Templeton was a Brit. Many of the Getty family still live in America, but some have moved to England where there are even higher taxes. Ted Arison was born in Israel and moved back there at the very end of his life in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the inheritance tax. Hahahaha, good ones!
And "Tax Girl" is a biased no-name blogger citing right wing, wealth friendly Financial Times, claiming that almost eight hundred people renounced their US citizenship last year. Horrors! Wait, most of them are moving to the UK, which has higher taxes than here. Can't you even find citations supporting your points?
Right, the rich have already stolen from us, and you propose to do away with the only mechanism that would allow us to get our money back. We can't just get rid of government now, the wealthiest ten percent own 80% of the real wealth of the country. If we got rid of government now, we would be going back to feudalism, there is no way the little guy could protect himself from the elite without banding together to form some sort of... government.
Demand does not always exist, you fuckwit, you can't just go about redefining basic economic terms of art. Demand means real demand, not imaginary demand if we all had enough fucking faerie unicorns.
And even by your logic, producing more stuff will not produce the ability to pay for that stuff. If people do not now have the ability to pay for more stuff, why would anyone invest in creating stuff no one can pay for? Your internal model of the world doesn't even make sense in its own terms, it is internally contradictory. The cognitive dissonance in your head must be well-nigh deafening.
For example, you say money is just a token of exchnage, but then complain that pieces of paper (otherwise known as TOKENS, don't cut it, and presumably we need something with 'real value' like gold. As a token of exchange. And you don't even see the internal; inconsistency in that statement, do you.
I'm sorry you don't have the mental capacity to comprehend simple logic. The world must be a bizarre and confusing place to you. Do you live in a special home?
Investment income is income, so tax that. And stop pretending we are powerless against the rich, this is a democracy. We just have to stop believing we are powerless, or that we need the rich to hand out jobs. We need to stop this "abusive stepfather state" (see what I did there?) that caters to the rich.
Okay, so we get rid of the loopholes too. It almost sounds as if you are saying that we are powerless against the rich and powerful. I choose not to subscribe to that world view.
That is bullshit, all sources, for instance, the Bible, estimate human lifespan as being essentially the same as today. The difference was child mortality rates. Most people died before the age of ten, if you know anything about statistics, you will see how that effects the average life expectancy, even though, if you lived past ten you were about a likely to live to seventy five as you are today.
No such thing as lack of demand? That is utterly stupid. You don't even support that inane statement, just utter it as a matter of fact, and then tack on a non sequiter about fiat money. You are a walking museum of wingnut cliches and your opinions should not be taken seriously.
The US government is nowhere near bankruptcy, you libertarian loon. Look at the bond market, people seem damn sure the government will pay them back, and history shows us they are right to think that.
As a follower of a discredited fringe school of economics that was invented by the rich to excuse the policies of and for the rich, why should anyone listen to a single self serving word you say?
Right, brilliant. Get rid of the government after the rich have used them to steal all your money. Right now, the government works for the rich because we don't vote in our own interests. Americans need to wake up and stop enabling our abusers. We have national Stockholm Syndrome.
Even if you choose how you spend your money, the rich still take you to the cleaners. In any free transaction, both people walk away with more value. Obviously, they value what they got over what they gave. But how much more? That gray area is where the wealthy do their work. They do everything they can to ensure that 99.999% of the extra value in any transaction goes to them. You walk away just barely happier with your purchase than your money, while they would have still been happy had they received far less than they did.
The wealthy actively collude with each other to devalue labor and workers, so they get you when you work, as well as when you buy from them. You are not paid what you are worth, no worker is.
If you are happy being raped by these dicks, well, I guess it takes all kinds and some people are into that kind of abuse and humiliation. Not me.
Because taking over factories that are competitive in a free market and giving them to workers has been shown not to work with current techniques. Whereas taking factories that are natural monopolies (like electricity, water, and so forth) is almost always a good idea.
The free market, when kept free through stringent government regulation, is a good thing. Lending money for unreasonable profit (aka capitalism or the sin of usury) is a bad thing. The unrestricted accumulation of wealth by individuals is also a bad thing, success in life should not allow one to dictate to other people, but in our system, it does. Small privately owned businesses are a good thing. Accumulation of too much power, be it in government or a corporation, is bad. Society should not allow any individual to accumulate too much power.
Moreover, this is simply not true for most societies over most of human history. We have valued our elderly and kept them alive to pass on their wisdom, even chewing their food for them back before the days of dentures.
Only when times were extremely tight did the elderly volunteer to go off and die. No society has forced this on their elderly and I challenge you to provide even one example where killing off the elderly was commonplace.
Easily debunked lies do not help advance your argument.
Health care is a moral issue. All civilized societies take care of even their least fortunate members. I do not want to be a part of a society that callously lets people die in the streets. If you aren't willing to help, you should not get the benefits of being a member of society.
I used to have a board game called 'Capitalism vs. Communism.' It had typical board game features, roll a die to move around a board, do what the space you land on says, like pick a card or roll again. One of the best squares to land on late in the game (if you were playing the Communists) was the one labeled "Police and Army Realize they are all Working Class."
You know how we domesticated ourselves, invented society and gave ourselves civilization? A hundred thousand years of killing fascists and sociopaths. You play nice with others or you play dead.
And we tax their businesses here. They can't pick up their factories and take them with. If they want to shut them down, we socialize them and give them to the workers. Let the rich cut off their noses to spite their face.
Gutting workplace safety laws. Gutting protections for union organizers. Gutting environmental regulations. Gutting financial regulations. Gutting social programs that make workers secure enough to ask for fair treatment. Letting in foreign workers with H1B visas. Lowering the top tax rate. Tax cuts for shipping jobs overseas. The list goes on and on, man, it's all out war and they are winning.
Let the rich leave, they don't do anything for society anyhow. They are parasites on the back of the working man. If they want to have a business here, we tax them anyhow. We are not their bitches.
So? We just close the loopholes. Don't allow people to invest in tax havens. Why should we continue to allow people to screw over society?
You know what removes the incentive to invest? Lack of demand. If you have all the money in the world and everyone else has none, why would you invest in jobs creation? No one has any money to spend on your products. That is what we are seeing now, there is plenty of capital to invest in new jobs, there is just no demand.
No, it does not destroy economies, quite the opposite, taking money from the middle class and the poor and giving it to the rich destroys economies.
The idea that people must work for and enrich bosses is stupid. Why not work for ourselves? Why do we need some rich person to give us the means to support ourselves?
Besides, I am not talking about people like your girlfriend's father. It sounds like he is upper middle class, not rich. Does he make over a million a year? If not, he isn't rich. I don't think we should take money from those who have fairly earned it, but sitting on your ass and gambling for a living, when your losses will be bailed out by the taxpayer, is not a fair way to earn a living.
They did it to us by buying laws that transferred wealth to them. The inflation adjusted real wages for the bottom 80% of Americans have not risen appreciably since the sixties. Almost all the increase in GDP over the last fifty years has gone to the top 10%. It's time to take back what was stolen from us.
Do not think that you will be one of them one day. They want you to think you will, so you will fight for them, but you will not.
Slashdot Mirror
Templeton was a Brit. Many of the Getty family still live in America, but some have moved to England where there are even higher taxes. Ted Arison was born in Israel and moved back there at the very end of his life in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the inheritance tax. Hahahaha, good ones!
And "Tax Girl" is a biased no-name blogger citing right wing, wealth friendly Financial Times, claiming that almost eight hundred people renounced their US citizenship last year. Horrors! Wait, most of them are moving to the UK, which has higher taxes than here. Can't you even find citations supporting your points?
Right, the rich have already stolen from us, and you propose to do away with the only mechanism that would allow us to get our money back. We can't just get rid of government now, the wealthiest ten percent own 80% of the real wealth of the country. If we got rid of government now, we would be going back to feudalism, there is no way the little guy could protect himself from the elite without banding together to form some sort of... government.
Demand does not always exist, you fuckwit, you can't just go about redefining basic economic terms of art. Demand means real demand, not imaginary demand if we all had enough fucking faerie unicorns.
And even by your logic, producing more stuff will not produce the ability to pay for that stuff. If people do not now have the ability to pay for more stuff, why would anyone invest in creating stuff no one can pay for? Your internal model of the world doesn't even make sense in its own terms, it is internally contradictory. The cognitive dissonance in your head must be well-nigh deafening.
For example, you say money is just a token of exchnage, but then complain that pieces of paper (otherwise known as TOKENS, don't cut it, and presumably we need something with 'real value' like gold. As a token of exchange. And you don't even see the internal; inconsistency in that statement, do you.
I'm sorry you don't have the mental capacity to comprehend simple logic. The world must be a bizarre and confusing place to you. Do you live in a special home?
Investment income is income, so tax that. And stop pretending we are powerless against the rich, this is a democracy. We just have to stop believing we are powerless, or that we need the rich to hand out jobs. We need to stop this "abusive stepfather state" (see what I did there?) that caters to the rich.
Okay, so we get rid of the loopholes too. It almost sounds as if you are saying that we are powerless against the rich and powerful. I choose not to subscribe to that world view.
That is bullshit, all sources, for instance, the Bible, estimate human lifespan as being essentially the same as today. The difference was child mortality rates. Most people died before the age of ten, if you know anything about statistics, you will see how that effects the average life expectancy, even though, if you lived past ten you were about a likely to live to seventy five as you are today.
That's your mom's crotch juice, not spittle, boy. Now sit down and stop interrupting the grownups.
No such thing as lack of demand? That is utterly stupid. You don't even support that inane statement, just utter it as a matter of fact, and then tack on a non sequiter about fiat money. You are a walking museum of wingnut cliches and your opinions should not be taken seriously.
The US government is nowhere near bankruptcy, you libertarian loon. Look at the bond market, people seem damn sure the government will pay them back, and history shows us they are right to think that.
As a follower of a discredited fringe school of economics that was invented by the rich to excuse the policies of and for the rich, why should anyone listen to a single self serving word you say?
Right, brilliant. Get rid of the government after the rich have used them to steal all your money. Right now, the government works for the rich because we don't vote in our own interests. Americans need to wake up and stop enabling our abusers. We have national Stockholm Syndrome.
Even if you choose how you spend your money, the rich still take you to the cleaners. In any free transaction, both people walk away with more value. Obviously, they value what they got over what they gave. But how much more? That gray area is where the wealthy do their work. They do everything they can to ensure that 99.999% of the extra value in any transaction goes to them. You walk away just barely happier with your purchase than your money, while they would have still been happy had they received far less than they did.
The wealthy actively collude with each other to devalue labor and workers, so they get you when you work, as well as when you buy from them. You are not paid what you are worth, no worker is.
If you are happy being raped by these dicks, well, I guess it takes all kinds and some people are into that kind of abuse and humiliation. Not me.
Because taking over factories that are competitive in a free market and giving them to workers has been shown not to work with current techniques. Whereas taking factories that are natural monopolies (like electricity, water, and so forth) is almost always a good idea.
The free market, when kept free through stringent government regulation, is a good thing. Lending money for unreasonable profit (aka capitalism or the sin of usury) is a bad thing. The unrestricted accumulation of wealth by individuals is also a bad thing, success in life should not allow one to dictate to other people, but in our system, it does. Small privately owned businesses are a good thing. Accumulation of too much power, be it in government or a corporation, is bad. Society should not allow any individual to accumulate too much power.
Moreover, this is simply not true for most societies over most of human history. We have valued our elderly and kept them alive to pass on their wisdom, even chewing their food for them back before the days of dentures.
Only when times were extremely tight did the elderly volunteer to go off and die. No society has forced this on their elderly and I challenge you to provide even one example where killing off the elderly was commonplace.
Easily debunked lies do not help advance your argument.
Are you saying that we are not civilized, or that we expose our elderly? Either way, you are an idiot.
Health care is a moral issue. All civilized societies take care of even their least fortunate members. I do not want to be a part of a society that callously lets people die in the streets. If you aren't willing to help, you should not get the benefits of being a member of society.
I used to have a board game called 'Capitalism vs. Communism.' It had typical board game features, roll a die to move around a board, do what the space you land on says, like pick a card or roll again. One of the best squares to land on late in the game (if you were playing the Communists) was the one labeled "Police and Army Realize they are all Working Class."
You know how we domesticated ourselves, invented society and gave ourselves civilization? A hundred thousand years of killing fascists and sociopaths. You play nice with others or you play dead.
And we tax their businesses here. They can't pick up their factories and take them with. If they want to shut them down, we socialize them and give them to the workers. Let the rich cut off their noses to spite their face.
Wikipedia is a good place to start, these being contested viewpoints the scholarship on the articles is impeccable and the citations are numerous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
Gutting workplace safety laws. Gutting protections for union organizers. Gutting environmental regulations. Gutting financial regulations. Gutting social programs that make workers secure enough to ask for fair treatment. Letting in foreign workers with H1B visas. Lowering the top tax rate. Tax cuts for shipping jobs overseas. The list goes on and on, man, it's all out war and they are winning.
Let the rich leave, they don't do anything for society anyhow. They are parasites on the back of the working man. If they want to have a business here, we tax them anyhow. We are not their bitches.
It didn't happen in the fifties, why would it happen now? The rich want to leave, let them. They don't do shit for society anyway, the leaches.
Fuck you too, Hitler. I'm in yur base, killin yur doods.
So? We just close the loopholes. Don't allow people to invest in tax havens. Why should we continue to allow people to screw over society?
You know what removes the incentive to invest? Lack of demand. If you have all the money in the world and everyone else has none, why would you invest in jobs creation? No one has any money to spend on your products. That is what we are seeing now, there is plenty of capital to invest in new jobs, there is just no demand.
No, it does not destroy economies, quite the opposite, taking money from the middle class and the poor and giving it to the rich destroys economies.
The idea that people must work for and enrich bosses is stupid. Why not work for ourselves? Why do we need some rich person to give us the means to support ourselves?
Besides, I am not talking about people like your girlfriend's father. It sounds like he is upper middle class, not rich. Does he make over a million a year? If not, he isn't rich. I don't think we should take money from those who have fairly earned it, but sitting on your ass and gambling for a living, when your losses will be bailed out by the taxpayer, is not a fair way to earn a living.
Of course. I only favor raising taxes on the ultra rich.
They did it to us by buying laws that transferred wealth to them. The inflation adjusted real wages for the bottom 80% of Americans have not risen appreciably since the sixties. Almost all the increase in GDP over the last fifty years has gone to the top 10%. It's time to take back what was stolen from us.
Do not think that you will be one of them one day. They want you to think you will, so you will fight for them, but you will not.
No, the rich didn't flee the country. That is ludicrous and you have no evidence, because none exists.