Sorry, but a corporation is not "just" a group of people.
Apologies if my typo confused things, the first point should have been:
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
The Court never said corporations are people, singular or plural. All they said is that the constitutionally guaranteed right of a person to free speech exists both as a single individual person and as a group of people. In other words people do not loose a constitutionally protected right by associating or operating as a group.
With respect to breeching contracts, polluting the environment and destroying the economy; none of these are constitutionally protected rights. Sadly it may seem otherwise but no such rights exist.
Healthcare is earned and part of pay. It is NOT paid for by the company. Another absurdity in this whole mess.
However until recently the healthcare policy and what it covered was in fact chosen by the company. Employees could not choose any plan they wished, they had to pick from the company offerings.
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc.
Well when you can read it you can record it. As the person in front of the window I should have no right to tell someone they can't record me when I knowingly made the choice to not privatize myself. In fact I would claim that you have even less right to complain when it comes to Wi-Fi because the security is already there, you just have to use it. It would be like the window coming with curtains installed and you just didn't put them down.
The Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that protects unencrypted wifi under existing wiretapping statutes. Their opinion, unlike ours, is the law.
Stop using the picture taking analogy. It doesn't work because there are specifically laws forbidding taking pictures of the inside of someone's house.
It does work, these laws are the point of the update to the GP's analogy. Why does it work, because the Supreme Court let stand a ruling that says unencrypted wifi is protected by wiretapping legislation.
Google is accused of recording data not merely reading it. To use your analogy it would be more like google walking up to the window without curtains and taking pictures.
When your democracy revolves around voting with dollars, how could anything besides this outcome have been expected?
That is a seriously misinformed view. Dollars don't vote, people do. And a 1%'er has exactly the same vote as a 99%'er.
Money is tool to influence voters who don't really care one way or another, nothing more. No amount of big money financed media campaigns will changes the minds of informed voters who care about a particular issue.
Two of the most power lobbies in the U.S. are the NRA and the AARP. The power of these organization is not campaign contributions, their power comes from the fact that their member as well known for reliably showing up on election day and voting their respective issue.
Want to change things, then educate and motivate voters. Want to support the status quo, then focus on the red herring of money.
Now factor in that in tax jurisdictions where bitcoins are an asset, like the U.S., that a person spending a coin at any of these merchants is obligated to report to the IRS the gain or loss the bitcoins spent had experienced between the time they were acquired and the time spent.
That's okay, currency of any sort including the USD is also treated like both a currency and a commodity.
It depends upon your tax agency, in the US the IRS is treating bitcoin like an asset. Under such policies people are expect to declare the gain or loss of value of bitcoins between the time they acquired the coins and the time they spent the coins. When this reality is enforced, i.e. people get letters from the IRS asking for such info, bitcoin usage in these jurisdiction will change.
The above is a key distinction between spending fiat and spending bitcoins.
Gold (or platinum) plated contacts are most desirable for circuits which carry very low to extremely low current, because it is free from corrosion, so surface resistance stays low.
Or for environments that are hostile. A family member assembled aircraft radios for the US Navy back in the day, they used gold solder. Don't know if they continue to do so or if everything is just in a sealed black box.
Persons Other that Grunts, have a dual mission, although Grunts don't much care to admit it. They order necessities like food, fuel, and ammo, they repair equipment and they acr as backups when the crap hits the fan. Ask the guys who were at the Battle of the Bulge, what they think about the cooks, clerks, and mechanics who joined them in holding the line until Patton arrived. In the Army, everybody's infantry, any other MOS is only an additional skill identifier.
I also knew someone who was 101st. At Bastogne this paratrooper spent days sharing a frozen hole in the ground with a truck driver who carried in one of the last loads of supplies before the German's completed their encirclement. The driver volunteered for this one-way trip into the city.
As for the sailor I mentioned previously. He didn't have a dual mission in the sense that you describe. He did not pitch in when things got desperate as the truck driver did. This clerk's general quarters station was as an anti-aircraft gunner, he was part of the ship's primary air defense. He was not some sort of backup or secondary. Things are different on a small ship like a destroyer. On a land base the clerks might be told to take cover in a shelter when enemy aircraft were spotted, but on a destroyer they man weapons.
As you climb above those levels, n% approaches pocket change.
That is mathematical nonsense. 15% of 100 thousand is 15 thousand. 15% of 100 million is 15 million.
This "pocket change" notion is nonsense. The wealthy would notice a 15% hit just like those of more moderate means.
No. They would not. Basic living expenses, common to all incomes, do not change. The guy who's left with $85 million after taxes doesn't have to worry about choosing between paying the heating bill or feeding his kids. Ever.
Jeezuz. How is this not patently fucking obvious?
Neither is the guy making $100,000, that's nearly twice the average median income in the US. Is that not obvious to you?
Before you attempt to introduce your straw man re-read older posts where I wrote that the tax is not literally flat. It phases in at the poverty line and does not become flat until some point well above it.
We used to call guys like that pogues, and we didn't give them medals. On the other hand, if you could introduce efficiency in military bureaucracy, or any bureaucracy really, good on you!
Careful where you draw the line between "fighting men" and "office workers". I knew someone who was a Yeoman, does the ship's paperwork, on a destroyer during WW2. He only did paperwork between the fighting. When the ship went to general quarters he put down the pencil and became part of the crew of a 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun. For those unfamiliar, this was not a gun where the crew had some protection inside a turret. Bofors' crew were on deck and exposed to enemy fire, debris/fuel from aircraft destroyed and friendly fire.
Better people is easy. Just do random selection. It may not result in optimal. But it would on average deliver 'better'.
It would be like the draft, you walk out to your mail box and find a letter from the government. Instead of being told to report to the Army for a year or more you are told to report to Congress for two years.:-)
Until we have legislation that could plausibly pass the legislature there is no misconception. What you describe below is just one possibility, and other possibilities can address such issues.
... but a flat income tax would either 1) not tax dividends and capital gains at all, or 2) would not tax business income at the corporate level. If both were taxed, then the tax rate on corporate income would be doubled...
Or dividends could be treated as an expense, like employee payroll, which is analogous since its sort of an owner payroll.
As for capitol gains, if the gain is retained by the company it is taxed. If the gain is passed on to shareholders it is not taxed at the company level but is taxed at the individual level since it was expensed.
Or in a more general fashion there is "pass through" taxation. One entity declares that certain taxable income is passed through to a different approved taxpayer (employee, shareholder,...) where taxation will occur. Much like in a single member LLC (where there is only one owner/shareholder) where the LLC declares that its taxable income appears on the tax return of another.
Obama got less votes in 2012 than McCain did in 2008. Had Romney gotten all of those "for granted" votes he would have easily won. Romney won the independents by 20%. By your claim, Romney easily beat Obama by courting those in-between voters, but to your surprise Obama is still in the White House. So, you are basically wrong, period.
No, your analysis is completely flawed. The Democrats simply had better party loyalty than the Republicans that year. Party loyalty is not some fixed percentage over time nor are the number of loyal voters equal between the parties.
Your analysis is also complete off topic. You are arguing how to win elections. I am arguing how to effect change in politicians. Those are two very different things.
If anything that election proves my point. The Republican Party analyzes the results and pays attention to those who stayed at home, considers what they need to do to get these people to the polls, what they need to do to get member motivated and loyal. They paid little attention to those who showed up and voted for Romney.
Similarly the base that loyally voted for Obama was largely left of center. And what do we find them doing after elections, largely complaining of Obama's drift to the right and courting the middle. Of not fulfilling the goals of the left.
2.5 Million GOP voters did not bother to come out for Romney, and had those taken granted for voters not been taken for granted it would have been different.
You confuse party membership with party loyalty. The two are very different things. What party a person belongs to does not make any difference. What matters is that they do not automatically vote for their party's candidate.
And yes a party should be shocked and concerned over disloyalty. That is the only thing that will change a party and its politicians. A loyal base will not. A loyal base is essentially a vote for the status quo, a vote to let party leaders control things.
It also nails people on things like medical deductions, double taxed state taxes, etc.
That is a red herring. Most serious flat tax proposals are not literally flat. They phase in at the poverty line, the tax doesn't truly become "flat" until some point well above the poverty line. With the Affordable Health Care Act out-of-pocket medical costs are capped. and if the federal government goes flat presumably the states could as well, etc. The voter driven movement pushing along the "flat" tax would effect both federal and state levels of government.
The saner thing is to nuke long term cap gains. If you realize income, tax it as income, doesn't matter where it came from.
The problem to me seems that regular folks don't seem to understand or care (or think they can do anything about) creating a system of government where the rule of law prevails instead of the rule of committees, boards and commissions. There is a difference between the rule of law with people executing that law and a law that simply abdicates to the discretion of men and the corrupting influence that it has.
They can do something about it. They can vote out politicians who are not serving the interests of the people. The people must however be willing to vote punitively, to vote against their political party, until politicians learn that they must serve the interests of the people first. Such a darwinian process will change the behavior of politicians. Above all else, politicians want their jobs, they will do what is necessary to keep them.
Votes are the true currency of politics and a 99%'er has the same vote as a 1%'er. Money is just a tool to persuade those who don't really care one way or another. If voters care money has little power.
The "flat tax" idea is seductive in it's simplicity, but extremely unfair in actual practice.
I did not say a "flat tax", I said "A rate is defined". That rate may be a function of income, i.e. progressive.
For those living at the lowest income levels, n% is a meaningful bite out of their income.
That is a bit of a red herring. Most of the serious flat tax advocates agree it should phase in at the poverty line, so it does have a progressive nature near the poverty line and would only be flat at some point above the poverty line.
As you climb above those levels, n% approaches pocket change.
That is mathematical nonsense. 15% of 100 thousand is 15 thousand. 15% of 100 million is 15 million.
This "pocket change" notion is nonsense. The wealthy would notice a 15% hit just like those of more moderate means. The motivation for higher tax rates for the wealthy had some basis in logic because they wealthy had greater resources to engineer their finances to take advantage of various loopholes. Basically the higher rate was trying to get the effective tax rate to a reasonable point. However with no credits and no deductions and no loopholes you don't need inflated rates at the higher end to collect a reasonable effective rate.
The progressive tax tables in place today were conceived with the notion that every tax payer should feel the burden more or less equally.
And a flat rate, above some point, would in fact result in an absolutely equal burden.
It worked well for a long time. Then the notion that "rich people need to be rewarded so that they do the right thing" began to gain favor, so the Reagan Tax Cuts came about, and things have gone downhill ever since.
That is a political myth. Tax cuts were not the problem. Uncontrolled spending and the exportation of middle class jobs have caused the downhill slide.
The notion that the rich need to be penalized is as logically flawed as the notion that the rich need to be rewarded.
Oh, and that political apathy that I mentioned. A big part of that is loyalty to your political party.
If you are loyal to your party then you are irrelevant. Your party can ignore you because they have your vote, the other party can ignore you because they can not obtain your vote.
The people who control the outcomes of elections in the US, and those to whom the politicians show some responsiveness, are those who vote for candidates and not political parties.
Belong to whatever party you want, whatever party most closely expresses your positions. But do not blindly vote for that party's candidates. Do note vote because of a party platform that a candidate is completely free to ignore. Look at the respective candidates and their track records, their voting history. Vote for whichever one you think will do the better job regardless of their party.
Voting for candidates rather than political parties is the only way for voters to regain control of politicians. Politicians must not have a political base they can count on regardless of how they vote, they must fear that every single vote they received must be earned.
Here's the thing though: a lot of people want a lot of changes to happen. Everyone doesn't agree on all of the changes, sure, but a lot of people want to see fundamental changes to our political system, starting with removing the corrupting influence of money. A lot of people want to support something moving in that direction, but what are our options right now?
Money is not the problem. The problem is apathetic voters who are OK with the status quo. Money does not control politicians, votes do. Money is just a tool to influence voters who don't really care one way or the other.
A member of the 1% has 1 vote, the same as a member of the 99%.
If a voter cares about an issue no amount of PAC money, no amount spent on media campaigns, is going to change their position.
Two of the most power political lobbies the US, the NRA and the AARP, have the attention of politicians **not** because of campaign contributions. The real power of these two organizations are their memberships. They have millions of members who will show up on election day and will vote according to their respective positions. These members showing up at the polls is the source of their incredible influence in Washington.
And the recent election in Virginia shows the power of motivated voters against big money. The candidate with the big money and power position in the Congress, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, lost to an university professor who spent only $100,000 on his campaign. Why, because the professor had motivated voters and Cantor only had money.
You want to do something? You want change? Then educate and motivate voters.
You want to see things stay the same? Then focus the wrong thing, money.
But then what will they call the new things that secretly do the same damn thing and spring up in their place? Shouldn't we have a catchier label ready now?
To get rid of the major source of political corruption in the U.S. we need to rewrite the tax codes. The U.S. Tax Code is probably the biggest vehicle by which U.S. politicians reward their friends and interfere with their enemies.
No credits, no deductions,... A rate is defined, you pay exactly that rate. Obviously these rates would be much lower than they currently are, however they can be designed using the average effective rates paid so that there is no revenue loss for the government.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but a corporation is not "just" a group of people.
Apologies if my typo confused things, the first point should have been:
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
The Court never said corporations are people, singular or plural. All they said is that the constitutionally guaranteed right of a person to free speech exists both as a single individual person and as a group of people. In other words people do not loose a constitutionally protected right by associating or operating as a group.
With respect to breeching contracts, polluting the environment and destroying the economy; none of these are constitutionally protected rights. Sadly it may seem otherwise but no such rights exist.
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
Oops, typo, "as" not "are". The Supreme Court has better proofreaders. :-)
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
Healthcare is earned and part of pay. It is NOT paid for by the company. Another absurdity in this whole mess.
However until recently the healthcare policy and what it covered was in fact chosen by the company. Employees could not choose any plan they wished, they had to pick from the company offerings.
Saying they ARE people is a power grab ...
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc.
how can anyone "educate", or even be heard, without large amounts of money?
Ask the economics professor who beat House Majority Leader Mitch Cantor in Virginia. The professor spent less than $100,000.
Cantor had money. The professor had enthusiastic voters.
Well when you can read it you can record it. As the person in front of the window I should have no right to tell someone they can't record me when I knowingly made the choice to not privatize myself. In fact I would claim that you have even less right to complain when it comes to Wi-Fi because the security is already there, you just have to use it. It would be like the window coming with curtains installed and you just didn't put them down.
The Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that protects unencrypted wifi under existing wiretapping statutes. Their opinion, unlike ours, is the law.
Stop using the picture taking analogy. It doesn't work because there are specifically laws forbidding taking pictures of the inside of someone's house.
It does work, these laws are the point of the update to the GP's analogy. Why does it work, because the Supreme Court let stand a ruling that says unencrypted wifi is protected by wiretapping legislation.
Google is accused of recording data not merely reading it. To use your analogy it would be more like google walking up to the window without curtains and taking pictures.
When your democracy revolves around voting with dollars, how could anything besides this outcome have been expected?
That is a seriously misinformed view. Dollars don't vote, people do. And a 1%'er has exactly the same vote as a 99%'er.
Money is tool to influence voters who don't really care one way or another, nothing more. No amount of big money financed media campaigns will changes the minds of informed voters who care about a particular issue.
Two of the most power lobbies in the U.S. are the NRA and the AARP. The power of these organization is not campaign contributions, their power comes from the fact that their member as well known for reliably showing up on election day and voting their respective issue.
Want to change things, then educate and motivate voters. Want to support the status quo, then focus on the red herring of money.
Now factor in that in tax jurisdictions where bitcoins are an asset, like the U.S., that a person spending a coin at any of these merchants is obligated to report to the IRS the gain or loss the bitcoins spent had experienced between the time they were acquired and the time spent.
That's okay, currency of any sort including the USD is also treated like both a currency and a commodity.
It depends upon your tax agency, in the US the IRS is treating bitcoin like an asset. Under such policies people are expect to declare the gain or loss of value of bitcoins between the time they acquired the coins and the time they spent the coins. When this reality is enforced, i.e. people get letters from the IRS asking for such info, bitcoin usage in these jurisdiction will change.
The above is a key distinction between spending fiat and spending bitcoins.
Gold (or platinum) plated contacts are most desirable for circuits which carry very low to extremely low current, because it is free from corrosion, so surface resistance stays low.
Or for environments that are hostile. A family member assembled aircraft radios for the US Navy back in the day, they used gold solder. Don't know if they continue to do so or if everything is just in a sealed black box.
Persons Other that Grunts, have a dual mission, although Grunts don't much care to admit it. They order necessities like food, fuel, and ammo, they repair equipment and they acr as backups when the crap hits the fan. Ask the guys who were at the Battle of the Bulge, what they think about the cooks, clerks, and mechanics who joined them in holding the line until Patton arrived. In the Army, everybody's infantry, any other MOS is only an additional skill identifier.
I also knew someone who was 101st. At Bastogne this paratrooper spent days sharing a frozen hole in the ground with a truck driver who carried in one of the last loads of supplies before the German's completed their encirclement. The driver volunteered for this one-way trip into the city.
As for the sailor I mentioned previously. He didn't have a dual mission in the sense that you describe. He did not pitch in when things got desperate as the truck driver did. This clerk's general quarters station was as an anti-aircraft gunner, he was part of the ship's primary air defense. He was not some sort of backup or secondary. Things are different on a small ship like a destroyer. On a land base the clerks might be told to take cover in a shelter when enemy aircraft were spotted, but on a destroyer they man weapons.
As you climb above those levels, n% approaches pocket change.
That is mathematical nonsense. 15% of 100 thousand is 15 thousand. 15% of 100 million is 15 million. This "pocket change" notion is nonsense. The wealthy would notice a 15% hit just like those of more moderate means.
No. They would not. Basic living expenses, common to all incomes, do not change. The guy who's left with $85 million after taxes doesn't have to worry about choosing between paying the heating bill or feeding his kids. Ever. Jeezuz. How is this not patently fucking obvious?
Neither is the guy making $100,000, that's nearly twice the average median income in the US. Is that not obvious to you?
Before you attempt to introduce your straw man re-read older posts where I wrote that the tax is not literally flat. It phases in at the poverty line and does not become flat until some point well above it.
We used to call guys like that pogues, and we didn't give them medals. On the other hand, if you could introduce efficiency in military bureaucracy, or any bureaucracy really, good on you!
Careful where you draw the line between "fighting men" and "office workers". I knew someone who was a Yeoman, does the ship's paperwork, on a destroyer during WW2. He only did paperwork between the fighting. When the ship went to general quarters he put down the pencil and became part of the crew of a 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun. For those unfamiliar, this was not a gun where the crew had some protection inside a turret. Bofors' crew were on deck and exposed to enemy fire, debris/fuel from aircraft destroyed and friendly fire.
Better people is easy. Just do random selection. It may not result in optimal. But it would on average deliver 'better'.
It would be like the draft, you walk out to your mail box and find a letter from the government. Instead of being told to report to the Army for a year or more you are told to report to Congress for two years. :-)
It's a common misconception to think so ...
Until we have legislation that could plausibly pass the legislature there is no misconception. What you describe below is just one possibility, and other possibilities can address such issues.
... but a flat income tax would either 1) not tax dividends and capital gains at all, or 2) would not tax business income at the corporate level. If both were taxed, then the tax rate on corporate income would be doubled ...
Or dividends could be treated as an expense, like employee payroll, which is analogous since its sort of an owner payroll.
...) where taxation will occur. Much like in a single member LLC (where there is only one owner/shareholder) where the LLC declares that its taxable income appears on the tax return of another.
As for capitol gains, if the gain is retained by the company it is taxed. If the gain is passed on to shareholders it is not taxed at the company level but is taxed at the individual level since it was expensed.
Or in a more general fashion there is "pass through" taxation. One entity declares that certain taxable income is passed through to a different approved taxpayer (employee, shareholder,
Obama got less votes in 2012 than McCain did in 2008. Had Romney gotten all of those "for granted" votes he would have easily won. Romney won the independents by 20%. By your claim, Romney easily beat Obama by courting those in-between voters, but to your surprise Obama is still in the White House. So, you are basically wrong, period.
No, your analysis is completely flawed. The Democrats simply had better party loyalty than the Republicans that year. Party loyalty is not some fixed percentage over time nor are the number of loyal voters equal between the parties.
Your analysis is also complete off topic. You are arguing how to win elections. I am arguing how to effect change in politicians. Those are two very different things.
If anything that election proves my point. The Republican Party analyzes the results and pays attention to those who stayed at home, considers what they need to do to get these people to the polls, what they need to do to get member motivated and loyal. They paid little attention to those who showed up and voted for Romney.
Similarly the base that loyally voted for Obama was largely left of center. And what do we find them doing after elections, largely complaining of Obama's drift to the right and courting the middle. Of not fulfilling the goals of the left.
2.5 Million GOP voters did not bother to come out for Romney, and had those taken granted for voters not been taken for granted it would have been different.
You confuse party membership with party loyalty. The two are very different things. What party a person belongs to does not make any difference. What matters is that they do not automatically vote for their party's candidate.
And yes a party should be shocked and concerned over disloyalty. That is the only thing that will change a party and its politicians. A loyal base will not. A loyal base is essentially a vote for the status quo, a vote to let party leaders control things.
It also nails people on things like medical deductions, double taxed state taxes, etc.
That is a red herring. Most serious flat tax proposals are not literally flat. They phase in at the poverty line, the tax doesn't truly become "flat" until some point well above the poverty line. With the Affordable Health Care Act out-of-pocket medical costs are capped. and if the federal government goes flat presumably the states could as well, etc. The voter driven movement pushing along the "flat" tax would effect both federal and state levels of government.
The saner thing is to nuke long term cap gains. If you realize income, tax it as income, doesn't matter where it came from.
That is what a "flat" tax would do.
The problem to me seems that regular folks don't seem to understand or care (or think they can do anything about) creating a system of government where the rule of law prevails instead of the rule of committees, boards and commissions. There is a difference between the rule of law with people executing that law and a law that simply abdicates to the discretion of men and the corrupting influence that it has.
They can do something about it. They can vote out politicians who are not serving the interests of the people. The people must however be willing to vote punitively, to vote against their political party, until politicians learn that they must serve the interests of the people first. Such a darwinian process will change the behavior of politicians. Above all else, politicians want their jobs, they will do what is necessary to keep them.
Votes are the true currency of politics and a 99%'er has the same vote as a 1%'er. Money is just a tool to persuade those who don't really care one way or another. If voters care money has little power.
The "flat tax" idea is seductive in it's simplicity, but extremely unfair in actual practice.
I did not say a "flat tax", I said "A rate is defined". That rate may be a function of income, i.e. progressive.
For those living at the lowest income levels, n% is a meaningful bite out of their income.
That is a bit of a red herring. Most of the serious flat tax advocates agree it should phase in at the poverty line, so it does have a progressive nature near the poverty line and would only be flat at some point above the poverty line.
As you climb above those levels, n% approaches pocket change.
That is mathematical nonsense. 15% of 100 thousand is 15 thousand. 15% of 100 million is 15 million.
This "pocket change" notion is nonsense. The wealthy would notice a 15% hit just like those of more moderate means. The motivation for higher tax rates for the wealthy had some basis in logic because they wealthy had greater resources to engineer their finances to take advantage of various loopholes. Basically the higher rate was trying to get the effective tax rate to a reasonable point. However with no credits and no deductions and no loopholes you don't need inflated rates at the higher end to collect a reasonable effective rate.
The progressive tax tables in place today were conceived with the notion that every tax payer should feel the burden more or less equally.
And a flat rate, above some point, would in fact result in an absolutely equal burden.
It worked well for a long time. Then the notion that "rich people need to be rewarded so that they do the right thing" began to gain favor, so the Reagan Tax Cuts came about, and things have gone downhill ever since.
That is a political myth. Tax cuts were not the problem. Uncontrolled spending and the exportation of middle class jobs have caused the downhill slide. The notion that the rich need to be penalized is as logically flawed as the notion that the rich need to be rewarded.
To avoid redundancy let me refer you to my other posts in this discussion, "Votes not money controls politicians", http://slashdot.org/comments.p..., and "Party Loyalty is Political Apathy", http://slashdot.org/comments.p....
Oh, and that political apathy that I mentioned. A big part of that is loyalty to your political party.
If you are loyal to your party then you are irrelevant. Your party can ignore you because they have your vote, the other party can ignore you because they can not obtain your vote.
The people who control the outcomes of elections in the US, and those to whom the politicians show some responsiveness, are those who vote for candidates and not political parties.
Belong to whatever party you want, whatever party most closely expresses your positions. But do not blindly vote for that party's candidates. Do note vote because of a party platform that a candidate is completely free to ignore. Look at the respective candidates and their track records, their voting history. Vote for whichever one you think will do the better job regardless of their party.
Voting for candidates rather than political parties is the only way for voters to regain control of politicians. Politicians must not have a political base they can count on regardless of how they vote, they must fear that every single vote they received must be earned.
Here's the thing though: a lot of people want a lot of changes to happen. Everyone doesn't agree on all of the changes, sure, but a lot of people want to see fundamental changes to our political system, starting with removing the corrupting influence of money. A lot of people want to support something moving in that direction, but what are our options right now?
Money is not the problem. The problem is apathetic voters who are OK with the status quo. Money does not control politicians, votes do. Money is just a tool to influence voters who don't really care one way or the other.
A member of the 1% has 1 vote, the same as a member of the 99%.
If a voter cares about an issue no amount of PAC money, no amount spent on media campaigns, is going to change their position.
Two of the most power political lobbies the US, the NRA and the AARP, have the attention of politicians **not** because of campaign contributions. The real power of these two organizations are their memberships. They have millions of members who will show up on election day and will vote according to their respective positions. These members showing up at the polls is the source of their incredible influence in Washington.
And the recent election in Virginia shows the power of motivated voters against big money. The candidate with the big money and power position in the Congress, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, lost to an university professor who spent only $100,000 on his campaign. Why, because the professor had motivated voters and Cantor only had money.
You want to do something? You want change? Then educate and motivate voters.
You want to see things stay the same? Then focus the wrong thing, money.
But then what will they call the new things that secretly do the same damn thing and spring up in their place? Shouldn't we have a catchier label ready now?
To get rid of the major source of political corruption in the U.S. we need to rewrite the tax codes. The U.S. Tax Code is probably the biggest vehicle by which U.S. politicians reward their friends and interfere with their enemies.
... A rate is defined, you pay exactly that rate. Obviously these rates would be much lower than they currently are, however they can be designed using the average effective rates paid so that there is no revenue loss for the government.
No credits, no deductions,