Trickle Down?Follow

Some government programs/agencies need to be cut, or at least reformed.

I've no idea how the capital gains or estate taxes work, so I'll not comment on those.

Well, that's why we have the current problem now. Unless I'm mistaken, they're *supposed* to pay a larger portion of their income. However, what usually happens is they find loopholes to lower their tax burden. Flat rate, zero loopholes eliminates this.

True.

Last year I paid in, a little under 11% in taxes. I'm not counting what I paid SS and Medicare. After my deductions, my effective tax rate was a little over 7%. That seems low to me.

No. You lost. Tax dollars provide goods and services to the poor. They do *not* provide wealth. Subsidizing the poor is not the same as making the poor wealthy.

I don't think that word means what you seem to think it means. You should look into that.


Entitlements do not make people "wealthy". They do not increase the personal ownership of the individual receiving them. They only provide goods and services which they would not otherwise have (in theory). I've argued this dozens of times in threads about poverty in the past Smash, how providing things like health care and education and housing do not actually make poor people any less poor. They just make their poverty more comfortable. I've used this as part of an argument for why such programs actually increase poverty over time instead of decrease it because by making poverty more comfortable they are removing some of the incentive for people to move upwards economically.

I'm sure that's probably true, you make many baseless arguments grounded in nothing that are logically inconsistent and have only ever existed as rhetoric in your mind. That said, I'll play along for a moment. Let's say Government decided to give the 100 poorest Americans $1 Billion each. That wouldn't be providing them wealth, right? They'd just be really, really, really comfortable poor folks, right? Does it bother you when your arguments can be destroyed in such short order? I'd assume not, but I thought I'd ask anyway.


Why is this a requirement?

Because our current system rewards inertia instead of merit.


Why should taxes reduce people in economic class?

Because the overall economy benefits most from having the largest most affluent *middle class*, not to mention people in general.


Isn't that counter productive?

No.


Shouldn't we have a system that helps more people become wealthy rather than one that makes everyone poor?

Yes. What you seem oblivious to, however, is that our current system is making "everyone poor," and higher taxation of the wealthy would help more people become wealthy.


Sounds to me like you want to make everyone "equal" by taking everything away from them.

Harrison Bergeron was still a parody, and you still missed the point of it. That said, what I'd like to see happen is less naked exploitation of the working classes by the wealthy. That's all. This includes you, sport. YOU ARE ******* WORKING CLASS. I know you hate to think it, but trust me, ace, you are.

Sure. You'll accomplish your goal, but I don't think most people want to live in that world.

Heavens, no. Who would want to live in a world where wealth was more evenly distributed among the people and where the primary predictor of one's wealth was one's ability rather than which ****** one fell out of at birth. That sounds awful.

It should be intrinsically obvious that the wealthy cost the government less in proportion to what they pay in taxes than any other group of people.

This is ludicrously untrue of the US by any measure. Your fairy tale presupposes a pristine bureaucracy free of influence from the wealthy. 90%+ of legislation passed in the US is passed explicitly to benefit entrenched wealth interests.

"Benefit" is not equal to "pay for". It does not "cost" the government money out of the pool of tax dollars it collects each year to change rules affecting various aspects of business which may or may not benefit those who own/invest in said business.

I'd also argue that this isn't the government helping or benefiting those interests, but rather government getting in the way and then charging those interests to get a little bit out of their way. If government wasn't there to impose zoning restrictions for example, wealthy investors looking to change the zoning rules so they can make money wouldn't need to lobby the government to do so, right? They'd just build whatever they want wherever they want it...


It's more than a bit silly to call this a "benefit". More like "less of a hindrance". Certainly, it is not in the same category as the government cutting a check in order to provide someone with food or housing. If the government wasn't there, that person would still not have food or a place to live. Totally different situation.

Can we agree that when we use the word "wealthy" in the context of this thread, we're not just talking about someone who has *any* positive economic value, but rather someone who has a significant amount? Giving someone $100 technically provides them with "wealth", but I think we can agree that this would not make them "wealthy".

Sure. Good thing neither of us was arguing about what constituted someone being "wealthy". I think we can both agree that bananas have less citric acid than oranges as well, and that Ottawa is the capitol of Canada.


You're taking it to a ridiculous extreme. Obviously if we actually did that, it would make them "wealthy". But only 100 people, which I think you'd agree would not qualify as "the poor". Here's the thing though. Even you, as socialist as you are, do not advocate giving every single poor person sufficient quantities of cash to make them "wealthy".

Sure I do. That's what you don't seem capable of understanding.


There's a very obvious reason why that wont work and I'm sure you can noodle it out. So let's drop the red herrings for a moment and look at the real options available to us, shall we?

There's absolutely no reason it wouldn't work. None. The reason it will never be implemented is that people are selfish. That's it. That's the big secret. In terms of resources and technology, there is no reason anyone on the planet should be hungry or homeless or lack excellent health care for one second of their lives. There is no reason other than people being selfish for 99% of the suffering that exists in the world. I accept it's an unsolvable problem, that it's likely an evolutionary imperative for people to derive joy from feeling superior to others. Denying it's the case, however, is infantile.


Overwhelmingly false. The system does not punish inertia, but it absolutely rewards merit (assuming this isn't a repeat of your definition of "merit" meaning that the government decides who deserves how much money of course). Assuming we mean "merit" as in "those who's labors produce the most monetary value", our economic system most definitely rewards merit.

Nope. Not close.

If your labor is valuable, you'll earn a higher salary. If you make good decisions with the money you earn, you can become wealthy. The number of new millionaires each year in the US proves you wrong.

Nope. Firstly, it's not 1945, "millionaire" is meaningless term as a measure of wealth. Someone with a net worth of $1,000,000 isn't wealthy or anything approaching wealthy. Secondly, even assuming it was some magical standard, guess what the number 1 method of becoming a "millionaire" is in the US. You guessed it, falling out of the right ******.


Yes, it does. But this is true when we have a large middle class because those people are there instead of being poor. Artificially reducing people who become rich to the middle class isn't a good thing.

Of course it is, moron. Redistributing the wealth from one Billionaire to 10,000 people living below the poverty line is a *gigantic* boon to the economy.


If we start with 30% poor, 60% middle class, and 10% rich, we could increase the size of the middle class to 70% by either taking 10% in the poor category and making them middle class, or taking all 10% in the rich category and making them middle class. Both methods increase the size of the middle class, but I think it's pretty obvious that one benefits the overall economy more than the other and it's *not* the one that eliminates the rich people.

What is it about the word "redistribution" that escapes you? I'll play along, though, explain to me how a society where the poor pay more than the rich for nearly everything by a factor of 5 is good for making the poor middle class. Explain to me how poor people paying rent and losing 40% of their income essentially instantly, while the wealthy live in inherited property the value of which has increased 10 fold in the last 50 years is conducive to the poor becoming middle class. Explain to me what the magic is that made William C Ford such a fantastic candidate to run Ford Motors. His prowess as an executive, right? He just worked his way up.

Explain to me why Sam Walton is the best candidate to be the Chairman of Wal Mart, and why his labor is so highly valued that he posses 5000 time as much wealth as income you'll earn in your lifetime, and how that helps the workers his corporation regularly defrauds.


Um.. If our current system is making everyone poor, then where are all these rich people coming from that you want to raise taxes on? You didn't really write that with a straight face did you?

I didn't write that at all, or anything approaching it. I responded to your terminology. Hence me putting it quotes. See, look: Yes. What you seem oblivious to, however, is that our current system is making "everyone poor,".

I know you're stupid and uneducated, so let me clue you in on this one. When I put quotes around something, it's either to indicate it was spoken to me (not the case here) or it's to indicate that I find the use of the term ludicrous and childish. Ie:

Sure, the fact that "tax and spend liberals" are in power means "socialist" policies.

Understand yet, or do I need to send an organ grinder along so that his monkey can explain it in a way you're capable of comprehending.

For clarity's sake, though, I'll restate the case for you explicitly:

The current system is an engine of wealth transfer FROM the middle class TO the wealthy resulting in a smaller middle class, a larger poor class, and a relatively static upper class.


Over time, wealth ceases to be wealth if you distribute it evenly Smash.

Wrong. You're thinking of *currency*. Wealth has nothing at all to do with currency.

A dollar has a particular value because it can be exchanged for a specific amount of goods or services. If you give everyone the exact same amount of dollars, what do you think happens to the price of all the things within the economy and therefore the value of the dollars you just distributed?


Again, this is currency, not wealth. Think of wealth as property if that makes it easier for you. What happens to the value of property if you give everyone the same exact amount of property? Oh right, nothing.

[n]
It's a great idea that is touted by Communists worldwide. It doesn't work though. It has never worked. When you eliminate differences in wealth and value, you eliminate all wealth and value. It's really really obvious if your head isn't stuff so far up Marx's dead butt of course...[/b]

Works great in every country on the planet. It works great in the US. You'd likely be long dead of starvation without it. Places where communism has failed are places where Democracy has failed. They're places with ****** resource allocation and social dynamics. Socialism failed on a large scale in Russia because all government fails in Russia, because the dynamics are ******. Is Putin's rise to power an indictment of the failure of Democracy and Capitalism?

Is Socialism's failure in Cuba attributable to the economic system or the fact the US has expended tremendous amounts of energy and money to prevent it from succeeding. Why is that again? Why is the US so incredibly invested in any fledgling Socialist state failing? Because Capitalism relies on one critical fact to convince suckers like you that it's the way to go: The lack of a better example. That's the entire argument. The US has supported dozens of world leaders who brutally slaughter their populace, rape children, and crush kitten's skulls. JUST SO LONG AS THEY DON'T TRY TO REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH.

Look into it.

I came.

I conquered

Did I get some in your eye?

Well, you could say it in the form of a poem:

Unaware, innocent,
******** your hooker,
In the basement,
Oh! The cat has a recorder!
His fiendish paws taping,
Your ***** thrusting.
On Youtube it shall be,
For an IT cat is he.

Or like a gangsta rap song:

Yo, yo...
Listen to this story, yo my bestest ********
Crank up the volume ho, I'll have y'all in stitches,
While my homey's making dirty with some high ho and her pussy,
Da kitty's got his number, finger on the trigger,
Of the camcorder, down in the cellar,
With a wire hooking up to his motherfucking computer,
The ****'s soon gonna be all over,
Youtube and twitter,
The sad tale of a gangstar,
And how he became a pornstar"

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don't work in the entertainement industry.

When rich people get money, they don't create more jobs with it, they invest.

Lol! What do you think their investment does?

Do you think a money fairy just decides to make those investments worth more over time? Investments increase in value ultimately because the money invested results in some way in the creation of more goods and services, which in turn result in a profit for the things they invest in. This may not be obvious in all cases, and there are certainly individual short term market fluctuations which can yield positive or negative gains without any direct gains in productivity elsewhere, but the overwhelming trend over the entire field of "investment" in an economy gains when the result of those investments generates more jobs and more/better goods and services.


It wouldn't work otherwise...