Fixing Inequality through Taxes

What was your intent in bringing a SLAVERY appeal into a thread on CURRENT tax policy, and moreover applying it to my second post to the thread? a short response to another poster having NOTHING to do with slavery or any "attack on the poor?" ...while utterly IGNORING my ONE OTHER long post to the thread FULL of facts and reasoning inconvenient to your argument, yet STILL not "attacking the poor" in any way, or having anything remotely to do with slavery? Rhetorical, we all know already. Now you are just playing "Who, me? what?" Transparent, slimy and dishonest.

LOL are you a STRING DOLL? just one that always says the same thing? I sure as hell didn't post any of that or anything like that, and just PROVED as much in my last post. Fine, the whole exchange is there two posts up in black and white.

ONE... ONE POST, before the "biting the hand that feeds" post... ONE... (#59 IIRC) that you have conveniently ignored, not addressed ANY of, what? six times? Yet are NOW claiming it has some "attacks on the poor" in it... without CITING OR QUOTING THEM? You are brazen enough to assume this "ask me anything you want" posture, yet claim that I have a "number of other posts" I made before the "biting the hand" comment? WTH?

When you are trying to cover your tracks by not quoting outright, and avoiding making it obvious how ABSURD and ridiculous it was for you to introduce a completely off-topic slavery tangent FOR OBVIOUS, TYPICALLY LEFTIST REASONS into this thread. You should have just dropped it after I called Godwin. You are in the wrong on this, have been in the wrong, and will continue to be in the wrong. This isn't your echo chamber where you can just spout off appeals to racism, sexism, classism, slavery, rape culture, whatever BS diversions and deflections leftists are peddling through the megaphone this week, without being CALLED OUT on it.

You cited it wrong to begin with. You -purposefully- cited it wrong from a leftist blog free of methodology or explanation instead of its actual source, hoping a) people would be misled into the conclusion the hack-blogger wanted them to reach merely upon seeing the 43% number and not the actual source or methodology; and b) hoping that people wouldn't see the WHOLE data which is nowhere near as dire looking as the CHERRY-PICK graph you in fact linked, actually makes a positive statement about mobility in the US. A supermajority of people in the US earn more than their parents, making a very strong case for generally healthy social mobility in the US. That's the takeaway you and blog boy don't want us to realize. This kind of thing goes on daily here with you leftists and the cutpaste, "free-floating" blog graphs that you cite from some official sounding source and then they end up being completely datamined, cherry-picked or curve fit, almost always devoid of necessary context. Gonna play "Who? Me? What?" on that too? Again, black and white, right here in this thread.

Yeah, no. The graph is dead. I killed it. If you want to revive it, then address more of my reasoned issues with it in a straightforward way... which I estimate is about snowball in hell chance of happening given your history in this thread. And what nerve on you. My FIRST POST TO THE THREAD THAT YOU PURPOSEFULLY SKIPPED OVER TO TOSS IN THE SLAVERY SNIDE IS CRAM PACKED CHOCK FULL OF CONTRARY DATA TO THAT GRAPH. Jaezes

Whatever. YOU did that, not me, and are continuing it. It's not civil to falsely characterize someone's post as some slavemaster logic and then dance all around repetitively like a kid caught raiding the cookie jar when called out on it.

I'll get civil when you get honest.

 

YOU linked the thing deadlinked to the source at Pew, not me. YOU cited it out of context from a far left partisan blog with bad links, not me. You did this on purpose to hide the whole data from the survey, stop playing games.

 

Do people seriously believe that an investment banker like chuck prince, who helped drive the economy into a recession deserves a 38 million dollar parachute when leaving his company? There are surgeons, doctors, nurses, engineers and construction workers out there doing an infinitely more important job for society every day, making only a fraction of that. I am not advocating socialism, but the crony capitalism that is raging in the US right now is completely messed up. And inequality at this scale will eventually become a problem. Not just socially, but economically and democratically aswell.

It is not about envy, I have no problem with a surgeon who saves lives every day making a ton more money than me or someone who flips burgers. That is common sense. But to see the greedy bankers who helped cause the recession take out massive bonuses after the taxpayers have bailed them out, while ordinary people are struggling to make ends meet is incredibly provoking. Privatize the profit and socialize the risk I guess. That is not free market capitalism, it is a plutocracy in the making.

 

Meta777: ".....the idea that the poor should be content with what they get as a result of what the rich do because they are better off than others or something
is fallacious and of the same caliber of the reasoning which was used by advocates for slavery. I'm not saying you yourself are pro-slavery,?

The poor shouldn't be content. That's why they should acquire skills, acquire and education, get a better job, or do whatever they need to do to improve their lot....except steal. They should just go around their neighborhood taking what they want or have someone else do it for them while they sit on the curb drinking beer with their buddies.

What the "poor" absolutely should not do is accept a lifetime of poverty on welfare offered by the liberals.

 

What is stealing? How sad. I realize liberals have no standards of ethical conduct. Taking the property of others by stealth, fraud, force, or threats of force would be stealing. So, tiptoeing into your house a 3 a.m. and taking your television would be stealing. Getting paid to do work you don't do would be stealing. Taking people's property at the point of a gun would be stealing. Or, threatening a person's family and home if they don't give you their property would be stealing. And, yes, the government steals from working citizens.

The civil seizure nonsense is stealing. Taking a person's home to give the property to a campaign contributor is stealing.

And, I'm sure you do support people gaining skills and working. But, if they really don't want to, you support their being able to live a life of leisure on ill-gotten gains.

A last thought on the short supply of jobs. Why is it when there are no jobs we keep having illegal immigrants come north and go to work?

 

ALL those words for this



- - - Updated - - -

Your inabilty to refute anything is noted

 

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”

Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/u...ise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0



The United States of Inequality


Social Immobility: Climbing The Economic Ladder Is Harder In The U.S. Than In Most European Countries


The report finds the U.S. ranking well below Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Spain in terms of how freely citizens move up or down the social ladder. Only in Italy and Great Britain is the intensity of the relationship between individual and parental earnings even greater.


Recent economic events may be increasing social mobility in the U.S. -- but only of the downward variety


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/social-immobility-climbin_n_501788.html

 

He'd have NOTHING left to post with though

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All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. Ben Franklin

 

In the fifties we spent 23% of GDP on the Federal government we are now spending 30% on the Feds and most spending at the state and local level is mandated by the federal government. Total government spending in 1950 was less than 30% of GDP now it is fifty percent and nearly a third of the population can't find a job because regulatory overburden has dramatically increased the cost of labor and you want to solve the problem by adding to it.

 

Historical Federal Receipt and Outlay Summary




http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200




As Corporate Profits Reach Record Levels, Their Effective Tax Rates Decrease


http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/comm...ord-levels-their-effective-tax-rates-decrease



'Last year, corporations made a record $824 billion, which didn’t stop conservatives from continually claiming that President Obama is anti-business.'

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/22/504853/corporate-profits-all-time-high/




Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs


No hard evidence is offered for this claim; it is simply asserted as self-evident and repeated endlessly throughout the conservative echo chamber.


Small Business Majority asked 1,257 small-business owners to name the two biggest problems they face. Only 13 percent listed government regulation as one of them. Almost half said their biggest problem was uncertainty about the future course of the economy — another way of saying a lack of customers and sales.

The Wall Street Journal’s July survey of business economists found, “The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists.”

In August, McClatchy Newspapers canvassed small businesses, asking them if regulation was a big problem. It could find no evidence that this was the case.

“None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it,” McClatchy reported. “Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-9 and its grim aftermath.”



The latest monthly survey of its members by the National Federation of Independent Business shows that poor sales are far and away their biggest problem. While concerns about regulation have risen during the Obama administration, they are about the same now as they were during Ronald Reagan’s administration, according to an analysis of the federation’s data by the Economic Policy Institute.




http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/regulation-and-unemployment/



Profits Just Hit Another All-Time High, Wages Just Hit Another All-Time Low

1) Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't. What they're suffering from is a myopic obsession with short-term profits at the expense of long-term value creation).







2) Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low. Why are corporate profits so high? One reason is that companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are represent spending power for consumers. And consumer spending is "revenue" for other companies. So the profit obsession is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.






In short, our current obsessed-with-profits philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.


http://www.businessinsider.com/profits-at-high-wages-at-low-2013-4#ixzz3T338rlGx



The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains (1/10th of 1%)



http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertl...of-the-nation-earn-half-of-all-capital-gains/

 

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains (1/10th of 1%)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertl...of-the-nation-earn-half-of-all-capital-gains/





In short, our current obsessed-with-profits philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.

 

Odd quote you use:

“The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”

Total wealth has increased substantially, everyone admits that is true, but they claim the problem is that the additional wealth has gone to the top 10%. Generally the poor are not any poorer, the middle class has not lost value, they are both just stagnant. Stagnant wage growth, stagnant job growth, no increase in wealth.

Yet your selected quote is that top tax rate is uncorrelated to productivity growth, and top tax rate have little/no correlation to the size of the economic pie....but top tax rate is related to wealth inequality? Somehow reducing the top tax rate created all that new wealth that went to the top 10%.

Your own "proof" contradicts itself. Didn't think this through, did you? That's the danger of doing a quick cut and paste without thinking.

 

Being efficient can create new problems that one may not be able to deal with effectively.

Let's take computers for instance. Computers have made our economy more efficient. Through automation, by the use of computers, we are able to build things more consistently, faster, and and reliable. Computers help institutional investors, such as the large mutual fund companies, to trade in ways that are ten thousand times fister than he 1980's. And computers have made the interne possible.


But with computers, there are draw backs. A major problem is hacking. Anyone who has even the basic knowedge of computer programming skills, with the aid of software, can hack anyone and possibly steal their identity or any other nafarous scheme. Computers can be used to skirt the system without anyone knowing about it or questioning it. And computers, thoruhg the internet, can allow even the most extremist ideas become more accessible, more tolerated, and more acceptable than before.

If we did not have computers, the problems that computers have brought will be eliminated, but our economy will not be efficient either. So the ethical question becomes is that a good thing?

Hard to answer given that our and most societies are used to technology and the instantaneous gratification it brings. But at the same time, the problems still persist and are not eliminated to a degree that makes people feel safe about technology.


As the adage goes, "it it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies and we are constantly tring to fix something that really is not broke, economically speaking.

 

That's interesting, a whole lot of generalities without a single source of concrete fact. So that leads to a few questions, just what did, in your honorable opinion, did cause the great depression and why is it tied into this thread on taxes? Same for FDR and his new deal, how does that relate to this thread on taxes?

And by the way, they both do relate to taxes in some manner and both have dire effects on the inequality.

 

Would that not add to the inequality by establishing an even deeper class system? How about we educate on the concepts of taxation of one's labor and why that is but slavery? How about we educate that income tax is voluntary and people stop volunteering to be a slave?

 

That begs, not answers the question. This thread is about solving the inequality issue by taxation but in your reply you bring up riches. As a reply you introduce a broad generality of some sort of "tangible forms" and another as some "economy as a whole".

So am I to take that your comment is but some off-hand remark not to be taken seriously?

 

Wow, such a well stated argument killed by a prejudice that taints the whole thing. First, there really is no difference between those labeled conservative against those labeled liberal, they both demand the right to rule the other.

Second, laborers deserve nothing outside the sum for which they sold their souls. If they aren't happy, they should seek to sell their souls elsewhere. Really all it amounts to is voluntary servitude, one that volunteers to be a slave.

Third, the real problem lies within the masses and their destruction of the free market system by endorsing the likes of the big box environment against the individual.

But still that doesn't address the inequality problem, that is again the problem of the unwashed masses that has allowed it to happen. They have accepted the benefit and ignored the price, now they are having to pay that price. But that isn't the worst of it, future generations will pay even heavier than the people are today.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

--unknown but so erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

And the wealthy get even richer, not in that so worthless paper most call money but in real assets stolen from the people using that worthless trash.

 

You aren't able to use logic and reason? Just cutting ones taxes for the "job creators" does NOTHING to influence the size or growth of the economy HOWEVER cutting the top tax rate DOES influence the way the pie is split. THINK

In 1980 the top 1% earned 8.5% of total income. In 2007 they earned 23%.

In 1980 the bottom 90% earned 68% of total income. In 2007 they earned 53%.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2012#table3

GOV'T POLICY MATTERS !!!

LIKE YOU SAID, THE DANGERS OF NOT THINKING

 

Oh right ANOTHER libertarian who can't point to a successful state/nation to EVER following their policies. Weird

It's all myths and fairy tales to the right wingers


In 1980 the top 1% earned 8.5% of total income. In 2007 they earned 23%.

In 1980 the bottom 90% earned 68% of total income. In 2007 they earned 53%.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2012#table3

GOV'T POLICY MATTERS !!!

BUT PLEASE SHOW ME THIS MYTHICAL "FREE MARKET" LOL

 

Willy Wonka memes and a quote from a communist do not conceal the fact that you obviously can't refute what I posted, most of which wasn't even in the ballpark of ad hominem. Right there in black and white. You posted a total straw man with the Limbaugh appeal and very plainly do not understand what the term "zero sum" means.

 

To what "strong property rights" and "rule of law" are you referring?