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We hear endless complaining from all the "progressives" and Left-leaners here that some "one per cent" -- sommewhere - is getting a disproportionaate share of the "nation's" wealth, and that it should e "redistributed".
I would love to hear some to these delusionists tell us all exactly how you would accomplish this.
To begin with, the Constitution doesn't permit seizure of the lawful property of an honest citizen without "due process of law". "Rule bythe peple" can't be allowed to degenerate into rule by the mob.
So we'll just tax those high incomes -- right?
Except that those who are self-employed, or have a share in a growing buisness (partnership, S-corp, etc) often can formulate strategies to drive the incomes of those enterprises down when taxes go up.
On the other hand, the guys anfd gals with mortgages and growing families usually have no choice but to give it everything they've got -- which puts them in a higher tax bracket where they have no choice but to pay a disproportionate share of the freight.
But what about Bill Gates, or Sergei Brin, or Jeff Bezos .... or so many of those "villains" on the Forbwes 400?
The wealth of a lot of these individuals is usually represented by the high value of common stock in an enterprise they created.Until they sell and actually realize any gain (and the value of that stock would drop considerably if the Lefties rattle thir sabers too loudly).
I fully understand that the American econmy is stagnant; that is mostly due to the fact that our real heavy industry can't compete in many global markets -- and that is due to the burden of too much regulatiory, environmental, and egalitarian dreams. We can afford the basics everyone agress upon, but there are limits.
so go ahead, you guys and gals over there on the left side of the aisle; tellus how you woulld "right" what you perceive to be a "wrong" without a field day for the shiftless and irresponsible who take advantage of what was intnded tfor the truly disadvantaged
Because what we've got right now clearly is not working.
Most of the spelling errors look more like typos to me. But a good way to give the pendulum a start back in the right direction would be to stop voting for Republicans and other economic nitwits.
People in general don't even seem to remember that
none of the fruits of nature's bounty come with price tags.
It's man that puts on the price tags.
It's man that corrupts dealings and hoards to the detriment
and subjugation of others. What has been allowed to transpire
cannot be sustained because eventually, the top cards on the
deck will fall - while the bottom stands.
Tax all income the same....interest, capital gains, dividends. Why is interest the only one taxed at the marginal tax bracket??
Eliminate tax favored treatment for corporations. Why does GE, Boeing, and a host of others pay ZERO taxes while small business gets taxed at the marginal rate??
My favorite is the Augusta National tax break. If you own a second home you get to tax free rental income for renting less than 14 days. For Augusta this is about 40-100 thousand dollars in income.
Go to a tax code that treats everybody the same. FAIR. No breaks for the rich or corporations. I don't think that's punishment. BTW......I confess to being a Palinista.
Do you think it is fair that President Obama is in a lower marginal tax bracket than my 25 year old daughter??
So far, all that's been posted are the usual rants about "tax breaks for the rich" (no specifics) and a few partisan jabs.
But let's examine just one -- capital gain.
Capital gain treatment is designed for the protection of the person who develops a small business, or a farm, sees the result of his/her effort payoff over 20-40 years, then cashes in. Inflation (which is still perking along at 3-5%) overstates the gain and pushes the individual into a higher tax bracket.
Same thing happened to people on the lower rungs of the employment ladder back in the Seventies; the so-called "progressive" tax laws automatically pushed them into higher brackets and confiscated a large portion of salary increases.
To be fair, a tax system not only needs a uniform rate; it needs to be based upon consumption rather than income.
The problem isn't with taxes per se (which most people are effectively clueless about), but rather with the tilted distributions of wealth and income that current tax structures help to promote and perpetuate. There are HUGE differences between what people think these distributions are and ought to be on the one hand, and what they actually are on the other. In the real worlld the wealthy have far, far, far, far more income and wealth than what everybody else thinks they have or ought to have. The wealthy are simply painting everybody else into economic corners. That's the problem.
First, "the 1%" term needs to die, because too many in that group are just normal people without much influence. Most of the skewed wealth and income over the last 40 years has been concentrated in the top .1%, and especially the top .01%. But in reality it is probably only a handful of people in that group.
It makes little sense to try to "punish" them or tax them, since they have the means to figure out how to avoid it. Rather we should undo the policies that caused our our wealth gains to be captured by a few people in the first place.
The core issue has been our perpetually large trade deficit due to an artificially boosted US$, via interest rates, tax cuts, fiscal deficits, loose credit, and unilateral trade policies with certain countries (like Japan, Mexico, and China). This has made it a no-brainer for companies to invest in overseas production rather than domestic, and simply import the goods into the US, greatly increasing their profits. This has depressed domestic investment and wages, and resulted in a huge increase in fiscal and private debt.
If we get back to trade parity, the US will be a good place to invest again and we will grow industries where we have a natural competitive advantage.
The other is the truly insane amount of financial BS going on. The finance leach has been sucking up about 2x as much of our wealth relative to GDP as the historic norm.
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