Why we have to redistribute income through taxes

[Dad2three]

So, we're in an era of lower taxes, reduced welfare spending for the poor (compared to back then, adjusting for inflation) and fewer regulations on financial institutions and Wall Street, and less oversight as the GOP has gutted regulatory agencies... Yeah. I can see where you're going with this. Conservative ideology leads to less money for working people.


Don't try to move the goal posts now. You said families were smaller now. That said, if what you were saying was true, then a smaller family with the same income means more disposable income.

Maybe you don't follow your own words. The number of families wasn't what you brought up. And again, we can still show that families are making less now in real wages than they were in 1980 (which even your chart helps to show how much of a failure conservative economics is).

You said families were smaller now. That said, if what you were saying was true, then a smaller family with the same income means more disposable income.

Dad working, $40k
Mom working $35k
Junior working $3k

Average Household Income $78k

Mom and Dad divorce.

Dad working, $40k

Mom working, $35k
Junior working, $3k

2 smaller households, Average Household Income $39k
Two rent payments, less disposable income.

Libs are bad at math!

Show that with REAL data, median per adult wages?

 

[Dad2three]

" We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory some of those loophole were understandable, but in practice, they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing."
~ Ronald Reagan

And he did!
Why do the Democrats block tax reform??

Weird how the GOP blocks Obama's Buffet rule, min 30% fed tax on $1,000,000+ incomes right?


Reagan did that?

The Myths of Reaganomics


Tax Cuts.

It's true that tax rates for higher-income brackets were cut; but for the average person, taxes rose, rather than declined.


http://mises.org/daily/1544

 

[MikeK]

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.

Many thanks for the James Madison quote! It carries weight.

 

[Dad2three]

Sweden and the Myth of Benevolent Socialism

Frequently referred to as a "benevolent" socialist or social democratic state, to distinguish it from the run-of-the-mill socialist butcher shop, such as Cuba, China, North Korea, the USSR, and most of Africa, Latin and Central America, and Asia, Sweden is the Promised Land of the Left. As usual, the rosy picture painted by the Left could not be farther from the truth.

Bubba, YOU need to grow a brain and grow up, Lew Rockwell? lol

 

[ilia25]

Why we have to redistribute income through taxes .

Because


WELFARE STATE = GOVERNMENT BUY THE PEOPLE

.

Right, and what they don't get is that when you take away to incentive to become better off financially, no one bothers working.

Let me ask you first -- before lamenting about how stupid liberals are, why don't your read first what they are actually suggesting?

Nobody is saying that we should take away the incentive to make more money. The point is that making 10 times the average income -- rather than 100s times -- would be good enough motivation too.

 

[ilia25]

You chart is bullshit because the ave size of the American family has been decreasing drastically for the last several decades.

BZZZT - wrong again.

Do you ever post intelligently?

I dont know which is worse: that you dont know the facts or you dont care about the facts.
Census: U.S. household size shrinking - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience | NBC News

US households have been shrinking before 1980 too, but the median income didn't lag back then.

 

[Dad2three]

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.

Many thanks for the James Madison quote! It carries weight.

No problem, remember Madison was a proponent of MUCH stronger federal control going into the Constitutional convention, wanting the federal gov't to have the ability to veto (negative) state laws, before he compromised, and recognize the federalist papers and anti federalist were just the propaganda advertisements of their days


"Which is not to say that he was always thrilled at the results of those "deliberations." On the contrary, Madison was thwarted on a wide range of minor and not-so-minor points, including two issues — a federal "negative" (veto) over the states and proportional representation in both houses of Congress — that he considered crucial to his dream of a government that would safeguard private rights and still promote the public good. "

James Madison "Godfather of the Constitution" - The Early America Review, Summer 1997


"The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages...Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." James Madison




"In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort. 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expence of another. 5. By making one party a check on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism." James Madison



Religion

"Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles. The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the U.S." James Madison

 

[Dad2three]

BZZZT - wrong again.

Do you ever post intelligently?

I dont know which is worse: that you dont know the facts or you dont care about the facts.
Census: U.S. household size shrinking - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience | NBC News

US households have been shrinking before 1980 too, but the median income didn't lag back then.

Bottom 90% has been stagnant since 1973, no real growth at all...

 

[ilia25]

It's such a wonderfully simple concept, Ilia...yet so naive.

The government shouldn't be in the "redistribution" business...what they should be doing is providing an environment for those who are poor to become part of the middle class.

What you suggest is impossible. We can't all become CEOs. Even if everyone would get a college degree, some of us would have to work at McDonalds.

The income distribution is defined by the level of technological progress. As machines replace workers, inequality increases -- middle class jobs are replaced by a few very high paying ones and much more low income, low skilled jobs. That is why we have to engage in income redistribution if only to maintain the status quo -- more if we want to decrease inequality.

Where did I say that everyone should become a CEO? Where did I say that everyone should get a college degree? What I do say is that everyone should be left to find their own level of accomplishment and be compensated for doing so by a free market.

And what if free market would make 1% earning 50% of total national income? Would you be OK with that?

Well, I would not. I don't think that free market always creates a fair income distribution (fair means that equal efforts should be rewarded equally). And as workers are getting replaced by machines -- the trend that will go on forever -- the income distribution gets ever more unequal. And less fair, as more and more income will be earned as a rent, not as a profit or salary.

 

[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.

It shows nothing of the kind..This is a graph with a bunch of lines on it with no explanation as to what the graph represents. There is no research included. No explanation of the processes used to create the graph.
As my very Bostonian 8 th grade math teacher used to say "I am not interested in answers. I want to see the work you did to produce the answer".

Why? You'll ignore that too?


American Pie: Wealth and Income Inequality in America

American Pie: Wealth and Income Inequality in America | Curry County Democrats


The crisis of middle-class America

The crisis of middle-class America - FT.com




The myth of the American Dream

America's economic mobility myth - Dec. 9, 2013

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/u...-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all


The American Dream died in February 1973.

realitybase - Journal - The American Dream died in February 1973. *

 

[Dad2three]

Government takes most of the money it taxes from the wealthy and flushes it down the welfare sewer. The rich invest their money. That creates jobs. Government hands it out to ticks on the ass of society. That creates dependency and destroys jobs.

bs!

it flushes it down the military industrial complex


there is nothing more important than LABOR, without the worker bees there is nothing to invest in....

HA!..Without investment, there is nothing for the worker bees to do....No investment, no need for labor.

lol, Like the US has a lack of investment available, lol

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Abraham Lincoln


Andrew Mellon had a few distinctly progressive ideas. Of particular note, he suggested taxing "earned" income from wages and salaries more lightly that "unearned" income from investments. As he argued:


The fairness of taxing more lightly income from wages, salaries or from investments is beyond question. In the first case, the income is uncertain and limited in duration; sickness or death destroys it and old age diminishes it; in the other, the source of income continues; the income may be disposed of during a man's life and it descends to his heirs.

Surely we can afford to make a distinction between the people whose only capital is their mental and physical energy and the people whose income is derived from investments. Such a distinction would mean much to millions of American workers and would be an added inspiration to the man who must provide a competence during his few productive years to care for himself and his family when his earnings capacity is at an end.



Tax History Project -- The Republican Roots of New Deal Tax Policy

 

[Dad2three]

Meanwhile liberals are bragging about creating so many "part-time" jobs and downplaying the loss of income as "more freedom" for people.

'WEIRD, YOU'D THINK THE US WOULD'VE BOOMED WITH 8 YEARS OF DUBYA/GOP 'JOB CREATOR' POLICIES?

 

[thereisnospoon]

Threads like these confirm how correct we are to fight -- to death if necessary, to retain our Second Amendment rights

Are you saying we should have shot the rich people who rigged the system and redistributed our wealth to themselves or are you only going to take up arms if we try to take what they stole back?

And are you rich or are you going to fight us for your master?

Chances are you aren't rich enough to worry about it. Chances are if we re distribute that wealth that'll put a few extra bucks in your pocket.

The system is not rigged.
If you're looking for rigged systems try Venezuela, the Western European Socialist countries and any other nation where people are destined to exist in a caste type system.
This is the result of the trade off. The more government provided goodies, the less freedom of upward mobility.

 

[Dad2three]

Compensation as a percentage of GDP peaked in about 1980. It has declined by about 6 percentage points since then. You can blame government regulations, taxes and social programs for the decline.

So, we're in an era of lower taxes, reduced welfare spending for the poor (compared to back then, adjusting for inflation) and fewer regulations on financial institutions and Wall Street, and less oversight as the GOP has gutted regulatory agencies... Yeah. I can see where you're going with this. Conservative ideology leads to less money for working people.

"Make it available" to whom? If you take the same total wages and divide it up among a greater number of families, then you get lower average family wages. The math is so simple that even a liberal could do it.

Don't try to move the goal posts now. You said families were smaller now. That said, if what you were saying was true, then a smaller family with the same income means more disposable income.

Maybe you don't follow your own words. The number of families wasn't what you brought up. And again, we can still show that families are making less now in real wages than they were in 1980 (which even your chart helps to show how much of a failure conservative economics is).

You are moving the goal posts. First this thread was about taxing the wealthy to give to the poor. Now it's about "working people".
Tell me, what is your definition of "working people"?

"Tell me, what is your definition of "working people"?"


How about the bottom 50% of US who filed tax returns and lost almost $5,000 PER family from the piece of the pie they had in 1980-2011? Going from nearly 18% to 11% of the pie?


Summary of Latest Federal Income Tax Data | Tax Foundation

 

[thereisnospoon]

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

We have to because that is exactly what the rich, through the GOP, have been doing to us since Reagan.

Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts | Common Dreams

Common dreams? It figures.

 

[Dad2three]

Threads like these confirm how correct we are to fight -- to death if necessary, to retain our Second Amendment rights

Are you saying we should have shot the rich people who rigged the system and redistributed our wealth to themselves or are you only going to take up arms if we try to take what they stole back?

And are you rich or are you going to fight us for your master?

Chances are you aren't rich enough to worry about it. Chances are if we re distribute that wealth that'll put a few extra bucks in your pocket.

The system is not rigged.
If you're looking for rigged systems try Venezuela, the Western European Socialist countries and any other nation where people are destined to exist in a caste type system.
This is the result of the trade off. The more government provided goodies, the less freedom of upward mobility.

NOT according to the ACTUAL data, unless you mean those goodies we give the 'job creators' and Corps?



Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/u...-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all




The Loss of Upward Mobility in the U.S.


Most studies back up the idea that the U.S. has lost the upper hand for upward mobility to Europe and Canada over the last several decades.


The Loss of Upward Mobility in the U.S. | TIME.com


DON'T LET ACTUAL DATA AND FACTS GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR IDEOLOGY, IT USUALLY DOESN'T!

 

[Dad2three]

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

We have to because that is exactly what the rich, through the GOP, have been doing to us since Reagan.

Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts | Common Dreams

Common dreams? It figures.

So after your crap about wanting sourcing and data, you choose ad homs instead? lol

 

[MikeK]

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.

Of course we did well as "the only major economy not bombed into rubble." But at what cost to us?

I hope you're not ignoring what it cost us to fight that war -- in addition to what it cost us to help rebuild those bombed out nations -- including the two which had been our enemies and had forced us to bomb them into rubble.

Ultimately the problem lies with those corrupted politicians who, once the rebuilt nations began competing with us, surreptitiously enabled them to surpass our productivity by limiting or removing tariffs on imported goods. This, along with other devious maneuvering and legislative manipulations, has vastly benefited back-door benefactors by transforming the once most productive nation in the world into the least productive.

The removal of protective regulations has consistently served to undermine the productive potential and economic stability of this Nation. And those who are responsible for these destructive maneuvers are never held to account. Nor is the issue of our Congress being dominated by multi-millionaires ever raised.

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." (Edward R. Murrow)

 

[Dad2three]

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.

It shows nothing of the kind..This is a graph with a bunch of lines on it with no explanation as to what the graph represents. There is no research included. No explanation of the processes used to create the graph.
As my very Bostonian 8 th grade math teacher used to say "I am not interested in answers. I want to see the work you did to produce the answer".

Libs are bad at readig charts! As you say, there is no telling what this shows. What do the terms mean? How are they measured? Do they account for changes in the workforce like younger workers entering and older ones leaving? How about technological changes since 1970? We dont know.

The share of income going to higher-income households rose, while the share going to lower-income households fell.

The top fifth of the population saw a 10-percentage-point increase in their share of after-tax income. Most of that growth went to the top 1 percent of the population. All other groups saw their shares decline by 2 to 3 percentage points.


Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007 - CBO

CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:

275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
65 percent for the next 19 percent,
Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.




From 1992 to 2007 the top 400 earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%

It's the Inequality, Stupid | Mother Jones


It's the Inequality, Stupid



After a period of shared prosperity in the early postwar decades, income disparities widened substantially beginning in the 1970s. The Census Bureau provides data on the distribution of family cash income back to the late 1940s. These data illustrate how a period of shared prosperity — during which incomes across the income scale rose at roughly the same rate — gave way to a period of widening inequality, during which incomes rose fastest at the top and slowest at the bottom.



For the reasons we discuss here, these Census data — while they provide statistics over a relatively long historical span — are not the best for assessing recent trends, especially at the top. In our next post, we’ll show with more refined data how gains for the top earners have outpaced the rest since 1979.



Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | Illustrating Income Inequality, Part 1: Shared Prosperity Gives Way to Income Disparities

 

[Erand7899]

What you suggest is impossible. We can't all become CEOs. Even if everyone would get a college degree, some of us would have to work at McDonalds.

The income distribution is defined by the level of technological progress. As machines replace workers, inequality increases -- middle class jobs are replaced by a few very high paying ones and much more low income, low skilled jobs. That is why we have to engage in income redistribution if only to maintain the status quo -- more if we want to decrease inequality.

Where did I say that everyone should become a CEO? Where did I say that everyone should get a college degree? What I do say is that everyone should be left to find their own level of accomplishment and be compensated for doing so by a free market.

And what if free market would make 1% earning 50% of total national income? Would you be OK with that?

Well, I would not. I don't think that free market always creates a fair income distribution (fair means that equal efforts should be rewarded equally). And as workers are getting replaced by machines -- the trend that will go on forever -- the income distribution gets ever more unequal. And less fair, as more and more income will be earned as a rent, not as a profit or salary.

Equal efforts should not be rewarded equally. Effort can be productive or non productive, and non productive work should not be rewarded, period. The markets determine what is, or is not fair, and there is no other reasonable method of doing so. When workers get displaced by machines, then it is the individual's duty to learn how to build, design, program, repair, and/or maintain the machines, or learn how to play the stock market.

Neither you, me, the government, nor any other group has the knowledge and the skills necessary to take the place of the market forces created by millions of individual economic decisions made by millions of individuals on a daily basis.

Your concept that equality equals fairness is pure bullshit. Those that work harder, work smarter, and work longer deserve more than those that don't. All people are entitled to the fruits of their labor, and that is fairness. Many people get rich by deferring current pleasures and putting that money to work for the future. They are entitled to the rewards of doing so, and that is fairness.

Others sacrifice their own today so that their children and grandchildren will have a better life tomorrow. Their children and grandchildren are entitled to that reward, and that is fairness.

BTW, income distribution is determined by market forces and/or government edict, and nothing else. Government edict has never been fair, or even financially or economically sound. Some undeservedly benefit from government edict, and others undeservedly lose from government edict. That is not fairness.