Bill Maher "Rich" Threads (Merged)

[frazzledgear]

When you're rich, you lose the right to complain about anything and be taken seriously.

Really? Wow what country do you live in? Class warfare may work for you -it doesn't work for most Americans who do NOT believe that government owns the fruits of your labor first and doesn't get to decide how much you may be allowed to keep. In THIS country WE THE PEOPLE decide how much we will ALLOW government to have of our own money.

If you think you can hose the wealthy indefinitely and that they should just STFU about it -you might want to pay closer attention to what is happening in Greece. The problem with thinking the rich are a bottomless well who should get stuck with the tab for everything -is that eventually you even run out of their money too. I sure hope you aren't teaching your children that there really is such a thing as a free lunch, that other people owe them, that other people (or worse, government) is responsible for "taking care" of them and that sticking other people with the bill is an American value. Or your children will be the same kind of loser in life you are.

Confiscating 40% of what ANYONE earns and has created for themselves -is IMMORAL. Just because someone created and earned more than you doesn't change the rules about who owns that first. There is no "magic line" beyond which someone else gets to decide how much you will be "allowed" to keep of the fruits of your own labor. Do you believe what you worked for is YOURS first -or government's? Do you really think what you toiled and worked to earn belongs to GOVERNMENT first? This goes to your basic philosophy in life buddy. Who do you work and exist for? Yourself and loved ones first -or government as its slave who owns the fruits of your labor and essentially owns you? Are you a free person or the dispensable and fungible possession and SLAVE of the government, government owned property no different from a government owned toilet seat? Who is your master in life -YOU or government? I bet you are another sad product of our public school system.

So where do you get off insisting that if someone has been more successful than you at what they do and therefore created and earned more for themselves than you did -that the rules are ALL changed for them and that if someone is actually good at what they do in life, they exist as government property who has first claim to anything they produce, create or earn?

The REAL source for your class envy is that you suck at life, have made poor decisions and still want rewarded for it by having the consequences for your decisions in life be handed over to others -specifically those who made other, better, wiser choices in life. The envious ALWAYS want to avoid the consequences they created for themselves and believe it should be the very people who avoided those consequences for themselves who should be saddled with them instead. The rich work an average 70 hour work week. YOU and I don't -by choice. The rich tend to be FAR more ambitious than you and I are -by OUR choice. The rich tend to be far more driven than you and I are -by OUR choice. The rich have chosen to sacrifice a huge chunk of their private lives that you and I have refused to do -by OUR choice. I made the choices I have in life -but I sure as hell don't envy the people who made other choices from my own! You do. So you don't work as hard as the rich -but you WANT what they worked for anyway. Instead of encouraging MORE people to imitate those work habits, you want government to both steal their wealth from them at the same time they demonize them for being better at what they do than you are. You pathetic loser.

Sorry to break the news to you -but being wealthy is only a crime to losers in life like you who want to pretend the rich only got rich because they stole it from people like you. They have as much right to complain about anything they want -just like you do every waking moment of your life. And you might want to think about this -it is possible for those paying all the bills to eventually decide that since they paid for it all, they also own it all and get to make all the rules. Please take a history lesson -and find out what REALLY happens every single time without exception when people like you, who have nothing but contempt, disdain and overriding envy for those who worked harder, longer and more ambitiously than you are running things. It has only massively increased the level of human misery -so probably not a good idea to be a parasite who despises the very victim they NEED to exist. Being a parasite in life has few rewards -demonizing those you suck dry is apparently one of the few but only emphasizes your own loser status in life -both in the eyes of everyone who has the misfortune to know you as well as YOUR OWN!

People like you are actively discouraging people from working hard and being successful -because you DESPISE such people and you do because YOU aren't successful in life and undoubtedly tell yourself it is always the fault of someone else that you aren't. It must the fault of those who are successful that you are such a loser, right? So you encourage others to become the parasites of such people just like you. But honey, only a bottom dwelling moron would actually believe it makes sense to not just be parasites but to then demonize the very hosts you would gladly suck totally dry. Who will you look to parasite off next then?

 

[PoliticalChic]

When you're rich, you lose the right to complain about anything and be taken seriously.

Really? Wow what country do you live in? Class warfare may work for you -it doesn't work for most Americans who do NOT believe that government owns the fruits of your labor first and doesn't get to decide how much you may be allowed to keep. In THIS country WE THE PEOPLE decide how much we will ALLOW government to have of our own money.

If you think you can hose the wealthy indefinitely and that they should just STFU about it -you might want to pay closer attention to what is happening in Greece. The problem with thinking the rich are a bottomless well who should get stuck with the tab for everything -is that eventually you even run out of their money too. I sure hope you aren't teaching your children that there really is such a thing as a free lunch, that other people owe them, that other people (or worse, government) is responsible for "taking care" of them and that sticking other people with the bill is an American value. Or your children will be the same kind of loser in life you are.

Confiscating 40% of what ANYONE earns and has created for themselves -is IMMORAL. Just because someone created and earned more than you doesn't change the rules about who owns that first. There is no "magic line" beyond which someone else gets to decide how much you will be "allowed" to keep of the fruits of your own labor. Do you believe what you worked for is YOURS first -or government's? Do you really think what you toiled and worked to earn belongs to GOVERNMENT first? This goes to your basic philosophy in life buddy. Who do you work and exist for? Yourself and loved ones first -or government as its slave who owns the fruits of your labor and essentially owns you? Are you a free person or the dispensable and fungible possession and SLAVE of the government, government owned property no different from a government owned toilet seat? Who is your master in life -YOU or government? I bet you are another sad product of our public school system.

So where do you get off insisting that if someone has been more successful than you at what they do and therefore created and earned more for themselves than you did -that the rules are ALL changed for them and that if someone is actually good at what they do in life, they exist as government property who has first claim to anything they produce, create or earn?

The REAL source for your class envy is that you suck at life, have made poor decisions and still want rewarded for it by having the consequences for your decisions in life be handed over to others -specifically those who made other, better, wiser choices in life. The envious ALWAYS want to avoid the consequences they created for themselves and believe it should be the very people who avoided those consequences for themselves who should be saddled with them instead. The rich work an average 70 hour work week. YOU and I don't -by choice. The rich tend to be FAR more ambitious than you and I are -by OUR choice. The rich tend to be far more driven than you and I are -by OUR choice. The rich have chosen to sacrifice a huge chunk of their private lives that you and I have refused to do -by OUR choice. I made the choices I have in life -but I sure as hell don't envy the people who made other choices from my own! You do. So you don't work as hard as the rich -but you WANT what they worked for anyway. Instead of encouraging MORE people to imitate those work habits, you want government to both steal their wealth from them at the same time they demonize them for being better at what they do than you are. You pathetic loser.

Sorry to break the news to you -but being wealthy is only a crime to losers in life like you who want to pretend the rich only got rich because they stole it from people like you. They have as much right to complain about anything they want -just like you do every waking moment of your life. And you might want to think about this -it is possible for those paying all the bills to eventually decide that since they paid for it all, they also own it all and get to make all the rules. Please take a history lesson -and find out what REALLY happens every single time without exception when people like you, who have nothing but contempt, disdain and overriding envy for those who worked harder, longer and more ambitiously than you are running things. It has only massively increased the level of human misery -so probably not a good idea to be a parasite who despises the very victim they NEED to exist. Being a parasite in life has few rewards -demonizing those you suck dry is apparently one of the few but only emphasizes your own loser status in life -both in the eyes of everyone who has the misfortune to know you as well as YOUR OWN!

People like you are actively discouraging people from working hard and being successful -because you DESPISE such people and you do because YOU aren't successful in life and undoubtedly tell yourself it is always the fault of someone else that you aren't. It must the fault of those who are successful that you are such a loser, right? So you encourage others to become the parasites of such people just like you. But honey, only a bottom dwelling moron would actually believe it makes sense to not just be parasites but to then demonize the very hosts you would gladly suck totally dry. Who will you look to parasite off next then?

Tried to rep, but was stymied!

 

[rdean]

Even though I don't like Bill Maher, I watch his show because he has some incredible people on there. He once had on Phyllis Schlafly (an odious woman who is at least very interesting). Last week, he had on the widow of Carl Sagan (who was treated disgracefully by the two Republicans who shouted at her and Bill Maher who did NOTHING to protect her).

He also played a tape of Christine O'Donnell. He said he will play a different one every week until she comes on his show. They ARE his tapes. He paid for them. No worse than Rev. Wright.

This is where the "I dabbled in witchcraft came from". Last week had Chris making fun of "evolution". "Why aren't monkeys still turning into humans?"

Of course, this woman also believes that those immoral scientists have given "mice" "fully functioning HUMAN brains". This is what happens when you don't keep people educated.

This is the woman Republicans think will make "good decisions" based on "what"? What she already knows? Her "experience"? This is why that odious party can't go away fast enough. Most of it's sheeple are nutz.

 

[FireGod]

I have come up with the perfect solution one that the republican party can stand behind with pride.

LOWER THE TAXES ON THE 1% to zero and progressive tax rates from there with the poorest kicking in at 39%.

On the theory that it is the rich who make the jobs then there will be no more poor in a very short while.

 

[MikeK]

Boofriggenhoo.. Why do the rich have any less right to whine than anyone else? Because they make more? Don't like it? Then make more yourself.

Well said. I'm sick to death of this class warfare and racial warfare the left is waging. It just sucks. And, I'm not even rich.

If you are sick of the class warfare, and what you are seeing is actually a very early stage of the coming class warfare, it is only because you or your children have not yet been touched by it. But give it time because the days of the middle class, which you presumably inhabit, are numbered.

What I find interesting but not surprising is a significant percentage of the right-wingers who most vociferously support the right of the super-rich to continue manipulating a compromised system of wealth distribution don't have a pot to piss in. They are are living in mortgaged homes, are heavily in debt to creditors and the thing that motivates these deluded nitwits is the notion that reduced taxes will solve all their money problems. It doesn't occur to them that the tax reduction which will net them an extra $500 a year will net their super-rich counterpart $50 million a year -- and is precisely the reason why the Nation's economy is in the shape it's in today.

The sad reality is that these deluded wretches really have no idea of what wealth is. The closest they have ever been to it is the sight of a private jet passing over their heads. They are their own worst enemies and they don't have the limited intelligence it takes to understand why.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Boofriggenhoo.. Why do the rich have any less right to whine than anyone else? Because they make more? Don't like it? Then make more yourself.

Well said. I'm sick to death of this class warfare and racial warfare the left is waging. It just sucks. And, I'm not even rich.

If you are sick of the class warfare, and what you are seeing is actually a very early stage of the coming class warfare, it is only because you or your children have not yet been touched by it. But give it time because the days of the middle class, which you presumably inhabit, are numbered.

What I find interesting but not surprising is a significant percentage of the right-wingers who most vociferously support the right of the super-rich to continue manipulating a compromised system of wealth distribution don't have a pot to piss in. They are are living in mortgaged homes, are heavily in debt to creditors and the thing that motivates these deluded nitwits is the notion that reduced taxes will solve all their money problems. It doesn't occur to them that the tax reduction which will net them an extra $500 a year will net their super-rich counterpart $50 million a year -- and is precisely the reason why the Nation's economy is in the shape it's in today.

The sad reality is that these deluded wretches really have no idea of what wealth is. The closest they have ever been to it is the sight of a private jet passing over their heads. They are their own worst enemies and they don't have the limited intelligence it takes to understand why.

1.Cultural elites and intellectuals, such as Christopher Lasch, state that “economic inequality is intrinsically undesirable…Luxury is morally repugnant, and its incompatibility with democratic ideals, moreover, has been consistently recognized in the traditions that shape our political culture…[A] moral condemnation of great wealth must inform any defense of the free market, and that moral condemnation must be backed up with effective political action.” Christopher Lasch, “The Revolt of the Elites, and the Betrayal of Democracy,” p. 22
Extension of this view changes democracy into socialism: the political ‘one person, one vote,’ becomes the economic mandate of socialism.

a. The desire for equality of income or of wealth is, of course, but one aspect of a more general desire for equality. “The essence of the moral idea of socialism is that human equality is the supreme value in life.” Martin Malia, “A Fatal Logic,” The National Interest, Spring 1993, pp. 80, 87

2. Since one cannot see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another’s greater wealth, the explanation for the ‘economic equality imperative’ can only be envy. The resentment of luxury in another is evil, in that there is no benefit to depriving others with no gain to ourselves. What is the satisfaction of seeing the better off lessened?

a. President Clinton proposed raising taxes on the rich, even though it didn’t appear that it would increase tax revenues. A sizable portion of the public agreed, even under these circumstances. The motive can only be envy.

3. Sociologist Helmut Schoeck’s observation: “Since the end of the Second World War, however, a new ‘ethic’ has come into being, according to which the envious man is perfectly acceptable. Progressively fewer individuals and groups are ashamed of their envy, but instead make out that its existence in their temperaments axiomatically proves the existence of ‘social injustice,’ which must be eliminated for their benefit.” Helmut Schoeck, “Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior,” p. 179

4. Who are the rich that are so envied, and reviled? Entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, just plain Americans…not royalty. The reason to deprive them of rewards with no tangible benefits to oneself: envy.

a. Everyone, it seems, wants to believe that he is just as good as the next guy, and in a democracy, the government adds its authority by the ‘leveling’ process. “ But what his heart whispers to him, and the law proclaims, the society around him incessantly denies: certain people are richer, more powerful than he, others are reputed to be wiser, more intelligent. The contradiction between social reality and the combined wishes of his heart and the law, therefore incites and nourishes a devouring passion in everyone: the passion for equality. It will never cease until social reality is made to conform with his and the law’s wishes.” Pierre Manent, “An Intellectual History of Liberalism,” p. 107-8.

b. The tried and true strategy for coping with the knowledge that others are a cut above, is to find a way to bring down the more fortunate. “And so the leveling process grinds insensately on. The Wall Street Journal recently reprinted a Kurt Vonnegut story, which the paper retitled "It Seemed Like Fiction"…Vonnegut saw the trend and envisioned the day when Americans would achieve perfect equality: persons of superior intelligence required to wear mental handicap radios that emit a sharp noise every twenty seconds to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains, persons of superior strength or grace burdened with weights, those of uncommon beauty forced to wear masks.” Hard Truths About the Culture War

 

[Synthaholic]

Boofriggenhoo.. Why do the rich have any less right to whine than anyone else? Because they make more? Don't like it? Then make more yourself.

Well said. I'm sick to death of this class warfare and racial warfare the left is waging. It just sucks. And, I'm not even rich.

If you are sick of the class warfare, and what you are seeing is actually a very early stage of the coming class warfare, it is only because you or your children have not yet been touched by it. But give it time because the days of the middle class, which you presumably inhabit, are numbered.

What I find interesting but not surprising is a significant percentage of the right-wingers who most vociferously support the right of the super-rich to continue manipulating a compromised system of wealth distribution don't have a pot to piss in. They are are living in mortgaged homes, are heavily in debt to creditors and the thing that motivates these deluded nitwits is the notion that reduced taxes will solve all their money problems. It doesn't occur to them that the tax reduction which will net them an extra $500 a year will net their super-rich counterpart $50 million a year -- and is precisely the reason why the Nation's economy is in the shape it's in today.

The sad reality is that these deluded wretches really have no idea of what wealth is. The closest they have ever been to it is the sight of a private jet passing over their heads. They are their own worst enemies and they don't have the limited intelligence it takes to understand why.

 

[MikeK]

[...]The Wall Street Journal recently reprinted a Kurt Vonnegut story, which the paper retitled "It Seemed Like Fiction"…Vonnegut saw the trend and envisioned the day when Americans would achieve perfect equality: persons of superior intelligence required to wear mental handicap radios that emit a sharp noise every twenty seconds to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains, persons of superior strength or grace burdened with weights, those of uncommon beauty forced to wear masks.”

Is is no surprise that the Wall Street Journal would borrow from this Vonnegut tale, which can be creatively adapted to mitigate in the cause of unadulterated greed. But the pivotal factor in the story, which the Journal's adaptation gracefully ignores, is that of perfect equality, which is not the objective of those who advocate for equitable distribution of our Nation's material resources via expediently judicious taxation.

Simply stated, I do not expect that resumption of the tax rate which facilitated a vibrant U.S. economy through the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the mid 80s will make me perfectly equal to Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. But it will put an end to the kind of financial nobility which is rapidly rising in America and is responsible for the equally rapid destruction of the middle class which so many have labored and bled to create.

It is not "perfect equality" we seek, but fair and sensible distribution of what this great nation enables its citizens to collectively produce. We seek an end to the kind of conniving and corrupt manipulation which is turning America into a two class, third world nation.

 

[PoliticalChic]

[...]The Wall Street Journal recently reprinted a Kurt Vonnegut story, which the paper retitled "It Seemed Like Fiction"…Vonnegut saw the trend and envisioned the day when Americans would achieve perfect equality: persons of superior intelligence required to wear mental handicap radios that emit a sharp noise every twenty seconds to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains, persons of superior strength or grace burdened with weights, those of uncommon beauty forced to wear masks.”

Is is no surprise that the Wall Street Journal would borrow from this Vonnegut tale, which can be creatively adapted to mitigate in the cause of unadulterated greed. But the pivotal factor in the story, which the Journal's adaptation gracefully ignores, is that of perfect equality, which is not the objective of those who advocate for equitable distribution of our Nation's material resources via expediently judicious taxation.

Simply stated, I do not expect that resumption of the tax rate which facilitated a vibrant U.S. economy through the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the mid 80s will make me perfectly equal to Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. But it will put an end to the kind of financial nobility which is rapidly rising in America and is responsible for the equally rapid destruction of the middle class which so many have labored and bled to create.

It is not "perfect equality" we seek, but fair and sensible distribution of what this great nation enables its citizens to collectively produce. We seek an end to the kind of conniving and corrupt manipulation which is turning America into a two class, third world nation.

Ah, you poor, sad hand-wringer...

Work harder, get a second job and/or a better degree...

Or take the risks that entrepreneurs have, and you could be one of the millions of millionaires in the US. Almost all of whom earned their money, they didn't inherit it.

Here, ya' big baby, let me set you on the right path:

1. A million dollars may sound like a fortune to most people, and folks with that much cash can't complain — they're richer than 90 percent of U.S. households and earn $366,000 a year, on average, putting them in the top 1 percent of taxpayers. But the club isn't so exclusive anymore. Some 10 million households have a net worth above $1 million, excluding home equity, almost double the number in 2002.

So how do you join the millionaires' club? You could buy stocks or real estate, play the slots in Vegas — or take the most common path: running your own business. That's how half of all millionaires made their money, according to the AmEx/Harrison survey. About a third had a professional practice or worked in the corporate world; only 3 percent inherited their wealth.10 Things Millionaires Won't Tell You - Spending - Rip-offs - SmartMoney.com

2. The 7 Top Ways Millionaires Become Wealthy
1) Live Well Below Your Means
2) Spend Your Time, Energy, and Money in Ways that Build Wealth.
3) Choose Financial Independence over Displaying High Social Status
4) Don’t Accept Economic Support from Your Parents once Outside the Home
5) Teach your children to be economically self-sufficient to foster a “Wealth Mind-Set”
6) Become Proficient in Targeting Market Opportunities
7) Choose the Right Occupation
The 7 Top Ways Millionaires Become Wealthy

3. Intellectuals often make the mistake of basing political analysis on clichés that misrepresent reality. Sowell shows, for instance, how debates about income distribution in the United States have been distorted by a preoccupation with statistical categories.

a. Journalists and academics alike endlessly repeat that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. What these discussions ignore is that people move with some frequency from category to category over time. Only 5 percent of Americans who were in the bottom quintile of income earners in 1975 were still there in 1991. Only 25 percent of the “super-rich” in 1996 (the top 1/100th of 1 percent of income earners) remained in that category in 2005.

b. Over half of the poor earning at or near the minimum wage are between the ages of 16 and 24. As Sowell wryly notes, “these individuals cannot remain from 16 to 24 years of age indefinitely, though that age category can of course continue indefinitely, providing many intellectuals with data to fit their preconceptions.”

c. Abstract talk about “inequities” in income distribution presupposes a social problem, where strictly speaking one may not exist at all.
An Independent Mind by Daniel J. Mahoney, City Journal 18 June 2010
(emphasis mine throughout)

Stop believing the left wing propaganda.
Grow up and wise up.

 

[topspin]

this shit is hillarious, taxing the rich a couple percent will help the middle class and poor. BHAHAHAHAH

 

[Madeline]

"New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being 'rich', or what tax rate is too much.'

"But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole."

Bill Maher...

Is the rich any less enititled to keep the money they earn? If so, Why?

The rich person has "earned" less than 100% of his gross receipts, Lonestar. It's the government who educated his customers, suppliers and workers. It's the government who protects his investments. It's the government who regulates his bank, so he is not the victim of fraud. Etc.

Should the poor and middle class just gift all these services to the rich? Why is that?

 

[Madeline]

Saw this interesting segment yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning



Linda McGibney: We Who Prospered Should Pay Tax
Counters Ben Stein's Claim That Ending Tax Cut Is "Punishment" of Well-Off, Says It's Patriotic for Rich to Pay More
Linda McGibney: Ben Stein is Wrong - CBS News Video

"Taking from the rich through much higher tax rates in order to help the poor and middle class makes no sense intellectually and has seldom worked in practice. Reducing rates, on the other hand, does increase the share of taxes paid by the highest income-earning group. For example, in 1981, when the highest tax rate on the rich was 70% and the top capital gains tax rate was close to 45%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 17% of total income taxes. In 2005, with a top income tax rate of 35% and capital gains at 15%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 39%."
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB122143692536934297.html

This has more to do with closing loopholes than with tax rates, Political Chic. Chief among these was the end of the bait-and-switch alteration of ordinary income into capital gains. The loss of the loophole alone damn near shuttered the tax bar.

Then there was the loss of the ability to deduct passive losses against active income, etc.

In short, we had a lowering of the overall bullshit level in our tax code. I suspect it has risen again, like the tide.

 

[Madeline]

Bill Maher: New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified

So you strongly recommend the politics of personal destruction if the target doesnt hold your views?


Democrats are the party of discrimination since its inception.

Well, I'm not a Democrat, Full Auto and shooting people just for disagreeing with me seems inefficient. I am sometimes wrong.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Saw this interesting segment yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning



Linda McGibney: We Who Prospered Should Pay Tax
Counters Ben Stein's Claim That Ending Tax Cut Is "Punishment" of Well-Off, Says It's Patriotic for Rich to Pay More
Linda McGibney: Ben Stein is Wrong - CBS News Video

"Taking from the rich through much higher tax rates in order to help the poor and middle class makes no sense intellectually and has seldom worked in practice. Reducing rates, on the other hand, does increase the share of taxes paid by the highest income-earning group. For example, in 1981, when the highest tax rate on the rich was 70% and the top capital gains tax rate was close to 45%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 17% of total income taxes. In 2005, with a top income tax rate of 35% and capital gains at 15%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 39%."
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB122143692536934297.html

This has more to do with closing loopholes than with tax rates, Political Chic. Chief among these was the end of the bait-and-switch alteration of ordinary income into capital gains. The loss of the loophole alone damn near shuttered the tax bar.

Then there was the loss of the ability to deduct passive losses against active income, etc.

In short, we had a lowering of the overall bullshit level in our tax code. I suspect it has risen again, like the tide.

Maddy, I'd be interested in your take on it being "Patriotic for Rich to Pay More" as per my question to Valerie.

 

[Madeline]

The fucking uber-liberoidals love to bandy around terms like "greedy" and "regressives" when the supposedly "rich" folks (evil, by unspoken definition) object to ever-increasing taxation.

The fucking scumbag uber-libs never seem capable, however, of explaining how it is "greedy" for anybody (at any level of wealth) to object to the taking of his own money.

If I earn it, it's mine. If there is a tax structure in place to pay for the CONSTITUTIONALLY limited government to which I have agreed, then I do not object to paying my fair share of my earnings to cover the costs associated with that LIMITED government.

But when the government transgresses the LIMITATIONS imposed on it by the Constitution in order to engage in social engineering like the redistribution of wealth, there is nothing "greedy" about objecting.

Newsflash for you retarded uber-liberoidal jackasses. It's NOT your fucking money.

It is not the rich man's money either, Liability. There is a cost to the government to supporting any business or investment that generates a high income in the US. Who should pay that cost?

Poor and middle class people, out of some weird worship for the rich?

This thinking is so fucked.

 

[Madeline]

"Taking from the rich through much higher tax rates in order to help the poor and middle class makes no sense intellectually and has seldom worked in practice. Reducing rates, on the other hand, does increase the share of taxes paid by the highest income-earning group. For example, in 1981, when the highest tax rate on the rich was 70% and the top capital gains tax rate was close to 45%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 17% of total income taxes. In 2005, with a top income tax rate of 35% and capital gains at 15%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 39%."
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB122143692536934297.html

This has more to do with closing loopholes than with tax rates, Political Chic. Chief among these was the end of the bait-and-switch alteration of ordinary income into capital gains. The loss of the loophole alone damn near shuttered the tax bar.

Then there was the loss of the ability to deduct passive losses against active income, etc.

In short, we had a lowering of the overall bullshit level in our tax code. I suspect it has risen again, like the tide.

Maddy, I'd be interested in your take on it being "Patriotic for Rich to Pay More" as per my question to Valerie.

Progressive tax rates are a weapon of choice for many a political theorist. The old-timey communists (Marx, Lenin) believed that tax rates should be steeply progressive. Many US tax pundits support progressive rates (at far less steep an incline) as a means of f-a-i-r-l-y distributing both the pain and the cost of government. In that the rich consume far more government services than the poor or middle class, they can fairly be asked to pay a larger share of same. This POV is often called "vertical equity".

I'm not really debating a progressive vs a flat tax in this thread, as no one is proposing a flat tax. What I am debating is the wisdom of shifting $700 Billion in tax burden away from the rich down on to the middle class and poor. However, if pressed, I'd personally support a flat tax because it would bring an end to loopholes and other evils of taxation.

I don't think many of you accept this truism: that $700 Billion has to come from somewhere. If not the rich, then who? YOU.

 

[PoliticalChic]

This has more to do with closing loopholes than with tax rates, Political Chic. Chief among these was the end of the bait-and-switch alteration of ordinary income into capital gains. The loss of the loophole alone damn near shuttered the tax bar.

Then there was the loss of the ability to deduct passive losses against active income, etc.

In short, we had a lowering of the overall bullshit level in our tax code. I suspect it has risen again, like the tide.

Maddy, I'd be interested in your take on it being "Patriotic for Rich to Pay More" as per my question to Valerie.

Progressive tax rates are a weapon of choice for many a political theorist. The old-timey communists (Marx, Lenin) believed that tax rates should be steeply progressive. Many US tax pundits support progressive rates (at far less steep an incline) as a means of f-a-i-r-l-y distributing both the pain and the cost of government. In that the rich consume far more government services than the poor or middle class, they can fairly be asked to pay a larger share of same. This POV is often called "vertical equity".

I'm not really debating a progressive vs a flat tax in this thread, as no one is proposing a flat tax. What I am debating is the wisdom of shifting $700 Billion in tax burden away from the rich down on to the middle class and poor. However, if pressed, I'd personally support a flat tax because it would bring an end to loopholes and other evils of taxation.

I don't think many of you accept this truism: that $700 Billion has to come from somewhere. If not the rich, then who? YOU.

And, of course, you are correct that this has nothing to do with a flat tax...so why bring it up?

And no one is disputing a progressive tax...

Nor is the spin off question whether or not raising taxes on the top earners efficacious in terms of taxes entering the treasury.

The question is what you think is a...let's call it 'fair' level, considering the fact that the top 1% now pays 39%...

"The top 1% of households, which made 19% of pre-tax income, paid 39% of all individual income taxes."
Who pays taxes - and how much? A tax day perennial. - Apr. 15, 2009

 

[MikeK]

[...]2. Since one cannot see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another’s greater wealth, the explanation for the ‘economic equality imperative’ can only be envy. The resentment of luxury in another is evil, in that there is no benefit to depriving others with no gain to ourselves. What is the satisfaction of seeing the better off lessened?[...]

Just one example of the glaring flaw in that reasoning are the millions of Americans who have been and are being forced out of the homes they were tricked into contracting for by unscrupulous bankers whose wealth is the direct result of the abject suffering of those whom they exploit. Some other examples are the millions who have become financially enslaved by usurious credit card interest rates and the victims of devious hedge fund operators who have caused millions of 401-K plans to dissolve.

Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Bernie Madoff are not the only diabolical bastards who have taken advantage of the increasing lack of regulations in the financial industry to acquire enviable wealth, they are just the ones who got caught. The effect of those absent regulations, most of which were removed by the direct influence of money on our corrupted legislative representatives, has made legal what once were crimes.

So it is not the excessive wealth that hurts the ordinary citizens. It is the way much of that wealth was accumulated that hurts us and will continue to hurt us until we either do something about it or America becomes an extension of Mexico.

 

[PoliticalChic]

[...]2. Since one cannot see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another’s greater wealth, the explanation for the ‘economic equality imperative’ can only be envy. The resentment of luxury in another is evil, in that there is no benefit to depriving others with no gain to ourselves. What is the satisfaction of seeing the better off lessened?[...]

Just one example of the glaring flaw in that reasoning are the millions of Americans who have been and are being forced out of the homes they were tricked into contracting for by unscrupulous bankers whose wealth is the direct result of the abject suffering of those whom they exploit. Some other examples are the millions who have become financially enslaved by usurious credit card interest rates and the victims of devious hedge fund operators who have caused millions of 401-K plans to dissolve.

Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Bernie Madoff are not the only diabolical bastards who have taken advantage of the increasing lack of regulations in the financial industry to acquire enviable wealth, they are just the ones who got caught. The effect of those absent regulations, most of which were removed by the direct influence of money on our corrupted legislative representatives, has made legal what once were crimes.

So it is not the excessive wealth that hurts the ordinary citizens. It is the way much of that wealth was accumulated that hurts us and will continue to hurt us until we either do something about it or America becomes an extension of Mexico.

I can see why you would ignore the essential nature of my post, as it shreds your jaundiced worldview.

Tons of US millionaires, who earned their bucks via hard work...

Carry on.

 

[rdean]

Boofriggenhoo.. Why do the rich have any less right to whine than anyone else? Because they make more? Don't like it? Then make more yourself.

Well said. I'm sick to death of this class warfare and racial warfare the left is waging. It just sucks. And, I'm not even rich.

If you are sick of the class warfare, and what you are seeing is actually a very early stage of the coming class warfare, it is only because you or your children have not yet been touched by it. But give it time because the days of the middle class, which you presumably inhabit, are numbered.

What I find interesting but not surprising is a significant percentage of the right-wingers who most vociferously support the right of the super-rich to continue manipulating a compromised system of wealth distribution don't have a pot to piss in. They are are living in mortgaged homes, are heavily in debt to creditors and the thing that motivates these deluded nitwits is the notion that reduced taxes will solve all their money problems. It doesn't occur to them that the tax reduction which will net them an extra $500 a year will net their super-rich counterpart $50 million a year -- and is precisely the reason why the Nation's economy is in the shape it's in today.

The sad reality is that these deluded wretches really have no idea of what wealth is. The closest they have ever been to it is the sight of a private jet passing over their heads. They are their own worst enemies and they don't have the limited intelligence it takes to understand why.

1.Cultural elites and intellectuals, such as Christopher Lasch, state that “economic inequality is intrinsically undesirable…Luxury is morally repugnant, and its incompatibility with democratic ideals, moreover, has been consistently recognized in the traditions that shape our political culture…[A] moral condemnation of great wealth must inform any defense of the free market, and that moral condemnation must be backed up with effective political action.” Christopher Lasch, “The Revolt of the Elites, and the Betrayal of Democracy,” p. 22
Extension of this view changes democracy into socialism: the political ‘one person, one vote,’ becomes the economic mandate of socialism.

a. The desire for equality of income or of wealth is, of course, but one aspect of a more general desire for equality. “The essence of the moral idea of socialism is that human equality is the supreme value in life.” Martin Malia, “A Fatal Logic,” The National Interest, Spring 1993, pp. 80, 87

2. Since one cannot see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another’s greater wealth, the explanation for the ‘economic equality imperative’ can only be envy. The resentment of luxury in another is evil, in that there is no benefit to depriving others with no gain to ourselves. What is the satisfaction of seeing the better off lessened?

a. President Clinton proposed raising taxes on the rich, even though it didn’t appear that it would increase tax revenues. A sizable portion of the public agreed, even under these circumstances. The motive can only be envy.

3. Sociologist Helmut Schoeck’s observation: “Since the end of the Second World War, however, a new ‘ethic’ has come into being, according to which the envious man is perfectly acceptable. Progressively fewer individuals and groups are ashamed of their envy, but instead make out that its existence in their temperaments axiomatically proves the existence of ‘social injustice,’ which must be eliminated for their benefit.” Helmut Schoeck, “Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior,” p. 179

4. Who are the rich that are so envied, and reviled? Entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, just plain Americans…not royalty. The reason to deprive them of rewards with no tangible benefits to oneself: envy.

a. Everyone, it seems, wants to believe that he is just as good as the next guy, and in a democracy, the government adds its authority by the ‘leveling’ process. “ But what his heart whispers to him, and the law proclaims, the society around him incessantly denies: certain people are richer, more powerful than he, others are reputed to be wiser, more intelligent. The contradiction between social reality and the combined wishes of his heart and the law, therefore incites and nourishes a devouring passion in everyone: the passion for equality. It will never cease until social reality is made to conform with his and the law’s wishes.” Pierre Manent, “An Intellectual History of Liberalism,” p. 107-8.

b. The tried and true strategy for coping with the knowledge that others are a cut above, is to find a way to bring down the more fortunate. “And so the leveling process grinds insensately on. The Wall Street Journal recently reprinted a Kurt Vonnegut story, which the paper retitled "It Seemed Like Fiction"…Vonnegut saw the trend and envisioned the day when Americans would achieve perfect equality: persons of superior intelligence required to wear mental handicap radios that emit a sharp noise every twenty seconds to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains, persons of superior strength or grace burdened with weights, those of uncommon beauty forced to wear masks.” Hard Truths About the Culture War

Just curious. Why does "your kind" always go on about "cultural elitists"?

What about the "rich elitists"?

You don't really think it's the "cultural elitists" who are buying politicians and lobbying to change laws to give the wealthiest Americans trillion dollar tax breaks, and magical derivatives, and deregulation do you? You know it's the "rich elitists". And do they really need your help? They can buy politicians, you can't.