Wealth and Income Inequality in the United States

[thereisnospoon]

You mean people like Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber?

Nice strawman, Mr. Stupid.

Fact is that somewhere on the order of 90+% of millionaires are new money and worked their asses of to attain their wealth.

Link?

How come you lefties never pick on Bill Gates, Theresa Heinz, The Bloomburg family, the Kennedy's, etc?....
Figure it out and get back.

 

[Full-Auto]

Does Donald Trump work harder than you do? Does he work 100,000 times harder than a nurse? A plumber? A teacher?

Yes..That's why he is wealthy.

I highly recommend you read up on his dad, Fred Trump.

Well give us the gist of it.

 

[rightwinger]

Well equality is not possible as there will always be differences between the man that works his ass off and gets a good education, and the man that is not serious and drinks. The man that has a good business education and owns his own business will make a profit and earn more money, while the man that drinks and screws around won't. You get what you put into it. The left has the belief they have for the past 150 years that have caused hundreds of millions to be slaughtered.

Why should the man that works hard get the same as the man that does nothing, but collects from the government?

Does Donald Trump work harder than you do? Does he work 100,000 times harder than a nurse? A plumber? A teacher?

Yes..That's why he is wealthy.
Question to you...Does Donald Trump's work provide jobs for thousands of people?

Trump makes a profit off of every one of those people

 

[Dot Com]

...but, but Fox News says collecting dividends is back-breaking work

 

[Wiseacre]

Ah yes, the obligatory whiney bitchfest that the left has to periodically trot out. They got absolutely nothing else to work with except class warfare, tax the rich! It's nothing more than an attempt to rationalize a license to steal from those who have more than others.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Get real you cant not tax to death those who provide the jobs all of us depend on. But that is a real good disquise for wealth redistribution.

I think I know what you're trying to say, and yes, you can tax job providers more, because job providers are companies and not people. Plus, we're talking about the profits of those companies. GE makes $5B and pays zero taxes or GE makes $5B and pays $2.5B in taxes. Which scenario lowered how much GE made? Neither.

It was Obama who made it possible for GE to avoid taxes. Obama did this because GE agreed to further his stupid "green" agenda.

 

[Sundial]

Are you one of the people who are worth more than others?

You're definitely one of the people who are worth less.

Original.

 

[bripat9643]

He works smarter. There's nothing stopping a nurse, a plumber or a teacher from doing exactly what Trump did.

Except for a rich daddy

Wrong, turd. trumps dad was not even a millionaire.

What about Bill Gates? Sam Walton? Warren Buffet? Were there parents millionaires?

 

[Sundial]

Cons on this board, or even contemporary con politicians, will never seriously discuss this disparity problem, or stipulate that it even constitutes a problem. Which is a shame, because it's possibly the biggest problem we're facing.

That's right. It's only a "problem" for parasites, looters and moochers, just as how to break into a house is only a problem for thieves.

How much money anyone earns is simply not the government's business.

The US Constitution disagrees with you.

 

[bripat9643]

I'm glad we agree about something.

Economies don't exist in a vacuum. Wealth is often a function of power, and the ability to shape the rules.

That's true only in the kind of lib-fascist economies you endorse.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Does Donald Trump work harder than you do? Does he work 100,000 times harder than a nurse? A plumber? A teacher?

No, but his family amassed that wealth and gave it to him. What right do we have to take it from him? What right do we have to tax him more then anyone else? What right did the Marxist in 1917 in the Czars russia have to do what they did? What right did Mao, Castro's Cuba or any other attempt in the past. It is a slippery slope that I sure as hell pray to god that we don't go through within the United states.

I guess his family formed a business that made a profit(billions), which means people brought the product and was rewarded with billions. The nurse, plumber, teacher gets what is the market value for what they produce or do. Is it prefect NO; hell it may not seem fair, but it is what it is.

So you're saying Donald Trump is not rich because he worked hard, but because of the accident of his birth?

What right do we have to take it from him?

The Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States[/QUOTE]"..
Non sequitur.

 

[DontBeStupid]

He works smarter. There's nothing stopping a nurse, a plumber or a teacher from doing exactly what Trump did.

Except for a rich daddy

Wrong, turd. trumps dad was not even a millionaire.

Fred Trump - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Care to try again?

 

[Sundial]

Do you think that middle-class Americans are "lazy, stupid, parasitic, shiftless people"?

Only the ones who work for the government

Are we more lazy and stupid than middle-class Japanese?
Swedes?
Germans?

Why is the answer to that question even relevant?

Because the US has greater income inequality than those countries.

If income inequality is because people are stupid, it follows that middle-class Americans must be stupider than middle-class Swedes.

 

[dblack]

I'm glad we agree about something.

Economies don't exist in a vacuum. Wealth is often a function of power, and the ability to shape the rules.

That's true only in the kind of lib-fascist economies you endorse.

How about we just agree it's true of the economy we have - and discuss how to put the clamps on it?

For my money the key is to not allow government to be used to manipulate the economy in the first place. To me, that's been our worst mistake. With the best of intentions we've granted government the power to intervene in matters economic, but, as Sundial has pointed out, inevitably, wealthy interests gain control of this power. The key is to cut the source of this corruption off at the knees.

 

[bripat9643]

That's right. It's only a "problem" for parasites, looters and moochers, just as how to break into a house is only a problem for thieves.

How much money anyone earns is simply not the government's business.

The US Constitution disagrees with you.

I should have been more clear: The government has no business trying to control how much money a person makes. How much a person makes should also be none of the government's business, but the 16th Amendment does give it that authority.

The 16th Amendment is an example of fascism.

 

[rightwinger]

He works smarter. There's nothing stopping a nurse, a plumber or a teacher from doing exactly what Trump did.

Except for a rich daddy

Wrong, turd. trumps dad was not even a millionaire.

What about Bill Gates? Sam Walton? Warren Buffet? Were there parents millionaires?

Do you ever tire of being wrong? Trumps father was a real estate tycoon

Donald Trump - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[DontBeStupid]

I'm glad we agree about something.

Economies don't exist in a vacuum. Wealth is often a function of power, and the ability to shape the rules.

That's true only in the kind of lib-fascist economies you endorse.

How about we just agree it's true of the economy we have - and discuss how to put the clamps on it?

For my money the key is to not allow government to be used to manipulate the economy in the first place. To me, that's been our worst mistake. With the best of intentions we've granted government the power to intervene in matters economic, but, as Sundial has pointed out, inevitably, wealthy interests gain control of this power. The key is to cut the source of this corruption off at the knees.

The problem is the government has to have some influence on companies and the economy, otherwise businesses will run rough shod over every citizen.

There has to be a middle ground.

 

[bripat9643]

Except for a rich daddy

Wrong, turd. trumps dad was not even a millionaire.

Fred Trump - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Care to try again?

Trumps father was a millionaire when he died in 1999, but he wasn't when he and his son began investing in real estate sever decades earlier.

Wrong again.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Can you tell me where I'm wrong?

Sure. You said this "The businesses are in business to make a profit from what they create(do), so raising taxes on them will just make them pass that on to the consumer."

We tax the profits of companies, which is revenue minus the total cost of business. Raising taxes on profits does not make your costs go up, so there is nothing to pass along to consumers. This is also why raising taxes on profits is a good idea, because then a company can lower their tax burden by increasing the cost of doing business, and they can do that by paying their workers more.

That will not happen. Business will not be coerced by government into paying inappropriate wages.
Government does not have the legal authority of open ended taxing authority. Taxes must be just and fair.
To satisfy those of your ilk, it would be necessary to tax business to the point where break even is the most business can expect. At that time business loses all incentive to stay in business.
You lefties bitch and moan about jobs. Government must create jobs. Business must stop sitting on cash and hire. Yet your side insists that government increase taxes on business or government must limit profitability by political fiat.
You cannot have it both ways.

 

[bripat9643]

The problem is the government has to have some influence on companies and the economy, otherwise businesses will run rough shod over every citizen.

There has to be a middle ground.

All the government has to do is enforce laws against fraud and robbery.