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Let's Drug Test The Rich Before Approving Tax Deductions, Says US Congresswoman (theguardian.com)
Press2ToContinue writes from a report via The Guardian: "The [tax] benefits we give to poor people are so limited compared to what we give to the top 1% [of taxpayers]," Congresswoman Gwen Moore says. "It's a drop in the bucket." Many states implement drug-testing programs to qualify for benefit programs so that states feel they are not wasting the value they dole out. However, seven states who implemented drug testing for tax benefit program recipients spent $1 million on drug testing from the inception of their programs through 2014. But the average rate of drug use among those recipients has been far below the national average -- around 1% overall, compared with 9.4% in the general population -- meaning there's been little cost savings from the drug testing program. Why? "Probably because they can't afford it," says Moore. "We might really save some money by drug-testing folks on Wall Street, who might have a little cocaine before they get their deal done," she said, and proposes a bill requiring tests for returns with itemized deductions of more than $150,000. "We spend $81bn on everything -- everything -- that you could consider a poverty program," she explained. But just by taxing capital gains at a lower rate than other income, a bit of the tax code far more likely to benefit the rich than the poor, "that's a $93bn expenditure. Just capital gains," she added. Why not drug-test the rich to ensure they won't waste their tax benefits? She is "sick and tired of the criminalization of poverty." And, she added: "We're not going to get rid of the federal deficit by cutting poor people off Snap. But if we are going to drug-test people to reduce the deficit, let's start on the other end of the income spectrum."
Seriously, the USA forces you through a drug test to get access to government benefits? I can't think of anything more invasive. This is why you don't make deals with the devil. The devil keeps you on a short leash.
Extending such a screwed up program to more people doesn't make things better, it makes things worse.
Lets drug test bloggers before they are allowed to post online. It should result in a marked decrease in idiotic headlines...
How about we start treating each other with some god damned respect and abolish the entire drug-testing paradigm?
On the one hand, when you drug test poor people, you're testing them before giving them money that they did not earn. If they do not want to be tested, they don't need to apply for the money. On the other hand, under the Congresswoman's proposal to drug test rich people, rich people would be drug tested just for filing taxes, something that the government forces them to do. In other words, it's forced drug testing without cause or recourse and for no reason other than they are wealthy, which is a violation of their constitutional rights.
Personally, I'm not for drug testing anyone unless it's part of a criminal investigation or unless they are in a job where they are responsible for other people's safety.
I think the best place to start would be mandatory drug test for Congress.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
To drug and alcohol test the congresspeople and senators too.
They must be high on something.
Obviously, the correct approach is "Don't drug test anyone outside of performance critical situations"; but this proposal seems like a reasonable way to point out one of the (numerous) ways we identify some people as presumptively scum until exhaustively proven otherwise; and others as presumptively guiltless until they really screw up(at which point the loss of standing caused by the case is punishment enough...)
Also worth considering that, even if you hate filthy poor people and criminals and such with a righteous passion; people nobody cares much about tend to be the beta testers for bad ideas that will eventually come to be imposed on the more 'respectable', usually starting with the ones that have less economic leverage. In this case, that's already mostly happened: mandatory drug testing of employees is pretty widespread, even in areas that aren't safety critical, and for metabolites that tell you nothing about the user's impairment on the job.
As a heuristic, you could do a lot worse when evaluating a law than asking "Would I approve if this law were applied to people I sympathize with?"
... if you're a capitalist. If you accept you live in a purely capitalist society, then someone "bad at capitalism" is as a natural extension of that a "bad societal actor", or more concisely, a "bad citizen". It isn't hard to see how someone who views the world through a lens of "money is the all important" that someone without money or who is bad at managing it would be a criminal. It's wrong but I've known people who believe the abolition of debtor's prison was one of the single biggest blows to modern capitalism. Think about that. It's nuts. That being said, making the rich take drug tests before receiving those tax breaks is about as likely as the rich actually paying their fair share of taxes.
Sounds great to me. How soon can it be implemented? And can it be back applied?
Is this for real? The rich don't care about your SILLY little drug test, they are RICH, there are multiple multiple ways to evade drug testing, the rich have a lot more resources available... It's good that people are thinking about "equalizing" in a sense, but this idea is just stupid I'm sorry...
The bar for getting in the top 1% still usually leaves you in the W2 arena. I'll pay over 50% of my income this year in income taxes (not to mention all the other taxes). To not be a W2 employee (carried interest, etc), you are probably in the top 0.1% or top 0.01%.
Now watch the Invisible Hands and Shrugging Atlases don the pitchforks:
"Drug test the rich? That's UNPOSSIBLE!"
There is a difference between a stipulation for being given someone else's money and a stipulation for being able to keep your own money.
I find this highly amusing. Now, what the hell is it doing on /.? I understand when major news items like the Orlando shooting show up here. And while what this Congress Woman is doing is nice it's hardly earthshaking... Should I be modded off topic when the article is too?
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Potent, damaging , addictive drug which is orders of magnitude more dangerous than heroin is Money.
Government can only give benefits from money they took from someone else in the first place.
The top 10% of earners pay 68% of taxes in the US. Anything government "gives back" was theirs in the first place.
That is unless we've moved to a ideology that government already owns everything the citizens have and we are all serfs.
So we drug test those who EARN their money to determine how much the government will take? Man, the hate for people who earn money is strong in some people. "We need the economy to grow, but damn those people who make money."
Forget drug test for the poor, if they are on welfare, everything they buy should be on record, and if that money is wasted they should be kicked off. Taxing rich more at this point will only reduce what taxes government gets, we have to lower welfare handouts. Will not happen since that is how Democrats buy votes, they keep people poor so they are stuck on welfare that they give to them.
Drug test their children.
Would fail one of those tests. After all, she's getting public assistance every month, too.
This is idiot is equivocating:
1. getting free money from the government
2. having to pay less money to the government
Several days in a row now Slashdot headlines are trailing BoingBoing. What gives? And how is this news for nerds, stuff that matters?
Congresswoman Moore put a big grin on my face with her farcical suggestion that we should drug-test the rich. But seriously, politicians who require drug-tests from the poor getting relief ought to be required to take drug-tests as well. Just so they know how humiliating this is.
Ideally all forms of income earned income, interest and dividend income, capital gains, carried interest, partnership distributions, profits, gambling gains, IRA distributions all should be just treated the same way. Ordinary salaried folks have no ability to reclassify their income streams. They have limited ability to defer income. But the top 0.1% earners can create shell corporation after shell corporation, trusts etc. Each acting as a way to defer income, change its category etc.
One concession I would agree for capital gains is to let people adjust their cost basis for inflation. This will help people who buy and hold rather than short term investors. Reduce volatility and provide stability to the instruments.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Is the "war on drugs" effective or helpful in any measurable way? No.
If the drug test is intended for safety, rather than misplaced morality enforcement, are these rich people in safety critical positions. Likely not. Safety critical positions like pilots already have such tests, and are not rich.
Is there any other reason to link drug tests with taxes?
You'll annoy the rich druggies. First, they'll tell their bought-and-paid-for cronies in Washington to kill the legislation. Then they'll spend the money necessary to make sure the people who brought the legislation in the first place don't get re-elected. Either that, or they'd just buy their way out of the drug testing in the first place. These people just don't understand how fucked-up our political system is, being so driven by the Golden Rule: The people (and corporations, by the way) who have the gold, make the rules, one way or another.
What a moron.
Capital gains tax is lower than income tax only for long term capital gains, not short term. It's that way to incentivize investors to make capital available to business for longer periods of time so they can finance operations and keep creating jobs. This is particularly true for her constituents, as the companies who have headquarters and manufacturing centers in her district are companies like Harley Davidson, Rockwell Automation, Johnson Controls, and Manpower Inc, as well as many smaller companies. All of these companies would lose capital available to them if you mess with capital gains tax, which puts their employees in her district at risk.
Maybe we should implement a basic economics test for people trying to run for Congress.
Adults have the right to consume any substances they choose so long as they do not hurt others while doing so.
Taxes are collected from privately owned assets. Tax deductions are government taking less private property.
One can only believe what you do if one believes that the concept of private property does not exist. For your premise to be true, all property would have to be owned by the government.
If you want that shit, move to Venezuela.
Whoops! There's traces of codeine and marijuana in your system (contact highs, they are a bitch). That means we have to tax you MORE!
Yeah...fuck that noise.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Hmmm, someone in government said something stupid, and the party was left off by the media.
Wanna bet she's a Democrat?
"But the average rate of drug use among those recipients has been far below the national average -- around 1% overall, compared with 9.4% in the general population"
Isn't it conceivable that drug users might be aware that benefits come with a drug test and they simply don't apply? The 1% that do test positive are just too stupid to realize their habit will cost them benefits.
So they tax you so it's "Their money" and then give it back to you with conditions. Why don't they do that with all money? Tax rate is 100%, then give it back on condition you don't assert any of your rights..
But you will say that these people are paying negative tax, because of credits.
Fair enough, but all these benefits are just subsidies for those who employ cheap labor. Without these, the people would have to move away driving up the price for labor until people could afford to live on what they earned. With a minimum wage high enough that people don't qualify for benefits, you don't have the pernicious loss of rights for the poor. ( and if you import enough cheap labor from abroad to keep wages down, they can make sure as few as possible can afford rights )
If they at some point must pay benefits, the appropriate quid-pro-quo should be sterilization-for-benefits, not drug-testing and umpteen other things. By shrinking the labor pool and driving up wages, ( all with closed borders of course ) people have the dignity of earning a living wage that is theirs free and clear from the control of government petty tyrants.
...
Holy fucking shit people. You're just now realizing that when you don't have any fucking money, you don't have any fucking drugs!
I mean, just how fucking braindead are you fucking conservatives? Are you totally incapable of critical thinking?
This country is fucked, and it's because of assholes like you who waste billions and billions of dollars just to make sure the wrong person doesn't get a fucking free lunch!
Implement a 10% federal sales tax at time of Stock purchase and completely get rid of "capital gains tax".
That way tax is paid every time a stock changes hands regardless of whether or not someone made money or lost money.
Also, implement a new law that would only allow financial companies to charge customers if the stock / bond portfolios make money. ie - make them work for their income. If their portfolios loose value or remain stagnant then no charges, fees, costs can be levied against the customer.
For futures, require that the entity purchasing futures must pay for the transportation and storage of said futures until sold off, that will take the profit out of the futures market.
I think before every funding vote or discussion all of the congress critters and senatorial types need to pee in the little cup AND blow into a breathalyzer. And no immunity should apply if they test positive.
The [tax] benefits we give to poor people are so limited compared to what we give to the top 1% [of taxpayers]
I think someone should read up on the "Earned Income Tax Credit". There was no point in reading anything after the first sentence, this person is obviously a totally clueless idiot.
The poor benefit handsomely from our, I would say overly progressive, tax system. Its the middle class that gets the squeeze. The very wealth have access to tax avoidance strategies and investment vehicles that get favorable tax treatment. The poor get outright handouts at tax time and mostly end up paying no federal taxes at all. Meanwhile the middle class foots almost the entire bill, and gets basically only the mortgage interest deduction and child credits as a consolation prize.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Many if not all companies require that employees consent to random drug testing as a condition of employment. I have had co-workers who have been tested. Drug testing is already common for those who pay taxes.
The drug test has failed to statistically correlate with our known figure for drug users, so we want to use this failed test on a larger population? Government efficiency at work.
maybe people will get down off their drug testing high-horse after they learn that their doctors, nurses, bus drivers, cops, and airline pilots are -all- on drugs and have been for years.
90% or all wealth wouldn't be owned by
A maximum way or arbitrary line after which your earnings are not yours is horrible sure... but you don't need hard limits, instead use a function to make exponentially more of your income become tax the more you earn, this is how natural systems keep balance
...by drug testing the gov't.
that according to the Government the solution to Government spending is never reducing the size and scope of Government?
Here's another question you'll never hear asked: Would things actually be better if the Government increased it's tax revenue?
The answer for the people outside of government or not on the dole: NO, NOT, AND NEVER!
Regards,
Captain Obvious
How about drug testing candidates for Congress before they're allowed to run? And once in office, random tests to be allowed to stay there?
So you want to drug test people before TAKING their money and they think that's the same as drug testing someone before you GIVE them OUR money?
Quite apart from all the rest, the claim that not taxing something (in this example, capital gains) counts as an "expenditure" really irritates me each time I see it. It proceeds from the assumption that all wealth belongs to the government, which has to decide how much to allow the governed to control and how much it can better allocate itself. In other words, it is fundamentally hostile to the concept of private property as a moral statement.
"cost of goods sold" on Schedule C (which is what those wages are) are not "Itemized deductions" on Schedule A.
Drug testing the wealthy could be one way to clamp down on those very tax avoidance strategies that the ultra-wealthy take advantage of. That's the whole point of this discussion. And the quote you mention is talking about absolute numbers -- the tax handouts and loopholes for the ultra-wealthy are so big that even a small increase in their tax rate is larger than all "handouts" for the poor.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
This is obviously a swipe at the idea that we should drug test welfare recipients. But tax deductions, in and of themselves, aren't comparable to welfare. For example, it is standard practice in the U.S. to deduct business expenses from taxable income because, traditionally, businesses pay taxes on profit rather than gross revenue. This is clearly not "welfare" -- as in a direct payment or subsidy -- unless you believe that 100% of your income is owed to the government by default. A better statement would have been: "Drug test business owners that are receiving government subsidies."
And make damned sure you understand properly what a subsidy actually is, because people also get that wrong. For example, there was a misleading clamor a few years back to "end oil company subsidies," when the reality is that oil companies don't actually receive subsidies; the whole campaign was really just a glib and not-so-subtle call to raise taxes on oil and gas.
Your property and your money is not yours. It belongs to the government. The government takes your wealth at the barrel of a gun and the decides how you get it back.
Public assistance recipients haven't earned that money. That money was taken from those who earned it and was distributed to those who did not.
A tax break is government taking less of your money. Assistance programs are government distributing the wealth of others.
Why should the government test anyone for anything when the government is taking property that is rightfully yours?
Do you think the only measure and worth of a person is in their ability to work? Is that whey they were born, to work? If a person cannot work, should they simply be left to die? If something were to happen that left you impoverished (ridiculous, I know) would you not ask for help? Or would you take it as a just punishment for being such a worthless human being?
You think poor people are poor because they're lazy, but that's not borne out by reality. Poor people actually work harder than most others.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Honestly I'd rather rich people spend it on drugs thanks our government spend it on war.
Maybe you should IQ test people before allowing them in Congress first.
Why is it a given that a government might forbid someone from owning or consuming any given substance? Doing this has led to feeding huge amounts of money to criminal syndicates, destablizing countries, etc. It also leads to some items being available only by prescription. News flash: we have the internet and access to information about diagnosing disease and about what is known about effects of compounds. Many conditions could be self treated, saving huge amounts of money.
What should be illegal and punished severely is misrepresenting what a compound is, or what is in it, or what is known about its effects. Aside from that, let it all be legal. If adults decide to overdose on some compound, as long as it is an informed choice, it should be nobody else's business.
Note that if drugs became all legal, it is virtually certain prices would drop very low, so crimes based on feeding habits, protecting sales turf, or the like would disappear. (Go beg on the street a bit to get your quarter (25 cents) to pay for your habit. Someone will give that much.)
None of this means that taking drugs and damaging your body are good ideas, just that such is your right once you reach adult age. Civil liberties would be in far better shape if all the spying and jailing done (and asset seizures for that matter) to suppress drugs were dropped.
Because I think she has been smoking something...
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
There was a question on some forum (perhaps AskReddit) for formerly poor people about what surprised them the most after they became better off.
One poster claimed that he was surprised people with more money actually do drugs for recreation. Everyone where he grew up that used drugs did it to soothe the pain. Everyone knew it. Everyone also knew the price. And those that chose this way were not judged too much.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
In public.
...as long as you require drug testing for all of the following:
- people on welfare to get their payouts
- people on food stamps to get their payouts
- people in government housing to be allowed to stay (including politicians)
- democratic party voters
- everyone with the last name of Clinton
My comment only dealt with property rights. I never said that assistance programs were improper.
What is improper is the view that taxes "belong" to the government and that tax-breaks and incentives are somehow "stealing" from the government.
That is a wrongheaded view.
Taxes are necessary for a functional nation, and yes, some of those taxes are distributed to the less-fortunate.
What I dislike is the view that if the government takes less money from its citizens, somehow those citizens are doing something wrong.
There are ways to improve tax revenue by playing with various tax rates, but capital gains is not one of them. It's been tweaked up and down enough that raising it now would produced lower revenues in the long term. Economists all know this. Biden and Obama know this as well, even when they talk about raising it ("It's an issue of fairness," they say).
Besides, taking less money from people is not an "expenditure", any more than a mugger giving you $5 for bus fare before he walks off with your wallet a "kindness".
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
If you actually read the link you cited, what it says is that the United States taxes former citizens for the taxes that they owed before they renounced their citizenship.
In other words, saying "I renounce my citizenship" does not mean that your debt suddenly vanishes.
Most of these are corporations, and I don't know how you would make a corporation take a pee test.
But if you could, I bet a lot of them would fail!
Different thing.
Money is government property so whoever is saying it is their money lives in a fantasy. How the government elects to channel it is a political ideology that has little to do with how hard one works or whether they earned it. It makes sense to change that dynamic and not give more public share of taxes to rich drug addicts.
Quick, someone test Hank Johnson before Guam capsizes!
Drug testing those who receive benefits seems reasonable. Drug testing rich people filing taxes would never happen. The only way anything similar to this would be the requirement of anyone filing with the IRS to be drug tested as part of their filing.
However, seven states who implemented drug testing for tax benefit program recipients spent $1 million on drug testing from the inception of their programs through 2014. But the average rate of drug use among those recipients has been far below the national average -- around 1% overall, compared with 9.4% in the general population
People who grow marijuana and smoke it should be prohibited from receiving government aid, but if you can not get a job because you are a chronically lazy, chain-smoking obese alcoholic with a porn addiction and a gambling compulsion then you are welcome to government handouts. What kind of incentive is that?
Conditioning government aid on actual need would be more appealing if the people devising policy were not imbeciles.
They could start by weighing fat people before giving them food stamps (SNAP). Your income is seized, under threat of prosecution, fines and imprisonment, to fund other people making themselves unhealthily fat. Your income is seized, under threat of prosecution, fines and imprisonment to pay for "free" health care required for medical treatments incurred from that obesity. "Your tax dollars go to save the lives of staving orphans" has more appeal when you are actually paying to save the lives of starving orphans and not buy groceries for that lardass blocking the aisle at the grocery on her i-am-to-fat-to-walk scooter with a cartload of donuts and steak, and then pay her medical bills.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
"That's a $93bn expenditure. Just capital gains." Sorry, a bit off topic here, but how is not taxing people an "expenditure"? By the same logic, one could claim that because the tax rate on anything is X rather than something bigger than X, the difference is an "expenditure" that is costing the government money. I think perhaps Ms. Moore might be in need of an accounting class... or maybe just a dictionary.
Might makes right irrelevant.
You are very right. It is a sickness, and it shows, how outright tyranny can sip in, when the government is allowed to do as much as it currently is in the Western world.
We had the early warnings — things, the government could not force you to do straight, it forced you to do by attaching strings to the tax-based wealth-redistribution:
The ultimate manifestation of this would be 100% taxation with the government kindly allowing you to pay less in exchange for obedience.
Can also take the approach into criminal justice system — saving billions in law enforcement costs — by making it illegal to live above, say, 20 years of age. The government would, of course, grant annual waivers to the well-behaved — those, who "maintain eligibility"... Scaremongering? You bet — but this idea is the same in principle with the current one: tax everyone, but spend the taxes only on the obedient.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Anyone who takes drugs and is remotely sane will either not apply for a program which has drug testing, or will stop taking drugs so they can apply for the program. So it's not surprising that recipients of the program don't use drugs--all the drug users either didn't apply or stopped using. Nobody's going to take drugs, apply, and get caught. The fact that it's even as high as 1% only happens because some people are stupid.
Being below the national average is what you would expect if the drug testing program works.
I watched a "banned" TED talk wherein the speaker claims that the rich get tax breaks because they are historically seen as "job creators". He further contends that this is not factually accurate, and that lower taxes on the middle class would create jobs. I've got a hybrid approach: What about if we auctioned off the lowest tax rates to the most job creators? This way the rich would actually be creating jobs. It for the first time directly incentivises job creation. If they don't create jobs then they don't get the rate.
It's a put-your-tax-rate-where-your-influence-is deal, which could be a win for everyone.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
... or at least the "gain" should be indexed to either gold or silver (government's choice - but in advance of the period during which the so-called "gain" occurs).
The "capital gain" of the tax code is actually a PRICE gain measured in dollars. The value of the dollar is under the control of the government (via its proxy, the Federal Reserve), and is systematically lowered ("inflation"). So an asset whose value doesn't change at all nevertheless suffers a "gain" in price, which is taxed. (An asset whose actual value does rise still suffers an additional "gain" in price, and one whose value falls doesn't start to show a "loss" unless the loss in value is more than that of the dollar.)
This means that the government not only steals the value out of money held by printing more of it, for itself and its cronies, diluting the supply, but it also steals a portion of the value of any other property held by someone between its purchase and its sale. Thus the "capital gains" tax is an additional incentive to inflate the currency and rip off the general population for the benefit of the government officials, functionaries, and their cronies.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A lot of serious academic research went on in the early 70's to prove that taxing the poor was wholly unproductive. See Dennis Moore's work, for a good, easy to digest example.
Hey dumbass,
Actually, we did. See, I live in a neighborhood where we take care of our own roads without your taxes and restrictions. It's not really that complex, and doesn't require paying double market rate for employees. Our water company is private, our electric and phone are a coop the HOA maintains the roads, and neighbors plow in the winter. When people don't act like entitled asses, it works a lot better than when people use government to steal from everyone else. But, but firemen... well, ever heard of volunteer firefighters. So, we get ripped off on our property taxes, but get mostly left alone from the county, and it works a lot better. And, oddly, when most of the people in the community enjoy shooting, we don't need a whole lot of police presence.
New Commercial:
"I was a successful business leader and had it made for most of my life but I used Cocaine and It gave me cancer.." *Takes off facial prosthesis to reveal deformed skull.." but it's not just that".. *removes coat to reveal amputations and ribcage open to the world.. "but the worst casualty was my bank account. Paying for this operation to save my life from all of my cocaine cancer cost $900 million, highway robbery! Obamacare! Dont use cocaine!! "
Better than all to smoking commercials that try to gross you out with.. Here is my prosthesis after I had my lung removed. and all my limbs amputated and my throat permanently cut open and this robot voice installed. ALL BECAUSE I SMOKED!
Here is the film of the operation.. DON'T LOSE YOUR LUNCH YOU DUMB ASS SMOKERS!
people who use cocaine are 100000 times dumber than anyone who has smoked a cigarette.
Well I would rather have the rich waste it than have the grandparent listen to this
http://saveie6.com/
Who cares what people do on their own time? It is none of the state's business and the War on Drugs (which this is part of) is an epic waste of time and, yes, money. Lots and lots of money.
You pretend your nation is an example of freedom to the world, but you are like a bunch of busybody old babas - everyone wants to butt into other people lives for a whole array of completely subjective reasons.
Man I am so glad I don't live there.
Liberal stupidly at it's finest.
The studies doesn't show how many actually welfare applicants dropped out of welfare, or the number of people that decided not to even apply for welfare in the first place, because of drug testing.
The claim that only 1% of welfare recipients tested positive for drugs has been repeated so often it's not a cited fact in articles such as this. It's like the 77 cents on a dollar for a man's work when the statistic is for all work averaged out. An outright lie.
Here's what happened: A million dollars was spent on a drug test (which says a lot about the cost of government workers more than the program being a bad idea) and a statistical sampling of a few percent of welfare recipients were tested. They tended to be doing drugs MORE often than the general population (let's say to illustrate the point, 20 percent) but only 5 percent were tested. So the result? 1 percent total of the welfare recipients were found to be on drugs. So the left cites the statistic of "only 1 percent of welfare recipients were shown to be on drugs" implying that all welfare recipients were tested when they were not. Repeat the statistic until someone fills in the assumptions for them.
Nice try.
I'm not sure that's actually correct. Poor people get caught more often, but IIRC there's research showing that the rich are more likely to break the law. Also, the rich have more resources so their crimes have the potential to have a much bigger impact.
As a taxpayer who is not on public assistance, I admit that I do feel a twinge of judgementalism when I see someone on public assistance purchase lottery tickets or cigarettes. Logic dictates that if one has the money for cigarettes, lottery tickets, drugs, cable television, cell phones, or any other 'deemed' luxury, that they must in reality have the money to feed and shelter themselves leaving the rest of us to subsidize their excesses. Mathematically, it's transitive right?
But then I think about it on a deeper level and realize that the indignant sense of unfairness I experience is in actuality selfishness because even with their perceived luxuries seemingly funded by the rest of us, the reality remains that there aren't too many of us that would trade places with them and that in fact, being poor actually does suck.
Then when I think about it on an even deeper level, I realize that for all the money that we the taxpayers are giving to the poor, they're not keeping it. In fact the money itself is a stimulus for slum--er-uh-landlords, mom&pop convenience stores, the tobacco industry, high interest financing industries, telecommunications industries, and all the goods and services that go into supporting the poor-- call them... poverty industries.
Years ago in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan used to promote what he called "trickle down" economics. The idea was that if you let the wealthy (whomever that was) keep more of what they gained, that they would spend that money in ways that would trickle down to the everyone else. The millionaire buys the boat, the boat maker employs boat builders and buys boat materials, the boat materials places employ transportation and materials people, so on and so forth...
However, in retrospect, I don't think that bore out because the further up the economic class scale you go, the better your ability to elect to not spend money. The percentage of your total wealth dedicated to necessities in small vs when you are poor, the percentage of your wealth (or lack thereof) spent on necessities is considerably larger. To me, this at least partially explains why so many businesses and rich individuals sit on money... money gives one options-- including the option to sit on your money until the most advantageous time to spend or invest it... (which while probably in your best interests, may not be in the best interest of the greater society)
It's easy to vilify the poor, and at times of my life I've done it myself... These days, I just think that the true equation is more complicated than that. While I do not think that our society needs to drug test the rich (or anyone else save public safety employees), I do think there should be more respect (or at least sympathy) for the poor if for no other reason that it makes no sense to consistently blame this country's economic woes on its most powerless citizens... especially in a time when the distance from poor to middle class is decreasing as rapidly as it is.
Do I personally have any solutions? Other than a flat tax with exceptions for food, clothing, and shelter... not that I could do justice to describe here.
Perhaps that is the privilege of armchair quarterbacking...
His money must be taxed less then your time.
The proposal doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. The purpose is to draw attention to consistent attacks wage on the poor and a pattern of class warfare used in politics to divide the working class.
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Stop for a moment and consider that retail outlets pay at or near minimum wage and typically hire only part time workers outside of management and sometimes even in lower management. These companies treat their employees like garbage giving them schedules so variable and inconsistent they have to be computer generated week to week and are rarely willing to accommodate. They can and do fire employees regularly for using sick time without notice (in practice, they certainly don't write this down) and for failing to answer their phone and come in when scheduled off combined with habitual underscheduling thus creating a need to call in employees on a regular basis. Consider that even the management make low to lower mid level income.
Now consider that every walgreens, cvs, walmart, kmart, etc has a custom designed employment application submission kiosk and has since the electronics in such kiosks would have been several thousand dollars. These are companies that cut every penny not companies that throw money away trying to impress job applicants. Those kiosks are there because there are so many people desperate enough to be trying to get these horrible jobs every day that it's actually more economical to build these custom machines than have their low paid management pick up the stack each day and toss it in garbage bin.
I'm not sure that's actually correct
I think the GP was trolling.
But there's one case where poor people are more criminal -- substance abuse. Some rich folks can manage to live their lives while being a total addict, but for most people, an uncontrollable drug addition is a nice downward spiral into poverty. If you get fired from your job and can't get another due to addiction, you'll quickly find yourself in poverty. And as long as the addiction drains whatever funds you receive, you're not getting out.
Betting you have a neat Final Solution to such scum.
He did, via taxes. Thats the rub.. he gets to complain. Those that are a drain on the system don't.
By virtue of living in America, you get to complain. That's the 1st amendment.
By virtue of being a US citizen, 18+, and not subject to restrictions due to felony status, you get to vote. That's Article I, Section II, Clause I, as well as the 12th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments.
The amount of taxes you pay has nothing to do with the rights of Americans to complain or to vote. Your comments are, frankly, un-American (except for your exercising your right to make an un-American comment... that is distinctly American).
Support a few technologists in Washington.
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Bet we catch more drug users testing the poor than the rich, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
That's a fairly common assumption, but I'm also not sure that one is actually true, depending on how you define substance abuse. In terms of legality, there are lots of otherwise perfectly normal people who use illegal drugs and don't really suffer any ill effects. Again, IIRC, the rate of illegal drug use among the rich is higher than among the poor, probably because the poor can't afford it.
Defining substance abuse more reasonably, in terms of dependence or use that causes negative effects, alcoholism is very common in all socioeconomic classes, and prescription drug abuse is extremely widespread among the wealthier classes.
You can certainly become a heroin addict and end up in an alley somewhere, but that seems to be a relatively rare outcome. Much more common is to get drunk regularly and beat your family, or become addicted to prescription painkillers.
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Buried in the middle of the article, it notes that this is “suspicion-based drug testing for each applicant”. What this actually means is that they give you a form asking basically "Do you use illegal drugs (yes/no), and if you answer yes then there is a reasonable suspicion so they are allowed to test you. This is obviously a stupid system (not that testing everyone would be better, but it would be stupid for a different reason), but it doesn't mean that only 1% of welfare recipients use illegal drugs. It turns out they use them at about the same rate as the rest of the population. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/02/14/drug-testing-welfare-users-is-a-sham-but-not-for-the-reasons-you-think/
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The "benefits" are supposed to help people who need money for food, shelter, clothing or child support, not get their next fix.
Money is labor, time and resources captured into a easily tradeable form. The wealthy, by being allowed to be wealthy, are being entrusted with the resources of society. If you are going to assume the role of moral arbiter of poor people and put constraints on how they spend their money, you could just as easily claim the same rights for the wealthy, and in fact it is probably mush more important to do so.
Moreover, it almost doesn't matter if some poor person blows $100 on some weed. But it certainly will affect the larger society if the CEO of Apple or Google makes a bad business decision while coked off their ass.
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You know? As a libertarian myself, it always amuses me how people rush to argue over the relatively few things central government accomplished for people that we can all agree are useful and often used by the vast majority of citizens.
When I think of all the boneheaded things government has done with my money (anything from grants for studying cow flatulence to billions of dollars the Pentagon managed to just make vanish into thin air right around the time we were distracted by 9-11) -- concerns over the expenditures for emergency services and a national highway system are at the bottom of my list.
I guess you need to zero in on those, though, if you want to make sure libertarians look like idiots for pointing out how wasteful government spending can be?
I'd definitely like to see mandatory drug testing ended, across the board. (For that matter, the same goes for those sobriety checkpoints.) You shouldn't be presumed guilty until proven innocent, period. When it comes to most private sector jobs that drug test? Regardless of any philosophical reasons against it, the practice is quite likely just a waste of money overall. I've worked at jobs where drug testing was required as a condition of employment PLUS at random intervals afterwards. Those tests aren't all that cheap, and the labs doing the testing aren't infallible either. So a positive result means you have to do a second test to verify the result. By then, a lot of people are crafty enough to know ways to cheat the tests. And who's to say a company didn't get rid of a really good employee over one of them? Just because someone likes to get high once in a while doesn't prove they can't do a great job at whatever you hired them for. How about we fire people for doing those drugs or drinking on company time and stop worrying about digging up evidence about what they may do on their personal time?
"But, Rawls says, the point at which we stop that inequality is when the extra money for the rich stops benefitting the society as a whole. At some point rich people just get more and more wealth, but it doesn't actually help the poorest to improve their quality of life (and often begins to make the poorest WORSE off). And again going back to the veil of ignorance, if you didn't know what your talent would be before entering in a society (and you might have ended up on the bottom), you probably would say that's not fair for all. Collectively, we need to design the rules to benefit us all, because rich people don't exist in a vacuum."
What I'd like to know is, at what point does someone get "too rich" to benefit society as a whole anymore? That's the problem with these statements. They may be based in reality, but there's no logical way to draw a line saying "X amount of wealth is still acceptable, but don't earn a penny more than that or you'll become one of the bad guys in society!"
In fact, an extremely wealthy individual might wind up donating practically all of his or her remaining wealth, upon death, to charitable causes -- negating all of the hand-wringing and postulating over how amassing that wealth was detrimental to society.
If you have money for drugs, you don't need welfare.
So either the poor have an extraordinarily low (1/10th) drug use rate, opposite of nearly every other notion, understanding, or evidence among those living in poverty...or they're simply better at beating the drug tests.
I hope /. realizes how simplistic it is to beat a urine test...though I sincerely doubt those making the decisions do.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
before they can vote or put forth such legislation
How about routine drug tests for politicians, could explain a lot of things lately.
Dump deductions entirely and convert the entire system to a flat tax with a minimum guaranteed basic income level that is not taxed at all.
And that means no bloody deductions for business either, no matter how big or small.
I'm not sure that's actually correct. Poor people get caught more often, but IIRC there's research showing that the rich are more likely to break the law. Also, the rich have more resources so their crimes have the potential to have a much bigger impact.
I'm not sure about that. Rich people crimes are mostly just inconveniences to others, poor people crimes usually involve violence and death.
If I had to be a victim, I prefer to have my shares lose value illegally, than my wife being raped.
Tax deductions or "offsets" as you call them are written into law by lawmakers - just as the initial taxes are.
Your definition of "acceptable fee" must also include those deductions.
We as a society through our representatives have decided that those tax deductions encourage certain behaviors - that is the reason for their existence.
Why should we penalize those with a drug-test for taking lawful tax deductions? Those people taking those deductions have already fulfilled their obligations by performing certain qualifying activities and paying the balance of their tax bill.
These types of policies very much come from "liberal" mindsets - "Sticking it to the man" as such. I hear very few conservatives or libertarians advocating for more wealth distribution - and I certainly know of none calling for drug tests on people that take mortgage and investment deductions.
Generally people with property support conservatives and libertarians, people with less property generally support liberals.
I understand liberal philosophy very well - and I do not agree with much of it.
... to test welfare recipients for drug abuse:
Read the goddam summary and note that it's the OTHER people abusing drugs. 1% vs 9+%.
Most people on welfare work. Get off your fucking ass and click over to Google to check that.
Look at the test case in Florida (it's a classic) and look at the current results.
Here's the real reason for testing welfare recipients:
1.) They are too fucking poor to to defend themselves. If you and I were subjected to this, as a class, we'd vote the fuckers out of office.
2.) Stupid people stereotype welfare citizens as non-Americans and not worthy of basic human rights.
3.) The drug testing companies have lobbyists who push this shit just like commercial prison ventures lobby for imprisonment of minorities for drug possession.
4.) Politicians' sole endeavor is vote survival and they will sell you bullshit as wild honey, to get reelected.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This is a ridiculous proposal. What could possibly be the connection between doing drugs and paying just the taxes you owe ?
It's not the government's job to "ensure that the deduction money are being spent properly".
If you think it is, do you think it's going to stop at "the rich" when the prospect of more taxes is in play ? The middle class pays the most taxes. You don't want to give the government the job of deciding how YOU spend your own money.
So 1% of $81BN isn't enough savings to implement drug testing on welfare recipients that cost several states $1M since the drug testing programs went into effect. If 50 states each spent $1M/year on drug testing, and the same 1% failure rate persists, that should invalidate 1% of the $81B we spend on welfare programs, or about $810M. So spending $50M to save $810M isn't a worthwhile investment? Really?
There are vastly more laws for 'rich' folks to violate: The unemployed can't cheat on their taxes The poor tend to not have cars, removing moving violations You don't have to be rich to commit a crime with great impact - the Orlando shooter bought $1,000 worth of guns and ammo.
Source: http://thinkprogress.org/econo...
Source: Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. (2015). 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Detailed Tables. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, MD, - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cm...
Eat the rich!
Next billionaire.
This dose of cyanide works.
Next billionaire.
I think I'll try strychnine on this one - ohh, it's broken it's back in muscular convulsions before suffocating slowly and in conscious awareness.
Sounds a good plan to me.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Gotta love it! It seems logical: Poor folk cannot afford dope! Rich folks afford the pay-offs to reduce taxes so they can by more dope! Problem is that the dope clouds their judgement such that they forget to help those poor folk! See - that trickle-down shit does NOT work! The only thing trickling down is the cocaine trickling down the throats of the rich and greedy! And I digress from here.
Point is: Rich folk need to actually pay a fairer share of taxes. Period.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Rich people crimes are mostly just inconveniences to others, poor people crimes usually involve violence and death.
I don't know about that. According to this study, the global financial crisis caused half a million additional deaths due to cancer alone (essentially, people being locked out of medical treatment due to poverty and unemployment). Other causes (including long-term costs, such as the cost of youth unemployment disadvantaging that generation into their future) are obviously harder to measure.
For comparison, the number of deaths attributable to terrorism worldwide since 2006 is somewhere around 200,000.
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Testing the rich welfare queens makes sense. Most certainly since they are costing everyone more money than welfare itself, of course we start with them.
What's good for the goose.
No, he's correct. Either you're borderline retarded or you simply dropped out of high school, because this is really basic accounting and you have a very poor understanding of it. Namely, you seriously misunderstand what income means. Income is NOT revenue. Income is your net gain minus your operating expenses. For example, if you're a business and you make $1,000,000 in one year and spend $500,000 that year on employee salaries, and $300,000 on operating expenses (such as leasing an office, paying the utility bills, etc) then that's only $200,000 of income. Likewise, you get a deduction on the $800,000 from your business's income taxes. Otherwise you'd be taxed on the whole million, and because of government taxes your business would only be losing money.
You're talking about expenses. The topic here is deductions. These are not the same thing.
You are correct about expenses. They are subtracted from income before taxes.
It really is.
the global financial crisis caused half a million additional deaths due to cancer alone
Cancer would kill you anyway if rich people weren't paying for the medical system that improves quality of life for patients.
And life expectancy has increased decade on decade because of inventions and systems and policies put in place by those same rich people.
So if prosperity comes with the occasional correction, it's still a much larger net gain than some poor fool raping your wife for kicks. I'll still take a GFC every few decades over that alternative.