It's true. The number of lies printed about Noam Chomsky is staggering. I'm not sure any of them have anything to do with the truth, though. I think they have more to do with the fact that some people don't like it when Noam Chomsky tells the truth about politics and economics.
Yes, and how much of the country's resources do they own? What percentage of the revenue stream do they control? It is fair and just that the people who own most of the resources and control most of the revenue pay most of the taxes.
Back in the 50s, the top tax bracket was around 90%. The middle class lived comfortably. The average person could afford to support a family without a second wage earner. The economy was strong. The changes made since then have only benefited a small percentage of the population, at the expense of the rest of us. I say we tax the rich more. What are they going to do about it? There certainly are more of us than there are of them.
The world would be better off without such a great disparity in income and ownership. There is a reason that most religions originally defined lending money for profit as a sin. There's a reason Jesus got pissed off at the money lenders in the temple. Now, we've made our money lenders into priests, the free market is a religion, and cash is God. I think that's sick.
Good point. However, I think the Bush cronies have engineered themselves a bigger cut of the military pie through outsourcing basic military services. Where before the military industrial complex could get its pork at any time, without going to a 'hot' war, thanks to the Soviet Union, with our new outsourced military services companies actually have to go to war to get their pork.
Do you have a creepy goatee? The antimatter version of you will always have a creepy goatee, so go look in the mirror, if you've got a creepy goatee, then you are the antimatter version.
I think that estimate is a little high. Look up the statistics for percentage of the population with personality disorders, specifically narcissistic, anti-social, and borderline for a better estimate.
There are some interesting recent experiments in economics and games theory. Less than ten percent of the population will generally act in an unfair and unjust manner unless the whole system is unfair and unjust. Most people are far more motivated by notions of reciprocity and fairness than by self interest.
It's not a war for oil, exactly. It is a war that is partly about control of oil producing regions by certain powerful interests in the US. It is mostly about money for the contractors in our newly privatized military. Revenge is just a story used to whip the masses into a frenzy.
Okay, then let's remove the deduction altogether. I pulled that $200,000 out of a delicate part of my anatomy, in order to make it seem more acceptable, but I'd really like to see all income taxed the same.
Can't I complain about it in the hopes of creating an anti-advertising backlash that drives theater owners into removing the commercials? Think about it, I am providing a valuable service by complaining. In our free market system, businesses don't know what they're doing wrong or right unless someone tells them. Usually, they have to pay someone to tell them. I am giving it away for free. I and many people I know go to movies less frequently because of the annoyance factor. If they got rid of the commercials, perhaps the increased sales volume would more than offset the lost revenue.
Well, you see, this one group of rich guys tried to screw over this other group of rich guys, but the second group of rich guys was like, "Oh no you didn't!" and the first group was like "What're you gonna do about it!" and then the jury said "We find in favor of the rich guys!"
My wife and I stand to inherit over $250,000 from her father and a house worth about $200,000 from my mother, so my proposed change would impact me. Simply because something would impact me is no reason not to do it. I didn't do anything of value to society to earn that money, should I therefore have an absolute right to it?
You are saying you've been impacted by a tax with a $2,000,000 deductible? I certainly hope you aren't expecting anyone to feel sorry for you that you have that much money and have to pay taxes on it.
You aren't being punished for transferring property. Anytime you transfer property, it is taxed, why should it be different after you die? The money you get for your job was already taxed when your employer earned it, why should it be taxed gain when that employer transfers it to you? Do you see how illogical this is? There is no arbitrary point you can stop at and say, "This money has been taxed, and it shall never be taxed again, forevermore!"
"Half your property" is an overstatement. First, there is a two million dollar deduction now, which I say could be cut to $200,000. So the actual tax rate would have to be over 50% to equal half after the deduction is figured in. In reality, the gift tax scale is used on assets over the deductible.
Personally, I see property as a positive right, not a negative right. It is the right to exclude others from using your property, it is not the right to be free from trespass or theft. It is not based on the laughable idea that you own yourself (you're your own slave? How amusing!) but on the pragmatic interests of individuals and society. Why should someone who was not a party to the contract between seller and purchaser respect the purchaser's right to exclude him from using what was purchased? Not, as I said, from some lame attempt to shoehorn the concept of ownership onto that which can not be owned, but because that third party may have property as well and would also like the privilege of excluding others.
All this means that property is not an absolute right. It is conditional upon upholding the rules of society. If one of the rules of society is that you have to give some of what you hoarded back after you die, well, you can try to change the social contract or leave and start your own society. But as long as the vast majority of people in the world don't own property, you're going to have a hard time getting them to go along with your little scheme.
As long as there is significant imbalance in the ownership of the means of production, beyond what the majority would consider a fair imbalance, then there will be conflict over property. And as long as there is a large percentage of people who do not own the means to support themselves, the owning class is in no position to claim the moral high ground and demand that the non-owners submit to wage-slavery.
Nice straw man. This isn't communism we're talking about, stop trying to conflate the two. Also, communism has never been tried, so you can hardly blame that death toll on it. A brutal oligarchy is hardly government of the proletariat, now is it?
To be fair, I take the side of the early anarchists such as Prudhon who said that communism would invariably lead to oligarchy. Any time you have violent struggle, the most brutal will rise to the top, hardly conducive to true government of the proletariat.
But that is true of any adversarial system, especially capitalism. Care to hazard a guess as to how many CEOs suffer from narcissistic, antisocial, or borderline personality disorder? The studies I've seen seem to show that it's a FAR bigger percentage than you'd find in the population at large.
I can always count on you, FallLine, to find the errors in my logic and point them out in a (relatively) non confrontational way. Duh, of course it is the net worth of that age group I should have considered. So, the average person would be paying taxes on $10,000 IF they inherited everything under my proposal. That is bad why, exactly?
Agreed, there should be fair opportunity, not equal opportunity. I worded that wrong. I just think that taxing all income the same regardless of the source is fair. By your logic, corporations have worked hard to accumulate profits, why should the government take them away?
That is the price we pay for the benefit of living in a highly interdependent society. If you don't like it, there are plenty of deserted islands you could where you could go, set up a shack, and pay no taxes at all.
Again, why is income from family members somehow different than income from employers?
How would I not be able to afford the taxes based on the one change I mentioned? Based on a $200,000 deduction I proposed and an average priced $264,000 home, that is $64,000 in taxable income. At the current rate, the one time tax burden would be around $13,000. If that amount is going to bankrupt you, perhaps you or your recently departed ancestor should have planned better.
Why should this type of income be treated differently than any other kind of income? How is a parent giving their kids assets different than an employer giving their employees assets? Why should there be a deduction AT ALL?
I still like to see certain movies in the theaters, but in order to get a good seat, you need to get there early and submit to a constant barrage of advertising that you just paid $9+ for the privilege of watching.
It is a socially responsible tax that helps level the playing field against accident of birth. The $2,000,000 deduction may be surpassed, but that isn't the point. You don't pay ANY taxes on the first $2,000,000. If you are stupid enough not to have saved up to pay for this tax when it is due, then your family does not deserve to run the damn business, sorry.
Only the very rich would benefit from the repeal of the estate tax. Anyone who's net worth, including homes and small businesses is over $2,000,000 is very rich. The average net worth of all US households is about $100,000. That is twenty times lower than this deduction!
Every dollar in circulation has been taxed umpteen times before. Every dollar of income you make was also income for your employer. It was taxed when your employer earned it, and taxed again when you earned it. Every time money changes hands, it is taxed. That is a very fair way of doing it.
Lottery winnings are income. Gifts are income. Money falling from the sky is income. So is inheritance.
Even a $200,000 deduction will allow anyone to keep running a small business unless it was on the verge of failing anyway.
You don't have to pay ANY estate tax unless you have over $2,000,000. That is far too high. Every other form of income is taxed without a two million dollar deduction. Why is the estate tax so limited? Think of how few people have over two million saved. Yet so many people who this tax will never effect want it eliminated entirely. I say reduce the deduction to $200,000 or less.
AAAAAAHhhhhhh! Noooooooooo! You just compared me to Ayn Rand. Besides Anne Coulter, there is not an Ann (or Anne, or Ayn) out there I would less like to be compared to.;-)
I thought that to be free from attachments, one had to be free from emotions, too. I've found in practice that this is not the case. One can be attached to being free from attachments, and it is this that usually leads to suppression of emotions and automaton status. I can feel happy without being attached to staying that way, and sad without feeling like I am failing to be free of attachment.
The middle path is a tricky one to walk.
Ever read Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse? Or The Four Agreements about the Toltec tradition? I would also recommend Mark Twain's short essay "What is Man?"
The east doesn't have a lock on non-dualistic thinking.;-)
If the danger of a non-dualistic way of thinking is a slippery application of relative morals, then the danger of dualism is reductionism leading to systems-blindness. When all one sees are the individual parts and not the systems that the parts create and are created by, one is blind to a large class of real effects.
This is the problem as I see it with individualism. It allows people to blame others rather than look at the systems we are all a part of and might be able to influence. It is so much easier to say, for instance, "He stole. He is responsible for his actions" than it is to look at the systemic causes of poverty. Looking at the causes of poverty, one might have to admit that one benefits from a system that treats others unfairly and does not provide the same level of opportunity to all. Being a good person, one might then decide they had to change that system.
So, before a conscious decision, the mind weighs the possible outcomes of believing that individuals are always responsible for their actions on the one hand and that systems influence behavior on the other. In the first case, there is judgment, a sense of superiority, and a sense of satisfaction. In the second case, there is a sense of responsibility, possibly confusion as to the correct course, and a desire to act to correct injustice.
Obviously, one of these is far more pleasant than the other for most people.
I don't think there are any absolute moral values. Certainly, there are values that are absolute to a given set, such as "all of humanity." But even societies that tend towards moral absolutism recognize that, for example, their God is not bound by the same moral code that they are.
Given that, how can one arrive at a satisfactory set of values? Enlightened self interest seems the best course as it seems to yield results virtually indistinguishable from the absolute morals that most major religions espouse, without the need to subjugate one's own moral and intellectual discernment to some external force.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true. The number of lies printed about Noam Chomsky is staggering. I'm not sure any of them have anything to do with the truth, though. I think they have more to do with the fact that some people don't like it when Noam Chomsky tells the truth about politics and economics.
Yes, and how much of the country's resources do they own? What percentage of the revenue stream do they control? It is fair and just that the people who own most of the resources and control most of the revenue pay most of the taxes.
Back in the 50s, the top tax bracket was around 90%. The middle class lived comfortably. The average person could afford to support a family without a second wage earner. The economy was strong. The changes made since then have only benefited a small percentage of the population, at the expense of the rest of us. I say we tax the rich more. What are they going to do about it? There certainly are more of us than there are of them.
The world would be better off without such a great disparity in income and ownership. There is a reason that most religions originally defined lending money for profit as a sin. There's a reason Jesus got pissed off at the money lenders in the temple. Now, we've made our money lenders into priests, the free market is a religion, and cash is God. I think that's sick.
Good point. However, I think the Bush cronies have engineered themselves a bigger cut of the military pie through outsourcing basic military services. Where before the military industrial complex could get its pork at any time, without going to a 'hot' war, thanks to the Soviet Union, with our new outsourced military services companies actually have to go to war to get their pork.
Do you have a creepy goatee? The antimatter version of you will always have a creepy goatee, so go look in the mirror, if you've got a creepy goatee, then you are the antimatter version.
I think that estimate is a little high. Look up the statistics for percentage of the population with personality disorders, specifically narcissistic, anti-social, and borderline for a better estimate.
There are some interesting recent experiments in economics and games theory. Less than ten percent of the population will generally act in an unfair and unjust manner unless the whole system is unfair and unjust. Most people are far more motivated by notions of reciprocity and fairness than by self interest.
It's not a war for oil, exactly. It is a war that is partly about control of oil producing regions by certain powerful interests in the US. It is mostly about money for the contractors in our newly privatized military. Revenge is just a story used to whip the masses into a frenzy.
Okay, then let's remove the deduction altogether. I pulled that $200,000 out of a delicate part of my anatomy, in order to make it seem more acceptable, but I'd really like to see all income taxed the same.
Can't I complain about it in the hopes of creating an anti-advertising backlash that drives theater owners into removing the commercials? Think about it, I am providing a valuable service by complaining. In our free market system, businesses don't know what they're doing wrong or right unless someone tells them. Usually, they have to pay someone to tell them. I am giving it away for free. I and many people I know go to movies less frequently because of the annoyance factor. If they got rid of the commercials, perhaps the increased sales volume would more than offset the lost revenue.
Just doing my part as a patriotic consumer.
Well, you see, this one group of rich guys tried to screw over this other group of rich guys, but the second group of rich guys was like, "Oh no you didn't!" and the first group was like "What're you gonna do about it!" and then the jury said "We find in favor of the rich guys!"
So you see, EVERYTHING is different now. Duh.
My wife and I stand to inherit over $250,000 from her father and a house worth about $200,000 from my mother, so my proposed change would impact me. Simply because something would impact me is no reason not to do it. I didn't do anything of value to society to earn that money, should I therefore have an absolute right to it?
You are saying you've been impacted by a tax with a $2,000,000 deductible? I certainly hope you aren't expecting anyone to feel sorry for you that you have that much money and have to pay taxes on it.
You aren't being punished for transferring property. Anytime you transfer property, it is taxed, why should it be different after you die? The money you get for your job was already taxed when your employer earned it, why should it be taxed gain when that employer transfers it to you? Do you see how illogical this is? There is no arbitrary point you can stop at and say, "This money has been taxed, and it shall never be taxed again, forevermore!"
"Half your property" is an overstatement. First, there is a two million dollar deduction now, which I say could be cut to $200,000. So the actual tax rate would have to be over 50% to equal half after the deduction is figured in. In reality, the gift tax scale is used on assets over the deductible.
Personally, I see property as a positive right, not a negative right. It is the right to exclude others from using your property, it is not the right to be free from trespass or theft. It is not based on the laughable idea that you own yourself (you're your own slave? How amusing!) but on the pragmatic interests of individuals and society. Why should someone who was not a party to the contract between seller and purchaser respect the purchaser's right to exclude him from using what was purchased? Not, as I said, from some lame attempt to shoehorn the concept of ownership onto that which can not be owned, but because that third party may have property as well and would also like the privilege of excluding others.
All this means that property is not an absolute right. It is conditional upon upholding the rules of society. If one of the rules of society is that you have to give some of what you hoarded back after you die, well, you can try to change the social contract or leave and start your own society. But as long as the vast majority of people in the world don't own property, you're going to have a hard time getting them to go along with your little scheme.
As long as there is significant imbalance in the ownership of the means of production, beyond what the majority would consider a fair imbalance, then there will be conflict over property. And as long as there is a large percentage of people who do not own the means to support themselves, the owning class is in no position to claim the moral high ground and demand that the non-owners submit to wage-slavery.
True dat.
Nice straw man. This isn't communism we're talking about, stop trying to conflate the two. Also, communism has never been tried, so you can hardly blame that death toll on it. A brutal oligarchy is hardly government of the proletariat, now is it?
To be fair, I take the side of the early anarchists such as Prudhon who said that communism would invariably lead to oligarchy. Any time you have violent struggle, the most brutal will rise to the top, hardly conducive to true government of the proletariat.
But that is true of any adversarial system, especially capitalism. Care to hazard a guess as to how many CEOs suffer from narcissistic, antisocial, or borderline personality disorder? The studies I've seen seem to show that it's a FAR bigger percentage than you'd find in the population at large.
I can always count on you, FallLine, to find the errors in my logic and point them out in a (relatively) non confrontational way. Duh, of course it is the net worth of that age group I should have considered. So, the average person would be paying taxes on $10,000 IF they inherited everything under my proposal. That is bad why, exactly?
Agreed, there should be fair opportunity, not equal opportunity. I worded that wrong. I just think that taxing all income the same regardless of the source is fair. By your logic, corporations have worked hard to accumulate profits, why should the government take them away?
That is the price we pay for the benefit of living in a highly interdependent society. If you don't like it, there are plenty of deserted islands you could where you could go, set up a shack, and pay no taxes at all.
Again, why is income from family members somehow different than income from employers?
How would I not be able to afford the taxes based on the one change I mentioned? Based on a $200,000 deduction I proposed and an average priced $264,000 home, that is $64,000 in taxable income. At the current rate, the one time tax burden would be around $13,000. If that amount is going to bankrupt you, perhaps you or your recently departed ancestor should have planned better.
Why should this type of income be treated differently than any other kind of income? How is a parent giving their kids assets different than an employer giving their employees assets? Why should there be a deduction AT ALL?
No, the average net worth in the USA is under $100,000, including the home.
I still like to see certain movies in the theaters, but in order to get a good seat, you need to get there early and submit to a constant barrage of advertising that you just paid $9+ for the privilege of watching.
Taxation isn't stealing. It is a method of preventing free-riders from acquiring the benefits of living in an interdependent society without paying.
How would you propose to give everyone an equal opportunity without leveling the playing field?
It is a socially responsible tax that helps level the playing field against accident of birth. The $2,000,000 deduction may be surpassed, but that isn't the point. You don't pay ANY taxes on the first $2,000,000. If you are stupid enough not to have saved up to pay for this tax when it is due, then your family does not deserve to run the damn business, sorry.
Only the very rich would benefit from the repeal of the estate tax. Anyone who's net worth, including homes and small businesses is over $2,000,000 is very rich. The average net worth of all US households is about $100,000. That is twenty times lower than this deduction!
Every dollar in circulation has been taxed umpteen times before. Every dollar of income you make was also income for your employer. It was taxed when your employer earned it, and taxed again when you earned it. Every time money changes hands, it is taxed. That is a very fair way of doing it.
Lottery winnings are income. Gifts are income. Money falling from the sky is income. So is inheritance.
Even a $200,000 deduction will allow anyone to keep running a small business unless it was on the verge of failing anyway.
You don't have to pay ANY estate tax unless you have over $2,000,000. That is far too high. Every other form of income is taxed without a two million dollar deduction. Why is the estate tax so limited? Think of how few people have over two million saved. Yet so many people who this tax will never effect want it eliminated entirely. I say reduce the deduction to $200,000 or less.
New Wonder Drug Enables Users To Get Higher Than Hell
and not this:
Wonder Drug Inspires Deep, Unwavering Love Of Pharmaceutical Companies
AAAAAAHhhhhhh! Noooooooooo! You just compared me to Ayn Rand. Besides Anne Coulter, there is not an Ann (or Anne, or Ayn) out there I would less like to be compared to. ;-)
;-)
I thought that to be free from attachments, one had to be free from emotions, too. I've found in practice that this is not the case. One can be attached to being free from attachments, and it is this that usually leads to suppression of emotions and automaton status. I can feel happy without being attached to staying that way, and sad without feeling like I am failing to be free of attachment.
The middle path is a tricky one to walk.
Ever read Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse? Or The Four Agreements about the Toltec tradition? I would also recommend Mark Twain's short essay "What is Man?"
The east doesn't have a lock on non-dualistic thinking.
If the danger of a non-dualistic way of thinking is a slippery application of relative morals, then the danger of dualism is reductionism leading to systems-blindness. When all one sees are the individual parts and not the systems that the parts create and are created by, one is blind to a large class of real effects.
This is the problem as I see it with individualism. It allows people to blame others rather than look at the systems we are all a part of and might be able to influence. It is so much easier to say, for instance, "He stole. He is responsible for his actions" than it is to look at the systemic causes of poverty. Looking at the causes of poverty, one might have to admit that one benefits from a system that treats others unfairly and does not provide the same level of opportunity to all. Being a good person, one might then decide they had to change that system.
So, before a conscious decision, the mind weighs the possible outcomes of believing that individuals are always responsible for their actions on the one hand and that systems influence behavior on the other. In the first case, there is judgment, a sense of superiority, and a sense of satisfaction. In the second case, there is a sense of responsibility, possibly confusion as to the correct course, and a desire to act to correct injustice.
Obviously, one of these is far more pleasant than the other for most people.
I don't think there are any absolute moral values. Certainly, there are values that are absolute to a given set, such as "all of humanity." But even societies that tend towards moral absolutism recognize that, for example, their God is not bound by the same moral code that they are.
Given that, how can one arrive at a satisfactory set of values? Enlightened self interest seems the best course as it seems to yield results virtually indistinguishable from the absolute morals that most major religions espouse, without the need to subjugate one's own moral and intellectual discernment to some external force.