Why we have to redistribute income through taxes

[auditor0007]

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

Here's a supplement that will tell us exactly WHY:

Unions are killing the American worker.

 

[ilia25]

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 better answer is that if the US invested the taxes from the wealthy into infrastructure, people would earn the money who aren't wealthy. Never mind the overall benefits to the economy, like more people working, and more people spending their money to keep the wealthy in wealth, and allowing new wealth to be created.

The element of risk is a necessary element in wealth creation. The government cannot create wealth.

Don't be ridiculous. Government can produce useful services as any person or business -- this creating additional value.[/QUOTE]

Giving people money does not create wealth. When it is spent it is gone.

You don't redistribute incomes to create more wealth. This is done done create more equal wealth distribution.

It is the investment that grows wealth.

Not true. Wealth the product of labor.

If the money "invested" in infrastructure were to grow wealth, then the fact is that said money was taken from someone else through application of the tax laws. Thus, that person or entity was already going to invest it, but now it will not.

Even this is not always true. When the economy is depressed (as it is since 2008), a lot of money are not invested, sitting idle. In that case the government can create more investment.

Also, private sector often invests money in useless projects. Like bitcoin, or gold mining, or one can argue that most of financial sector is a big casino benefiting only owners and providing no benefit to the society.

But that's not the point -- we redistribute incomes to create more equality, not to increathe wealth.

it is really a loss, as it is well established that better return are generated from private investment than from the government'a "investments".

Yeah, right... ever heard of bubbles?

There is no profit incentive for the government, meaning that the job will not have to be done as efficiently as possible.

No incentive? Government employees can and do get fired for unacceptable performance.

You will never create wealth from government spending in itself.

Repeating that mantra does not make it true.

We obviously need roads and other infrastructure. However, do not be so dishonest about it by calling it an investment.

I don't think you know the meaning of the word "investment". Investment means an act of devoting time, effort, or money to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result.

Building a road is an investment, whether it is build by a government, or a private company.

The budgeting and account if any governmental project us so contrived, bloated, inefficient and wasteful that if a private company's books looked like theirs the banks would pull all funding and shut down the project immediately.

You wish..

Get a ******* clue. I know you ideas make you feel good about yourself. But the reality is that lacking risk and profit motive you cannot create wealth.

I don't think you understand the meaning "wealth" any more than "investment".
Sent from my iPhone using USMessageBoard.com[/QUOTE]

 

[Shanty]

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.

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

 

[ilia25]

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.

Don't be silly. The share of compensation falls because an ever bigger share is taken as profit by the company owners. And that's exactly what happens when you start replacing workers with machines.

Also, I don't know what you have to be smoking all these years if you think that regulations and taxes increased since 1980. It was the other way around.

 

[Shanty]

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.

Well... One of the downfalls of corporate pay is that boards of directors are not doing their jobs at all.

A Cure for Bloated CEO Pay | Op-Eds & Columns

 

[ilia25]

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.

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.

 

[Shanty]

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 better answer is that if the US invested the taxes from the wealthy into infrastructure, people would earn the money who aren't wealthy. Never mind the overall benefits to the economy, like more people working, and more people spending their money to keep the wealthy in wealth, and allowing new wealth to be created.

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.

If by welfare sewer, you mean handouts to corporations and billionaire, yes, that's where almost all of the money goes directly, and indirectly. Walmart gets more subsidies in a year than all of the single moms and down on their luck families who get a few bucks to survive on.

The best economy that developed nations have seen was during times of high taxation on high income earners and capital gains receivers.

 

[Shanty]

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.

It says whatever is in the interest of the general welfare of the country as a whole. Since there's empirical evidence that helping the poor makes the US have a stronger economy, then you're argument has bitten the dust. Just the spending multipliers alone, especially in a time of still low demand in the aftermath of the GOP's Great Recession means your argument that government helping the poor is unconstitutional comes across as pure BS.

 

[Shanty]

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

If you show workers real wages over the past several decades, it still shows the same problem.

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.

If anything, the size of the families being smaller would tend to make available more disposable income, if real wages were not falling.

"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).

 

[Care4all]

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 better answer is that if the US invested the taxes from the wealthy into infrastructure, people would earn the money who aren't wealthy. Never mind the overall benefits to the economy, like more people working, and more people spending their money to keep the wealthy in wealth, and allowing new wealth to be created.

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....

 

[Oldstyle]

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.

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 and for those that are in the middle class to become part of the upper class. Income redistribution simply encourages low income people to "skate" through life while encouraging those with capital to keep that money in places the government can't reach. So in the end what you have are a subclass locked into poverty by an entitlement mentality while the people that you desperately need to create jobs "pass".

Look, Capitalism is competition. It rewards those who strive and succeed. It punishes those that don't try at all or who fail. You want to give everyone a trophy like we're 8 year old kids playing soccer. That isn't what made this country an economic power.

 

[Shanty]

The element of risk is a necessary element in wealth creation.

Certainly. I've lived it when I went into business for myself.

The government cannot create wealth.

It can create opportunities for wealth to be created. Infrastructure is a good history lesson in the creation of wealth for the TeaBaggeds to learn from, if they use their empty little heads. Going back to Roman times, roads making travel quick over land, was known as a way to trade with others. Later on in history, guys like Vanderbilt built huge fortunes based in infrastructure, where land and tax dollars were used build those fortunes. It also built the fortunes of others trying to reach new markets for their goods. Later on again, we've seen the FAA keep the skies relatively safe for air travelers and other cargo that is flown around the world, through the infrastructure and regs the government created.

Giving people money does not create wealth.

The Vanderbilts disagree. But if you want to get into the multiplier effects of tax cuts versus help for the unemployed or poor... OK. It's a little old, but you'll get the idea if you have even a modicum of economic understanding.
What?s the most effective way to avert an austerity crisis? More stimulus. - The Washington Post

When it is spent it is gone.

When it's spent, as the above link has shown, it goes into the economy directly.

It is the investment that grows wealth.

But the investment isn't worth shit if people aren't buying goods, or borrowing money, etc.

If the money "invested" in infrastructure were to grow wealth, then the fact is that said money was taken from someone else through application of the tax laws. Thus, that person or entity was already going to invest it, but now it will not. So it is a wash. But wait, it is not wash...it is really a loss, as it is well established that better return are generated from private investment than from the government'a "investments". There is no profit incentive for the government, meaning that the job will not have to be done as efficiently as possible.

LOL! You're in total need of a lesson in the most basic economics. Look, dude... No infrastructure, no goods move. No goods moving, no markets to buy it. Think of it like this... Since the wealthy don't create infrastructure, then government has to do it for them. That takes taxes to do. So, the taxes are a form of giving the wealthy opportunities to exploit markets. Not just that, but the raw materials have to get from the ground to the factory, and you need roads and railways, with bridges that aren't going to fall apart for that.

The spending of tax money is tantamount to pissing away the money. You will never create wealth from government spending in itself.

You'll never make it in understanding business with that attitude.

We obviously need roads and other infrastructure. However, do not be so dishonest about it by calling it an investment. The budgeting and account if any governmental project us so contrived, bloated, inefficient and wasteful that if a private company's books looked like theirs the banks would pull all funding and shut down the project immediately.

The first sentence of this paragraph blows your own previous argument out of the water. Plus, government has done pretty well at making it all come about by contracting private companies to build all that stuff. But, in the meantime, just because I like to smack down the ignorant and snide, I'll leave you with a thought that I know from first hand experience: government run entities are often run cheaper, with better service, than private ones.

Get a ******* clue. I know you ideas make you feel good about yourself. But the reality is that lacking risk and profit motive you cannot create wealth.

I'm giving you a clue. I'm not too hopeful you'll grasp it. But I can hope for you to be able to understand the very fallacies in your attempts at logic. Since you don't have a background in business, I'll be here to help you out if you get stuck. .

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Heh... DARPA gave you something useful to use.

 

[The Rabbi]

I'll leave you with a thought that I know from first hand experience: government run entities are often run cheaper, with better service, than private ones.

No, there is nothing government entities do that they do more efficiently than private ones. You are lying and misinformed.

 

[Care4all]

and since the competition in Labor includes the GLOBAL market the past few decades, where lots of cheap labor is available there has been no need to compensate the US worker because business can just go overseas and get cheaper labor to make their widgets... competition and free trade has obviously hurt the American worker, but helped the Chinese, the Indonesians, the Vietnamese etc

the chart in the op shows the US worker is producing more widgets per hour, and more profit dollars for the business but are not getting paid more for producing more....

 

[The Rabbi]

and since the competition in Labor includes the GLOBAL market the past few decades, where lots of cheap labor is available there has been no need to compensate the US worker because business can just go overseas and get cheaper labor to make their widgets... competition and free trade has obviously hurt the American worker, but helped the Chinese, the Indonesians, the Vietnamese etc

the chart in the op shows the US worker is producing more widgets per hour, and more profit dollars for the business but are not getting paid more for producing more....

The chart is a lie.
But yeah, all work is sent overseas. No one is working in America anymore.

 

[Shanty]

I'll leave you with a thought that I know from first hand experience: government run entities are often run cheaper, with better service, than private ones.

No, there is nothing government entities do that they do more efficiently than private ones. You are lying and misinformed.

No. I'm not a conservative, so I have no need to be a lying conservative.

And try to use some reading comprehension before you take a badly aimed shot. your misinformed mind needs to allow in some facts.

Here's a great example... Health care. It's been done cheaper by Medicare as the payer, than by the private sector as the payer. Why? Part of it is lower administrative costs for Medicare. Another is that there is no profit motive for Medicare, while private companies tack on costs to make a profit to keep shareholders happy. Another is that advertising costs are lower for Medicare, while private insurers are on TV asking for your business. And yet another difference is that private insurance execs have bloated, unnecessarily high salaries that Medicare doesn't have. And Medicare has a far more effective means of price negotiation than insurance companies do. Medicare does this all cheaper, while taking on the highest costing demographic of oldster who's bodies are breaking down and such.

 

[Shanty]

and since the competition in Labor includes the GLOBAL market the past few decades, where lots of cheap labor is available there has been no need to compensate the US worker because business can just go overseas and get cheaper labor to make their widgets... competition and free trade has obviously hurt the American worker, but helped the Chinese, the Indonesians, the Vietnamese etc

the chart in the op shows the US worker is producing more widgets per hour, and more profit dollars for the business but are not getting paid more for producing more....

The chart is a lie.
But yeah, all work is sent overseas. No one is working in America anymore.

The chart isn't a lie. Wages are easily historically on the BLS website. So can productivity measures by the DoL.

But with your statement... You would be real pissed at Reagan if it were true, for selling us down the river.

 

[The Rabbi]

I'll leave you with a thought that I know from first hand experience: government run entities are often run cheaper, with better service, than private ones.

No, there is nothing government entities do that they do more efficiently than private ones. You are lying and misinformed.

No. I'm not a conservative, so I have no need to be a lying conservative.

And try to use some reading comprehension before you take a badly aimed shot. your misinformed mind needs to allow in some facts.

Here's a great example... Health care. It's been done cheaper by Medicare as the payer, than by the private sector as the payer. Why? Part of it is lower administrative costs for Medicare. Another is that there is no profit motive for Medicare, while private companies tack on costs to make a profit to keep shareholders happy. Another is that advertising costs are lower for Medicare, while private insurers are on TV asking for your business. And yet another difference is that private insurance execs have bloated, unnecessarily high salaries that Medicare doesn't have. And Medicare has a far more effective means of price negotiation than insurance companies do. Medicare does this all cheaper, while taking on the highest costing demographic of oldster who's bodies are breaking down and such.

Yeah the Medicare is more efficient has been debunked many times. Their fraud ratio is out the roof compared to private companies.
So of course you're lying. You're a liberal. That's what liberals do.

 

[Shanty]

No, there is nothing government entities do that they do more efficiently than private ones. You are lying and misinformed.

No. I'm not a conservative, so I have no need to be a lying conservative.

And try to use some reading comprehension before you take a badly aimed shot. your misinformed mind needs to allow in some facts.

Here's a great example... Health care. It's been done cheaper by Medicare as the payer, than by the private sector as the payer. Why? Part of it is lower administrative costs for Medicare. Another is that there is no profit motive for Medicare, while private companies tack on costs to make a profit to keep shareholders happy. Another is that advertising costs are lower for Medicare, while private insurers are on TV asking for your business. And yet another difference is that private insurance execs have bloated, unnecessarily high salaries that Medicare doesn't have. And Medicare has a far more effective means of price negotiation than insurance companies do. Medicare does this all cheaper, while taking on the highest costing demographic of oldster who's bodies are breaking down and such.

Yeah the Medicare is more efficient has been debunked many times. Their fraud ratio is out the roof compared to private companies.
So of course you're lying. You're a liberal. That's what liberals do.

Boy... You can't even make an honest statement, can you? I guess you think it's ok to cover your lies with more lies? Weird.

 

[Care4all]

and since the competition in Labor includes the GLOBAL market the past few decades, where lots of cheap labor is available there has been no need to compensate the US worker because business can just go overseas and get cheaper labor to make their widgets... competition and free trade has obviously hurt the American worker, but helped the Chinese, the Indonesians, the Vietnamese etc

the chart in the op shows the US worker is producing more widgets per hour, and more profit dollars for the business but are not getting paid more for producing more....

The chart is a lie.
But yeah, all work is sent overseas. No one is working in America anymore.

you are such as dufas!


the chart is not a lie, it's a KNOWN fact with lots and lots of statistics to back it up....

productivity(what the worker produces per hour for the employer) of the American worker has gone up, while wages have not proportionately.

that's a fact, jack.