Tax the rich, lose the rich

[theDoctorisIn]

Yes, private property does indeed equal freedom.

I disagree. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Ever heard the saying "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"?

I've heard it, but I try not to let '60s protest songs do my thinking for me.

That was a joke, clearly. But my point stands - how does owning property make you free?

What choices is the collective going to allow you to have?

I think you're missing my point here, which is probably mostly my fault.

Marxism doesn't work. It never will, except on a small scale. On this I'm sure we agree.

But this what Marxism is NOT:
It's not a totalitarian system. In fact, it's nearly ANARCHY. No one is telling you what to do. "The Collective" doesn't exist - it's just a bunch of people, all of them working towards common goals, and sharing food, land, etc. It will never work because of faults of human nature, but it's not a autocratic system.

It will never work not because of faults of human nature, but because it doesn't take human nature into account.

Semantics. We're agreeing here.

 

[Bern80]

I have a hard time blaming this gap on "lazy" people.

Why is it so hard to believe? Again it is readily observable. Do you think the people I work with are somehow the exception? It isn't a question of laziness. It's a question of good enough. If the problem with the gap between rich and poor or even rich and middle class was that say 10% were rich and the other 90% were doing everything possible to become rich but just couldn't, you might have an argument. But that is not reality. Reality is the seven other people I work with doing nothing to show try to earn more or show an employer that they are worth more.

But the point Ii was attempting to make was that the game is fixed. It has been for a long time. I don't blame corporations - I'm certain I'd do the same thing if I was in their place - but the working man doesn't have billions of dollars to lobby with. The deck is being stacked, and that's where the problems begin.

And the institution that fixed the game is the same one you want to have raise people's taxes. Government. I am no fan of crony capitalism. the other problem is that in terms of barriers to becoming successful. Second only to yourself, is government and it's regulations on businesses.

So what if corporations have billions to lobby with? What you are suggesting is that joe avg. would lobby for something if he could. What exactly?

Do you know why it's illegal to grow hemp in the US? (Hint: it's not because of Marijuana).

there is not logical reason for hemp to be illegal. It again goes back to government regulation ultimately impeding prosperity.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

I have a hard time blaming this gap on "lazy" people.

Why is it so hard to believe? Again it is readily observable. Do you think the people I work with are somehow the exception? It isn't a question of laziness. It's a question of good enough. If the problem with the gap between rich and poor or even rich and middle class was that say 10% were rich and the other 90% were doing everything possible to become rich but just couldn't, you might have an argument. But that is not reality. Reality is the seven other people I work with doing nothing to show try to earn more or show an employer that they are worth more.

But the point Ii was attempting to make was that the game is fixed. It has been for a long time. I don't blame corporations - I'm certain I'd do the same thing if I was in their place - but the working man doesn't have billions of dollars to lobby with. The deck is being stacked, and that's where the problems begin.

And the institution that fixed the game is the same one you want to have raise people's taxes. Government. I am no fan of crony capitalism. the other problem is that in terms of barriers to becoming successful. Second only to yourself, is government and it's regulations on businesses.

So what if corporations have billions to lobby with? What you are suggesting is that joe avg. would lobby for something if he could. What exactly?

Do you know why it's illegal to grow hemp in the US? (Hint: it's not because of Marijuana).

there is not logical reason for hemp to be illegal. It again goes back to government regulation ultimately impeding prosperity.

I do want to respond to all of what you've said, but I have to run right now. I'll try and get online later tonight.

But as to the Hemp question, it's because of the oil lobby. Hemp is a stronger material than plastic. Therefore, it must be destroyed as a possible competitor.

 

[Bern80]

I do want to respond to all of what you've said, but I have to run right now. I'll try and get online later tonight.

okay.

But as to the Hemp question, it's because of the oil lobby. Hemp is a stronger material than plastic. Therefore, it must be destroyed as a possible competitor.

Which, lobby or not, the government has not business doing. But when they have the power to control donations to elections, I see that side as well. Lobbying is a hard one. I don't like the outcomes it brings in many respects anymore than you, but I also think there isn't much you can do to curb it that wouldn't be unconstitutional. People have the right to organize in an effort to better be heard. I think however, it needs to be considered whether monetary donations can be considered a form of protected speech.

 

[Charles_Main]

Liberals will never understand that we need the Rich as much as everyone else.

When you tell them they will leave if you raise taxes. They say....GOOD. Which tells us all we need to know about how much the understand economics.

 

[The Rabbi]

How can anyone support borrowing money to give tax cuts to the rich?

At least if you did that you'd get it back in higher wages, more productivity, greater GDP.
What I dont understand is why you'd borrow money to give to poor people where you'll never get it back.

 

[The Rabbi]

If your business provides goods or services, you should call your Senators and Congressman and demand they extend unemployment insurance. The economy's fundamental problem is a "demand deficit." There is less economic demand for products and services than the ability we have to produce them. Every dollar of spending on unemployment benefits increases overall economic growth by $1.61. That's because people who get unemployment benefits need to spend the money, and the people who receive it from them spend it as well, and so on. Tax cuts for the wealthy return $0.34 for every dollar spent or not collected as revenue.

IF you run your business based on your taxes, then you are not a smart businessman. You will expand or contract based on the market, NOT on if your taxes go up 3.6%.

Yet another chucklehead who believes in the "multiplier effect." Newsflash: The multiplier of gov't spending is less than one. Unemployment has to be paid for by taxes, which put a drag on the economy and on businesses.
This has been demonstrated many times. If what you said were true, everyone ought to go on unemployment and we could watch GDP soar.

"Not all budgetary dollars are created equal," said Alan Blinder, professor and co-director of Princeton University's Center for Economic Policy Studies, in a conference Wednesday morning. "Some have a lot of bang for the buck, and some have very little. The GDP increase per dollar of budgetary cost is in the range of 1.6, 1.7 for things like food stamps and unemployment benefits, and in the range of .35 for extending the Bush tax cuts. We could get some substantial job creation by simply reprogramming the $75 billion that would be saved over the next two years by not extending the upper-bracket Bush tax cuts and spending it instead on unemployment benefits, food stamps, and the like."

Blinder's economic advice supports the tax policy of President Obama and the Democrats, who would like to maintain tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans, while letting the cuts for those with incomes above $250,000 expire. Letting the tax cuts lapse is projected to trim approximately $675 billion from the deficit over 10 years, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

The GOP, by contrast, is aiming to extend the Bush tax cuts across the board, and has tried to block the billions in deficit spending to extend benefits to the long-term unemployed.

Blinder said that extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would only exacerbate an ever-increasing income gap.

"One of the objections a lot of us raised back in 2001 when the Bush cuts were originally enacted was that they were...adding further post-tax income inequality to an economy that was already producing a lot of pre-tax inequality," he said. "I still feel that way. On the other hand, unemployment benefits and food stamps tend to go to people with much much lower incomes [who] need it a lot more, and you get substantially more GDP boost and job creation than if the same amount of money were spent extending tax cuts at the top."

After the U.S. has dug itself out of this recession, Blinder said, Congress should then make it a priority to start digging the country out of debt.

Alan Stuart Blinder (born October 14, 1945) is an American economist. He serves at Princeton University as the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in the Economics Department, and as co-director of Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies, which he founded in 1990. Since 1978 he has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.

Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration's Record on Cutting Taxes; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Yeah. Blinder is an idiot. No wonder you quote him.
How that man ever got a responsible position is beyond me.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

I have a hard time blaming this gap on "lazy" people.

Why is it so hard to believe? Again it is readily observable. Do you think the people I work with are somehow the exception? It isn't a question of laziness. It's a question of good enough. If the problem with the gap between rich and poor or even rich and middle class was that say 10% were rich and the other 90% were doing everything possible to become rich but just couldn't, you might have an argument. But that is not reality. Reality is the seven other people I work with doing nothing to show try to earn more or show an employer that they are worth more.

Because the gap has been widening for the last 20 years, and I have a hard time accepting that it's because people have gotten lazier. I don't doubt for a minute that you work with people with no drive, people who are happy to stay where they are for the rest of their lives. There have always been people like that. I don't accept that there are all of a sudden more of them now.

But the point Ii was attempting to make was that the game is fixed. It has been for a long time. I don't blame corporations - I'm certain I'd do the same thing if I was in their place - but the working man doesn't have billions of dollars to lobby with. The deck is being stacked, and that's where the problems begin.

And the institution that fixed the game is the same one you want to have raise people's taxes. Government. I am no fan of crony capitalism. the other problem is that in terms of barriers to becoming successful. Second only to yourself, is government and it's regulations on businesses.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of "Big Government" at all. I just don't trust corporations and capitalism either. We've seen an America with little to no corporate regulation - and the labor struggle to end that is what ultimately created the middle class. We've seen that pure government control doesn't work at all - the USSR, countless other failed Communist states. But we've also seen what pure, unadulterated capitalism can do as well. Look at places like China - where there is no government regulation - and you see people essentially in indentured servitude. Neither the left end of the spectrum nor the right work in the real world. So the only option we've got is somewhere in the middle.

So what if corporations have billions to lobby with? What you are suggesting is that joe avg. would lobby for something if he could. What exactly?

First, let me start off by telling you that I don't want to ban lobbying. Our system is far from perfect, but it's the best out there, and until someone comes up with a realistic alternative, I'm actually all for the status quo, since both extremes terrify me.

But I think the deck is stacked too far towards corporate power right now. If you look at economics as a labor-management struggle (and I'm not the first person to do this), there must be a balance. Right now, the scale isn't even.

Do you know why it's illegal to grow hemp in the US? (Hint: it's not because of Marijuana).

there is not logical reason for hemp to be illegal. It again goes back to government regulation ultimately impeding prosperity.[/QUOTE]

There is no logical reason, unless you're an petroluem giant. Or a tobacco company. Or a liquor company.

 

[rdean]

Tax the rich.

Lose the rich.

**** the rich.

They can't get rich without us. All they can do is move American jobs to China. Then pay the Chinese so little, no one can afford to buy their products, that didn't work anymore anyway. **** 'em.

You are decades out of date in your knowledge of China and the global economy.

You dumbass *****. You don't know anything.

A spate of suicides leaves ten dead at the Shenzhen campus of Foxconn, the giant electronics manufacturer that makes many of the world's most popular consumer electronics. A rare strike paralyzes production at Honda Motors, shutting down all of the company's manufacturing lines in the country. In response, both companies offer substantial concessions to workers, causing many to ask if this marks the end of China's reign as the low-cost "workshop to the world"?

Suicides, Strikes and Labor Unrest in China

What they don't say is those strikers got their salaries "DOUBLED" to $293 ******* dollars a MONTH! THAT'S $73 A WEEK!!!!!!!!!!! With NO benefits!!!!!!!!!!

That's what Republicans want Americans to make.

 

[The Rabbi]

Tax the rich.

Lose the rich.

**** the rich.

They can't get rich without us. All they can do is move American jobs to China. Then pay the Chinese so little, no one can afford to buy their products, that didn't work anymore anyway. **** 'em.

You are decades out of date in your knowledge of China and the global economy.

You dumbass *****. You don't know anything.

A spate of suicides leaves ten dead at the Shenzhen campus of Foxconn, the giant electronics manufacturer that makes many of the world's most popular consumer electronics. A rare strike paralyzes production at Honda Motors, shutting down all of the company's manufacturing lines in the country. In response, both companies offer substantial concessions to workers, causing many to ask if this marks the end of China's reign as the low-cost "workshop to the world"?

Suicides, Strikes and Labor Unrest in China

What they don't say is those strikers got their salaries "DOUBLED" to $293 ******* dollars a MONTH! THAT'S $73 A WEEK!!!!!!!!!!! With NO benefits!!!!!!!!!!

That's what Republicans want Americans to make.

Maybe ask them the next time you're in East Germany.

 

[rightwinger]

How can anyone support borrowing money to give tax cuts to the rich?

At least if you did that you'd get it back in higher wages, more productivity, greater GDP.
What I dont understand is why you'd borrow money to give to poor people where you'll never get it back.

LOL

Rabbi still believes in Trickle Down

 

[Bern80]

Because the gap has been widening for the last 20 years, and I have a hard time accepting that it's because people have gotten lazier. I don't doubt for a minute that you work with people with no drive, people who are happy to stay where they are for the rest of their lives. There have always been people like that. I don't accept that there are all of a sudden more of them now.

Again I don't think it's about laziness exactly. But it also isn't just the people in my office. I work in a production facility that builds things. Meaning we have production workers. Many have been there many years as well and probably aren't aspiring to do much more. Would they like more money? Probably. What prevents people from pursuing more money is their comfort level. People will stay where they are if they are content where they are or until they get uincomfortable enough to do something about it. At some point most people figure out it is more prudent to try to help yourself than it is to wait around hoping someone will help you.

It isn't that people are lazier it's that as we have evolved our lives have become easier. In terms of when civilization started here we have moved further and further from a time when a person's life was consumed by figuring out how to survive. Granted many still do, but that is not the majority as it once was.

You can say you don't believe people's ambition has changed all you want. But you can't sit there either and tell me all the people you know including maybe yourself are doing anything and everything they can to improve their financial position. You probably can't tell me even a slim majority of them are. That is simply not reality. That being the case it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that there just aren't that many wealthy Americans or at least fewer than middle class and poor ones.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of "Big Government" at all. I just don't trust corporations and capitalism either. We've seen an America with little to no corporate regulation - and the labor struggle to end that is what ultimately created the middle class. We've seen that pure government control doesn't work at all - the USSR, countless other failed Communist states. But we've also seen what pure, unadulterated capitalism can do as well. Look at places like China - where there is no government regulation - and you see people essentially in indentured servitude. Neither the left end of the spectrum nor the right work in the real world. So the only option we've got is somewhere in the middle.

There isn't any good reason not to trust corporations or capitalism. The problem isn't too much of it. The problem is government getting in the way of it working like it's supposed to. Some labor laws are good, but it can go too far and has in terms of stiffiling productivity and halting entrepreneurship. You seriously need to consider whether some of things you think have helped prosperity are actually hindering it. Over regulation stifles entrepreneurship because there is too much red tape to go through to bother even trying, which leads to less competition. The health insurance industry is the best example there is. The cost of insurance would plummet if it was de-regulated and the crony capitilism stopped and they were actually forced to compete.

But I think the deck is stacked too far towards corporate power right now. If you look at economics as a labor-management struggle (and I'm not the first person to do this), there must be a balance. Right now, the scale isn't even.

Then consider whether the opposite is true. Is it really corporations that have their employees over a barrel, or the other way around? Really stop to think a minute about the beneifits you get from any semi-decent job (including my $12/hr) one. Think about it most decent jobs pay you at least two weeks of pay to NOT be there. They pay most of your health insurance costs. That is the tip of the ice berg. The benefits companies provide only increase the better your skill set is and the harder you work for them. The 2 week vacation isn't a law either. It's something businesses did on their own to lure skilled people.

I just don't think people see the big picture when it comes to money. Life is meant to be lived in my opinion. The only given of which is the more you want to get out of life in terms of expieriences the more it is going to cost. So all one has to figure out how to do is pay for the experience of life. Getting a job and working your ass off is not the only way to get money. You can start a business, run it for a while, and sell it. You can invest in something, hell you can gamble. But people for whatever reason have become conditioned that the only way to make it is to work for other people. And that is generally go to be good enough. But if you really want to make a lot of money you either have to have a valuable skill set or you have to work for yourself.

My last point is given all of this and know what it takes from you as an individual to attain wealth you have no one to blame but yourself for not achieving it, if you aren't willing to start making changes of yourself FIRST. If you do all that and you still can't make it, THEN you can go whine to government about how uinfair things are.

 

[rdean]

You are decades out of date in your knowledge of China and the global economy.

You dumbass *****. You don't know anything.

A spate of suicides leaves ten dead at the Shenzhen campus of Foxconn, the giant electronics manufacturer that makes many of the world's most popular consumer electronics. A rare strike paralyzes production at Honda Motors, shutting down all of the company's manufacturing lines in the country. In response, both companies offer substantial concessions to workers, causing many to ask if this marks the end of China's reign as the low-cost "workshop to the world"?

Suicides, Strikes and Labor Unrest in China

What they don't say is those strikers got their salaries "DOUBLED" to $293 ******* dollars a MONTH! THAT'S $73 A WEEK!!!!!!!!!!! With NO benefits!!!!!!!!!!

That's what Republicans want Americans to make.

Maybe ask them the next time you're in East Germany.

I don't have to ask the East Germans what Republicans want Americans to make. I already know. Republicans want the unemployed homeless, they want the employed to make $73 dollars a week with no benefits and they want poor children to starve.

I assume on most things the Republicans lie. But on these three? I believe them.

 

[Wicked Jester]

The problem is, what YOU are not seeing is that THEY ARE NOT CREATING JOBS WITH IT - they obviously have the capital - 80% of the wealth is in their posession. The fact is, they are shipping more and more jobs overseas to increase profits by exploiting slave labor and no environmental reguation. Now they have higher profits and lower taxes and they are becoming richer and richer faster and faster while the rest of us are drowning - they had Bush's tax cuts for almost a decade. WHERE ARE THE JOBS???

They?
Yes, there are some shipping jobs overseas. SOME. NOT ALL. But you tell me...exactly how do you think countries overseas will react if we pulled all of our jobs back here? You think Japan will keep their plants open here or bring their jobs back to Japan to make up for the lost jobs?

Where are the jobs?

We were in a recession. It was expected. Some jobs are lost in a recesssion. But then, as is expected, one of the candidates decided to play in it and call it the beginnig of a depression...that was to get votes. But it did more. IT SCARED THE HELL OUT OF PEOPLE. So they started to lay off out of fear. Then it spiraled.

Then came the stimulus. What does a stimulus do? It gives people reason to be reactive not pro-active. So people sat around and waited for it to kick in. Less people spending, more layoffs. It never really kicked in....still waiting.

Then came the health care bill. What did that do? Told employers the cost of each employee will be going up. MORE reason to not want to hire.

Then came the threat of losing the tax cuts. MORE REASON not to hire.

Thats where the jobs are.

LOL so even if they get more tax cuts or we extend bush's tax cuts to the job creators will still not create jobs because we are in a recession so what is the point of allowing them to keep the capital if they aren't willing to follow through with their end of the deal??

FEAR so do you also have a distaste for the fear that the right is using to try and gain in the upcoming election?? mccain made similar comments so why only focus on one candidate?? Furthermore didn't W even talk about it??

The fact is that they had the motivation that they wanted in order for them to hire and just like you they made lame excuses as to why they weren't hiring although your lame excuses seem to have more a political motivation as you seem to only want to be critical of one side as you give the obstructionist right a pass.

Seriously, hack....You need to go into business for yourself and get an understanding, instead of spouting off with your USUAL b.s. progressive talking points.

In fact, come here to California and try and do business. Particularly if you own the property and land your business is located on. Deal with property taxes on top of business taxes. Deal with your own personal income taxes. Deal with having a bottom line that must be maintained. When that bottom line is negatively affected in any way, too include over taxation, decisions have to be made in order to protect it. Those decisions more often than not result in the loss of jobs of those you employ.

 

[daveman]

I disagree. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Ever heard the saying "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"?

I've heard it, but I try not to let '60s protest songs do my thinking for me.

That was a joke, clearly. But my point stands - how does owning property make you free?

How does not being allowed to own property make you free?

I think you're missing my point here, which is probably mostly my fault.

Marxism doesn't work. It never will, except on a small scale. On this I'm sure we agree.

But this what Marxism is NOT:
It's not a totalitarian system. In fact, it's nearly ANARCHY. No one is telling you what to do. "The Collective" doesn't exist - it's just a bunch of people, all of them working towards common goals, and sharing food, land, etc. It will never work because of faults of human nature, but it's not a autocratic system.

It will never work not because of faults of human nature, but because it doesn't take human nature into account.

Semantics. We're agreeing here.

Not really. Marxism thinks people will be willing to consider the needs of people they don't know on an equal basis as the needs of their family. That's simply not the case.

That's not a fault of human nature; that's a strength.

 

[daveman]

I don't have to ask the East Germans what Republicans want Americans to make. I already know. Republicans want the unemployed homeless, they want the employed to make $73 dollars a week with no benefits and they want poor children to starve.

I assume on most things the Republicans lie. But on these three? I believe them.

You can always tell people who don't know any Republicans in real life, and get all their "information" about them from fellow leftists.

 

[Bfgrn]

Yet another chucklehead who believes in the "multiplier effect." Newsflash: The multiplier of gov't spending is less than one. Unemployment has to be paid for by taxes, which put a drag on the economy and on businesses.
This has been demonstrated many times. If what you said were true, everyone ought to go on unemployment and we could watch GDP soar.

"Not all budgetary dollars are created equal," said Alan Blinder, professor and co-director of Princeton University's Center for Economic Policy Studies, in a conference Wednesday morning. "Some have a lot of bang for the buck, and some have very little. The GDP increase per dollar of budgetary cost is in the range of 1.6, 1.7 for things like food stamps and unemployment benefits, and in the range of .35 for extending the Bush tax cuts. We could get some substantial job creation by simply reprogramming the $75 billion that would be saved over the next two years by not extending the upper-bracket Bush tax cuts and spending it instead on unemployment benefits, food stamps, and the like."

Blinder's economic advice supports the tax policy of President Obama and the Democrats, who would like to maintain tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans, while letting the cuts for those with incomes above $250,000 expire. Letting the tax cuts lapse is projected to trim approximately $675 billion from the deficit over 10 years, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

The GOP, by contrast, is aiming to extend the Bush tax cuts across the board, and has tried to block the billions in deficit spending to extend benefits to the long-term unemployed.

Blinder said that extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would only exacerbate an ever-increasing income gap.

"One of the objections a lot of us raised back in 2001 when the Bush cuts were originally enacted was that they were...adding further post-tax income inequality to an economy that was already producing a lot of pre-tax inequality," he said. "I still feel that way. On the other hand, unemployment benefits and food stamps tend to go to people with much much lower incomes [who] need it a lot more, and you get substantially more GDP boost and job creation than if the same amount of money were spent extending tax cuts at the top."

After the U.S. has dug itself out of this recession, Blinder said, Congress should then make it a priority to start digging the country out of debt.

Alan Stuart Blinder (born October 14, 1945) is an American economist. He serves at Princeton University as the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in the Economics Department, and as co-director of Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies, which he founded in 1990. Since 1978 he has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.

Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration's Record on Cutting Taxes; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Yeah. Blinder is an idiot. No wonder you quote him.
How that man ever got a responsible position is beyond me.

Of course Blinder HAS to be an idiot, he doesn't agree with your Monica Lewinsky approach to sucking off the rich.

SO Rabbi, we have had a decade of Bush's tax cuts for the rich...WHERE ARE THE ******* JOBS???

 

[editec]

Somebody's got to pay the bill for having a civil society.

Naturally I'm sympathetic with those of you complaining that government is inefficient and bloated, but that doesn't change the fact that we live in a society where a very small percentage of the population owns the vast majority of this society's wealth.

So until the USA is willing to do something about income inequity, the fact is that the rich are going to have to pay most of the society's bills, too.

And if the "rich" want to leave for someplace that doesn't tax them?

Well then, so be it.

But we're damned fools to let them sell into our markets if they do.

But we have already proven that we're damned fools, haven't we?

Until we wake up to the fact that FREE TRADE is anything but free, this problem will continue to vex us, folks.

 

[Bfgrn]

Somebody's got to pay the bill for having a civil society.

Naturally I'm sympathetic with those of you complaining that government is inefficient and bloated, but that doesn't change the fact that we live in a society where a very small percentage of the population owns the vast majority of this society's wealth.

So until the USA is willing to do something about income inequity, the fact is that the rich are going to have to pay most of the society's bills, too.

And if the "rich" want to leave for someplace that doesn't tax them?

Well then, so be it.

But we're damned fools to let them sell into our markets if they do.

But we have already proven that we're damned fools, haven't we?

Until we wake up to the fact that FREE TRADE is anything but free, this problem will continue to vex us, folks.

I would take many steps further...

If the rich and corporate CEO's are only willing to pay 3rd world wages, then they should LIVE in those 3rd world conditions their wages support. If they still want to live in America and enjoy all the benefits, then their corporate properties in America should be charged a fee for all those benefits...police, fire, sewers, potable water, roads, hospitals, etc.

 

[editec]

Somebody's got to pay the bill for having a civil society.

Naturally I'm sympathetic with those of you complaining that government is inefficient and bloated, but that doesn't change the fact that we live in a society where a very small percentage of the population owns the vast majority of this society's wealth.

So until the USA is willing to do something about income inequity, the fact is that the rich are going to have to pay most of the society's bills, too.

And if the "rich" want to leave for someplace that doesn't tax them?

Well then, so be it.

But we're damned fools to let them sell into our markets if they do.

But we have already proven that we're damned fools, haven't we?

Until we wake up to the fact that FREE TRADE is anything but free, this problem will continue to vex us, folks.

I would take many steps further...

If the rich and corporate CEO's are only willing to pay 3rd world wages, then they should LIVE in those 3rd world conditions their wages support. If they still want to live in America and enjoy all the benefits, then their corporate properties in America should be charged a fee for all those benefits...police, fire, sewers, potable water, roads, hospitals, etc.

Third world, first world, they don't care.

They're going to live better than KINGS either way.

When you have enough money to be in that class?

Nationality isn't really all that important.

As long as your money is SUPERnational, so are you.

Case in point?

Roman Polanski