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White House Proposes "Wealthy Tax"
President Obama is proposing a new tax rate for people making over $1m a year. The new rate is part of a larger plan which seeks to bring in $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue and is sure to meet opposition in congress. From the article: "The core of the president's plan totals just more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. It combines the new taxes with $580 billion in cuts to mandatory benefit programs, including $248 billion from Medicare." GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, "Class warfare may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics."
So all they did was give even larger incentive for rich people to start playing games with taxes. Remember that tax planning isn't illegal, nor is forming offshore companies. It's unlikely to change as well, because foreign companies are needed too. As long as you keep the money in the offshore company accounts and not your personal ones, you don't need to pay taxes from them. The people making over one million dollars a year have all the means to do this - normal working people don't.
You know what, maybe start looking if the huge companies pay taxes? For example Google does a insane amount ($60 BILLION) of tax dodging.
Once the wealth accumulates to the top only, how will the economy survive without spending by the middle and lower classes? Won't a lot of business just shutdown because people don't have money to spend?
This space for rent.
It is class warfare to increase tax rates in the highest income brackets to a level that is about half that of the 1950s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#1913_-_2010. The current tax rate for the highest income brackets is 33%. In the 1950s and 1950s the highest tax rate was 91%. One can also argue that the proposed increased tax rate won't even restore the high tax rate to the same extent, since the historical tax rates were for income of at least $250,000, whereas this will apply to income of at least a million dollars but this would be slightly misleading since adjusting for inflation $250,000 in 1960 dollars is around a 2 million now. But even given that, the general point should be clear: This is far less than the historic tax rate during a time period that is often considered to be one of the most stable and prosperous.
The other problem with labels like class warfare is how much they miss the point of what actual class warfare is. If one wants to see actual class warfare look at the French Revolution where aristocrats and clergy got executed and this eventually spread to wealthy merchants. Or look at the Russian Revolution and the following years where people were punished and exiled for simply being farmers who owned their own land and equipment. That's class warfare. Voting to increase tax rates to levels well below historical levels is just regular economic policy. One can discuss whether such taxes are a good or bad thing, but it is pretty clear that such discussion isn't going to go very far when people like Ryan are using this sort of ridiculously inflammatory rhetoric.
Remember how awful the economy was when Clinton was president? Eight horrible years of peace and prosperity, thank God that's long gone.
Going back as far as 1950, higher top marginal rates are (weakly) correlated with improved economic growth, not reduced economic growth ( http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/002279.html ).
Wealth accumulating at the top does ruin the economy. The only thing that makes this economy thrive is spending. One person having a billion dollars in the bank isn't going to make Target's quarterly numbers, no matter how much real-estate or stock said rich person invests in. Unless that money finds its way to the lower and middle class to be spent again, our economy will continue to stagnate. So yes, rich people continuing to accumulate a larger share of the wealth in this country every year are the problem. Fixing corporate tax loopholes will not increase demand for goods from the middle and lower classes.
tax you today for and promise to cut spending tomorrow.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Yes, that's true. However, I wonder why this comment is usually directed at the working classes, when they are the ones upon whom the warfare is being waged. The rich have been conducting class warfare in the US since the Reagan administration, and they are now beginning to reap what they have sown.
I now make more than twice what my father earned at the height of his career in the early 80's, but I have less actual purchasing power. Rotten economics indeed.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Might it not be better just to cut say military spending in half? Nobody is going to invade the US, without coming home to a glass parking lot anyway, and all that money is just thrown down a hole. Yes military spending is to an extent recycled back into the economy, but surely we can come up with something more constructive to spend it on if one must spend that money?
Please understand this is a COMPLETELY honest comment. Please take it as face value. I am ignorant of this new tax and as I am working I don't currently have time to research. Based on the summery, President Obama is proposing to increase taxes on those that make over 1mil a year and the republicans are calling it class warfare. Which part of that is wrong / pandering to the conservative base? If it is fact then it can't be construed as bias, however, if it is FALSE then it should be discredited. In all honesty, I ask, please fill me in. Thank you.
For the past thirty years we have held up the image of the put upon rich person who would love to invest in the US but can't because of our terrible tax burden. So the tax code has been modified to take the burden off the most wealthy [our top tax rate used to be 50% now it is 35%]. We did this in hopes that the wealthy would let the rest of the economy have more. This has not happened. In fact, the money has become more concentrated at the top while wages have stagnated at the bottom and in the middle. Instead of investing in industry, the Giant Pool of Money at the Top has bought US debt [we don't owe our soul to the Chinese, we owe it to the wealthy] and, because T-bills have had lousy returns for a decade, the money also went to fuel speculative bubbles [including the global housing bubble].
In this situation, where the top earners [about 5% of the population] have over 85% of the wealth, to whine about horrible confiscatory tax and wave the class warfare banner is beyond absurd. In order to have class war you need to have class, is the GOP saying that we still have class in the democratic United States?
"The conduct of neither [party], if strictly examined, will be irreproachable." -Elizabeth Bennet
...for a long time now. IIRC, the 250K top tax bracket dates back to almost the beginning of the income tax system, when 250K was legitimately rich, and the earner of 250K would likely be a millionaire due to cash reserves from earning that kind of money for years.
Nowadays, 250K is still a very, very good income, but inflation has curtailed its spending power significantly. New brackets every so often that account for inflation, or else a periodic adjustment of all brackets for inflation would probably be good for the country.
As far as those who want to argue that "job creators" in the form the of the wealthy wouldn't create jobs if their personal income were taxed higher, the simple solution would be to offer tax breaks for the demonstrable creation of jobs. This mainly would affect small companies where only a handful of people actually own the companies in question, as they could say, "I didn't take $XX salary because instead I reinvested $XX in the company for salaries for workers" with the ability to produce those figures from the payroll books...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What's going to be entertaining (in the sense that the sad circus of American politics is entertaining) about this whole thing is to watch the about-face the conservatives will make about how much money it takes to be rich. Recently, various state governments have been going after unions, and you see conservative commentators on the various shows talking about how teachers make enough money, how $30-40k a year is plenty when you consider union benefits, blah blah. Now these same exact people are going to go on the same exact shows and, with a straight face, say how those poor folks making a million a year are just struggling to get by and really need a break in this kind of economy while completely ignoring the fact they've spent a better part of a year telling us a teacher's salary is downright lavish. How does a conservative's head not explode from the cognitive dissonance? Do they actually simultaneously believe these polar opposite stances they take, or are they (like all politicians) simply bought and paid for by their masters and puppet whatever talking points they are fed?
For those of you who are going to dispute my point, here are some preemptive replies. First, I know that folks on the left do this shit all the time too. I remember Kerry's "flip flopping" helping cost him the 2004 election. But pointing to the other side and saying "See, they do the same reprehensible thing we do" does not actually make it okay. It's still downright disingenuous. My point is simple: How much money does it take to be rich? Because the conservatives in America have two different definitions that depend not on the amount income, but essentially on class. The fact that these same conservatives are the first to scream "Class Warfare!" at this kind of proposal is deliciously ironic and the whole thing would be fucking hilarious if the stakes weren't so high.
Reality check: to solve the long-term debt crisis, two things need to happen. Taxes need to go up, and spending needs to go down. Either side that says you can do one but not the other is living in some magical fairy-tale land where facts are superseded by what they wish were true.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
If by "work hard" you mean go to a business school where they will give you a adress book of other self content bastards who will exclusively hire you instead of someone competent and teach you how to maximize short term profit until you can use your golden parachute (only to be hired the next month by another rogue corporation's board), then that's what you deserve. This is about 50% of the rich, "hard working people". Add to that the 45% of lucky sperms, and you have 95% of the rich out there.
Working hard is by far no guarantee to get wealthy.
Being rich is by far no proof to have worked hard.
The important thing is to spare small businesses from the tax increase. A lot of small businesses are either simple proprietorships/partnerships or LLCs, for which the profits are taxed as an addition to personal income. Proprietors and partners will pay these taxes from the cash on hand of the business, meaning that the business has fewer resources to expand and hire more employees.
So go ahead and tax the $20M CEOs and such, but try to avoid placing the additional burden on small businesses.
Don't kid yourself. You're not rich. This isn't about you, even if Fox tries to convince you otherwise.
At best you're some middle-class chump who generates money for those who are actually rich.
This is a subtle point that is covered in first semester microeconomics. The "incidence" of a tax (who actually pays it, seller or buyer of a commodity) depends on the relative slopes of the supply and demand curves. If the commodity is inelastic (i.e. demand doesn't depend much on price: gasoline in the short run), then if you put a tax on the seller, they can just bump the price, and their revenue remains the same, while the buyer pays the full tax. On the other hand, if you have a very elastic commodity (where people are happy to not buy it if the price goes up a little bit), then a tax applied on the mfr falls mostly on the mfr, because if they raise prices, people stop buying. (Example would be a tax on domestically produced toys vs imported ones. There's a lot of toy mfrs out there, and people buy just on price)
So, corporations send tax money to the govt, and some of it is manifested in higher selling prices, but some is manifested in lower revenue. If you have a tax policy that is uneven across lines of business/commodities, you can use this to encourage/discourage certain lines of business (e.g. tobacco taxes). The problem is that different commodities all have different elasticities, and that elasticity changes with time scale (gasoline is inelastic in short run, you still have to drive to work today, but quite elastic in the long run, jack the price of gas up to $6/gallon, and people stop buying Escalades and start buying Honda FITs) If you put a huge tax on gasoline (to encourage reduction in consumption) it would hit the consumer first, but the manufacturers in the long run. So you could give individuals a rebate on the tax when they file everyyear.. OK that helps the overall consumption reduction goal, but now the tax code is more complicated. And so it goes
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning
At long last, someone on Slashdot that understands how an economy works.
Consumer demand drives growth, not rich people investing in gold and government bonds. Companies with money to spend don't expand production (and jobs) if they don't see demand increasing.
And right now they don't see demand increasing so they don't need to expand or hire more people. So they just sit on the money, or they invest in productivity improvements which leads to job losses.
Raising taxes on the rich is the ONLY thing that will save this economy.
Federal taxes are built into gas, phone bills, any product you purchase. Taxes are built into everything. They do this in such a way that the true cost of government is hidden from populace. After all, if you got a bill at the end of the year that said "You owe us 60% of everything you made this year", people might get testy.
So please dont think that the poor are not paying taxes. They are, and they are probably paying a fairly large portion of their meager incomes to boot.
The main reason that Warren Buffer, hedge fund managers, and many of the rest of the ultra-wealthy pay so little in income taxes is that most of their "income" is in the form of long-term capital gains: the appreciation of and sale of investments. On that money, they don't pay the maximum income tax rate of 35%, but rather the maximum long-term capital gains tax rate of 15%. (The situation is different for short-term cap gains, which are generally taxed at the ordinary income tax rate.) This is also the case for many CEOs who have compensation packages in the tens of millions of dollars: much of that value is in the form of stock and stock options, not outright salary.
In that light, creating a new, higher income tax bracket is unlikely to have quite the intended impact that many would like to see: having the ultra-wealthy pay at least as great a percentage of their annual income as taxes as their secretaries, minions, and housekeepers. Much as I prefer a simplified tax code, it seems to me that we may want to instead add this provision: If more than 50% of your adjusted gross income comes from long-term capital gains, then count it as ordinary income, because that's what it is to them.
Yes, some will find ways around that (and goodness knows the ultra-wealthy have tax planners aplenty), but it seems more equitable than what we have currently. Please don't trouble us with the strawman argument of "If the ultra-wealthy have their investments taxed so heavily, then they won't invest." What else are they going to do with all their extra money? Save it at ~0% interest?
Poor often don't pay federal income taxes, but they do pay other taxes, and considerably more, relative to what they make and the wealth they have, than the middle and upper classes.
Note that this is still an income tax -- not a wealth tax. Those who are already wealthy can and will always game this such that they report little income, thereby preserving their wealth. If necessary, they'll just keep their money offshore.
If he had any sense, he'd offer an amnesty to the wealthy. Allow them to repatriate their funds from overseas at a reduced tax rate so that money comes back to the US. The money the treasury makes on that smaller percentage would still be more than the zero they get from it today.
"Class warfare may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics."
Hey, that's actually true! Why didn't you shout out during the Bush administration?
Tax cuts for the rich, huge public deficit, enormous public debt, continued private indebting of the middle class, withering away of the public school system and other government systems that the American middle class and lower classes depend on...
Terrible acts of class war that lead to terrible economics, especially in the long term when the debt is going to be paid off, or alternatively when the US decides to default.
So you're right. Of course, if you don't want a class war the first thing to do is to remember to not start one.
Number of households in the United States filing tax returns: 140,494,127
Number of households in the United States filing tax returns with incomes of $1,000,000 or more: 236,883
Percentage of households in the United States filing tax returns with incomes of $1,000,000 or more: 0.19959471529%
Percentage of households in the United States filling tax returns with incomes of less than $1,000,000: 99.80040528471%
Number of people in the US living at or below the poverty line in 2001: 34,570,000
Number of people in the US living at or below the poverty line in 2010: 46,200,000
Percentage of US population living at or below the poverty line in 2001: 12.1%
Percentage of US population living at or below the poverty line in 2010: 15.1%
Of those living at or below the poverty line in 2010, the percentage that are 18 years old or younger: 35.5%
Of those living at or below the poverty line in 2010, the number that are 18 years old or younger: 16,401,000
Total number of people living in the United States, as of September 19, 2011: 312,204,000
Maximum number of people living in the United States who would be affected by President Obama’s proposal to impose a minimum tax rate on those earning more than $1 million a year : 450,000
Highest possible percentage of people living in the United States who would be affected by President Obama's proposal to impose a minimum tax rate on those earning more than $1 million a year: 0.144136526118%
Number of people in the United States who would not be affected by this tax increase: 311,754,000
Lowest possible percentage of people living in the United States who would not be affected by President Obama's proposal to impose a minimum tax rate on those earning more than $1 million a year: 99.855863473882%
All stats derived by me from Census.gov using 2010 and 2011 census data, and from IRS.gov data using 2009 data, the most recent year for which reporting, especially Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) information, was available.
The first person to invoke Census.gov or IRS.gov conspiracy theories will receive my 1st Annual Stannous Fedora Trophy. Please reply with your mailing address, so I'll know where to send this very special award.
Goddamn Republicans beating the same fucking drum they've been beating for 10 years "Lower taxes and remove regulations so corporations can compete!" Ignoring the fact that that's what got us into this mess to begin with.
And Goddamn Democrats incapable of showing anything resembling leadership. Hook up that vagisil IV drip because they're just a bunch of vaginas.
Vote them out. Vote them all out. And keep doing it until we find some representatives who are more interested in solving the nation's problems than playing political games with American lives as the pieces.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Spending doesn't make an economy thrive. Savings, investment, and production do. More spending and consumption don't fix the effects of over-consumption.
The only thing that makes this economy thrive is spending.
- the US economy is not thriving, it's nowhere near thriving. The only thing that makes any economy thrive is production capacity, and USA has an unsurmountable debt and a 53Billion USD/month trade deficit. That's not thriving, when you are vendor financing all of your purchases.
Who is getting richer when you spend counterfeit currency to buy Chinese made products? It's not the Chinese, so they will come to their senses one of these days and then what?
One person having a billion dollars in the bank isn't going to make Target's quarterly numbers,
- USA doesn't need more consumption, it needs real recession to kick in and it needs underconsumption and savings so that real capital can be once again accumulated to restart production.
A rich person is NOT benefiting from his wealth when he is NOT spending it, the rest of economy IS benefiting from his wealth, because he is not just holding cash in a bank, he is investing that money.
How and where the money is invested is a function of political and economic freedom, but the fact remains: nobody who has billions is actually benefiting from that money until they really spend it, when they are not spending that money, that's the total investment capital available to the market.
You can't handle the truth.
It's about time the rich "share the sacrifice". First nation in history to give tax cuts to the rich, during a time of war. And some of you want to whine about class warfare? You're damn right it is, and the rich have been waging it on the rest of us for 30 years.
Maybe that's because those liberals only consider people with an actual personal income of a million or more to "make $1M". Nobody actually says "Dan the contractor", who grossed $1M last year before taking into account his business expenses and labor costs is a millionaire, unless they're trying to score some points dishonestly about how taxing the rich really hurts the little guy instead.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Give rich people in your country incentives to actually grow their business via local employment instead of offshoring to more attractive labour markets.
Companies with money to spend don't expand their number of jobs if it is far cheaper and less liable to be sued when you spend the money to develop a robot, or pay shipping from the other side of the world from production based in china where the labor rate is less artificially inflated.
If your job market is so fucked that it is cheaper to pay people on the other side of the world to turn your raw materials into products and then ship them back to you, rather than produce locally then something is SERIOUSLY wrong.
That doesn't just go for the US - most of the western world is in a similar position, and this is why they're all fucked. The east asian nations, russia, germany and other economies that have been actually producing goods and putting money into production rather than providing artificially cheap money to fund speculative bubbles are laughing all the way to the bank.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Yeah, as someone who grew up in a work-class family that managed to climb to the upper middle class/lower upper class (or whatever you want to call it) I'm going to quote my dad (who started his own company which ended up becoming fairly successful): "Sure we worked hard but we were lucky too". That pretty much sums up his views on his own success, he worked hard but he was lucky to be in the right place at the right time with the right idea...
On a personal level I've actually had some issues this experience of upward mobility, I grew up in a working class neighborhood, just about all my old friends are the children of people who worked blue collar jobs, I knew I had to work hard to make anything of myself and despised the idle rich (and according to my dad I did so with good reason) yet these days my dad frequently has to deal with these people and yes, a lot of them truly see themselves as "self-made" even though they really had it easier than my dad (and required less luck since they were born into wealth).
Some of today's rich people disgust me. Kudos to Buffett, one rich guy who isn't disgusting.
You FELL FOR IT! Did you know Warren Buffet can go pay for the Federal Debt--there's a link on their page--but he hasn't? He's called for the government to come get it from him. It's great marketing because it won't really happen. It'll be debated, but won't happen. He went out there to make himself look good, because what he said has no real meaning.
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This bill is dead on arrival that the House, which is Republican controlled. Too many there have signed Grover Norquist's pledge to NEVER raise any taxes of any kind.
I'm sorry to say this, but the radicals are now in control. Just like the Taliban, they have an extreme ideology and will not compromise or make "common sense" decisions because they carry a radical philosophy.
As such, there is no longer any 'bargaining" going on. The bill will be flat out struck down or filibustered into oblivion. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but our Congress has passed almost no legislation of any kind since taking office 18 months ago. All they've done is argue.
This is the Congress that campaigned on a platform of "jobs", came in and immediately wasted two days reading the Constitution, then tried to repeal Obamacare and abortion rights, and since then, hasn't done anything except destroy the nation's credit rating.
Good luck getting this through.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Why do people that aren't rich defend people that are? The problem is very simple, just about everyone reading this is not rich. If we would like to live better lives, and build small and medium businesses we need capitol to do this. If the rich have it all, we can't. The only way for our lives to get better is if the rich have less of the money and we have more. It really is just that simple. We can't have more unless the rich have less!
Now, for those that are not rich defending policies that benefit the rich at your expense? WTF? Do you think the rich will read your post and like you? This is like President Obama pandering to the Republicans. It's just dumb. You aren't one of the club.
George Carlin said it best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpcd0woY2KY
* Carthago Delenda Est *
We need a flat tax on income with no loop holes. The only "deduction" should be living expenses, which should be pre-calculated by your local county, and you don't fill that out.
Make $100k/year, but live in an area with $80k/year median living expense cost, your effective income is $20k/year. You pay taxes on that $20k
Make $40k/year, but live in an area with $20k/year median living expense cost, your effective income is $20k/year. You pay taxes on that $20k
The local median living expense should never exceed some factor of the national median living expense, that way you can't have a bunch of rich folk buying out a county and skewing the median.
This is just a start of an idea, I have no idea how it would play out, that would be up to people more knowledgeable than me to find out. But on the surface, it looks like it would allow for a more "fair" taxation.
Personally, I think corps are tax dodging more than people are. Corps are reporting record net profits during a recession and getting 0% effective taxes.. WTF?!
GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, "Class warfare may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics."
The GOP has been waging a class war on the middle class for over a decade and guess what, the middle class lost. Since 2000 the median income level has been dropping, while the top 1% of income earners has seen a 20% increase. The shift of income from the middle class to the most wealthy has already taken place. Now the GOP wants to assure the top earners do not lose what they stole from the middle class. It is the height of unmitigated gall for Rep. Ryan to use the "class warfare" meme.
Unfortunately, the recession you're welcoming with open arms would end up being deflationary.
- no, that's FORTUNATELY, not unfortunately. Recession must be deflationary, as bad investments must be restructured, debt must be paid out partially and the investors must eat part of the loss as well.
Deflation is much better than inflation in case of recession, because it allows the poorest people to survive, as they can buy more with whatever meager savings they have.
The important point to understand that deflation in this case is the cure. The disease is the counterfeit currency printing and vendor financed consumption and debt and trade deficit and lack of production.
Inflation isn't good, but deflation is deadly..
- that's nonsense, both of those statements. Inflation is actually eating your economy alive right now, while deflation would have allowed the bad debts to be liquidated and people would save and restart production.
Inflation is Adam Smith's way of forcing the wealthy to invest their money
- pure nonsense on its face, as what you have in USA (and in the West) is inflation - counterfeiting of the fiat currencies, which is then being distributed to the largest government propped monopolies and the poorest and middle class end up shafted with higher prices.
but a small, stable amount of annual inflation (let's say ~3%) is a good thing.
- more Keynesian nonsense, but also funny, because the real inflation in USA is over 11% and I count it as 13.
You can't handle the truth.
GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, "Class warfare may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics."
Class warfare, in the strict sense of guns and bombs, is -- like all civil war -- bad for the economy. Labor resources spending time shooting at each other, and getting shot, is potential productivity lost. Similarly, spending time on arguments that have no basis in reality is a waste of resources. There is evidence, however, that reducing the Gini (a measure of income disparity -- higher Gini means higher disparity) in the United States would increase the GDP growth rate. Here is one example set of data:
http://beach.traxel.com/img/gdp-gini-4.png
America's Gini has been rising steadily since the early 1970's (it started before Reagan, because the tax brackets didn't keep up with the rapid inflation resulting from the oil embargo). Our Gini is now high enough to make our PPP (GDP per capita) an outlier. Most nations with our level of income disparity are third world nations. Only Hong Kong and SIngapore -- hybrid economies which mix successful free market economies with the stark poverty resulting from communism -- are in the first world ballpark and have Ginis as high as ours.
One possible reason is this: In any economic system there is an optimal market price to pay for any resource. If that economic system overpays for some resource or class of resources, it will operate less efficiently. There may be systemic biases in place which cause us to pay more for the labor (and/or capital lending) of our wealthy than their labor (and/or capital lending) is worth. Of course the chart above is insufficient to show the causal relationship, but it would explain why our PPP (GDP per capita) growth rate has fallen during the same period that our Gini has been increasing (I have more charts that show the temporal relationship, but they are not yet ready for publication).
If, in fact, the increasing Gini is a cause of falling PPP, then increasing the taxation on upper income brackets would increase the GDP growth rate. If that is the case, and assuming one believes (as I do) that the ideal free market is GDP maximizing, there is only one possible explanation: some degree of progressive taxation actually increases the accuracy of our approximation of the free market, by offsetting a systemic bias.
Disagree? Good, I'd love to see your empirical evidence. Show me the data.
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You want to know about class warfare? That's when you have people who work fulltime (unlike the unlucky 40 million who can't get jobs or are under-employed) having to rely on food stamps to feed their families because otherwise they can't keep a rented roof over their heads. A federal minimum wage of $7.25, which allows employers to pay wages that employess can not live on, and forcing students to take out huge loans in order to try get a basic education that might allow them to exceed the ridiculous minimum wage, now that is class warfare. There is no American Dream anymore for many millions of American citizens, just dreams of making it to the next paycheck without suffering. Trickle-down economics is class warfare.
I still think the ol' U S of A is the greatest country in the world, and I feel fortunate to have been born here and be doing alright, but I recognize that a lot of things are broken. People here enjoy a lot of freedom, but if we are as civilized as we claim, don't you think we can still do better? If you make a million dollars a year, you should be doing just fine, and you can afford to pay a little bit more to fix America. Stop whining, since with all your tax breaks and loopholes you don't truly pay a higher rate than those of us who only "earn" $30,000 or $60,000. You will need a strong middle class in the future or it won't be long before our nation's time as the world superpower comes to a close, which will be bad for all of us. If we maintain the status quo, with the rich getting richer, the poor staying poor, and the middle class vanishing, your wealth will evaporate in time, floating away overseas, or we'll rise up and take it from you. Rich people have a chance to fix things now before it is too late, if they are not so greedy as to insist on hoarding every last nickel now. The status quo is class warfare, and prolonged class warfare is our road to doom.
Vote for me. I'll work to keep wealthy people wealthy, by convincing them to invest in our future, which will also benefit all in our society. You can keep the power, if you choose to, but you can't have all of everything.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'
Check the date. It's eerily prescient.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
People seem to think that people who are "rich" must be swimming around in their money bins like Scrooge McDuck. They don't seem to realize that if they don't invest that money, its value decreases.
That is probably why they don't have the understanding of how to build wealth themselves.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
And this is not a knock on Obama. Here is the inside baseball on the 2012 election:
The Republicans have a vested interest in the economy remaining poor. If the economy improves, Obama will be re-elected. This is almost a certainty, given his favorability numbers. Conversely, if the economy remains poor, Obama stands a good chance of losing.
The people who decide elections in this country are "swing" voters, or LIVs (low information voters). These voters tend to decide who they want to vote for based on their gut feeling, and then find reasons to justify this decision. This is why incumbent presidents almost always win in a good economy, and lose far more often in a bad one. Even if the Obama jobs proposal would completely turn the economy around, and give us all ponies, the Republicans won't let it pass. So, Obama has rolled out this package, knowing Republicans will vote against it, and then will campaign throughout this election cycle on their obstructionism. His only chance is to get those LIVs to think twice at the voting booth - to firmly implant in their minds that Republicans care more about millionaires than them. This jobs bill is not about jobs - it is about exposing Republicans for the obstructionists they (currently) are, in the most public way possible.
You've been enjoying the Kool-Aid, I see.
Yes, there certainly are people who lucked into wealth. But if you think that money just makes itself, I humbly submit that you don't know WTF you are talking about. A few years ago, I worked with the wife of a millionaire. That dude worked his butt off, easily doubling the hours I worked every week. The bottom line is this: Obama has fed you a line of crap, that it's the "evil rich" who are the reason you are a have-not. You can buy that story if you want, but while you might be right that "Working hard is by far no guarantee to get wealthy,", IME, it's the best option out there for those of us who weren't born into wealth. I was flat broke a while back (1995), but I'm reasonably comfortable right now. That's not because the government "redistributed" the wealth "fairly"; it's because I worked hard and paid my dues. YMMV, but I've got no patience for this bitterness against the rich. Working hard isn't a guarantee, but jealousy won't get you anywhere.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Eating Ramen 3 times a day in a bad part of the neighborhood with no car, etc. etc. is not really "living."
If you ran up CC debt, you *didn't* make it through college without borrowing.
Everyone knows what the American Dream is and that it's unobtainable by the majority (at all, or without major financial consequences), stop being a moron.
"but I'm reasonably comfortable right now"
Chance is you're not rich, hence not mooting my point
I understand you are trolling, so your sig says, but for how long can you keep it up?
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Long-term, sure. But there are costs associated with moving,
Looking at the list of current plants and plants closed in USA, the numbers of workers for just the Ford company is revealing that the long-term is here now.
The babies line was about the absurdity of your position
- why is my position absurd? I never talked about babies, I am talking about unemployment in USA, which is nominally over 9%, but in reality is over 20%.
A minimum-wage job is not a worthwhile use of anyone's time
? No? Really?
What if you are unemployed?
What if you have over 20% unemployment?
What if you have underproduction?
What if you have huge debts and are printing fiat to support the debt based consumption?
What if your kids are in colleges, getting worthless degrees, while without minimum wage laws at all, they could be hired for nominal fees and actually become apprentices, and learn at work to do something useful and then in 4 years, while other kids get their BSc in Sociology, these kids would have 4 years of work experience and NO mortgage without a house?
What if you don't produce anything and have 90% of your sea food imported from elsewhere?
What if your money is quickly becoming worse than toilet paper, because you can't really use it for that, it's too dirty?
What if China will STOP subsidizing you (and it eventually will)?
So wait, is the money worthless or isn't it?
- USD is worthless for the Chinese, they can't buy anything for it, so they buy your debt, which means they are buying your FUTURE with worthless paper you give them.
Debt is deferred taxation, do you understand the concept? It means taxes that must be paid later. But who is going to pay that? I don't even think Chinese will get anything back (anything useful), even from your future generations, because your future generations will wake up and LEAVE. And WHO is going to give you anything when you are old? You think you'll have your SS check? Sure, the gov't will print it, but it won't be coming out of production and it won't buy anything.
If he's not cycling his profits through Ireland and paying less than 10% at the c
- maybe he isn't paying the taxes by using all the tricks available in accounting, then he shouldn't be in a position to preach about taxes, should he?
In any case, giving any money to government is destructive to the US economy in the long run. There is no difference if the money is coming from China or taxes, at this point it worsens the situation by causing greater debt, and this explodes the Keynesian heads in government, now they believe they have no choice but to keep interest at 0%, which PREVENTS the economy from restructuring, they print more money, and this worsens the situation.
This is a vicious cycle, that can only be interrupted by categorically denying any new money to the government.
Again, which is it? If the money is worthless then surely it makes no difference how it is distributed.
- printed currency is worthless. Printing currency makes it worthless. EARNED money is CAPITAL savings. Capital savings can be invested, organized with other resources - land and labor, to produce new value. Government confiscating earned money is surely destroying the wealth, because that's the money that is actually was produced for, earned, and it could be invested with by the people who earned it.
Of-course in today's USA there are too many people who got their millions from government itself,
You can't handle the truth.