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It helps if you have ancestors who got free land under the Homestead Act, and it also helps if you inherited assets which enjoyed a 1000 percent step-up in tax basis.
My high school GF got a $1M insurance/inheritance windfall (i.e. untaxed) on her 18th birthday and bought a house on the Jersey Shore. Last I checked a few years ago it was worth $1.5M.
So basically, greed is good and everybody else can simply rot in hell because such greed has absolutely no influence on the lives of anyone else. Yes, it's a vacuum we live in, ladies and gentlemen. Cause and effect have been abolished.
Our economic system is unbalanced. One person can end up with the value of the labor of a billion others and all is considered right with the world. The millions of people who do nothing but receive from the rest of us were created by the wealthy, not the government. It is the selfishness of the wealthy that made so many people worthless and ultimately hopeless. In order to maintain the status quo, to maintain the giant vacuum that the wealthy elite represent, the poorest had to be given scraps. If they were left alone to complete despair, their numbers would crush the elite.
I would argue that you roy are not in the top 1% and that you have been brainwashed like so many other generations of people by the elite to form judgments that counter your best interests. Just as so many think it's OK for corporations to reap record profits and not be subjected to any kind of regulation, so too do we find many people who want the wealthiest to continue to do their destruction on the world. They hold that one person can be equal to the value of ten million others and they think such a natural imbalance is not only sustainable but also commendable! Bravo to the person who gets everything in his/her corner!
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the government should be helping any able bodied person by giving them freebies that discourage them from lifting a finger. We collectively should only help those who are in situations that are not of their creation (disabled by accident, exposure, or genetics, unemployed by layoff, etc).
But what choice do we have when our economic system rewards people disproportionately? Just because someone makes a lot of money doesn't mean they are worth it nor does it mean they have worked hard nor does it mean they have any value to the collective. Our economic system distributes a fake measure of value (money) along lines that have nothing to do with real value or amount of labor involved. It is this imbalance that needs to be addressed, not the abandonment of the lower class to fend for themselves in such an unfair system, not the demonization of people put in circumstances that they have no control over.
. News flash: The elite have already taken what we all have!! Why continue to support that?
I was thinking about a reply to what you say that really didn't discuss any f my points and all of a sudden out jumped those words that turn my stomach every time I see them. First you said that the worth of a man with wealth to the COLLECTIVE not important and that word is a real tip off to what one is thinking when it is used in that context.
Then you came in with these words: Our economic system distributes a fake measure of value (money) along lines that have nothing to do with real value or amount of labor involved. It is this imbalance that needs to be addressed, not the abandonment of the lower class to fend for themselves in such an unfair system, not the demonization of people put in circumstances that they have no control over.
Now where do I read those words so often when I go to certain websites?
I was thinking about a reply to what you say that really didn't discuss any f my points and all of a sudden out jumped those words that turn my stomach every time I see them. First you said that the worth of a man with wealth to the COLLECTIVE not important and that word is a real tip off to what one is thinking when it is used in that context.
Then you came in with these words: Our economic system distributes a fake measure of value (money) along lines that have nothing to do with real value or amount of labor involved. It is this imbalance that needs to be addressed, not the abandonment of the lower class to fend for themselves in such an unfair system, not the demonization of people put in circumstances that they have no control over.
Now where do I read those words so often when I go to certain websites?
I have no idea because I wrote them myself from no influence other than my personal experience. I don't surf the net for economic theory or visit websites devoted to any one of them. If someone else came up with a similar phrase, then clearly great minds think alike.
I didn't specifically discuss any of your five points because all five of them are the same thing using different words. I was in essence referring to them together when I mentioned how wrong it is to support the elite and their greed by promoting the idea of a dog-eat-dog world, something I think I quite clearly do not support.
And the bolded portion above in your post doesn't make sense to me so I can't respond to it directly. Although if you're implying that the word collective is a code word for communism, that was not my intent. I'm thinking of society as a whole and I mean that word in that context.
Last edited by mhouse2001; 03-05-2012 at 11:44 AM..
I know someone who inherited a house 20 years ago and sold the house at the top of the bubble. Who worked for the money in the windfall?
Those of us who had to pay the difference between what those houses bought and then sold for, and also now those of us who pay bankrupting property taxes on houses they can't sell at any price.
I fall into BOTH categories, and had to EARN the money to buy housing at market rates, or rent and lose there too. Now I might be able to sell at a fire sale and REALIZE the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars that I earned and paid massive taxes on. And I'm not alone.
1. Yes you can. Its directly tied to your second line. When corporations and people are paying less taxes or through subsidy, then the entire tax base must pay for that. You can legislate people out of poverty, its called education spending, and its actually proven to give the tax payer their highest rate of return on investment.
2. When one person has had the breaks of paying 15% taxes, then yes, they are getting an unfair advantage. The middle class tax payers are left with the bill for them, and the poor. The middle class gets screwed, no government assistance, and no tax breaks.
3. In a country where imminent domain is the rule of law, then everything belongs to the government first.
4. Yes, you can multiply wealth by dividing it. Haven't you heard of "diversifying your investments"? You never put your eggs in one basket. The more investment by more people, the more jobs are created. The situation we find ourselves in now is that a small group of people can invest, most people can not, and that cuts the wealth creation, not increasing it.
5. Who said that half the people don't have to work? I'd like to see where only 150 million Americans are working. Unemployment is less then 10%, and long term added to that is likely 15%. That means that around 85% of people are working.
You missed the boat on this one son.. You do realize you, in some odd way, described a communist rule?
You missed the boat on this one son.. You do realize you, in some odd way, described a communist rule?
Well first, I am not your "son", secondly, care to elaborate?
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