Why we have to redistribute income through taxes

[sealybobo]

It's even more important to understand that your childish "Tax the rich!!" greed and envy completely falls apart if you do the math:

Milking the Millionaires | National Review Online

• Millionaires accounted for just 0.17 percent (236,883) of the more than 140 million tax returns filed in 2009, and reported income totaling $727 billion.
• The federal government will spend about $3.6 trillion this year (a rate of $300 billion per month), running an annual deficit of about $1.3 trillion. So, even if the IRS decided to confiscate every cent earned by millionaires in a given year, it would amount to less than half of the new debt we are taking on each year, and would barely be enough to fund the government for two months.
• According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest individuals in the U.S. are worth a combined $1.37 trillion. Confiscating all their wealth (not just annual earnings) would buy us another 4.5 months.
• The top 1 percent of income earners (just a quarter of which are millionaires) earn just 20 percent of the country’s personal income, yet pay 38 percent of federal income taxes. For the top 10 percent of earners, those figures rise to 46 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

Get it? It's like robbing the bank and finding only enough money to buy two carts of groceries. It's not enough to live on forever.

Progressivism never withstands collision with reality. NEVER.

What a dope. Lets explain it to you like this. There is 10 dollars. The way things work properly is the rich get 4 dollars, the middle class gets 4 and the poor get 2. Right now the rich get 80 and we're stuck with the crumbs.

Now how is it you say your policies will put more money into the middle class? This I got to hear.

I just proved to you that progressive economic policies CAN'T work. You can't make any demands until you acknowledge that basic fact.

The rich pay their fair share of taxes. They pay YOUR fair share of taxes, too.

The rich aren't paying their fair share. And **** what's fair. What works is what matters. Fair is what a little ***** would say. If you are rich and crying about what's fair, then you are a greedy little ***** and don't understand you have a responsibility to pay your fair share. Progressive tax system is what we have in America. And if you are not rich, which I suspect you aren't, then you are what we call a house slave. Stupid ****.

Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts | Common Dreams

 

[MikeK]

More (truth) about Denmark here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleyperez/14-reasons-everyone-needs-to-move-to-denmark-immediately

 

[Dad2three]

Why would anyone think that they are entitled to a distribution if they do nothing to earn it?

But they do. Nobody has earned their fortune in an empty space -- they did it while leaving in the society, using the rules that everyone is following. That is why it is only fair to set up the rules (including taxation) so that most people would benefit, not just the lucky few.

Hard work and risk taking should be rewarded -- but making hundreds times more than someone working full time is ridiculous. Nobody is working 4000 hours weeks.

I have never heard of a Democrat holding another Democrat to this system. It's a smoke and mirrors argument that targets middle-class Republican citizens. Anybody eating Angelina Jolie's liver about her income per shoot? Nope! Anybody holding Oprah's feet to the fire because she has a billion-dollar piggy bank? Nope! Any Democrat ranking on John Kerry for marrying a rich Republican billionaire widow after dumping his mere millionaire wife of many years? Nope!

Democrats are seen as savvy when they make the big bucks. Let a Republican rise by the sweat of his or her brow, and it's take it away, Crusader and redistribute the hell outta da man!

/soapbox

What absolute crap. We don't care how much anyone makes, we care that it's actually earned AND that redistribution, like MANY Founders supported, helps to stop the inequality MOST US Founders worried about. THINK. We had an aristocracy their were fighting to get away from!!!


We do that REDISTRIBUTION through taxes, mainly. Weird how those people you say we don't 'hold the feet' to the fire, support a higher tax burden right?

Guess when the largest middle class EVER created was born? And the period of highest sustained growth in the US economy? Hint 1932-1981when the top rate was 70%-94%

 

[Erand7899]

The problem is obvious to anyone capable of reading charts. Unfortunately, most right wingers aren't that bright.

A chart that says that, is the reason why GOVERNMENT must step in, in violation of the Constitution?

Your interpretation of the Constitution is flawed. And even if it wasn't, then it would mean the Constitutions had failed to serve the interests of the people and should have been amended.

Failed to serve the interests of what people? BTW, what in the hell does productivity have to do with median family income?

Increases in productivity are a product of increased investment, increased innovation, new technology, invention, and/or doing things smarter. Why is that so difficult for you left wingers to comprehend?

 

[regent]

Your interpretation of the Constitution is flawed. And even if it wasn't, then it would mean the Constitutions had failed to serve the interests of the people and should have been amended.

The US Constitution is meant to provide a frame work to manage a union of STATES, the only provision in it that should effect the daily lives of individuals is to make sure you get your mail. Now show me where I got it wrong, quote the Constitution.

Ignorance of the REAL Constitution and the STRONG federal Constitution our Founders gave US?

We had what you describe called it the Articles of Confederation. Didn't work. You know Madison wanted veto power rover the states right? And Washington agreed with him the Constitution needed to be able to have a strong federal Gov't?




If there’s one thing that we know about the Founding Fathers, it’s that they didn’t want a weak national government.

But there was a group who wanted a weak national government. They were called the anti-Federalists, and they were appalled by the proposed Constitution. Guess who lost?

When the anti-federalists became the government beginning with Jefferson they began to fear government less and less. Then somewhere along the line the old anti-federalists discovered the government could even be used to help citizens as well as business and bingo a new era came into being and continues.

 

[dblack]

The rich aren't paying their fair share. And **** what's fair. What works is what matters. Fair is what a little ***** would say. If you are rich and crying about what's fair, then you are a greedy little ***** and don't understand you have a responsibility to pay your fair share. Progressive tax system is what we have in America. And if you are not rich, which I suspect you aren't, then you are what we call a house slave. Stupid ****.

Speaking of slavery, I don't suppose you'd have a problem with it, eh? As long as it 'worked'?

 

[Dad2three]

The US Constitution is meant to provide a frame work to manage a union of STATES, the only provision in it that should effect the daily lives of individuals is to make sure you get your mail. Now show me where I got it wrong, quote the Constitution.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes

And the remainder of section 8 specifies what the legal expenditures of those funds are. Hint giving money to citizens isn't part of that unless they are providing a service for the US.

Don't know what the General Welfar Clause is huh?



Founding Fathers wanted to "Spread the Wealth"


Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing
By David Cay Johnston

The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.

George Washington, nine months before his inauguration as the first president, predicted that America "will be the most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit." And, he continued, "it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property."

The second president, John Adams, feared "monopolies of land" would destroy the nation and that a business aristocracy born of inequality would manipulate voters, creating "a system of subordination to all... The capricious will of one or a very few" dominating the rest. Unless constrained, Adams wrote, "the rich and the proud" would wield economic and political power that "will destroy all the equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves."

James Madison, the Constitution's main author, described inequality as an evil, saying government should prevent "an immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches." He favored "the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort."


Alexander Hamilton, who championed manufacturing and banking as the first Treasury secretary, also argued for widespread ownership of assets, warning in 1782 that, "whenever a discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it."

Late in life, Adams, pessimistic about whether the republic would endure, wrote that the goal of the democratic government was not to help the wealthy and powerful but to achieve "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."



http://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/why-thomas-jefferson-favored-profit-sharing-245454.html




"The poor who have neither property, friends, nor strength to labor, are boarded in the houses of good farmers, to whom a stipulated sum is annually paid. To those who are able to help themselves a little, or have friends from whom they derive some succor, inadequate however to their full maintenance, supplementary aids are given which enable them to live comfortably in their own houses, or in the houses of their friends. --Thomas Jefferson



With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property. Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."


Stephen Budiansky's Liberal Curmudgeon Blog: Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and other fellow travelers








Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on."

--Thomas Jefferson

 

[Dad2three]

A chart that says that, is the reason why GOVERNMENT must step in, in violation of the Constitution?

Your interpretation of the Constitution is flawed. And even if it wasn't, then it would mean the Constitutions had failed to serve the interests of the people and should have been amended.

Failed to serve the interests of what people? BTW, what in the hell does productivity have to do with median family income?

Increases in productivity are a product of increased investment, increased innovation, new technology, invention, and/or doing things smarter. Why is that so difficult for you left wingers to comprehend?

Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.




The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

[dblack]

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes

And the remainder of section 8 specifies what the legal expenditures of those funds are. Hint giving money to citizens isn't part of that unless they are providing a service for the US.

Don't know what the General Welfare Clause is huh?

It's a limitation on the taxation power. It's also a popular target for the 'creative lawyering' of ambitions statists.

 

[Erand7899]

Your interpretation of the Constitution is flawed. And even if it wasn't, then it would mean the Constitutions had failed to serve the interests of the people and should have been amended.

He's referring to the TeaBagged Constitution. The rest of us live under the US Constitution, that the TeaBaggeds deny existence of.

I don't get the whole idea of making an idol out of Constitution. It was created to improve people lives, not to be an excuse for making people suffer. Also, it was designed amendable for this very reason -- so we can improve it.

The thing is that so many people doubt their own intelligence, and for a good reason -- and they hope that with the Constitution they won't have to use their brains.

Wow, another intellectual in the mix. The United States Constitution was created as a contract between the federal government and the soverign states. It was not created to improve people's lives, in fact it has little to do with people's lives. It was made amendable by the entities that created it, the soverign states, and not by anyone else.

The Supreme Court is part of the federal government, and allowing the Supreme Court to amend the Constitution is like allowing your mortgage company to modify your mortgage at their convenience. A contract, that is not adhered to by the contracting parties, is a worthless piece of paper, and a joke. In the case of the Constitution, the joke is on us.

A free people need the rule of law to be supreme. The alternative is the rule of man, and that means the man in charge, and freedom is fleeting in that environment.

 

[Dad2three]

Now I am never for forced redistribution, clever taxing schemes for redistribution or even reparations of any kind on such things like that, but I am for shaming companies who treat and abuse the American workers badly, and especially for the reasons of GREED in which they do it.

You cannot shame a company for paying millions to its CEO. This is a valid business decision -- the companies have to attract the best and brightest. As long as we have a free-market based economy, which we should, it will create inequality. Sometimes it would create way more than it is necessary for simply giving people right motivations.

When it happens, the government should intervene by redistributing incomes from the rich to the poor.

Higher the Pay, the Worse the CEO

Study: The Higher the Pay, the Worse the CEO (Vocativ)
Daniel Edward Rosen looks at a study from the University of Utah, which shows that companies that pay CEOs more than $20 million a year have average annual losses over $1 billion.


The Higher the Pay, the Worse the CEO | Vocativ

Roosevelt Take: Roosevelt Institute Fellow and Director of Research Susan Holmberg and Campus Network alumna Lydia Austin look at additional ways high CEO pay distorts the economy.


Fixing a Hole: How the Tax Code for Executive Pay Distorts Economic Incentives and Burdens Taxpayers

Fixing a Hole: How the Tax Code for Executive Pay Distorts Economic Incentives and Burdens Taxpayers | Roosevelt Institute




The Highest-Paid CEOs Are The Worst Performers, New Study Says

Across the board, the more CEOs get paid, the worse their companies do over the next three years, according to extensive new research. This is true whether they’re CEOs at the highest end of the pay spectrum or the lowest. “The more CEOs are paid, the worse the firm does over the next three years, as far as stock performance and even accounting performance,” says one of the authors of the study, Michael Cooper of the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business.


The Highest-Paid CEOs Are The Worst Performers, New Study Says - Forbes

 

[daveman]

What a dope. Lets explain it to you like this. There is 10 dollars. The way things work properly is the rich get 4 dollars, the middle class gets 4 and the poor get 2. Right now the rich get 80 and we're stuck with the crumbs.

Now how is it you say your policies will put more money into the middle class? This I got to hear.

I just proved to you that progressive economic policies CAN'T work. You can't make any demands until you acknowledge that basic fact.

The rich pay their fair share of taxes. They pay YOUR fair share of taxes, too.

The rich aren't paying their fair share. And **** what's fair. What works is what matters.

I just proved to you it doesn't work, and it can't work. Your incoherent ranting is immaterial.

Fair is what a little ***** would say.

Little ***** indeed. "The rich aren't paying their fair share."

If you are rich and crying about what's fair, then you are a greedy little ***** and don't understand you have a responsibility to pay your fair share.

There's a little ***** whining about fairness again.

Progressive tax system is what we have in America. And if you are not rich, which I suspect you aren't, then you are what we call a house slave. Stupid ****.

That's especially amusing, coming from the useful idiot of rich liberals, not a single one of whom has EVER voluntarily sent extra money to the US Treasury, and, in some cases, don't pay their taxes at all.

Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts | Common Dreams

Not interested in your stupid Drug Dreams link. Just more stupid progs whining that they deserve what they haven't earned. I'm getting enough of that from you.

 

[daveman]

A chart that says that, is the reason why GOVERNMENT must step in, in violation of the Constitution?

Your interpretation of the Constitution is flawed. And even if it wasn't, then it would mean the Constitutions had failed to serve the interests of the people and should have been amended.

Failed to serve the interests of what people? BTW, what in the hell does productivity have to do with median family income?

Increases in productivity are a product of increased investment, increased innovation, new technology, invention, and/or doing things smarter. Why is that so difficult for you left wingers to comprehend?

Because it means they have to un-ass the couch and go to work, instead of waiting on the government check.

 

[daveman]

Your interpretation of the Constitution is flawed. And even if it wasn't, then it would mean the Constitutions had failed to serve the interests of the people and should have been amended.

Failed to serve the interests of what people? BTW, what in the hell does productivity have to do with median family income?

Increases in productivity are a product of increased investment, increased innovation, new technology, invention, and/or doing things smarter. Why is that so difficult for you left wingers to comprehend?

Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.




The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The modern liberal is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for covetousness.

daveman


You keep insisting that you deserve what you haven't earned...but you never rationally explain why.

 

[Erand7899]

boy are you really fucked in the head .... you have no Idea what a liberal or a progressive is about... I don't know of any Progressive or liberal that supported Goldman sack or any multinational corporations ... we have been for years trying to get these multinational corporations from dumping their cheep products ... that are way cheeper then these small corporation here for years ... where the hell have you been
what do you think the liberals and progressive have been trying to do for years ??? we have been trying to pass regulations on these multinational corporations to pay tariffs on their products coming to this country ... so we can compete ... how can we compete with a multinational corporations that pays 12 cents a day to their 12 year old worker ??? heres how ...put a tariffs on their products ... thats all you can do ...but your republican masters say NOooooooooooo we won't allow that ... and it keeps getting worse...

as for gun laws ... we liberals and progressive don't like large mag.. and we want back ground check on all gun sales whether its done at a gun show, gun store or you do it from your home, thats it ... what's so god damn bad about that ...

If protecting industries through tariffs worked East Germany would be a powerhouse.

it work for the steel industry back in the 1970 saved their butts.. but hey what would you really know ... you think the unions are the bad guy

In 1974, the steel industry in the United States employed 521,000 workers. In 2000, it employed 151,000. Who got their butts saved? Not the workers.

 

[Ringel05]

I love threads like this. Better than any comedy show any writer could come up with!!!

 

[regent]

He's referring to the TeaBagged Constitution. The rest of us live under the US Constitution, that the TeaBaggeds deny existence of.

I don't get the whole idea of making an idol out of Constitution. It was created to improve people lives, not to be an excuse for making people suffer. Also, it was designed amendable for this very reason -- so we can improve it.

The thing is that so many people doubt their own intelligence, and for a good reason -- and they hope that with the Constitution they won't have to use their brains.

Wow, another intellectual in the mix. The United States Constitution was created as a contract between the federal government and the soverign states. It was not created to improve people's lives, in fact it has little to do with people's lives. It was made amendable by the entities that created it, the soverign states, and not by anyone else.

The Supreme Court is part of the federal government, and allowing the Supreme Court to amend the Constitution is like allowing your mortgage company to modify your mortgage at their convenience. A contract, that is not adhered to by the contracting parties, is a worthless piece of paper, and a joke. In the case of the Constitution, the joke is on us.

A free people need the rule of law to be supreme. The alternative is the rule of man, and that means the man in charge, and freedom is fleeting in that environment.

The Articles of Confederation was a firm league of friendship between the states but the Constitution was not a contract between the states and the national government. The Constitution was created by the people for the people's benefit.

 

[Dad2three]

Another idiot who cant read charts.
OK, genius. Tell me what you think this chart represents.

It shows flat compensation since 1970.

If you like, I can show the differences between tax brackets, and quintiles and include top income earners and wealth disparity.

See, I can produce information. You can't produce anything except feeble bullshit. But, I'll teach you how to read a chart if I feel like helping you.

No actually it does not.
Do you honestly think people who have been working since 1970 are making the same money today as they did 40 years ago?

For working people the economy has been in recession since 1973:



1. Before 1973, The inflation Adjusted Median Income rose at 2.5% per year:

1953 = $22,648
1973 = $34,762

2. From 1973 to 2009, Inflation Adjusted Median Income fell by $2,578.

1973 = $34,762
2009 = $32,184

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/ftnotes.html

4. While per capita GPD has doubled:

1969 = $21,021
2010 = $42,517


5. This is accomplish by shifting the income distributi*¬on:

Share Of Aggregate Income by Quintile:

BOTTOM 20% – 1967: 4.0% 2009: 3.4% Change: -0.6%
LOWER MIDDLE – 1967: 10.8% 2009: 8.6% Change: -2.2%
MIDDLE CLASS – 1967: 17.3% 2009: 14.6% Change: -2.7%
UPPER MIDDLE – 1967: 24.2% 2009: 23.2% Change: -1.0%
UPPER CLASS – 1967: 43.6% 2009: 50.3% Change: +6.7%

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/inequality/H02AR_2009.xls

Bottom line message: WORK MORE, PRODUCE MORE, BUT GET LESS”

3. The same thing shows up in Weekly Earnings




All earners:

1979 = $339
2008 = $339

No Change over 30 years

Men:

1979 = $412
2010 = $389

DECREASE of $23/week




1&2) From 1947 to 1973 – a period of just 26 years – inflation-adjusted median income in the United States more than doubled. But in the 31 years from 1973 to 2004, it rose only 22 percent. And, over the last decade, it actually declined. -

WITH LINKS

Median-itis and The Great Stagnation

4) Per capita. Grab the first one

per capita GPD - ERS Search Results

5) Share of income percentile

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/publications/newydata.pdf

3)

Here

Earnings (CPS)

here

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1981/02/art5full.pdf

and here

Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers

RIGHT WINGERS ARE HORRIBLE AT ECONOMICS

 

[westwall]

the difference is you know what the unions are asking for ... you don't know what these corporations are wanting, you dolts ... unions are asking for more money for the worker, more workers ... the corporations are asking to take that money back and do it so they all lose ... look at all the retirement plans that have been stolen from retired Union workers under the disguise of keep the corporation open ... what do these corporations do ??? the get it to where its making good money, then move that plant to over seas to make larger profits ... you haven't a clue in what's going on here ..... you just listen to your repub-lie-tard masters all the way to the poor house ...then blame it on us liberals for not stopping it ... you're to stupid to pay attention

Of course we do. Unions are asking for things to make the unions stronger that's what they do. My dad was a lifelong Teamster and he watched his pension robbed repeatedly so the Teamster bosses could live large on the backs of the membership.

My dad despises the Teamsters.

you got a source for that lie of your ??? you know the lie about Teamster and he watched his pension robbed repeatedly so the Teamster bosses could live large on the backs of the membership. the unions couldn't touch his retirement ... only the corporation could thats the law ... it was designed to save it self from closing ... he should have been angry at the company not the union ... union can't touch or with draw any money from a retirement account ... you're lying here ...

No, this was back in the 1970's before they had the controls. He's been dead a while now... But I do see that the pension fund is in trouble yet again with major shortfalls in funding.



"Few multi-employer plans are as troubled as Chicago's Central States Pension Fund, which provides benefits for 500,000 current and former Teamsters nationwide. Decades ago, former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa allegedly used the fund as his personal checkbook. Central States became known as the "bank of the Mob" during the 1970s after making loans to casinos with ties to organized crime. After that, the government stepped in, placing Central States under the watch of the courts. Ever since, a host of money managers, most recently at Goldman and Northern Trust (NTRS), have run money for the plan.

But even with its star lineup, Central States is in dire straits, with $21 billion in assets and $39 billion in liabilities.

Central States Pension Fund In Deep Trouble - Teamsters Talk - Teamsters Forums



And, more recently.....

"The plight of the Teamsters’ Central States, Southeast & Southwest Pension Plan has been in the news lately and its prospects are not good.

Documents filed at the end of 2012 by the Rosemont, Ill.-based fund show that its liabilities are almost double its assets – $34.9 billion vs. $17.8 billion."


Teamsters pension plan stuck in crisis | BenefitsPro


As usual, you're just simply wrong.

 

[jasonnfree]

The increasingly skewed income distribution pattern is a result of of what economists call "concentration of capital." It is a natural and inevitable result of our system. Fewer and fewer people own more and more because of the way the capitalist system works. Taxation and redistribution by the government is the only way to keep our current system and still maintain our constitutional democracy, which requires income distribution to remain within broad parameters in order to maintain social and political stability.

When enough people are suffering sufficiently, they turn to the government for relief. Provision of that relief is resisted by the people who have to pay for it in taxes. The result is called fascism when it fails, socialism when it succeeds. No matter which side of the economic highway we crash off, it is never as good as adjusting our democratic capitalism so that it works. Those who make evolution impossible make revolution inevitable.

Wrong, what we see happening today is the direct result of government policies, not the inevitible result of capitalism as you claim.

Now, we could have a socialist system where all of the money and all of the power is controlled by a very small group of super elites and everyone else is EQUALLY miserable. Would that be preferable to you?

But since you hate successful rich people so much, what do you propose we do about the wealth of Oprah and Beyonce?

If the bailout of the banks in 2008, with no strings attached, isn't an example of socialism for the owners of this country , I don't know what is. It was probably planned, due to the fact that the ability of the average income American to declare bankruptcy was taken away shortly before everything crashed.