Clinton’s 65% Killer Death Tax......

Anyone who uses phrases like "nation's income and wealth" has a moral agenda around economics that nationalist and likely socialist. They claim to be logical about economics but drop that completely to generate moral outrage. It's intellectual dishonesty and anything they post should be considered as biased as a creationist posting anti-evolutionary "science" sources.

 

The difference between you and me is that you would force everyone to follow your conscious, using violence aggression when those people peacefully follow their own. You would not use violence, of course. It is the proxies that you vote for who then hire enforcers. That way you can feel like it is just people doing what the government wants them to do and that makes everything righteous.

I, on the other, want people to be able to peacefully follow their own conscious. The only purpose of law, then, is to protect people from those who would violently interfere. You would see law perverted to suit your own ends.

 

Where did I say anything about wanting equality?

Straw man.

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You're obfuscating and muddling.

 

Don't see the correlation. The prime was low in the years before inequality began skyrocketing in 1981, and it was low in the years after.



Something else happened in 1981.

How, in your view, would the prime rate cause inequality to skyrocket?

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I never said they shouldn't. But they should certainly pay a tax on money they get like everyone else has to.

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I never said they shouldn't. But they should certainly pay a tax on money they get like everyone else has to.

 

I'm not saying that most should not have some skin in the game.

But the richest 10% are not getting 50% of the nation's gross income, up from 35% in 1980. 50% of the nation's income is more than enough to make the kind of impact we need.

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http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=9&step=1 Table 2.1

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Phrases, you mean like "using the violence and police powers of the state to harm peaceful people"?

From people who claim to be logical about economics but drop that completely to generate moral outrage. It's intellectual dishonesty and anything they post should be considered as biased as a creationist posting anti-evolutionary "science" sources, right?

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Exactly. As long as they are *your* morals, you're fine with using violence to enforce them. Just pointing out your hypocritical claim you were against that.

 

I'm just like you. I wouldn't use violence against anyone as long as they follow the rules.

We just have some different views on morals.

No, you're happy to use violence to enforce *your* morals, as you admitted and I demonstrated above.

The only difference are the opinions on what is moral.

 

Whatever level society deems appropriate.

But we've seen the negative impact of the Reagan "trickle down" policies on consumer spending and our economy as more and more of the nation's income and wealth have been redistributed from the middle class to the richest.

So objectively speaking, the overall impact of that distribution on the economy is a factor that should be considered.

 

You are referring to deregulation. That has kind of occurred all though out this, Isn't there more regulation now?

I already explained it. The prime rate goes down. Credit is easier to get more people borrow. Everything cost more in part because credit is easy. makes it easier to afford large purchases. In part because people are paying interest on everything we buy. Rich people collect the interest. Giving them more money to lend to people who are less rich. All these transactions come with a fee, they collect that they get richer etc.

It wasn't low really.. It peaked in 1981.

 

How am I referring to regulation?

We certainly had regulation before and after 1981. Regulation didn't suddenly skyrocket in 1981 driving inequality.

Something else happened that year.

That makes little sense. If "rich people collect interest" they collected more interest in the mid 1970s and early 80s when interest rates were high, and less when it was low, and we would have seen inequality drop after the mid 80s.

 

What else happen? I was 1. I know there was a crash, I know interests rates peaked, and I know Regan deregulated.

We didn't though because they had us with credit we were hooked. A lot of economist blame the rise in stocks due to the low rates. Savings rates were also high prior. Consumerism was pretty stagnate prior. Think of all new household toys that hit the markets during that time period.

 

Oh, I see, so maybe you are just uninformed.

I'll give you a quick overview. The "Reagan revolution" was based on the concept that if we made the rich richer, they would create jobs and the wealth would "trickle down" (a phrase Reagan's budget director used) to the middle class.

So to enable this, during the tenure of Reagan and the two Bushes, there were massive tax cuts for the richest (top income tax rate, estate tax, investment taxes), and a major tax increase on the middle/lower class working folks (FICA). The minimum wage was not raised and with inflation, shrank to relatively lower levels. Conservative legislators did not update OT laws and conservative judges whittle away at its scope, so that few people were covered under OT laws. Unions, which had already been in decline, were further demonized (most famously by Reagan's air traffic controller union busting) and their power to unionize workers diminished, and many conservative states passed "right to work laws" which virtually eliminated union representation. We also had a major decrease in welfare and a relative decrease in government assistance for higher education, and fewer employers providing health care.

Some of these things were scaled back a bit under Clinton who had a Democratic Congress for 2 years and Obama (same), but for all but 4 years out of the last 36, Republicans have controlled at lease one house of Congress and have been able to protect or expand these income redistributing effect.

And we see the consequence:



The Reagan "trickle down" revolution worked fabulously well at making the rich richer. The top 1% now gets about 20% of the nation's income and has about 40% of the nation's wealth, doubled since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution.

But it didn't "trickle down". The bottom 90% middle classes are now only getting 50% of the nation's wealth, down from about 65%.

That equates to over $2 Trillion with a "T" that is going to the richer few instead of the middle classes every year.

Give that the middle classes are the "great engine of spending" and the wealtiest tend to spend only a fraction of their income, it should be no surprise that consumer spending growth has been anemic compared to prior decades (and Republican austerity has not helped).

And since 70% of our economy is based on spending, economic growth has been anemic as well.

"Trickle down" has made the richest fabulously richer, proportionally richer than any time in modern history.

But it has hurt our middle classes and our economy.

 

You said you were concerned with them getting income. Did you really mean to say that you were concerned that not enough of their income was being taken from them by the government?

 

You'll have to point me to my post you are referring to. I don't recall ever saying I was concerned with heirs getting income.

 

I like the idea but I wonder what the impact will be economically at the start. In CA there are some folks that have had their property taxes frozen for decades. I would assume property taxes would go up but I would also assume that the tax burden overall would be much less for each taxpayer.

I also think that valuation of property would have to be somehow consolidated as property taxes are levied by State/Local assessors. Each has different methods for valuing property and different tax rates.

 

from the models I could run and from personal experience, I would expect initially for it to have a negative impact on housing, as some folks will sell off and essentially increase density slightly in homes... this will be from some seniors moving into their kids homes, some kids staying with their parents longer, etc etc etc... but I think it'll be a small impact even though I acknowledge it WILL have some initial negative impact... and going forward I expect it to actually help reduce cost of living for all the reasons cited, but also because I expected density per household to increase, which means less folks will be paying rent or have mortgages, so in addition to the other savings, you'll also see a great increase in wealth building since density increases to take advantage of this... grand scheme of things, investors in new home builders, as well as REITs for renters, will drop in value in this kind of an economy initially, but you'll see other sectors increase... basically like any changes you make, there will be winners and losers, ultimately however my approach and goal was to reduce cost of living and increase wealth for people, not so much for companies, so I was less concerned with tracking which industries will benefit and profit the most and those that will lose the most, but it won't take a rocket scientist to connect those dots to be honest...

I agree each state will value properties different, but thats moreso to do with local economies and now so much a "standard" method that needs to be deployed to value a property, what people are willing to pay to buy them, is pretty much the gold standard in assessing them, now in some cases folks will want to pay an assessor to come in or to challenge the city/states assessment because their property won't match the averages in their neighborhoods, you know where a mix of old and new property is, or homes that have been neglected or damaged in some ways will naturally get assessed lower, but there is no magical formula thats really needed, just plain old assessments... and since each state/county/city will just be added a "line" to each property tax, we won't have to worry about local formulas which may say "we only tax properties at 90% assessed value for a 3% rate"... it'll just be a straight assessment and a set percentage... the only thing I ever left open for discussion in the past, was lets call it the "farmers assessment" where perhaps we do allow them to pay a different percent, although quite frankly, when I reviewed their assessments, the actual cost to them was negligible per acre, and wouldn't affect food prices that much, people blow the farmer hysteria way our of proportion when saying I'll bankrupt them all...

but yes, overall for lower and middle class people, the burden would be lower, as we reduced cost of living despite raising property taxes, however like I pointed out, on the upper and luxury brackets of property it would increase as those are the people who generally like me, benefit the most from the current tax code, but it would shrink the burden on corporations as well, which was intended... I mean the 10% we collect now on the federal level from them is so insignificant we can afford to shift that to the upper and luxury individuals instead, in exchange for creating an immense business environment which will once again benefit the lower and middle class... its basically my "fair" way of redistributing wealth, but giving people the choice... nothing is preventing a millionaire from living in the slums, I'm sure a couple might, I sure won't though...

 

Then why introduce inequality into the discussion?

 

Someone asked me why I was so concerned about the rich.

 

"Society" doesn't deem anything. That's just more obfuscating rhetoric. Individuals do things. Collectives are just conceptual labels.

What does "Reagan trick down" policies have to do with anything? Did I mention anything about Reagan or "trickle down"? More obfuscation from the moralist.

 

Whatever conceptual label suits you.

It was was in answer to your question about how much inequallity is "immoral."

 

The rich are the natural prey of the political class.

“When bad things happen in Washington, we assume the problem is that our national leaders have given in to seductive outside forces, the “special interests”, from time to time we erect laws and rules to protect politicians from these temptations. But what if we have it backwards? What if the greater culprits are *inside* the halls of power in Washington rather than on the outside? Some at the heart of Washington power have hinted at this cold, hard reality. As Edward Kangas, former global chairman Deloitte Touche, put it: ‘What has been called legalized bribery looks like extortion to us … I know from personal experience and from other executives that it's not easy saying no to appeals for cash from powerful members of Congress or there operatives. Congress can have a major impact on business … The threat may be veiled, but the message is clear: failing to donate could hurt your company.’”. EXTORTION, "How Politicians Extract Your money, BuyVotes, And Line Their Own Pockets, Peter Schweizer, HMO, NY, NY, 2013 p. 3.

Without the rich how would our politicians get rich?

 

Good point. Yet another reason, along with the economic and fairness ones, to reverse the growth of income inequality.

We've pampered the richest enough. Time to focus on middle class workers. Reverse trickle down.

 

Professional politicians will not do that. Will a Trump? He might - if he wanted to - will probably not occur to him.
But then if the entire political class keeps alienating him ... Trump is vindictive.

 

Trump "might"? Are you kidding me? Have you even bothered to look at his plans and proposals? Massive tax cuts for the m/billionaires.

Which of course will benefit Donald himself greatly. You wouldn't honestly expect anything differently, would you?

 

Trump is not ideological, and unpredictable and vindictive, and Wall Street is in open war with him now. If you want any chance of seeing the super rich tale a hit vote for Trump. Clinton is the Wall Street candidate.

While I doubt that Trump will go for any substantive change it is clear that Clinton will not. The Clintons have a very long history of betraying the people who believe their political promises.

 

Trump stated position is to cut the top income tax rate to 33% (his first plan was to cut it to 25% but he flip flopped when he got too much heat), eliminate the alternative minimum tax, and eliminate the estate tax.

Feel free to explain how that is going to put a "hit" on Donald and other m/billionaires.

You've been conned by the "con man."