must also go into specifics about taxation. High taxes for corporations is only good when there are accompanying tax breaks - large tax breaks - for research and development and hiring workers in the United States.
I would even argue that personal income taxes for the very wealthy should be higher and corporate tax rates lower. There is nothing inherently “evil” about corporations. They are one of the best methods of converting raw materials into usable products and create a great deal of wealth for their employees, shareholders and customers.
But they can be run by jackasses who act in their own interest intead of the companies.
Worth noting that despite a wide-ranging top marginal tax rate over the last 75 years, tax receipts as a % of total GDP have remained remarkably constant at around 17.8% (bottom quartile = 17.3%, top quartile = 18.5%). That is to say, jacking up (or down) the highest tax rate doesn’t necessarily add all that much in tax revenues (although fair enough that at a 94% marginal tax rate you can bet people are doing anything and everything to “adjust” their reported numbers).
They’re amoral, and sociopathic, which is even worse.
Sociopathy and amorality is the very nature of a corporation.
Employees? You mean those “interchangeable carbon blobs” you keep talking about? Hardly.
A corporation can screw its employees - in fact it is in the company’s best interest to do so. It cuts overhead. After all, you said they were “interchangeable carbon blobs”. Going by this logic you can’t lose by abusing employees. You simply kick the disgruntled ones out and… interchange them.
According to your previous arguments, that is.
Yes, much in the same way an automobile is. Your car doesn’t care about you running someone over. It’s just a machine. A corporation is just a legal agreement. It’s the people running it or working for it who are the assholes.
So where does their paycheck come from so they can buy Budweiser[sup]TM[/sup] and Doritos[sup]TM[/sup] and drive their kids to The Gap[sup]TM[/sup] in their Ford[sup]TM[/sup] listening to their Apple[sup]TM[/sup] iPods?
Well, not the ones it wants or needs to keep. A corporation is just a machine built to organize free people into converting resources into products for money. If those people served a useful purpose, why would the company get rid of them?
I don’t understand this mentality of yours. Serfs had pretty good job security so long as they kept working the baron’s land. Is that what you would prefer?
Untrue.
The legal mandate of most corporations is to maximize a shareholder’s return on investment. Maximum ROI, zero overhead, is the typical corporate holy grail. This is by nature a predatory directive. Does a corporation, in the fulfillment of its directive, pursue as close to a zero labor cost as it can? Yes. Does a corporation try to run others out of business to reduce competitors? Yes. Must a corporation, in consistency with its mandate, cut as many corners as possible, including getting around environmental pollution laws and workplace safety laws, to make a profit? Yes. If the corporation clearly does something wrong and something bad happens, is it not in the typical corporate mandate to avoid taking responsibility? Yes*.
A corporation is not like a car. Its mandate makes it more like a ravenous mountain lion. By definition it kills and it eats.
It comes from a variety of sources.
For me, it comes from my business profits.
For others, it comes from their employer.
For yet others, it comes from Government transfer payments.
Oh noes. That means employers are not the only source of income!
You have yet to answer this… how can the top 1% which you say are the only producers of wealth, produce any wealth without customers? And how do you get customers without a paycheck?
As I said before, it’s called the food chain. You break one link and it all falls apart. The top 1% does not generate all the wealth. They need the economic activity of everyone else - as in, demand - to make wealth.
You forgot the demand side of the equation. You failed economics, epically.
Tell that to Circuit City, which laid off a ton of its best sales staff in favor of hourly schmucks. Corporations make idiot mistakes like that all the time.
Why would a corporation kick off its best employees? Because they see them as too expensive. The “overqualified” label comes from this. It’s not about overqualified employees inconveniently leaving and looking for better work. It’s because their skills cost too much.
The thing you’re forgetting is that most corporations care about their quarterly statements more than the long term. Their investors want to get in, pump it up, then cash out rich.
You accuse me of wanting a fiefdom? Dude, you’re the one calling workers “interchangeable carbon blobs” - that is the very core of feudalist thinking.
It sounds like EXACTLY what you are advocating!
I’m waiting for him to show he has a basic understanding of the role of DEMAND in the generation of wealth.
I have no problem with increasing productivity. My point is that labor should share in the increased productivity otherwise there is ultimately noone to buy the products of that improved productivity.
That’s not the opposite of what I want. I have no problem with an industry employing fewer and fewer people as long as those fewer people earn salaries commensurate to their productivity.
Because the doctor will make even more. You would see a world where capitalists have the ability to provide a lot of products that noone can afford to buy.
In this case the money earned by labor is ultimately the source of demand. Unless you think we can have an economy based on providing goodies to the capitalist segment of society and those that provide services to the capitalist segment of society…
Well, yes. If you want to invent definitions.
I’m curious. What legal structure did you declare your “business” as?
Two of the things you mentioned are “employers” and the third is just another employer with the ability to forceably take money from one employer and give it to another or printing it from nothing.
Because the 1% who actually create wealth can trade with each other (that’s about 3 million people in the US). The other 99% of carbon blobs can cry it isn’t fair, but if they can’t produce anything useful, what do they have to trade?
Right. Food chain. For the ravenous mountain lions!
No, you were just epic pwnd. LOL!!!
You mean like the top 1% of sales people?:eek:
Their skills cost too much relative to what they actually produce. You really think that guy who has been coasting in his position for 20 years is really doing 20 year’s of raises worth of additional work?
In the long term we are all dead. I want to get paid now.
And this is why it’s such a waste of time to talk to you about economics.
If you want to go there, then you can also define almost all workers as employers, because as customers they employ businesses to make goods for them. You can fire a business by deciding never to do business with them again. If enough other people decide to do so, the business is out put of business.
And they won’t last long doing that.
You’re even more wrong here. They can start their own businesses and home gardens. Happens all the time.
Again, you fail basic economics.
If they could start a successful business than they’d be part of the 1% generating wealth. They would also have a marketable skill that someone else finds useful.