A friend complains of "government" financing programs for the general welfare with "other people's money". In America "government" is by definition "We the People". In an oligarchy it is "We the Wealthy"
The one percent have over a third of all wealth. The 5% have over 60% . At what point will "other people's money" be all in the hands of the oligarchs? Talk about tyranny. The arrogance of anyone who thinks his good fortune is ALL his own doing or others' poor fortune is ALL theirs is astounding. I do NOT want a socialist state, but we are in NO danger of that. We ARE in danger of the opposite. Shoot, we are already an oligarchy. The ONLY way to have liberty is to balance the six purposes of "we the people".
"WE the People" have contributed greatly to the success of every member of the wealthy class. Praise their energy, creativity, entrepreneurship, etc. but the roads, schools, military, health regulations, air safety, libraries, etc., etc., etc. are necessary to our general welfare and the fairest way to pay for those things is for each of us to pay the same percentage of tax on the first X amount of income and a slightly higher amount on each succeeding X amount of income. That is progressive taxation.
The president is absolutely correct in seeking to close the loopholes that have "flattened" our tax rates in the last 30 years, stagnating the middle class that drives our economy.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/.../U.S._Distribution_of...
[Wow! did I get comments....]
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Raymond Atkins
I will gladly pay a higher rate as long as every single taxpayer in the country, human or otherwise, pays the same rate.
Rob Friar
The thing is, in theory, if everyone did pay the specified rate with limited loop holes, ALL of us; rich, middle class, etc, would pay Less in overall taxes.
Sam Burnham
Progressive taxation is one of the cornerstones of communism. It is impossible to talk about equality while demanding government mandated inequality.
If we want to have an income tax that's equal, then everyone pays and they pay the same amount. Progressive taxation is unfair & punishes success.
Now, with a consumption tax, everyone pays. And the wealthy, who spend the most, pay the most. The middle class, who spend in the middle, pay the middle. The lower class, who spend the least, pay the least. And everyone keeps 100% of their income on the front end. It's naturally progressive, voluntarily. It's fair, it's effective, and it doesn't stifle the economy the way a Marxist progressive tax does.
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."- Thomas Jefferson on progressive taxation & wealth redistribution.
Charlie Hehn
Excellent Sam Burnham. Terrell Shaw for a second there I thought you were leaning in favor of a flat tax. I like that concept actually.
David Jones
More taxes are NOT the answer . We stifle success. I worked for what i have
Jeff Akin
Mr Smith... Please take a look at the EFFECTIVE tax rates. Loopholes and deductions take that corporate tax rate you quote to almost zero. At least be completely honest in your statements and their implications.
Victoria Stanz Abernathy
Since corporations have now achieved 'personhood' the tax loopholes and undeserved entitlements to them should be closed like the government has done to the working poor and the rest of us who sacrificed being paid a living wage that the privileged, though not always effective, and sometimes outright crooks, CEOs can command lordly salaries to the detriment of their corporations. Sorry for the individuals who have bought into the laundered Reagan 'dogma' and the false misstated historical premises on which the Tea Party came into being.
Sam Burnham
Funny how the same people that complain about corporate personhood will fight to the death to maintain labor union personhood.
Terrell Shaw
I'll always fight for the right of laborers to organize. Labor can never get a fair shake with capital without organizing and working together for their rights.
By the way, I try to avoid the big guys, tho I no longer use a total boycott. That's useless on a small scale. This fact is always true: unregulated capitalism is tyranny. Always. Just as surely as unbridled socialism. Always, always the answer is in the middle, perfectly stated in our preamble. We must work toward a better union through justice AND tranquility AND safety from foreign threats AND general welfare AND liberty. None of those is absolute and none is really possible without the others.
Howard Smith
Rest assured, if we do not support governmental action to protect our rights AND the common good, these would be trampled upon by the rich and powerful. A perfect example is the importance of the passage of FLSA...the fact of the matter is there would hardly be a middle class in America were it not for government intervention. The great American captains of industry in this country are without question the product of capitalism. And, that is important to recognize. But, the rise of the middle class is the product of progressive politics and that must be accepted and celebrated,too.
Sam Burnham
Seems to me that the only entity that should have personhood should be, call me crazy, a person. Not Wal-Mart, not the AFL-CIO, not NRA, not NOW, not Greenpeace. Just people.
Terrell Shaw
On this we can agree, Sam! How 'bout that.
Howard Smith
I agree with Sam Burnham, God help me, again.
Lydia Simpson
I'm afraid I can't resist getting into the fray here. The problem, as was pointed out in a recent analysis by economists (Princeton, maybe? I'll have to try to dig up the article...) is that in reality, the poor are paying their full tax burden or close to it because they (we, actually, as in the past few years despite working multiple jobs and holding an advanced degree my income has fallen short of a living wage) tend to qualify for fewer allowances and credits. I believe the average tax rate paid was 10.9% among the poor, around 9% for middle income households, and close to 5% for the wealthiest Americans. If you are a person making, say, $16,000 a year (I made about that not too many years ago while working over 40 hours a week and with a degree), and you pay 11% of that in taxes, that drives your monthly income down below $1200/month, which is too high to qualify for assistance programs in most states. Unfortunately, apartments only get so small and so cheap when you don't qualify for assistance. For instance, a friend of mine was living in the smallest, cheapest, rathole she could find last year and she was paying almost $600/month in rent (utilities included, thankfully) for one unheated room and a bathroom. Add the average car payment - a car which is required by most jobs (anyone who has been out of work recently living in an area that lacks adequate transportation has experienced this catch 22- personal transportation is a required qualification for many jobs, especially in the low-income bracket) which might be $200 if you've got a crap car or a great deal, plus gas, which might be around $100/month if you don't have too much of a commute. And of course, most states require car insurance, which might be around $50/month, and now the required purchase of health insurance, which a low, but not low enough, income person might pay about $20/month for. That brings us to $970/month in basic expenses, not including any kind of telecommunication, which might be an additional $30+ a month for a basic phone with limited usage. Including a phone of some sort, then, our low-wage worker is left with a less than $200 a month - about $186 - before eating or leaving the house for anything other than work. If that person can eat for $50/week, that leaves exactly $86 left, or about $21.50 for either A)saving, B)entertainment (because at this point our low income wage worker is left to stare at the blank walls of her rathole apartment), or C)the inevitable emergency that almost always comes up because you're poor and you have a crap car and live in a skeezy part of town where you're more likely to get robbed. It's just basic math. This is not the math of greed or laziness; this is the math of humanity. I challenge anyone who thinks that taxing the poor and rich at the same rate, and applying the regressive tax structure inherent in sales tax, to walk a mile in the shoes of a low-income worker in this day in age. In fact, I have long been advocating for a new reality show in which congressmen and CEO's are forced to live on a minimum wage income and work a minimum wage job for a season with no lifelines. When you make more you can spare more. When you make almost nothing you can spare almost nothing. The seemingly endless tax loopholes to the highest-income citizens and, more importantly, large corporations, have stacked the deck. Worker salaries decrease, relative costs of housing and services rise, and the economy, as we see today, falls into a state of dismal stagnation. It isn't just the result of ghettoization, though that plays a role. Recent college grads are competing against hundreds of other applicants for a limited number of field-related jobs in many instances. Yes there is a mismatch of training and workers in America, but even moreso there is a social, and resultant economic, de-valuation of many jobs that are absolutely necessary to keep the system going. Advocating for broader access to higher education is all fine and well. But where do they go once educated? To work at McDonalds for $7.50 an hour? The majority of jobs being created by private corporations in this economy are low-income, unskilled positions. Where are the educated, and student-indebted, to turn? Okay rant over...
Howard Smith
thank you for your analysis
Lydia Simpson
Well my long-windedness might have left my comment to lose a little impact in the interim...
Terrell Shaw
And on my Mac a "shift-return" allows you to put paragraph breaks --- my old eyes have a heard time reading long blocks without breaks.
Sam Burnham
Pg 55 of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.
Sam Burnham
Pg 56 of Karl Marx's Communist manifesto.
Turns out the book reads like a Barack Obama speech. I've been able to expect almost every single domestic move he has made because he is a communist, and I have read his bible.
Howard Smith
Sam Burnham....to quote Ronald Reagan...."there you go again"...not even communist pay much attention to Karl Marx and this is a long way from modern day socialism and light years away from the concept of democratic socialism....where admittedly, hold on to your hat, the developed world is headed...you'll be ok...take your meds...and, also, get this...those nations you call "communist" too, because they don't exist...I know this will come as a shock to you...but, its true...there are no, get this, no such nations that exist.
Lydia Simpson
The communist manifesto, as a statement of doctrine, is not inherently evil. The problem with communism is that it simply doesn't work. One has to understand the point in time in which Marx lived. The fear of communism was based on the fact that it could not succeed unless adapted by all of the nations of the world in a mass revolution, a revolution which will never manifest itself because communism as a political and economic theory has never borne fruit, nor could it in the modern world as it has developed since the time of Marx. Modern economic systems have the advantage of being able to borrow from a multitude of economic theories. The problem in the United States, however, is that economic theory is largely divorced from history both in our politics and in our universities, whereas economic theory, like any study of humanity, is better tested on the past than on the future in order to mitigate potential disaster.
Sam Burnham
Oh we agree that the world is headed towards that tyranny. What we don't agree with is completing the trip. We can change. We can educate ourselves and head back towards freedom.
If communists today don't pay much attention to Marx, how is it that our communist president is following all of these points in varying degrees?
Sam Burnham
Lydia, I disagree wholeheartedly. The Communist Manifesto is filled with the teaching of lying, theft, murder, conspiracy, etc. it's one of the most evil books I've ever read. And it produced an evil theory that Lenin executed to the letter.
Howard Smith
Sam, If you truly believe our President is a "communist" then either you are an idiot or you are delusional or MAYBE you need to seek medical attention or probably you are just plain stupid...I call it as I see it. I will make no apologies for acknowledging what is obvious! Seek help,.
Lydia Simpson
If you read a Communist Manifesto filled wit "lying, theft, murder, conspiracy, etc." then we read very different books. And I'm afraid I'll have to second Howard Smith's sentiments. Marxist Communism was not unique in its espousal of redistribution economics. Marx was one among many economic philosophers of the early modern era who were seeking to find a better way than what they saw around them. But he was only a theorist, and his theories were never borne out by any society that ostensibly adopted them. Soviet Russia skipped an entire step of the process by using the government to industrialize the country, thereby perverting the post-revolutionary progress Marx espoused. No one, not even myself (admittedly a far-left liberal) is calling for a government takeover of industry. If anything most of us are actually calling for LESS government involvement in business. The government of the United States has been deeply involved, and in bed with, industry since the Civil War, only it has been involved in creating a more pro-corporate environment to the detriment of the worker instead of allowing free market competition to flourish.
Sam Burnham
Howard, as usual, you resort to attacks that are beneath intellectual discourse. I have presented the ten tenets of Marxism. Barack Obama espouses them all on one level or another. That is how I arrived at my conclusions about his obvious philosophical leanings.
The reason I shared these tenets is because our society is deteriorating to a state in which we speak of graduated income tax and wealth redistribution as if they are benign. Just another bill in Congress.
They aren't. They're dangerous. They're ill advised. And if we tinker with these tenets of communism then others are soon to follow.
This is not a communist nation. There are plenty out there. If you want one bad enough, go find one.
If you cannot muster the civility to refrain from calling me stupid because I present evidence for ideas that displease you, ignore me, block me, whatever. I assure you I am not stupid, just as I can assure you that you are no gentleman.
Lydia Simpson
The damage done by this weird inversion of capitalism America has been under for the past hundred years or so needs a correction. It is better to adopt that correction by practical and studied legislation than by revolution.
Terrell Shaw
Sam, unregulated capitalism also results in redistribution of wealth -- toward the wealthy. I know I say it over and over but I believe it to my toes, the answer is in the middle. To put the president all the way over to the communistic end of the spectrum is a very mistaken idea by a smart, but very wrong, guy.
Sam Burnham
Lydia, my point about the evil is based in the treatment of the bourgeois. They are robbed of their personhood. They are objectified to the point that murder becomes acceptable. Theft from the bourgeois is one of the primary tenets. And it is all accomplished through deceit, conspiracy, etc.
But we are in agreement that capitalism has become distorted in the last century. Starting with Wilson and proceeding through the progressive movement, our nation has become what it was never meant to be: a top-heavy monolithic empire.
The results are mega corps, the decline of small business, family farms, etc. the more progressive approaches we take (from either major party) the worse the problem becomes.
Yes, we absolutely have issues that need to be solved. We need to find ways to make competition fair for small businesses. But taxing people for dying won't do that. Confiscatory fuel taxes won't do that. Progressive income tax won't do that. All those methods are easily absorbed by a Wal-Mart but mom & pop wind up in bankruptcy court.
We need something that works.
Lydia Simpson
It sounds like we are in more agreement than disagreement. I've found that in many cases an apparent disagreement often conceals a fundamental agreement. Maybe our legislators can see the same one of these days?
Sam Burnham
It will depend on them ceasing the name-calling and acting on emotion. We must be guided by reason and elect legislators that do the same. Only then can we work towards real compromise that will be beneficial.
Sam Burnham
And we do agree on a lot. I'm not a neocon. I'm what we like to call a "cornbread conservative". More akin to an old Southern Democrat or a Bourbon than the modern Republican Party.
Lydia Simpson
That can mean a lot of things, but I'm going to hope for not Jim Crow...
Sam Burnham
Certainly not.
OK, I know, it's kinda weird to post a quote from someone else's dream.
