The guy who "works" by turning a crank contributes less than the guy who provided the factory. In net, the crankman may produce nothing.
in effect, you have; it is the difference between public socialism via the law and private socialism via the subjective value of social morals for free. socializing costs is one thing the right is very good at. - - - Updated - - - only capital worth means anything to the right? what would poor carpenters say.
The problem with most people's concept of wealth is what a person possesses. With my assets in retirement accounts and real estate my family is worth a little more than a million. My wife and I combined have never earned more than 100k a year. Taxes are based upon what is earned that year, not based upon what a person's estate is worth. And please don't say that it cannot be done...My wife and I have worked hard, raised five kids, and still will retire comfortably.
What does that have to do with a wealth tax? And I wish you the best of accountants if you think you will retire comfortably on a net worth of a little more than a million.
The problem is what is the threshold to be considered wealthy...$200k earnings per year puts you in the 33% tax bracket. Who decides? I believe a flat tax is more fair...everyone pays the same rate...no deductions. Or a national sales tax, the more money you spend, the more taxes you pay. And don't worry about me I own 2 houses, and my retirement home allows sustenance hunting and fishing and has no property taxes, I'll get by just fine on a little over a million.
Not quite sure what you mean by nonsense. Investors don't physically build any goods or provide any services. All of the goods and services are produced by or provided for by the workers of enterprise. In point of fact investors don't even typically fund corporations that produce goods and/or provide services. Based upon a one month analysis of SEC transactions and the limited number of investments in corporate stock offerings (where the corporation receives the funds) less than 0.00005% of all investment dollars go to corporations that produce goods and/or provide services. If we rounded off to 1/1000th of a 1% it would be "Zero Dollars Invested" in corporations. Buying a stock owned by someone else doesn't fund the corporation.
More Welfare For the Rich http://www.occupydemocrats.com/no-s...the-house-into-their-private-lobbying-agency/ CLIMATE CHANGE No Science Here: Big Oil Has Turned The House Into Their Private Lobbying Agency In an astounding demonstration of the power of corporate influence coupled with ignorance to overpower logic, common sense, and the public good, the Republican-dominated House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has been bought out by the oil and gas industry and their stooge, Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX), who was appointed head of the committee in 2013. Smith has led a crusade against rampant environmentalism that has seen the House science committee, once a venerable and intellectual body, degenerate into a farcical circus run by science-denying Republicans who are perfectly willing to ignore facts and behave like absolute imbeciles in order to keep the money from the oil and gas industry flowing. Over the course of his three years as chairman of the Science committee, Smith has fought what he calls the climate-change religion of the Obama administration, by which he apparently means facts. Hes launched a legal battle against administration over new air-pollution regulations that he claims are not backed up by science, despite the fact that theyve been upheld by federal appeals courts, theyd save tens of thousands of American lives and produce more than $40 billion in health care savings, and, of course, they are in fact backed up by essentially universal consensus in the actual scientific community. When the Supreme Court eventually overturned the EPAs curbs on toxic emissions, a major part of Obamas environmental plan, in June, the decision was not the result of any scientific misgivings but rather because the EPA had failed to take into account the costs [of the regulations] to utilities and others in the power sector. In other words, regulations that would make help to stop the poisoning of the planet and its inhabitants were overturned because they would cost the people poisoning the planet some money. Smith and his band of oil industry-financed lawyers and lobbyists were of course influential in lobbying the court to overturn the obviously beneficial legislation. From that inauspicious beginning, Smith moved on to slash NASAs budget for earth sciences and subject grant reviews at the National Science Foundation to extra scrutiny. He ostensibly supported these moves out of concerns for the budget, which has become a boogeyman nearly as powerful as Islamic terrorism that conservatives can use to eliminate anything they dont like. However, given his support for increasing our already enormous military budget, anyone with common sense can see that such moves are merely meant to stifle the voices of those scientists who disagree with the delusional brand of climate-denial that the oil industry bosses in Houston tell him to peddle. And, given the general tendency of scientists to have brains and common sense, that has essentially meant that the House science committee is battling to keep scientists from publishing the truth, which, as former committee member and physicist Rush Holt (D-NJ) notes wryly, is an interesting way to raise the profile of a science committee, but not surprising given the substituting of politics for evidence. Most recently, he has accused scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of manipulating data and rushing publication of a major study that refuted claims that global temperatures were stabilizing, all in order to advance Obamas extreme climate-change agenda, extreme apparently meaning, in Smiths mind, anything to the left of his own brand of lunatic conservative rejectionism. He eventually subpoenaed NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan and surprise! nothing amiss was found. That setback, however, hasnt stopped him from issuing a subpoena to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy seeking her personal phone and text records that he somehow believes will reveal a malicious plot in the EPAs new regulations on ozone emissions. With such blatant idiocy and obstructionism coming from the head of the science committee, and with its meetings regularly descending into such kindergarten-level stupidity as claiming that snowballs disprove climate change and that melting ice caps arent a concern because melting ice cubes dont cause a drink to overflow, one has to wonder whether these lawmakers are really this stupid or are simply acting on behalf of their donors, and willing to sacrifice their dignity and the good of humanity for a little extra cash. The answer, of course, is the latter, as the energy industry or, non-euphemistically, the oil and gas industry spends millions of dollars to put lawmakers in their pocket to protect their interests and bottom lines at the expense of tens of thousands of Americans and tens of millions of humans who will die from climate-change related causes in the coming decades. Smith, whose home district in West Texas depends heavily on the oil and gas industry, is a prime case and point. Over the course of his career in Congress, Smith has received almost $650,000 from big oil and gas companies, making the industry his biggest financier and making him one of the largest recipients of oil industry buyouts in Congress. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the notorious snowball Senator, has received almost $500,000 from the energy industry, twice as much as any other group, and Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), of ice-melt-doesnt-raise-water-levels fame, has received some $120,000 from the energy industry. It is an absolute travesty that such idiots have been allowed to take over a government committee overseeing what is perhaps the most dangerous issue of our time and run it like a joke, and yet that is exactly what a dangerous combination of unfettered corporate purchasing of lawmakers and delusional conservative anti-intellectualism have produced, and it is truly a tragedy for our country and for the planet. No end to the corporate welfare given to the wealthy - where are the howls of protest from the forum right wingers???
Well if you do a flat tax and tax capital gains at the same rate as earned income and eliminate tax free municipal bonds, mortgage deductions and stepped up basis for inheritance and eliminate caps on earnings that are subject to SS and Medicare tax you just might get close to a fair system. Oh and you should also probably tax all inheritance as income to the recipient.
it only takes money to make money under any form of Capitalism; or, has the Right simply been lying to us the whole time.
... not sure what you think you've heard. But if you believe all you need to make money is have money: start with a dime and get rich. Good luck to you.
Pretty sure you have a dime or two. Get started. *shrug* Heck, Obama's people are making cold calls offering zero interest loans to folks with good business plans. There's a friggin game show where a guy called Mr Perfect offers to hand money to anyone with a good idea. I think you'll find you don't need money to make money. You just need to be able to convince others you will build with their money and not (*)(*)(*)(*) it away. If you actually have value to offer, well these days capital is the easiest piece of the puzzle.
capital is not easy to get in relation to the market, to compete with apple you need billions of dollars in capital. look at the cable companies, the poor service they give us and limited competition in their industry, the average person can't compete with them and change things for some reason. this market is not a free market, it is set up where the rich have the advantage, unfair patent laws and the like held america back from innovation a long time ago. there are no guys in their backyards like the wright brothers, henry ford, or even bill gates, because the very successors like bill gates prevent competition after they became big. therefore those zero interest rate obama loans even subsidized by the taxpayer can't make a difference if the entrepreneur has nowhere to compete with it.
the whole point of capitalism is to be able to compete, and if the rich are closing off competition with their huge amount of capital that is not very fair wealth distribution. making up a whole new industry or market segment just to compete alone or with one other is not the principle of a free market, as that would be advocating for accepting the big and rich monopolies or oligopolies we have now. a real free market has many small competitors providing similar products and services, as that creates many small innovations which make an efficient and quickly evolving market place. today instead we have the slow pace in which bloated big companies like the cable and internet industry, which just stagnate while providing everyone with poor quality of services. even if your idea of being original is attempted, what usually ends up happening is that the inventions are bought out by the big companies and innovation is finished for another long generation.
