Why Are We Afraid to Tax the Super-Rich?

[dreamdancer 0]

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>and money is easier to tax.

And store. All those chickens can make a racket.

is it easier to tax the gold coin hidden under the bed or the land, cattle and chickens you own?

Nope. The IRS can tax you on assumption of income if you can't produce other means of proof of income.

I'm personally glad my money markets and my deposits do not shit all over the place.

sounds like we've got all the tools at hand then to tax the super rich

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[billvon 3,119]

>sounds like we've got all the tools at hand then to tax the super rich

Yep, or the middle class - or even the guy who has only chickens. Think of all the money we could make! You could get everyone a PhD.

[rushmc 23]

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In 2006 the top 20 percent of income earners paid almost 70 percent of all federal taxes.
In addition, it is the "super-rich" who higher and pay people so if you want people to have jobs, (which equals more people to tax and more goods being exchanged and more taxes on goods ect, then you should tax the rich less. If you tax the rich more then they have to let people go and raise prices and there are less people to buy the good meaning less people to tax and less taxes on goods and more people on welfare and unemployement putting the government into further debt because the "super-rich" can't higher more people becuase the government taxes them so much.

trickle down economics has been a failure. it has meant the rich getting exponentially richer and leaving the government (us) in huge debt.

(remember it was the rich who invented taxation in the first place - time to use their own weapon against them)

And what facts do you have for such a statement or is the fact that it worked so well for reagan despite the fact he started with unemployment at 10.8% and it lowering unemployment, causing deflation of the dollar, and all the tax cuts only reduced government revenues from taxes by 1%. What a failure!

Reagan's policies tripled the National Debt. The apparent prosperity of the Reagan years was based on BORROWING. George H.W. Bush was absolutely correct when he called it "Voodoo Economics".

No, Tip ONeals budget did

Reagan doubled the monies coming into the treasury.

Spending tripled the debt

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[champu 1]

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>sounds like we've got all the tools at hand then to tax the super rich

Yep, or the middle class - or even the guy who has only chickens. Think of all the money we could make! You could get everyone a PhD.

"Go on, I steal from the rich. Are you rich?"

"No, I'm … comfortable."

"That's no good, I can't steal from the fairly well off and give to the moderately impoverished! That's not gonna swing, is it?"

[rhys 0]

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Yes, most defiantely.

Exactly what does that mean?

you inability to read between the lines, probay explains why you have a poor understanding of basic physics 9pertaining to our other conversation).

If it not spelled out absolutely correctly for you, can you not understand the message?

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[champu 1]

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you inability to read between the lines, probay explains why you have a poor understanding of basic physics 9pertaining to our other conversation).

"I can't hear you... you're trailing off. And did I catch a "niner" in there? Were you calling from a walkie-talkie?"

[hwt 0]

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socialism doesn't work.

yes it does
(next)

If you like socialism so much , then move to Greece or France or whatever . Stop trying to change America

[dreamdancer 0]

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socialism doesn't work.

yes it does
(next)

If you like socialism so much , then move to Greece or France or whatever . Stop trying to change America

that's up to me - not you

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[kallend 2,150]

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If you like socialism so much , then move to Greece or France or whatever . Stop trying to change America

That attitude reminds me of the redneck south during the civil rights movement. And of those who wanted to deny the vote to women.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[dreamdancer 0]

there is no time element involved in barter. i have a good - you have a good. we swap - we walk away immediately satisfied.

now, we can have an imperfect barter trade along the lines of - i only have 2 sheep at the moment but i will give you 3 more sheep later for that single cow at the moment. the trader with the cow accepts the trade and walks away with 2 sheep and a promise/iou/money in his pocket for 3 more sheep to cash in at the next market

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[idrankwhat 0]

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If you like socialism so much , then move to Greece or France or whatever . Stop trying to change America

No one is trying to change America, just improve it. We are already socialist-capitalist-communists. The system just needs to be tweaked for sustainability.

[rhaig 0]

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If you like socialism so much , then move to Greece or France or whatever . Stop trying to change America

No one is trying to change America, just improve it. We are already socialist-capitalist-communists. The system just needs to be tweaked for sustainability.

improve is a type of change. So you are trying to change America. And if you don't like the way it's operating, you should try to change it. That's the whole point of the system.

Don't take that to mean there won't be a shit ton of people who disagree with you. Many of them here.

--
Rob

[idrankwhat 0]

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improve is a type of change. So you are trying to change America. And if you don't like the way it's operating, you should try to change it. That's the whole point of the system.

Don't take that to mean there won't be a shit ton of people who disagree with you. Many of them here.

This implies that you like things exactly as they are. I'd wager that most people, especially here, disagree with you.

[billvon 3,119]

>If you like socialism so much , then move to Greece or France or
>whatever . Stop trying to change America

If you want pure capitalism, move to Somalia. Stop trying to change the US.

We _are_ socialist. Roads, the CDC, NASA, air traffic control - all socialist. Our parks, our airspace - communist. Most of our commerce - capitalist.

Heck, even our government is a mix. We are part monarchy (one ruler) part democratic government (ballot measures) part representative government (laws passed via the legislature.)

That's why the US works so well - because we are not tied to any one "ism." We use the best parts of some and discard the worst. But it's somewhat hypocritical to cry about socialism while using the parts of it you like.

[rhaig 0]

i dont see anything in my post that implies i like the way things are. I believe you have inferred incorrectly.

--
Rob

[idrankwhat 0]

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i dont see anything in my post that implies i like the way things are. I believe you have inferred incorrectly.

Quite possibly.
The first time I read it I thought you were arguing against change. My mistake if that was not the point.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

You want change? How about forcing government to reduce their spending (yes this includes military spending). All we hear is tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend. Governments are too big, too fat and the people working at these government jobs are too spoiled with their entitlements.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[idrankwhat 0]

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You want change? How about forcing government to reduce their spending (yes this includes military spending). All we hear is tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend. Governments are too big, too fat and the people working at these government jobs are too spoiled with their entitlements.

I completely agree. Cut the waste.

[rehmwa 2]

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You want change? How about forcing government to reduce their spending (yes this includes military spending). All we hear is tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend. Governments are too big, too fat and the people working at these government jobs are too spoiled with their entitlements.

I completely agree. Cut the waste.

ya know what? cut everything

"waste" implies we know what's necessary and what isn't - but if we cut everything, I think we'll find out that nothing in there is absolutely necessary. Not even the things I/you think are necessary.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[billvon 3,119]

>ya know what? cut everything

Would be an interesting experiment. Cut everything by X percent and see what happens. The problem would be "sticking to our guns" and not making the million exceptions to that experiment.

What's that? A dozen soldiers may die because they're not being resupplied? Well, they knew they could die when they signed up.

And ATC? You have to shut down for two weeks because you can't pay your employees? Get Delta and United on the horn and tell them they're not flying.

Car accident? Family trapped inside? Stay put until next Tuesday; that's when EMS is working again. Hospital is closed anyway.

There are undoubtedly better ways to handle all of the above, but those are the sort of 'growing pains' we'd see (and the sort of pain we'd have to be willing to put up with to make anything like that work.)

[loumeinhart 0]

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That's why the US works so well - because we are not tied to any one "ism." We use the best parts of some and discard the worst. But it's somewhat hypocritical to cry about socialism while using the parts of it you like.

awesome post

[rehmwa 2]

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>ya know what? cut everything

Would be an interesting experiment. Cut everything by X percent and see what happens. The problem would be "sticking to our guns" and not making the million exceptions to that experiment.

What's that? A dozen soldiers may die because they're not being resupplied? Well, they knew they could die when they signed up.

And ATC? You have to shut down for two weeks because you can't pay your employees? Get Delta and United on the horn and tell them they're not flying.

Car accident? Family trapped inside? Stay put until next Tuesday; that's when EMS is working again. Hospital is closed anyway.

There are undoubtedly better ways to handle all of the above, but those are the sort of 'growing pains' we'd see (and the sort of pain we'd have to be willing to put up with to make anything like that work.)

"and not making the million exceptions to that experiment" ah ha - but no way could that happen with our current politicians now could it


I like your scenarios that show we are so incredibly efficient that losing any dollars results in tragedy.

do the soldiers REALLY die? Do you REALLY shut he ATC down for two weeks? Does that family REALLY not get saved?

methinks you place a lot of faith in government doing things with money and not a lot of faith in people finding ways to get things done more efficiently. (Actually, I see your post as more of a clear indicator of how "addicted" the public is to government service - it really tells how far we have swung on the spectrum)

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[billvon 3,119]

>do the soldiers REALLY die? Do you REALLY shut he ATC down for
>two weeks? Does that family REALLY not get saved?

Ay, there's the rub. In most cases - no, they don't. But:

1) in some cases they do because we have become so used to having that money that we don't know how to do without it. Sure, US troops could start hunting goats and eating them, or using local weapons/ammunition. But in the process there are going to be problems - and that's going to result in problems like the ones above.

As a simpler example, you could probably switch to a system where there's no manned air traffic control, just computerized traffic separation services. But there's no question that that transition (especially a rapid one driven by a lack of money) would be rocky.

2) in other cases that will be the claim, if not the reality. What's the first thing politicians say they will shut down when budgets get tight? Parks, schools, basically the most visible things out there. This isn't because closing parks saves a lot of money (at least, compared to, say, not building a new football stadium) - but closing the parks is going to piss off a LOT of people, and those people are then going to be amenable to someone who proposes a temporary sales tax or something. Just to save the parks, of course.

3) when that family of four does die a fiery death while the phone rings at the unattended 911 call center, that's going to wipe out billions in savings. (Not literally; people are worth about $1.2 million each per the UK rail system, which is one of the few organizations to actually put a monetary value on life.) But that will again set up a public perception that we're "killing families to save a few pennies" - and a sound bite like that will get even the most wasteful politician elected.

I think it would be great to give it a try. But there are some very serious problems with implementation no matter what your political views.

[idrankwhat 0]

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I think it would be great to give it a try. But there are some very serious problems with implementation no matter what your political views.

Shutting down the FDA and the CDC should get the body count rolling. The media will love it. I'll have to remember to buy some of their stock before we start this experiment.

[dreamdancer 0]

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. . . after all this time in small, egalitarian, hunter gather groups using proto markets to barter limited surplus's we decide to settle down and start farming. suddenly we have huge surplus's, increasing population and an explosion in the variety of goods being produced. also, there is stuff worth nicking, so we finally get to see the rise of the warlord

I was wondering where you got your economics; now I'm wondering where you get your history. There was nothing "sudden" about huge agricultural surpluses. They began to occur as farming methods improved, which took place in fits and starts over several millenia.

You are correct though in that the successes of early agriculrure were the foundation for civilization, the beginnings of commerce, and the founding of the first things we would eventually call states.

Wrong about that leading to warloards though. They were not dependent on agriculture, or even on others that practiced agricultrure. They were just as happy to slaughter other nomadic foragers and herders as they were to slaughter city folk.

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Cities started around five thousand years ago, when some of the world's great river valleys saw a step change in human development. Fertile land, farmed successfully, became in just a few centuries very densely populated. On the Nile this hugely increased population led, as we saw in the last programme, to the creation of a unified Egyptian state. In Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates - now Iraq - the agricultural surplus, and the population that could support, led to settlements of up to 30,000 - 40,000 people, a size never seen before, and to the first cities. Co-ordinating groups of people on this scale obviously needed new systems of power and control, and the systems devised in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC have proved astonishingly resilient. They have pretty well set the urban model to this day. It's no exaggeration to say that modern cities everywhere have Mesopotamia in their DNA.

On the Standard, the scenes are arranged like three comic strips, one on top of each other. One side shows what must be any ruler's dream of how a tax system should operate. In the lower two registers, people calmly line up to offer their tribute of produce and fish, sheep, goats and oxen; and on the top register, the king and the elite, probably priests, are feasting on the proceeds while somebody plays the lyre. And you couldn't have a clearer demonstration of how the structures of power work in Ur: the land workers shoulder their burdens and deliver offerings, while the elite drink with the king - and to emphasise the king's pre-eminence, the artist has made him much bigger than anybody else - in fact so big that his head breaks through the border of the picture. What we are looking at in the Standard of Ur is a totally new model of how a society is organised. We asked the former Director of the London School of Economics, Professor Anthony Giddens, to consider this shift in social organisation:

"From having a surplus, you get the emergence of classes, because some people can live off the labour of others, which they couldn't do in traditional small agricultural communities - everybody worked. Then you get the emergence of usually a priestly warrior class, you get the emergence of organised warfare, you get the emergence of tribute and something like a state - which is really the creation of a new form of power I think. So all those things hang together, and that was the way it happened really, the conjunction of all those things.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode12/

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding