Why we have to redistribute income through taxes

[westwall]

I don't know of a single rich person who doesn't pay any taxes.

As far as eating them alive, you'd only be harming yourself. No rich, no jobs. No jobs, you starve. Brilliant move Sherlock.

The fortunate 400

400 tax returns reporting the highest incomes in 2009.

Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each.
another 110 families paid 15 percent or less in federal income taxes.


The fortunate 400: David Cay Johnston | Reuters

The 400 richest Americans used to pay 30% of their income on the average to Uncle Sam(but 55% in 1955).


Yeah, the 'rich' create jobs *shaking head* Ever look around and recognize without demand, jobs aren't created?


The US corporate business model has changed: It used to be based on sharing profits with workers to incentivize them and generate loyalty. Now, the model has shifted to rewarding not workers, but shareholders and upper management.. So, as corporate profits soar, the rich get richer and workers are told they are lucky to even have a job so stop whining about income disparity.



A recent IRS study found that one in every 189 taxpayers earning $200,000 or more in adjusted gross income paid no income tax in 2009, the most recent year for which complete data is available. That's more than 10,000 wealthy households paying no taxes anywhere in the world, and more than 35,000 paying no U.S. income tax.

How Thousands of Wealthy People Pay No Taxes (It's Totally Legal) - DailyFinance

Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each.

Well, if they lost $300 million in 2008, why would they pay taxes in 2009?
If they gave $300 million to charity in 2009, why would they pay taxes in 2009?

That's a fair question.

 

[westwall]

Just the other day, I was reminiscing with Mrs. H. on a time about 20 years ago when we had not jack shit and were roughing out life renting an old farm house. We couldn't drink the well water, no cell signal, intermittent electricity, the phone would go out whenever it rained, the road rarely got plowed after a snowstorm, the place leaked heat like a sieve, propane ran $500/month in the winter, beans pasta and rice were a menu staple...

Yet we both agreed- those were the happiest and most memorable of times.

I knew there was something I liked about you Mr. H.! You can't keep a good man down.

Sounds very familiar. When I was just out of high school in the 70's, I rented an unheated farm house without power or phone. I was happy to have it. It never occurred to me I was "underprivileged" or that not enough wealth had been "distributed" to me. It was what it was. I went to work and I went to night school and I was going somewhere.

And I was normal back then. Hell, you're 19. You're not making any money. You're going to school. Of course you live in a shell of a farm house. So what?

Back then, I was on my way up. In today's America, I'd be a victim being held down.

As much as I hate to sound like an old fart, I feel sorry for this generation. By buying into this Marxist class struggle BS, they are missing out on the pride of earning something. They're being played as fools--useful idiots.

Yup, right out of college I was pretty broke! I lived out of a truck for two years while saving up to buy my first place. Bought that place, fixed it up. Sold it for a decent profit and did it again. After I had done that four times I had enough to buy a decent place!

 

[MikeK]

Bottom line: There is nothing wrong with wealth. It is the hoarding of excessive wealth which is ruining America. And because of the obvious level of corruption in Washington, correcting this problem will require the implementation of radical measures. I.e., redistribution of the Nation's wealth resources via confiscatory taxation.

Honest question:

Are you saying what I earn through hard work and investment isn't my private property? It's part of or belongs to the "Nation's wealth"?

I was paying very close attention and I could swear my wealth wasn't "distributed" to me. I distinctly recall earning it and risking a great deal of it investing.

Just curious.

If you are permitted by virtue of citizenship or special accommodation to make use of this Nation's material, administrative, and human resources to generate wealth, whether by physical labor or via capital investments, you have thus converted resources, which are the real wealth of this Nation, into monetary wealth. Of course some percentage of that converted wealth is yours because of the effort you expended to convert it. But do you disagree that some percentage of it belongs to the original source, which is the Nation?

Even as an employed worker you are required to pay a percentage of the converted wealth you receive for your labor to the federal government in the form of an income tax. Because were it not for this Nation's available resources your employer would have no need for your service in helping to convert them.

 

[Dad2three]

That wasnt even coherent. Even for you. You're just spewing shit in some kind of pathetic failed attempt to make a point that is obviously beyond you.
If Oprah wants to pay more she can write a check today. How many actors, singers, etc take a one dollar a year salary like the 9 CEOs of corporations I posted?
Greed is not wanting to keep what you've made. Greed is wanting what someone else has made.

Good think O and B support Gov't policy versus that 'voluntary' crap you moth off about...

9 CEO's? Oh stock options where they've gained their Corps NOT able to do that pre Reagan, weird right (stock for payments)...

I know CEO's cutting costs at all available options, layoffs, off shoring jobs, temp workers, 'helps' the stock prices (at least temporarily)and the top 1/10th of 1% who get over 50% of Corp dividends, but how does it help US?


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

the top 1/10th of 1% who get over 50% of Corp dividends,

You have a link for this claim?

CLAIM? OH FACT BUBBA

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains - Forbes





Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data

Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data | Tax Foundation

But the upper 0.1% gained the most. Share of pretax
income earned by top 0.1% increased from 2.7% (1977) to12.3% (2007), which is 66% of increase to upper 1%

http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmed.../20120502_1830_towardEconomicFeudalism_sl.pdf

There is “optimal level” of inequality incentives for resource allocation, but market economy can exceed that level and that US has done so to fall into a social/economic danger zone


1) Logic and experiment.

2)Statistics showing US inequality is exceptionally high.

3) Inequality incentives → people at top to game system, which
produced the crime, near-crime, chicanery behind Wall Street
implosion.

4) Stock option incentives that fuel income of highest paid are not associated with better company performance.

5) Inequality leads to “economic feudalism”--economy/society
run by a small clique of super-wealthy insiders (aka “crony
capitalism”; plutocracy, etc.)


http://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/558084/miegunyah.pdf

 

[Dad2three]

The fortunate 400

400 tax returns reporting the highest incomes in 2009.

Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each.
another 110 families paid 15 percent or less in federal income taxes.


The fortunate 400: David Cay Johnston | Reuters

The 400 richest Americans used to pay 30% of their income on the average to Uncle Sam(but 55% in 1955).


Yeah, the 'rich' create jobs *shaking head* Ever look around and recognize without demand, jobs aren't created?


The US corporate business model has changed: It used to be based on sharing profits with workers to incentivize them and generate loyalty. Now, the model has shifted to rewarding not workers, but shareholders and upper management.. So, as corporate profits soar, the rich get richer and workers are told they are lucky to even have a job so stop whining about income disparity.



A recent IRS study found that one in every 189 taxpayers earning $200,000 or more in adjusted gross income paid no income tax in 2009, the most recent year for which complete data is available. That's more than 10,000 wealthy households paying no taxes anywhere in the world, and more than 35,000 paying no U.S. income tax.

How Thousands of Wealthy People Pay No Taxes (It's Totally Legal) - DailyFinance

Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each.

Well, if they lost $300 million in 2008, why would they pay taxes in 2009?
If they gave $300 million to charity in 2009, why would they pay taxes in 2009?

That's a fair question.

DON'T KNOW WHAT ADJUSTED MEANS HUH?

"A recent IRS study found that one in every 189 taxpayers earning $200,000 or more in adjusted gross income paid no income tax in 2009"


Those losses would be PRE adjusted incomes

 

[Dad2three]

It is amazing the wealth envy displayed, as well as the lack of critical thinking,
At what point is wealth "excessive"? DOnt know. They can't answer.
At what point does somene earn "too much"? Dont know. They can't answer.
Why is it a problem what a corporation pays its CEO? Dont know. They can't answer.
Why is Beyonce's $30M salary different from Larry Ellison's salary? Don't know, they can't answer.

But someone somewhere is making big bucks and I want some dammit! That seems to be the only motivation here.

Liberals confuse riches with wealth.

To them, money is both riches AND wealth.

Just the other day, I was reminiscing with Mrs. H. on a time about 20 years ago when we had not jack shit and were roughing out life renting an old farm house. We couldn't drink the well water, no cell signal, intermittent electricity, the phone would go out whenever it rained, the road rarely got plowed after a snowstorm, the place leaked heat like a sieve, propane ran $500/month in the winter, beans pasta and rice were a menu staple...

Yet we both agreed- those were the happiest and most memorable of times.

My goals in life are constantly short-term in nature. And they change as I age. My newest goal is to stay alive for the next four years and see our daughter graduate college, see my son get married, watch my grandson grow...

After that, I'll set some more short-term goals.

We all need a carrot in life. Conservatives seek the carrot in life.

Liberals seek the carat in life.

Ayn Rand was writing FICTION. we all theorize and hypothesize and imagine "what if?". when people start to implement fiction into their own realities, they are sociopaths. I too would love to have a world where CAPITALISM actually worked, but it doesn't. GREED ruins it all.

 

[Dad2three]

Just the other day, I was reminiscing with Mrs. H. on a time about 20 years ago when we had not jack shit and were roughing out life renting an old farm house. We couldn't drink the well water, no cell signal, intermittent electricity, the phone would go out whenever it rained, the road rarely got plowed after a snowstorm, the place leaked heat like a sieve, propane ran $500/month in the winter, beans pasta and rice were a menu staple...

Yet we both agreed- those were the happiest and most memorable of times.

I knew there was something I liked about you Mr. H.! You can't keep a good man down.

Sounds very familiar. When I was just out of high school in the 70's, I rented an unheated farm house without power or phone. I was happy to have it. It never occurred to me I was "underprivileged" or that not enough wealth had been "distributed" to me. It was what it was. I went to work and I went to night school and I was going somewhere.

And I was normal back then. Hell, you're 19. You're not making any money. You're going to school. Of course you live in a shell of a farm house. So what?

Back then, I was on my way up. In today's America, I'd be a victim being held down.

As much as I hate to sound like an old fart, I feel sorry for this generation. By buying into this Marxist class struggle BS, they are missing out on the pride of earning something. They're being played as fools--useful idiots.

The last 40 years of conservati*ve think tank legislatio*n has killed the economy

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated.


Neo-Liberalism/Conservatives is/has destroyed the American Economy in favor of the so called "Job Creator"... In reality are "Job Exporters"...





Share of Income

With stagnant incomes for many, but rising incomes for the wealthiest 5 percent, the share of national income earned by the middle 60 percent of households has been in a clear downtrend for decades. In 2012, the middle class received 45.7 percent of national income, down sharply from 53.2 percent in 1968.



http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/...cas-disappearing-middle-class.html/?a=viewall

 

[Dad2three]

I'm so sick of people crying victim.

Man up and pull your own weight and stop whining it's disgusting.

Between the end of World War II and the late 1970s, incomes in the United States were becoming more equal. In other words, incomes at the bottom were rising faster than those at the top. Since the late 1970s, this trend has reversed.

Data from tax returns show that the top 1 percent of households received 8.9 percent of all pre-tax income in 1976. In 2008, the top 1 percent share had more than doubled to 21.0 percent.

This level of income inequality, research shows, endangers our society, on a variety of fronts.

Income Inequality | Inequality.org

Between the end of World War II and the late 1970s, incomes in the United States were becoming more equal. In other words, incomes at the bottom were rising faster than those at the top.

It's amazing how well you can do when you're the only major economy in the world not bombed into rubble.

Since the late 1970s, this trend has reversed.

Eventually, those other nations rebuilt.

Sorry, 90% of the nations were rebuilt by 1955 100% by 1960, what happened the next 20+ years again?


Non-Partisan Congressional Tax Report Debunks Core Conservative Economic Theory


The conclusion?

Lowering the tax rates on the wealthy and top earners in America do not appear to have any impact on the nation’s economic growth.

This paragraph from the report says it all—

“The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”



Non-Partisan Congressional Tax Report Debunks Core Conservative Economic Theory-GOP Suppresses Study - Forbes

 

[The Rabbi]

Bottom line: There is nothing wrong with wealth. It is the hoarding of excessive wealth which is ruining America. And because of the obvious level of corruption in Washington, correcting this problem will require the implementation of radical measures. I.e., redistribution of the Nation's wealth resources via confiscatory taxation.

Honest question:

Are you saying what I earn through hard work and investment isn't my private property? It's part of or belongs to the "Nation's wealth"?

I was paying very close attention and I could swear my wealth wasn't "distributed" to me. I distinctly recall earning it and risking a great deal of it investing.

Just curious.

If you are permitted by virtue of citizenship or special accommodation to make use of this Nation's material, administrative, and human resources to generate wealth, whether by physical labor or via capital investments, you have thus converted resources, which are the real wealth of this Nation, into monetary wealth. Of course some percentage of that converted wealth is yours because of the effort you expended to convert it. But do you disagree that some percentage of it belongs to the original source, which is the Nation?

Even as an employed worker you are required to pay a percentage of the converted wealth you receive for your labor to the federal government in the form of an income tax. Because were it not for this Nation's available resources your employer would have no need for your service in helping to convert them.

Fallacy. No one is "permitted" to generate wealth. Making money is a right, a very basic one. No one owes anyone else anything for having done it. In fact, he is owed because in the process of building wealth he also enriches those around him.
Besides, if it requires no special skill or effort to attain wealth, why aren't you rich?

 

[Dad2three]

I don't know of a single rich person who doesn't pay any taxes.

As far as eating them alive, you'd only be harming yourself. No rich, no jobs. No jobs, you starve. Brilliant move Sherlock.

The fortunate 400

400 tax returns reporting the highest incomes in 2009.

Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each.
another 110 families paid 15 percent or less in federal income taxes.


The fortunate 400: David Cay Johnston | Reuters

The 400 richest Americans used to pay 30% of their income on the average to Uncle Sam(but 55% in 1955).


Yeah, the 'rich' create jobs *shaking head* Ever look around and recognize without demand, jobs aren't created?


The US corporate business model has changed: It used to be based on sharing profits with workers to incentivize them and generate loyalty. Now, the model has shifted to rewarding not workers, but shareholders and upper management.. So, as corporate profits soar, the rich get richer and workers are told they are lucky to even have a job so stop whining about income disparity.



A recent IRS study found that one in every 189 taxpayers earning $200,000 or more in adjusted gross income paid no income tax in 2009, the most recent year for which complete data is available. That's more than 10,000 wealthy households paying no taxes anywhere in the world, and more than 35,000 paying no U.S. income tax.

How Thousands of Wealthy People Pay No Taxes (It's Totally Legal) - DailyFinance

Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each.

Well, if they lost $300 million in 2008, why would they pay taxes in 2009?
If they gave $300 million to charity in 2009, why would they pay taxes in 2009?

Don'yt know what adjusted income is huh?



26 U.S. Code § 62 - Adjusted gross income defined


a) General rule

For purposes of this subtitle, the term “adjusted gross income” means, in the case of an individual, gross income minus the following deductions:

(1) Trade and business deductions

The deductions allowed by this chapter (other than by part VII of this subchapter) which are attributable to a trade or business carried on by the taxpayer, if such trade or business does not consist of the performance of services by the taxpayer as an employee.

(3) Losses from sale or exchange of property

The deductions allowed by part VI (sec. 161 and following) as losses from the sale or exchange of property.


(4) Deductions attributable to rents and royalties

The deductions allowed by part VI (sec. 161 and following), by section 212 (relating to expenses for production of income), and by section 611 (relating to depletion) which are attributable to property held for the production of rents or royalties.


(6) Pension, profit-sharing, and annuity plans of self-employed individuals

In the case of an individual who is an employee within the meaning of section 401 (c)(1), the deduction allowed by section 404.

26 U.S. Code § 62 - Adjusted gross income defined | LII / Legal Information Institute


THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE GET THAT INCOME FROM TAX FREE BONDS! Like I said, top 1/10th of 1% get 50% of dividends

 

[Dad2three]

what happens when they run of people to TAX?

almost 47% of people are on some form of government assistance ALREADY

I guess we'll be in what they call that, liberal UTOPIA

The same thing occurring right now in the EU.
That is, entire nations economies collapsing under the weight of massive government giveaways and unreasonable social safety nets.

Yeah, NOT the Banksters world wide ponzi scheme they ran on US and the world! *shaking head*

 

[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.

The purpose of taxation is to create and maintain a source of revenue for essential functions of government.
Whomever convinced you that it is the job of government to confiscate the assets of one then turn it over to people such as yourself sold you a bill of goods.

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


If I 'make' a million dollars, I accumulated money from other people. I'm not actually producing cash, I'm acquiring theirs. Therefore, others have collectively lost a million dollars of purchasing power to me.

These people can't go demand new money just because I have all of their money.

They go broke, I get rich, and income inequality is a thing.

 

[Dad2three]

Plutocrats need to STFU, pay their taxes, ride their goldplated jet skis and be thankful we haven't eaten them alive yet.

Genius, they already do.
BUt for the the wealthiest having the most significant tax burden, that burden would fall upon you.

WHEN DID THE DEBT REALLY START PILING UP AGAIN? When Ronnie tripled US debt?'


"Starving the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives in order to limit government spending by cutting taxes in order to deprive the government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force the federal government to reduce spending.


Before his election as President, then-candidate Ronald Reagan foreshadowed the strategy during the 1980 US Presidential debates, saying "John Anderson tells us that first we've got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you've got a kid that's extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker."

 

[Dad2three]

I don't know of a single rich person who doesn't pay any taxes.

As far as eating them alive, you'd only be harming yourself. No rich, no jobs. No jobs, you starve. Brilliant move Sherlock.

The fortunate 400

400 tax returns reporting the highest incomes in 2009.

Six American families paid no federal income taxes in 2009 while making something on the order of $200 million each.
another 110 families paid 15 percent or less in federal income taxes.


The fortunate 400: David Cay Johnston | Reuters

The 400 richest Americans used to pay 30% of their income on the average to Uncle Sam(but 55% in 1955).


Yeah, the 'rich' create jobs *shaking head* Ever look around and recognize without demand, jobs aren't created?


The US corporate business model has changed: It used to be based on sharing profits with workers to incentivize them and generate loyalty. Now, the model has shifted to rewarding not workers, but shareholders and upper management.. So, as corporate profits soar, the rich get richer and workers are told they are lucky to even have a job so stop whining about income disparity.



A recent IRS study found that one in every 189 taxpayers earning $200,000 or more in adjusted gross income paid no income tax in 2009, the most recent year for which complete data is available. That's more than 10,000 wealthy households paying no taxes anywhere in the world, and more than 35,000 paying no U.S. income tax.

How Thousands of Wealthy People Pay No Taxes (It's Totally Legal) - DailyFinance

" Ever look around and recognize without demand, jobs aren't created?"

There is always demand for jobs. Demand doesn't create jobs. People with ideas, motivation, and money create jobs.

Got it, willfully ignorant, not demand for jobs dummy, demand for products or services, in your theory, India and China should be a paradise for their citizens right? lol

 

[Dad2three]

And what the success of New York and California shows me is that two industries...financial in New York and high tech in California are centered in Silicon Valley and New York City. If you work in either, chances are you're living around Silicon Valley or around New York City because you need to be close to where the action is.

Disagree with me? Then kindly explain why New York has had to come up with "tax free zones" to encourage investment in the State if their overall economy is so strong? Obviously it's because if you take away the people getting rich on Wall Street from this latest stock market bubble the New York economy is NOT that strong.

To qualify, they must be linked with a college and located on or "near" that college's campus

Bryant: Who doesn't want to be in a tax-free zone?




Governor Cuomo's "Tax-Free New York" Would Come at a High Cost

Eliminating taxes in college communities won't improve the economy, but it will undermine our public institutions.

The decade-long conservative campaign for lower taxes and limited government has hit a wall of public outrage over the unfairness of the American tax system

Of course, the governor is not really proposing to get rid of all taxes in New York. Instead he would eliminate all taxes – property, personal income, sales, and business – in new tax-free zones established in and around public and private colleges and universities in the state. Every one of these institutions of higher education are supported heavily by taxes in a host of ways: for their very existence and operations in the case of public colleges, and through research grants and government-provided or -guaranteed student grants and loans to private colleges.

If there is an idea behind the governor’s program, it is that the researchers and thinkers who work in higher education have long made university communities incubators of new businesses. Creating tax-free zones around New York universities is somehow supposed to make them more attractive to business innovation. But Governor Cuomo has this totally backwards. Universities are business innovators because of the creative people who work there.

Eliminating taxes around a community college or university does not make the people who teach and do research more creative or innovative. Businesses don’t start in university communities because of low taxes. Businesses are started in university communities because of the quality of the researchers and intellectual richness of the faculty.

Attracting and supporting them takes money – from taxes!


Governor Cuomo's "Tax-Free New York" Would Come at a High Cost | Roosevelt Institute

 

[The Rabbi]

Are you on crack?

 

[MrZartok]

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.

The purpose of taxation is to create and maintain a source of revenue for essential functions of government.

Whomever convinced you that it is the job of government to confiscate the assets of one then turn it over to people such as yourself sold you a bill of goods.

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





If I 'make' a million dollars, I accumulated money from other people. I'm not actually producing cash, I'm acquiring theirs. Therefore, others have collectively lost a million dollars of purchasing power to me.



These people can't go demand new money just because I have all of their money.



They go broke, I get rich, and income inequality is a thing.

No founding father ever considered it ok for the federal government to implement a forcible confiscatory tax based upon an arbitrary standard of wealth for the purpose of exacting an arbitrary standard of social justice not found anywhere in law. Such an action would shock the conscience of the founders as it far exceeds what was intended in the taxing clause of the federal constitution. Such a social-engineering tax is exactly the type of arbitrary bullshit that would come from the crown, and therefore would have been opposed by the founders.

You are off your rocker, shithead. Don't you have a job to get to? Oh, wait, what am I saying? Oh well, have fun bleeding us taxpayers today. I am heading to work now...apparently I am working for you today, boss.

]





Sent from my iPhone using USMessageBoard.com

 

[MrZartok]

Plutocrats need to STFU, pay their taxes, ride their goldplated jet skis and be thankful we haven't eaten them alive yet.

Genius, they already do.
BUt for the the wealthiest having the most significant tax burden, that burden would fall upon you.

WHEN DID THE DEBT REALLY START PILING UP AGAIN? When Ronnie tripled US debt?'


"Starving the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives in order to limit government spending by cutting taxes in order to deprive the government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force the federal government to reduce spending.


Before his election as President, then-candidate Ronald Reagan foreshadowed the strategy during the 1980 US Presidential debates, saying "John Anderson tells us that first we've got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you've got a kid that's extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker."

$17 trillion, asshole....at a rate higher than ever before.... This is the type of fiscal prudence you get out of Democrats.

Cash for clunkers - drove up price of cars because it depleted supply

Stimulus - paid off contributors and did nothing to maintain growth

Artificially keeping interest rates low - destroys savings; strangely channels money into big business and investors because of the higher rate of return relative to safer individual investment products

ACA - largest tax increase in history

Promotes executive amnesty - dilutes American workforce, increase in labor supply will drive down wages

Do you want me to go on, asshole?





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[CrusaderFrank]

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.

The purpose of taxation is to create and maintain a source of revenue for essential functions of government.
Whomever convinced you that it is the job of government to confiscate the assets of one then turn it over to people such as yourself sold you a bill of goods.

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


If I 'make' a million dollars, I accumulated money from other people. I'm not actually producing cash, I'm acquiring theirs. Therefore, others have collectively lost a million dollars of purchasing power to me.

These people can't go demand new money just because I have all of their money.

They go broke, I get rich, and income inequality is a thing.

People went broke buying smart phone and computers.

Who knew?

This is why economies run by Progressives fail 100% of the time

 

[Oldstyle]

Bottom line: There is nothing wrong with wealth. It is the hoarding of excessive wealth which is ruining America. And because of the obvious level of corruption in Washington, correcting this problem will require the implementation of radical measures. I.e., redistribution of the Nation's wealth resources via confiscatory taxation.

Honest question:

Are you saying what I earn through hard work and investment isn't my private property? It's part of or belongs to the "Nation's wealth"?

I was paying very close attention and I could swear my wealth wasn't "distributed" to me. I distinctly recall earning it and risking a great deal of it investing.

Just curious.

If you are permitted by virtue of citizenship or special accommodation to make use of this Nation's material, administrative, and human resources to generate wealth, whether by physical labor or via capital investments, you have thus converted resources, which are the real wealth of this Nation, into monetary wealth. Of course some percentage of that converted wealth is yours because of the effort you expended to convert it. But do you disagree that some percentage of it belongs to the original source, which is the Nation?

Even as an employed worker you are required to pay a percentage of the converted wealth you receive for your labor to the federal government in the form of an income tax. Because were it not for this Nation's available resources your employer would have no need for your service in helping to convert them.

So how does this work? If the "Nation's" taxes and regulations become so onerous that it makes me lose my business...of course the "Nation" is going to do the right thing and give me a percentage of my loss back...right? What's that you say? That's not the way it works? Oh, I see...so the "Nation" is the reason why I can MAKE money...but it's never the reason why I can LOSE it? Hmmmm...that's a rather interesting concept...