Tax the Rich? Tax the Millionaires!

[georgephillip]

....as the foul stench of envy and covetousness wafts about the room....

That has to be the real reason because a prosperous economy benefits all citizens better than a broke one...:cuckoo:

Taxing the Rich
The trouble with progressive economics.

John Stossel writes:

Progressives want to raise taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year because they say it's wrong for the rich to be "given" more money. Sunday's New York Times carries a cartoon showing Uncle Sam handing money to a fat cat. They just don't get it.

As I've said before, a tax cut is not a handout. It simply means government steals less. What progressives want to do is take money from some—by force—and spend it on others. It sounds less noble when plainly stated.

That's the moral side of the matter. There's a practical side, too. Taxes discourage wealth creation. That hurts everyone, the lower end of the income scale most of all. An economy that, through freedom, encourages the production of wealth raises the living standards of lower-income people as well as everyone else.

A free society is not a zero-sum game in which every gain is offset by someone's loss. As long as government keeps its thumb off the scales, the "makers" who get rich do so by making others better off. (When the government allocates capital or creates barriers to competition, all bets are off.)

Much more:

Taxing the Rich - Reason Magazine

A free society that uses money as a commodity is a zero-sum game.

Between 1995 and 2005 twice as many US households acquired "super rich" status (more than $10Million) If money can only be possessed by one person or another that means those 300,000 newly super rich households (~2%) acquired $3 trillion that's no longer available for the other 98% of US households.

All governments "keep their thumb on the scale" by writing tax codes that primarily benefit the richest elements of their country. Big Government, Big Business and the richest individuals in any country conspire to steal the resources from the vast majority of citizens while the citizens focus almost all of their anger on Big Government only.

The Dooh Nibor Economy (that’s “Robin Hood” backwards!) | Phil

 

[MitchMan]

AquaThena, quoting John Stossel? He’s a journalist with only an undergraduate degree in philosophy! He has been and is repeatedly debunked by watchdog organizations. If you want to be credible, you need authoritative citations, not quotes from a journalist.

Weak, very weak.

 

[MitchMan]

Georgephillip, keep hitting those right wing hobbits with the facts and stats just as you are doing. It leaves them utterly defenseless and reveals their lack of foundation. Notice how they never rebut with any on point substance. Debunking their unfounded, unsupported contentions is like shooting sitting ducks.

 

[kaz]

Georgephillip, keep hitting those right wing hobbits with the facts and stats just as you are doing. It leaves them utterly defenseless and reveals their lack of foundation. Notice how they never rebut with any on point substance. Debunking their unfounded, unsupported contentions is like shooting sitting ducks.

Arguing politics with a liberal is like arguing Jesus with a Christian. All their arguments are based on the assumption of truth of their positions and you have to believe their views on faith because there is no empirical data to support their statements.

But since you're a member of the Church of the Democratic party, you're going to see it this way. Just recognize that those who aren't members of your faith aren't going to see it like this.

 

[Seawytch]

The top 1% of the population holds 90% of the wealth. Reagan would have taxed 'em...

I like Trump's idea...

November 09, 1999

Trump proposes massive onetime tax on the rich

NEW YORK CNN Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has a plan to pay off the national debt, grant a middle class a tax cut, and keep Social Security afloat tax rich people like himself.

Trump, a prospective candidate for the Reform Party presidential nomination, is proposing a onetime net worth tax on individuals and trusts worth 10 million or more.

By Trumps calculations, his proposed 14.25 percent levy on such net worth would raise 5.7 trillion and wipe out the debt in one full swoop.

 

[MitchMan]

Kaz, once again, you lie! You rubes must live in the bizarro world of opposites.

It is the liberals on this forum that quote facts and figures and authoritative sources to a much larger extent than you and your ilk do. You right wingers virtually never report verifiable stats, virtually never. Also, you right wing hobbits never respond with empirical verifiable data (nor any data) when your assumptions and statements are challenged. Virtually never! Just lift your sleepy eyes and scan the last five pages of this thread. Hell, Libo was just caught quoting himself as a supportive citation for one of his contentions!

Bizarro world. Let's face it, you monkeys don't really know how to do formal research nor what or how to cite authoritative sources, do you? There are protocols that have been established centuries ago for citing authoritive support. You haven't got a clue as to what you are talking about. Not a clue.

And, by the way, fool, this thread is more about economics than politics.

 

[LibocalypseNow]

Libo, you lazy ass brain dead hayseed, you meal fed cow, you mealy mouthed miscreant. There is not a chance in the world for a one-eyed myopic mutant hobbit ignorant blowhard radical right wing mutant like you to have even the slightest modicum of understanding of what America is all about. You flatter yourself without foundation. You are the illness and the deficit that this country protects with freedom of speech every time your diseased mind jettisons an excuse for a thought.

If you could just unlock that stench filled cavernous garbage pit that only you would call a mind from the rank selfish and self-centered rot that constitutes your collection of anti-social, anti-American, evil, destructive notions long enough to read objectively enough real information to understand even the simplest of concepts in classic logic, history, economics or finance, you might, by only the slightest of margins, be able to free yourself from the obvious and blatant prison of mediocrity and distorted unworthy circular philosophy that you wallow in so voluntarily.

Your posts are so filled with hatred for the majority of Americans, error, misstatements, dishonesty, inaccuracies, and poorly stated inept mostly incomplete concepts that you have no credibility, relevance, or significance among the sane and well informed. You always cowardly decline to support and explain yourself when challenged. If you were to ever find yourself among well adjusted, informed, articulate people, they would banish you to an asylum for the insane and the terminally ignorant.

Your corrupt intent is so heinous that you are among the worst inhabitants that could be found in this country. Your statements are always contradictory to classic economics that this country has been founded upon, and you don’t even know it because you don’t study. Additionally, what you have written is anti-social, anti-humanitarian, contrary to fact, always totally unsupported, and not in keeping with true egalitarian American thought and principle when it comes to the majority of good Americans in this country.

In short, you are not what this country is all about. You represent the immorality and base element of only the dregs of the right wing, certainly you are no real champion to conservatism. Believe me, your rank ineptness at expression and crude lack of intellectuality and consistent refusal to support your contentions with corroborating fact when challenged would be heartily rejected by true conservatives. You are an intellectual coward, truly unpatriotic and one lousy American. Clean yourself up, and do it now!

Interesting,because i consider whiny Losers to be everything you stated. Without all those "Evil" Rich people,the whiny Losers wouldn't be able to sit on their fat arses playing video games,sucking their drugs & alcohol down,and watching TV on the Taxpayers' dime. Most miserable Losers are willfully ignorant as to who pays for their free ride. There is no Welfare Fairy. Real hard-working Taxpayers pay for their free ride. So Welfare is far from being free.

There is absolutely no reason for someone to be obsessed with how much $$ other Citizens make. Unless of course they're an ignorant & bitter Loser. No one is entitled to others' Income. That is an unreasonable & unjust expectation. If you're a Loser,then do something about it. But don't blame everyone else. That mentality will only lead to permanent Loserdom. But I can see we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Being a miserable Loser doesn't give anyone the right to take from other Citizens. Thanks for your replies.

 

[MitchMan]

You're welcome, Libo, my pleasure.

 

[MikeK]

Interesting,because i consider whiny Losers to be everything you stated. Without all those "Evil" Rich people,the whiny Losers wouldn't be able to sit on their fat arses playing video games,sucking their drugs & alcohol down,and watching TV on the Taxpayers' dime. Most miserable Losers are willfully ignorant as to who pays for their free ride. There is no Welfare Fairy. Real hard-working Taxpayers pay for their free ride. So Welfare is far from being free.

There is absolutely no reason for someone to be obsessed with how much $$ other Citizens make. Unless of course they're an ignorant & bitter Loser. No one is entitled to others' Income. That is an unreasonable & unjust expectation. If you're a Loser,then do something about it. But don't blame everyone else. That mentality will only lead to permanent Loserdom. But I can see we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Being a miserable Loser doesn't give anyone the right to take from other Citizens. Thanks for your replies.

You have shown yourself to be a thoroughly indoctrinated water carrier for the emerging plutocracy. Because you are incapable of engaging in reasoned discourse everything you say is a waste of time and space, so the best place for your malicious, repetitious, shit-slinging nonsense is on Ignore.

 

[yota5]

The truth of the matter is that many of you responding to this thread don't know what you're talking about. Rich people payed their dues with academic excellence, established expertise in their field, and risked their personal wealth in an entrepreneurial venture. Some times they succeeded. Other times they lost everything that they had. Successful entrepreneurs amassed personal wealth, acquired a comfortable life style, created jobs, and paid more then their share of taxes.

On the other hand we have a class of people who will never make the effort to improve themselves or their lot in life. These people expect that other peoples wealth should be taken away and given to them. These people want everything free, and now. These people view successful Americans with contempt, and liken success to a crime against society.

Freeloaders have been around since the beginning of time with the same demands and flawed ideologies. For this group the results are always the same. They live in poverty. They never realize that with out marketable skills their fate is sealed.

 

[MikeK]

The truth of the matter is that many of you responding to this thread don't know what you're talking about. Rich people payed their dues with academic excellence, established expertise in their field, and risked their personal wealth in an entrepreneurial venture. Some times they succeeded. Other times they lost everything that they had. Successful entrepreneurs amassed personal wealth, acquired a comfortable life style, created jobs, and paid more then their share of taxes.

On the other hand we have a class of people who will never make the effort to improve themselves or their lot in life. These people expect that other peoples wealth should be taken away and given to them. These people want everything free, and now. These people view successful Americans with contempt, and liken success to a crime against society.

Freeloaders have been around since the beginning of time with the same demands and flawed ideologies. For this group the results are always the same. They live in poverty. They never realize that with out marketable skills their fate is sealed.

So your position is all who managed to amass multi-million or billion dollar fortunes did so by achieving academic excellence and proceeding with honest, diligent and skillful entrepreneural determination and all who have ended up jobless and/or homeless or only marginally successful are indolent, incompetent, uneducated, unmotivated slackers or freeloaders?

In the interest of those who might benefit from your obvious expertise I would be interested in knowing a bit more about you, such as your academic background, your present situation, your future plans and what you expect to achieve. And I'll ask that you provide as much specific information as possible.

 

[MitchMan]

MikeK, your intuition on Yota5 is right on target.

 

[MitchMan]

Yota5,
you made a series of declarative statements. Just some questions, since you have made those declarations. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and presume that you can support your contentions, that you have the requisite command of the quantitative facts that support your contentions.

Just what portion or % of the American people are you referring to when you refer to the "class of people" who will never make the effort to improve themselves or their lot in life? 5%? 10%? 1%? 30%? 50%? 60%? 85%? Come on, give us the benefit of your knowledge of the truth. I mean, if you say that it is 1%, then that quantity of people is immaterial to the big picture, why even make that declaration? If you are talking about 85% of the people, then you are disparaging the vast majority of the working class which is the vast majority of the American People...Wow, how anti American would that be? Just asking.

You don't have to be exact to give a credible, meaningful answer, + or - 10% accuracy is sufficient. You can do that, right, truth sayer Yota5?

And, just what % or proportion of people in the USA are those that you refer to as "freeloaders" who will never make the effort to improve themselves or their lot in life? 5%? 10%? 1%? 30%? 50%? 60%? 85%? Same margin of error is A, OK.

I mean, you have even declared the "truth of the matter" about those who respond to this thread that they do not know what they are talking about. The implication is that you know the real truth about that. Let's get some corroboration from you, that you, in fact, know the truth that we don't know what we are talking about. I mean, explain yourself. How do you know that we don't know what we are talking about. You don't mind a challenge, do you, truth sayer Yota5? After all, saying what you said is a bit insulting. Prove yourself, offer some supportable, citable, corroborative facts, that for the most part, contradict and disprove our contentions, thereby supporting your contentions.

BTW, does your flowery lavish, even loving description of the rich:

Rich people payed their dues with academic excellence, established expertise in their field, and risked their personal wealth in an entrepreneurial venture.

does this description of the rich extend to those that have inherited their wealth? If so, since you declared that about the rich you must know something about that of which you speak, what proportion does your characterization of the rich applies to those that inherited their wealth? 5%? 10%? 1%? 30%? 50%? 60%? 85%? Just wondering, truth sayer Yota5?

 

[georgephillip]

Georgephillip, keep hitting those right wing hobbits with the facts and stats just as you are doing. It leaves them utterly defenseless and reveals their lack of foundation. Notice how they never rebut with any on point substance. Debunking their unfounded, unsupported contentions is like shooting sitting ducks.

Arguing politics with a liberal is like arguing Jesus with a Christian. All their arguments are based on the assumption of truth of their positions and you have to believe their views on faith because there is no empirical data to support their statements.

But since you're a member of the Church of the Democratic party, you're going to see it this way. Just recognize that those who aren't members of your faith aren't going to see it like this.

Do you think I'm wrong to assume the following is truthful?

"The number of millionaire households jumped to 8.4 million in 2010 increasing by 600,000 last year. Now to contrast this rise in millionaires in 2010 we added 5,000,000 Americans to the national food stamp program.

"The income inequality gap is only getting more pronounced here.

"A rising sea is not lifting all ships because many of the reasons for wealth building (i.e., corporations cutting costs to boost profits) directly impacts the working and middle class who own very little in stock.

"Yet the stock market going up over 100 percent from the March 2009 lows has helped the top 1 percent that control 42 percent of all financial wealth."

Do you believe it's truthful to say the income inequality gap is getting wider in the US?

The financial scam of the century