He didn't say that he said "be less of a dick" to me that means not getting invlolved where we have no business and stop playing world police, one in the same I suppose. I and many other Americans agree with this. We need to fix the problems here before we go galavanting around the globe playing cop.
I find it sad that mass graves filled with mothers and their children is filed under "not our problem". Would you say the same of tsunami or earthquake victims overseas? How about at a state level? Was Texas wrong for taking hundreds of thousands Katrina evacuees? After all, it was Louisiana's problem, not Texas'.
It's nice to say "we should fix our own problems first", but compared to others around the world, we don't have any problems.
Saying the US behaves like a dick is flamebait. What you call "behaving like a dick" others call "giving the populace the chance to vote", "allowing women to go to school" and "preventing children from being killed or starved to death because their parents are part of the wrong religious sect".
What if the US spends less money on defense , and instead behaves less like a dick. Instead we should concentrate on being a little less arrogant, and be more world friendly. Foreign relations has really taken a turn or the worse in the last 6 years or so.
Actually, isolationism was Bush's plan for about the 9 months ranging from January-Sept 11, 2001 (remember that whole "We are not into nation-building" stuff?). It didn't work out to well.
Oh definitely. Ten years ago, the president was lying about having sex, whereas the current president launched a war based on lies that has killed more Americans than 9/11 and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. For starters.
Good point, except that perjury is a crime, war powers are granted by the Constitution and the liars in this case are George Tenet, who told the President that WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk", and people like you, who keep claiming that Bush lied about WMD's when everyone knows what Tenet told him.
I find it very telling that you refer to the twice-elected highest official in America as an evil, well-entrenched enemy. I'm a Republican, mainly because I've never heard Republicans call Clinton or Carter an evil, well-entrenched enemy. Nor did I hear them compared to Hitler, referred to as a "regime" nor wished for the defeat of our armed forces just to prove that they were wrong. Funny how the party opposite the Democrats the "evil enemy" and those opposite Republicans are "the idealogical opposition". I don't know if this hyperbole is a sign of immaturity or just a raw hatred of all those who have a different point of view. I guess it's both since one causes the other.
You should take comfort in knowing that you are not alone. Go to any university when someone who doesn't spout "group-think" and see how their views will not be heard over those who shout them down. Ironic that it happens at an institution that is supposed to be encouraging freedom of thought and speech.
I guess I'm not surprised that you agree with silencing those scientist who don't march in lock-step with the your current line of thinking.
There's the rub. Even if everything was handled well and no innocent person's privacy was violated without good cause, the lack of oversight makes it wrong. I don't care if they were being nefarious or not, I want the spying investigated and overseen by the judiciary then, now, and forever always. Any organization that says "Trust us, we're working in your best interests!" without accountability is almost certainly not.
I think you have right/wrong and illegal/legal confused. While stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family is right, but it is certainly not legal. Calling someone's mother a bitch is legal, but rarely right.
Bending Constitutional rules to spy on someone to save thousands or millions of lives is probably not legal, but I'd do it, Bush did it and I hope you would too, because it's right. Now don't get me wrong, any abuse of such power, like using the FBI or IRS to harass your political enemies would be wrong, but if genuinely done with the intention of saving lives, then it's right, legality be damned!
Unless, of course, that you are one of these righteous people that say even if everyone in America is killed, preventing would not have been worth violating the rights of a single American. (Yes, I've heard that argument here)
Because there really aren't any other organizations that have the power of a government,
Actually, they have more power than the government. When you apply for a car, they run your credit report. You apply for an apartment, they run a credit report. You apply for a job, they run a credit report. All of these companies that are running credit reports can use them against you. The Gov't can't.
I'd love to know where that $75 to $175 of value is being made.
The number was extracted from my backside (you could say I pulled it out of my ass).
I see it like this. Company A wants to make toothpicks to sell at a a penny a piece. Spend $25 to buy a large block of wood and make 5000 toothpicks from it. This is a profit of $25 (for a boatload of toothpicks in boxes of 100 at 1$ each). They sell these toothpicks to the supermarket, which in turn sells them for $1.50 per box. The original lumberjack that cut the tree down only spent $10 on the saw he used to cut that block of wood.
Of course not all of this is profit as they had to pay the truck drivers to transport everything, who purchased fuel, coffee and dinner. The truckstop made a profit off of the truckdriver, as did the waitress, who spent the money she earned to buy groceries and.... wait for it.... toothpicks!
Now I could fudge the numbers further to make it come out to $75-125, but I think you get the point. Economies are not a closed system. Materials are processed into stuff that is worth more than the original materials and labor put into it. Just like a box of toothpicks is worth more than the block of wood that made it. No one had to get poor to make up for that difference in value. The money (or value) was actually created by the everyone involved in this chain.
I could be wrong here, but it seems like the problem is not with global warming, but AlGore's movie and the theories as to what is causing global warming. I know that it is currently vogue to point out how stupid people are that disagree with the current group-think, but that's not what is going on here. Parents complained because their kids were forced to watch AlGore's movie and 100% of it was presented as fact. Man may be causing global warming, he may not. People much smarter than any of us argue both sides of that debate. It is conceited to think that just because something is happening, it must be our doing. Man didn't cause the global warming that ended the last ice-age, it's possible we have nothing or little to do with it this time around.
You math is correct if you take the total amount of income from the top 1% and redistribute to the rest of the country. I was talking about 1%, which is $38.07.
Note to everyone else. This guy knows his math pretty well. To check our numbers: Open excel and type "=(250000 * (300000000 * 0.015) / ( 300000000*0.985))*0.01" into a cell and press enter.
Of course stripping the top 1% of everything and giving to everyone else won't make sense either, as you noted. Especially since the top 1% employ a whole bunch of people who would now be unemployed.
Actually, if you want to be pedantic, the $25 per person is only mostly being invested, and the investments go to established companies-- that is, the money comes back into the economy in a 'trickle-down' fashion. If it were redistributed, it would most likely not be reinvested to any large extent and re-enter the economy through spending, benefiting the little companies as well.. not just feeding the corporations.
And the Bush tax cut was born!
Of course you have to consider that with "trickle-down" statement you made, that $25 still makes it into the hands of the population, but it is more than likely $100-$200 now. Even if it remained the original $25, you get the same benefits that you would if just gave it away PLUS the benefits to the corporations, which also pay all their employees as well as smaller companies that act as outsources.
Assuming that I could copy, watch, manipulate, change formats, watch on different media players or do whatever I wanted to with (it is mine, after all!) except for distribute illegally. Of course I would support it!
Of course, this is a pipe dream. Even if all players took a thumb-print to make sure I was the true owner, but allowed me to do all the stuff listed above, I would still need to buy multiple copies of whatever so that my wife and kids could enjoy it without me there to swipe my thumb!
I recalculated the math to include the top 1.5% and corrected that 299 million thing from the last post. Either way, the final dollar amount given to the bottom 98.5% of Americans comes to a grand total of $38.07.
1% of 53 million dollars = 530,000 66% of 530,000 = 331,980 after tax
That's enough to buy a house, but hardly more than that.
Yes, Virginia, extreme income inequality is a bad thing. But so are frothy rants by people who should know better by now.
The GP just mentioned million dollar bonuses so that's the number I used. Of course, you have to consider that if you get 1%, I want 1% too! So, let's take 1% from the top 1.5% in America and distribute it among the rest of us. The average income for the top 1.5% is 250,000. Spread that money over other 98.5% of the population. (We'll use 1% and 99 for ease of math.) The US population 300,000,000. So 3 million times $2500 divided by 299 million is about $25 a person. Is that going to buy you a house?
Granted, the numbers are a bit off, but not by much, certainly not enough to buy a house, or even a muffler!)
Hold on. Nobody is suggesting that we ditch the whole money idea and turn to communism. That is a strawman argument.
The GP suggested that it made him mad that the rich make a lot of money and implied that if he could get a percentage of that money, everything would better for him. In other words, take from the rich and give to the poor. I guess you're right. It's socialism.
As for the taxes part, that asks the listener to ignore the plight of someone who works hard for little income, and feel sympathy for someone who has an excessive amount of money, but must give away a larger-than-average portion of it. Now if we are to feel no sympathy for people who have no money, than how do we feel sympathy for people who are incredibly well-off, but could have more.
This is not about sympathy for anyone. I was simply pointing out that after taxes, that one million is not one million anymore and 1% of that would probably not pay for his college. I don't have a problem with a graduated income tax except for the fact that bonuses for those of us not in the top bracket are taxed at a much higher rate than normal income. Although I feel that a flat federal sales tax (necessities like food and medicine excluded of course) would be better as it would encourage savings and investment that would spur the economy meaning more and better paying jobs for all of us. The rich would still pay more as they spend more.
The crux of your argument, which has been stated many times before, is that without incentive capitalism breaks down.
Close. My argument is "without incentive the economy breaks down." See Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Why would I go to school for 10 years to be a doctor when I could skip school all together and become cashier at the mall if both make the same amount of money?
Your numbers are wrong btw. It was a million dollar bonus, not a 600k bonus. College students would pay maybe 1k on 10,000 income, but I don't remember paying taxes on my student grants and loans.
That's why I specified after taxes. The top tax rate right now is 35%, leaving 650k after a million dollar bonus. Of course, that top tax rate fluctuates. It was 70% in the 70's. Also, when you make, say 40K a year and you get an extra $10,000, you pay taxes on that $10,000 at a much higher rate than if you were paying $50k. You have to make up the difference in the tax rate you have been paying all year in the $40,000 bracket, for the $50,000 you are actually making. So the taxes you pay on that "free" $10,000 are going to be much higher than you would pay if that $10,000 was all you made. Of course, this is just Federal taxes, there is also Soc Sec, Medicare, Medicaid, State taxes, local taxes and so on. Then again, if all you made all year was the $10000, then no, you probably wouldn't have to pay taxes on it (Social Security, but not federal taxes), but you wouldn't be going to college either.
Also, you don't pay taxes on your student loans because they are just that, loans that you will be paying back. The money you will use to pay those loans back will be taxed, of course.
I couldn't disagree more. The rich don't drive the economy any more than any other consumer does. How is a single mother buying baby formula any less connected to the economy than Paris Hilton buying a new purse? You might be tempted into an argument of scale (that the purse costs thousands more), but this point is moot because there are far more single mothers than Paris Hiltons. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the rich, as a result of their savings accounts, contribute less to the economy, per capita, than an individual forced to live paycheck to paycheck. Therefore, measures aimed at reducing the wage gap would probably help the economy more than hurt it and would certainly provide greater incentive to produce products that people need and not spurious things like yachts.
This entire line of logic that the rich drive the economy by buying yachts is the modern equivalent of Broken Windows Fallacy.
Well, I was trying to keep it brief, but you make a good point that deserves a response.
The economic contribution of the wealthy goes beyond their purchasing power. What was Redmond before Bill Gates? What was Round Rock before Dell? What was Beaumont TX before the oil boom of the 70's and what is it now after the oil bust of the 80's? I'm not a big fan of Paris Hilton, but there are a lot of people working at Hilton hotels. There are many people who feed their families by supplying sheets and little shampoos to Hilton Hotels. So while I don't care for Paris Hilton, I would not want to see her family poor because that would mean that an awful lot of people would be out of work, unable to provide for themselves and their families.
I agree with the benefits of reducing the income gap. However, I don't agree that it can be achieved by knocking the rich down. What needs to happen is an increase in opportunity across the board. Yes, this means that rich will get richer, but it also means that the poor will be able to get rich also, or at least not be poor anymore. Those that do take advantage of the increased opportunity will remain poor, but we can't punish the rest of society for their lack of motivation and/or laziness. If you take away the ability for some to get rich, you remove the motivation for all.
Why would a mouse bother to navigate a maze if there was no cheese at the end?
That's incarceration rate rather than crime rate, but they are related, so clearly it's reasonable to guess that we might well have one of the highest crime rates as well.
Did you actually have any reason to think that we don't?
As a matter of fact, I do. It could be that the US has more people in prison because our justice system can catch criminals and put them in prison. Our economy is strong enough to afford police officers and a court system that will even pay for a lawyer for those accused of a crime (as poor as public defenders may be).
I can tell you that I get pretty pissed off when I hear about million-dollar bonuses when if I had 1% of that money I wouldn't have to worry about college tuition for the rest of my career. It makes me angry, so I try to ignore it. Watching commercials also gets me a little mad because of the huge disparity between the way the "average american" is depicted on television, and the way we actually live. If you're willing to buy into the commercial vision, then you start to think that everyone but you is living like that, and then you start to wonder how you can get to that point. When you start to think that you can't, you get angry.
You get angry or jealous? There is a difference.
1% of one million is $10,000. I spent more than that on college but I'm sure you could get an education for less than that. But let's say that a million-dollar-bonus earner was forced to give it away in 1% increments. He would be able to give $10,000 to exactly 100 people (all before taxes of course). After taxes, he could give approximately $6000 to 100 people, who in turn would only receive $4000 each (after taxes again). Could you go to college on $4k?
Finally, in your perfect world where the rich have to give all their money to pay for your college, why would you want a college education anyway? You bust your ass through college, work hard, long hours in your job, and when you are successful, you'd have to give away your money to some angry kid who despises you for your hard earned success and is too lazy to pay for his own education!
There is a limited amount of wealth in our society. It is not an entirely zero-sum game, but it is true that the more wealth the richest have, the less the rest of us have. If you were to take half the money of the richest 10% of Americans and spread it out among the poorest 40%, you'd probably take one of the biggest steps in history towards eliminating poverty.
What would that amount to? Without researching the numbers, you might end up giving each of the poorest 40% about $20-$200 each. What about those of us who are in the 50% range? Are we screwed? Yes, we would be because the people that run the companies we work for are not bankrupt, the companies have been sold to give $$ to the poor. Now us 41%-89% are the new poor because we can't find freaking jobs!
In Sweden (good example since I live here..:P), the higher taxation and minimum wages, and also a non-linear taxation where people who earn more will not only pay a higher tax but even a bigger share of their income, results in a smaller income inequality. This money goes into public healthcare and social security, in order to basically make sure that even if you're the lowest drug-addict scum on earth, you don't have to steal anything, but can just show up at the social security office and get more than enough money to buy everything they need (except, unfortunately for them, the drugs).
How's the Swedish economy doing, btw? What is the unemployment rate and so on...
My point is that in a capitalist society, it is the rich that drive the economy. It is the rich that employ people and buy products. Granted, Paris Hilton doesn't need another yacht, but I'm sure the workers at the shipyard where that yacht is made will disagree.
Slashdot Mirror
He didn't say that he said "be less of a dick" to me that means not getting invlolved where we have no business and stop playing world police, one in the same I suppose. I and many other Americans agree with this. We need to fix the problems here before we go galavanting around the globe playing cop.
I find it sad that mass graves filled with mothers and their children is filed under "not our problem". Would you say the same of tsunami or earthquake victims overseas? How about at a state level? Was Texas wrong for taking hundreds of thousands Katrina evacuees? After all, it was Louisiana's problem, not Texas'.
It's nice to say "we should fix our own problems first", but compared to others around the world, we don't have any problems.
Not sure how this is flamebait, it's dead on.
Saying the US behaves like a dick is flamebait. What you call "behaving like a dick" others call "giving the populace the chance to vote", "allowing women to go to school" and "preventing children from being killed or starved to death because their parents are part of the wrong religious sect".
What if the US spends less money on defense , and instead behaves less like a dick. Instead we should concentrate on being a little less arrogant, and be more world friendly. Foreign relations has really taken a turn or the worse in the last 6 years or so.
Actually, isolationism was Bush's plan for about the 9 months ranging from January-Sept 11, 2001 (remember that whole "We are not into nation-building" stuff?). It didn't work out to well.
Oh definitely. Ten years ago, the president was lying about having sex, whereas the current president launched a war based on lies that has killed more Americans than 9/11 and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. For starters.
Good point, except that perjury is a crime, war powers are granted by the Constitution and the liars in this case are George Tenet, who told the President that WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk", and people like you, who keep claiming that Bush lied about WMD's when everyone knows what Tenet told him.
I find it very telling that you refer to the twice-elected highest official in America as an evil, well-entrenched enemy. I'm a Republican, mainly because I've never heard Republicans call Clinton or Carter an evil, well-entrenched enemy. Nor did I hear them compared to Hitler, referred to as a "regime" nor wished for the defeat of our armed forces just to prove that they were wrong. Funny how the party opposite the Democrats the "evil enemy" and those opposite Republicans are "the idealogical opposition". I don't know if this hyperbole is a sign of immaturity or just a raw hatred of all those who have a different point of view. I guess it's both since one causes the other.
You should take comfort in knowing that you are not alone. Go to any university when someone who doesn't spout "group-think" and see how their views will not be heard over those who shout them down. Ironic that it happens at an institution that is supposed to be encouraging freedom of thought and speech.
I guess I'm not surprised that you agree with silencing those scientist who don't march in lock-step with the your current line of thinking.
There's the rub. Even if everything was handled well and no innocent person's privacy was violated without good cause, the lack of oversight makes it wrong. I don't care if they were being nefarious or not, I want the spying investigated and overseen by the judiciary then, now, and forever always. Any organization that says "Trust us, we're working in your best interests!" without accountability is almost certainly not.
I think you have right/wrong and illegal/legal confused. While stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family is right, but it is certainly not legal. Calling someone's mother a bitch is legal, but rarely right.
Bending Constitutional rules to spy on someone to save thousands or millions of lives is probably not legal, but I'd do it, Bush did it and I hope you would too, because it's right. Now don't get me wrong, any abuse of such power, like using the FBI or IRS to harass your political enemies would be wrong, but if genuinely done with the intention of saving lives, then it's right, legality be damned!
Unless, of course, that you are one of these righteous people that say even if everyone in America is killed, preventing would not have been worth violating the rights of a single American. (Yes, I've heard that argument here)
But... But... 10000 slashdotters can't be wrong!
But I asked and my wife said:
"No way in Hell!"
Queue the "we hate democrats too crowd" (even though they were strangely quiet for eight years.)
Because there really aren't any other organizations that have the power of a government,
Actually, they have more power than the government. When you apply for a car, they run your credit report. You apply for an apartment, they run a credit report. You apply for a job, they run a credit report. All of these companies that are running credit reports can use them against you. The Gov't can't.
I'd love to know where that $75 to $175 of value is being made.
The number was extracted from my backside (you could say I pulled it out of my ass).
I see it like this. Company A wants to make toothpicks to sell at a a penny a piece. Spend $25 to buy a large block of wood and make 5000 toothpicks from it. This is a profit of $25 (for a boatload of toothpicks in boxes of 100 at 1$ each). They sell these toothpicks to the supermarket, which in turn sells them for $1.50 per box. The original lumberjack that cut the tree down only spent $10 on the saw he used to cut that block of wood.
Of course not all of this is profit as they had to pay the truck drivers to transport everything, who purchased fuel, coffee and dinner. The truckstop made a profit off of the truckdriver, as did the waitress, who spent the money she earned to buy groceries and.... wait for it.... toothpicks!
Now I could fudge the numbers further to make it come out to $75-125, but I think you get the point. Economies are not a closed system. Materials are processed into stuff that is worth more than the original materials and labor put into it. Just like a box of toothpicks is worth more than the block of wood that made it. No one had to get poor to make up for that difference in value. The money (or value) was actually created by the everyone involved in this chain.
I could be wrong here, but it seems like the problem is not with global warming, but AlGore's movie and the theories as to what is causing global warming. I know that it is currently vogue to point out how stupid people are that disagree with the current group-think, but that's not what is going on here. Parents complained because their kids were forced to watch AlGore's movie and 100% of it was presented as fact. Man may be causing global warming, he may not. People much smarter than any of us argue both sides of that debate. It is conceited to think that just because something is happening, it must be our doing. Man didn't cause the global warming that ended the last ice-age, it's possible we have nothing or little to do with it this time around.
You math is correct if you take the total amount of income from the top 1% and redistribute to the rest of the country. I was talking about 1%, which is $38.07.
Note to everyone else. This guy knows his math pretty well. To check our numbers:
Open excel and type "=(250000 * (300000000 * 0.015) / ( 300000000*0.985))*0.01" into a cell and press enter.
Of course stripping the top 1% of everything and giving to everyone else won't make sense either, as you noted. Especially since the top 1% employ a whole bunch of people who would now be unemployed.
Actually, if you want to be pedantic, the $25 per person is only mostly being invested, and the investments go to established companies-- that is, the money comes back into the economy in a 'trickle-down' fashion. If it were redistributed, it would most likely not be reinvested to any large extent and re-enter the economy through spending, benefiting the little companies as well.. not just feeding the corporations.
And the Bush tax cut was born!
Of course you have to consider that with "trickle-down" statement you made, that $25 still makes it into the hands of the population, but it is more than likely $100-$200 now. Even if it remained the original $25, you get the same benefits that you would if just gave it away PLUS the benefits to the corporations, which also pay all their employees as well as smaller companies that act as outsources.
Assuming that I could copy, watch, manipulate, change formats, watch on different media players or do whatever I wanted to with (it is mine, after all!) except for distribute illegally. Of course I would support it!
Of course, this is a pipe dream. Even if all players took a thumb-print to make sure I was the true owner, but allowed me to do all the stuff listed above, I would still need to buy multiple copies of whatever so that my wife and kids could enjoy it without me there to swipe my thumb!
Correction!
I recalculated the math to include the top 1.5% and corrected that 299 million thing from the last post. Either way, the final dollar amount given to the bottom 98.5% of Americans comes to a grand total of $38.07.
Wow. Take a deep breath, comrade.
1% of 53 million dollars = 530,000
66% of 530,000 = 331,980 after tax
That's enough to buy a house, but hardly more than that.
Yes, Virginia, extreme income inequality is a bad thing. But so are frothy rants by people who should know better by now.
The GP just mentioned million dollar bonuses so that's the number I used.
Of course, you have to consider that if you get 1%, I want 1% too! So, let's take 1% from the top 1.5% in America and distribute it among the rest of us. The average income for the top 1.5% is 250,000. Spread that money over other 98.5% of the population. (We'll use 1% and 99 for ease of math.) The US population 300,000,000. So 3 million times $2500 divided by 299 million is about $25 a person. Is that going to buy you a house?
Granted, the numbers are a bit off, but not by much, certainly not enough to buy a house, or even a muffler!)
Hold on. Nobody is suggesting that we ditch the whole money idea and turn to communism. That is a strawman argument.
The GP suggested that it made him mad that the rich make a lot of money and implied that if he could get a percentage of that money, everything would better for him. In other words, take from the rich and give to the poor. I guess you're right. It's socialism.
As for the taxes part, that asks the listener to ignore the plight of someone who works hard for little income, and feel sympathy for someone who has an excessive amount of money, but must give away a larger-than-average portion of it. Now if we are to feel no sympathy for people who have no money, than how do we feel sympathy for people who are incredibly well-off, but could have more.
This is not about sympathy for anyone. I was simply pointing out that after taxes, that one million is not one million anymore and 1% of that would probably not pay for his college. I don't have a problem with a graduated income tax except for the fact that bonuses for those of us not in the top bracket are taxed at a much higher rate than normal income. Although I feel that a flat federal sales tax (necessities like food and medicine excluded of course) would be better as it would encourage savings and investment that would spur the economy meaning more and better paying jobs for all of us. The rich would still pay more as they spend more.
The crux of your argument, which has been stated many times before, is that without incentive capitalism breaks down.
Close. My argument is "without incentive the economy breaks down." See Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Why would I go to school for 10 years to be a doctor when I could skip school all together and become cashier at the mall if both make the same amount of money?
Your numbers are wrong btw. It was a million dollar bonus, not a 600k bonus. College students would pay maybe 1k on 10,000 income, but I don't remember paying taxes on my student grants and loans.
That's why I specified after taxes. The top tax rate right now is 35%, leaving 650k after a million dollar bonus. Of course, that top tax rate fluctuates. It was 70% in the 70's. Also, when you make, say 40K a year and you get an extra $10,000, you pay taxes on that $10,000 at a much higher rate than if you were paying $50k. You have to make up the difference in the tax rate you have been paying all year in the $40,000 bracket, for the $50,000 you are actually making. So the taxes you pay on that "free" $10,000 are going to be much higher than you would pay if that $10,000 was all you made. Of course, this is just Federal taxes, there is also Soc Sec, Medicare, Medicaid, State taxes, local taxes and so on. Then again, if all you made all year was the $10000, then no, you probably wouldn't have to pay taxes on it (Social Security, but not federal taxes), but you wouldn't be going to college either.
Also, you don't pay taxes on your student loans because they are just that, loans that you will be paying back. The money you will use to pay those loans back will be taxed, of course.
I couldn't disagree more. The rich don't drive the economy any more than any other consumer does. How is a single mother buying baby formula any less connected to the economy than Paris Hilton buying a new purse? You might be tempted into an argument of scale (that the purse costs thousands more), but this point is moot because there are far more single mothers than Paris Hiltons. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the rich, as a result of their savings accounts, contribute less to the economy, per capita, than an individual forced to live paycheck to paycheck. Therefore, measures aimed at reducing the wage gap would probably help the economy more than hurt it and would certainly provide greater incentive to produce products that people need and not spurious things like yachts.
This entire line of logic that the rich drive the economy by buying yachts is the modern equivalent of Broken Windows Fallacy.
Well, I was trying to keep it brief, but you make a good point that deserves a response.
The economic contribution of the wealthy goes beyond their purchasing power. What was Redmond before Bill Gates? What was Round Rock before Dell? What was Beaumont TX before the oil boom of the 70's and what is it now after the oil bust of the 80's? I'm not a big fan of Paris Hilton, but there are a lot of people working at Hilton hotels. There are many people who feed their families by supplying sheets and little shampoos to Hilton Hotels. So while I don't care for Paris Hilton, I would not want to see her family poor because that would mean that an awful lot of people would be out of work, unable to provide for themselves and their families.
I agree with the benefits of reducing the income gap. However, I don't agree that it can be achieved by knocking the rich down. What needs to happen is an increase in opportunity across the board. Yes, this means that rich will get richer, but it also means that the poor will be able to get rich also, or at least not be poor anymore. Those that do take advantage of the increased opportunity will remain poor, but we can't punish the rest of society for their lack of motivation and/or laziness. If you take away the ability for some to get rich, you remove the motivation for all.
Why would a mouse bother to navigate a maze if there was no cheese at the end?
That's incarceration rate rather than crime rate, but they are related, so clearly it's reasonable to guess that we might well have one of the highest crime rates as well.
Did you actually have any reason to think that we don't?
As a matter of fact, I do. It could be that the US has more people in prison because our justice system can catch criminals and put them in prison. Our economy is strong enough to afford police officers and a court system that will even pay for a lawyer for those accused of a crime (as poor as public defenders may be).
I can tell you that I get pretty pissed off when I hear about million-dollar bonuses when if I had 1% of that money I wouldn't have to worry about college tuition for the rest of my career. It makes me angry, so I try to ignore it. Watching commercials also gets me a little mad because of the huge disparity between the way the "average american" is depicted on television, and the way we actually live. If you're willing to buy into the commercial vision, then you start to think that everyone but you is living like that, and then you start to wonder how you can get to that point. When you start to think that you can't, you get angry.
You get angry or jealous? There is a difference.
1% of one million is $10,000. I spent more than that on college but I'm sure you could get an education for less than that. But let's say that a million-dollar-bonus earner was forced to give it away in 1% increments. He would be able to give $10,000 to exactly 100 people (all before taxes of course). After taxes, he could give approximately $6000 to 100 people, who in turn would only receive $4000 each (after taxes again). Could you go to college on $4k?
Finally, in your perfect world where the rich have to give all their money to pay for your college, why would you want a college education anyway? You bust your ass through college, work hard, long hours in your job, and when you are successful, you'd have to give away your money to some angry kid who despises you for your hard earned success and is too lazy to pay for his own education!
There is a limited amount of wealth in our society. It is not an entirely zero-sum game, but it is true that the more wealth the richest have, the less the rest of us have. If you were to take half the money of the richest 10% of Americans and spread it out among the poorest 40%, you'd probably take one of the biggest steps in history towards eliminating poverty.
What would that amount to? Without researching the numbers, you might end up giving each of the poorest 40% about $20-$200 each. What about those of us who are in the 50% range? Are we screwed? Yes, we would be because the people that run the companies we work for are not bankrupt, the companies have been sold to give $$ to the poor. Now us 41%-89% are the new poor because we can't find freaking jobs!
In Sweden (good example since I live here.. :P), the higher taxation and minimum wages, and also a non-linear taxation where people who earn more will not only pay a higher tax but even a bigger share of their income, results in a smaller income inequality. This money goes into public healthcare and social security, in order to basically make sure that even if you're the lowest drug-addict scum on earth, you don't have to steal anything, but can just show up at the social security office and get more than enough money to buy everything they need (except, unfortunately for them, the drugs).
How's the Swedish economy doing, btw? What is the unemployment rate and so on...
My point is that in a capitalist society, it is the rich that drive the economy. It is the rich that employ people and buy products. Granted, Paris Hilton doesn't need another yacht, but I'm sure the workers at the shipyard where that yacht is made will disagree.