The U.S. Already Soaks the Rich In 2021 the richest 1% paid 45.8% of income taxes, up from..

I don't buy into that nonsense. I believe people should pay for what they use but when they have to pay for what others use, I have issues with that. the progressive tax nonsense encourages politicians to pander to the many and overspend.

 

if that were true, none of the socialists would be in office. if we had a pure flat tax, then all the extra constitutional power the government grabbed would dissipate

 

That's why I used the word, "probability."

I don't consider inheritance relevant to the issue. If wealth was rightly earned, the owner has a right to bequeath it as he wishes; if it wasn't rightly earned, being inherited doesn't make it any more or less unearned.

The point is to understand how those sources of wealth relate to production of wealth. That's why it is crucial to understand what privilege is: a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation. Claiming ownership of a natural resource, for example -- which historically has been by far the most common source of large accumulations of wealth -- is a privilege that does nothing whatever to produce wealth. All it does is legally remove others' liberty rights to use that resource. Patents and copyrights are also privileges that have created many large fortunes largely unrelated to productive contribution. Ringo Starr was a pretty good drummer; but is that a reason why he should be a billionaire? Banksters take billions by exercising their privilege of creating money -- and then getting bailouts when they get too greedy and create too much of it. The list goes on.

 

socialist engineering with tax rates ends up giving the government far too much power

 

all I see is class envy. are you mad that Ringo Starr or Jimmy Page are making more in a month than you make in a year? They earned that and claiming they didn't is nonsense

 

The nation is drifting into more and more people with power and wealth concentrating into fewer and fewer hands.

And you are okay with it.

The only cure for that eventuality, the flaw in capitalism, is to tame the excesses of capitalism with progressivism.

It's similar to how the founders sought to temper the excesses of democracy by installing a bicameral legislature, a house of representatives, 2 senators per state and an electoral college.

But,. the right, in their eternal strawman fearmongering, will holler 'communism'.

You do that, too.

You guys are the problem.

 

that's completely contrary to reality. the least productive people are able to LIVE because others subsidize their existence. That George nonsense is just that-utter bullshit. You ought to study nature and see what happens to those without talent or skills.

 

why do the ultra wealthy usually support big government pawns like Biden?

 

What socialists? And even if a "socialist" gets into office, that is a very different thing from actually making a difference.

Garbage. You just want a government that is limited to forcibly stopping your victims from defending themselves against you.

 

By 'unrealized' you mean not converted to cash.

I disagree, wealth is wealth.

That's a fact.

 

Not for me.

 

Again, we had a strong, vibrant middle class in 1965.

What power did they get in 1965 that needed the dismantling of the middle class to correct?

 

A good argument, but a separate argument, altogether. Plenty of room for reform in landlord/tenancy law.

Almost all modern apartment buildings have similar rules.

You do realize that in the 90s the Clinton administration overhauled welfare called 'workfare'?

They did the best they could to deal with precisely the problem you are commenting on.

If you can do better, offer your ideas.

But arguments like 'they are all bums' or it's wrong to tax for safety nets, that's a bogus argument.

There are serious flaws in capitalism.

Housing is no longer 'buying a home', it's buying a house as an capital investment. This invites rich foreigners to come in and buy up the land and hold it. half the condos and offices in NYC are vacant, but owned by oligarchs who are laundering ill gotten gains in other countries.

Capitalism has flaws that need correcting but Republicans in the Senate and House do not want to do anything about it.

 

No, it is a fact. It is your absurd, anti-economic, right-wing elitist nonsense that is completely contrary to reality.

Yes, and many of them are rich, greedy, privileged parasites. I've known a few of them personally. One of the richest guys I have ever known made his millions by getting suckers to buy shares in his worthless companies that rarely produced any products and never made any profits. He called the investors whose money he legally stole, "Dick and Dora Dumbf^ck."

No, you are merely ignorant of economics. The Henry George Theorem is an indisputable fact of economics that is proved, repeat, proved by the astronomical unimproved value of land.

<yawn> In nature, they perish; in a capitalist society, if they own privileges, they prosper more than the productive. How else could it be the case that honest working people toil their lives away and end up with nothing, while greedy, idle landowners get rich without lifting a productive finger in their whole lives?

 

Because they know he is keeping the scam safe for them.

 

Never is a long time, son. Eventually, superhuman artificial intelligence (SAI) will decide on the taxes, and then we will certainly tax privilege, especially land titles, or fall permanently behind the countries that do.

 

How do you calculate? I go to schools and the rich employer uses my skills, should he pay for my school? I go to work on a road built from taxes should my employer pay for the road since without me he fails? I could go on and on. If the rich guy has money it's because non rich do the labor. Rich guy has more rich guy pays more, simple.
We do not now see the rich falling behind, in fact their incomes are growing far faster than the rest. They do not need more help.

 

So people without talent and skills should not live...that is your contention?

 

as in if one works 40 hours a week, they should be able to afford the basic essentials, and if they can't, the taxpayer has to cover the difference in the slave wages

 

Because you have decided not to see any injustice that you believe profits you personally.

One of the most evil acts a human being can commit is to accuse those who oppose injustice of envy for those who profit from it. It is pure, naked, smirking, Satanic evil.

I am "mad" at all injustice. Why do you feel you have to change the subject to me personally?

No, they most certainly did not earn it, and claiming they did is self-evidently absurd and disingenuous nonsense. They earned the money they made performing live, because people willingly paid for tickets to see them. They did not make the money they get from their government-issued and -enforced copyright monopolies, because that depends on government forcibly stopping others from making copies of what is naturally in the public domain, and that do not deprive Page or Starr of anything they would otherwise have.

 

Unless they own privileges like land titles, IP monopolies, and bank licenses. Then they should be legally entitled to steal from the people with talent and skills.

 

Wow! I am amazed at the level of economic ignorance. It is like a mosquito at a nudist colony. Where to begin? I hope this isn't a valid cross-section of the level of economic comprehension in the populous in general.

 

No, it's actually very sensible and efficient. If you only tax gains when they are realized, you just encourage people never to realize the gains they have been given by government spending. Taxing unrealized gains makes markets more liquid and encourages people to use their assets more productively. That is why the US states with the highest property tax rates tend to have better economies, more affordable housing, etc. than the states with the lowest property tax rates.

You just don't know that because you don't know any economics.

No it's not. Every state in the union has a property tax on unrealized gains, and none of them has ever been ruled confiscatory or unconstitutional.

You are just flat, outright wrong as a matter of objective fact, as usual.

 

There is no moral high ground in taking wealth from those who earned it, and giving it to yourself or others who took no part in the creation of that wealth. Greed is not a virtue and neither is sloth. Neither is it the American Idea. We were founded on the principles of Equal Taxation for Equal Representation.

 

Everybody pays for others. We don't live on islands away from other people, or even in isolated cabins in the wilderness. I guess these different mindsets do explain the urban-rural divide to some extent.

Having a different sense of fairness isn't necessarily envy.