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The Constitution states that one of the purposes of government is to promote the general welfare. The income tax was created as one way of helping to accomplish this. Since you are arguing from the position of someone in a higher tax bracket, Trump's tax cuts for the rich should be swelling your coffers. Yet still you complain. You'll have to excuse me but I'm fresh out of sympathy.
In other words, you want a flat tax across the board and what you'd REALLY like is to pay a smaller percentage than you would even under a flat tax. You apparently have decided that amassing a fortune is the most noble outcome of life in a democracy. If you want to go back to the Constitution, nowhere does it state that a system of unbridled greed must go hand in hand with democracy.
In our society we have fallen into the trap of equating wealth with morality. The more money you have, the better a person you are. Those who are poor must be "bad" people or at the very least, stupid ones. This false paradigm gets cited more and more often as we go up the economic scale. Unfortunately for those in the upper income levels who love to cite such things, it's a lie. A rich man is not inherently a better person than a poor one. Many times the wealthy - especially the uber wealthy - shed integrity like a snake shedding its skin each time they climb another wrung higher up the ladder.
It is not a crime if you can't afford a Cessna and a wealthy man does not deserve a free ride anymore than a poor one does. And please don't even try to tell me that the wealthy do not benefit from all sorts of government welfare programs tailored just for them. Go speak with the CEO's at the "too big to fail"financial institutions who ran this country into the ground with their highly questionable if not downright illegal lending practices. The resulting Great Recession put working class families out on the streets while the bankers took their obscene profits and salted them safely away in off shore banks. To add insult to injury, they got astronomical bonuses for bringing the institutions they worked for to the brink of bankruptcy and never - not once - were they brought before a court of law and made to pay for the consequences of their actions.
Go ahead and defend them. I won't.
Thanks for conceding up front that your refusal and the refusal of people like you to pay for the upkeep of our schools has resulted in the United States going to the end of the line when it comes to educating our children. Go out there and start a competitive business with China when your workers can't even run a simple computer program and see how long it takes before you've lost your market and your profits. The plain truth is that what you get out of something depends on what you're willing to put into it.
Go tell that hoary old story to Horatio Alger. If your pal got paid multiple times for a piece of property, he was engaged in a form of rent seeking - an endeavor of questionable integrity which we have come to foster in the latter stages of our system of rampant capitalism. In addition, you would have us believe that this meme of an American Success Story figured out how to profit buying and selling timber and real estate with the only knowledge under his belt being the multiplication tables. I call B.S.
Quit repeating yourself. I have already responded to these points above. The wealthy are benefiting hand over fist from tax breaks and programs designed to increase their already considerable income levels. Again, just look at what a sweet deal the wealthy are getting from Trump's tax breaks for millionaires. The wealthy do NOT have the market cornered on "willpower, perseverance, and ability." If you doubt me, just look at your president* who spends his days on the golf course and his nights absorbed in making childish complaints on twitter.
You hubris is actually rather amusing, but I prefer to get my comedy from Steve Colbert, thanks all the same.
Your imaginary argument was amusing to read, but nothing that you attribute to me is something that I actually said. You quoted my statements, but you still managed to twist them so that you had a valid counter argument. It's too bad that most of your counter arguments had nothing to do with my actual statements.
Interesting to see how much you hate the wealthy, though.
The Constitution states that one of the purposes of government is to promote the general welfare. The income tax was created as one way of helping to accomplish this.
CU grad?
The income tax was passed as a temporary 1% war tax to fund Wilson's stupidly awful entry into WWI.
Congress passed an income tax to fund the Civil War in 1861; it expired in 1872. The 16th should've been temporary as well, like the 18th.
The Constitution states that one of the purposes of government is to promote the general welfare. The income tax was created as one way of helping to accomplish this.
You make the classic reading comprehension error. The Constitution says "promote the general welfare of the United States" NOT "provide social welfare program benefits to the people of the United States."
Promote and provide have different meanings, along with your other miscomprehension.
Quote:
Go speak with the CEO's at the "too big to fail"financial institutions who ran this country into the ground with their highly questionable if not downright illegal lending practices. The resulting Great Recession put working class families out on the streets while the bankers took their obscene profits and salted them safely away in off shore banks. To add insult to injury, they got astronomical bonuses for bringing the institutions they worked for to the brink of bankruptcy and never - not once - were they brought before a court of law and made to pay for the consequences of their actions.
Go ahead and defend them. I won't.
Actually, they didn't do it. The Fed Gov did with regulatory mandates. Even former U.S. Representative Barney Frank finally admitted it on C-SPAN in 2013.
Hint: It has to do with the entities that needed a $2 trillion bailout. $1.76 trillion of that has still not yet been paid back.
Read how that happened, and the subsequent fallout:
Thanks for conceding up front that your refusal and the refusal of people like you to pay for the upkeep of our schools has resulted in the United States going to the end of the line when it comes to educating our children.
That's quite incorrect. The U.S. pays more per student for education than any other country. The REAL reason the quality of our country's public education system has plummeted is outlined in the following link. The dumbing-down began 50 years ago, it was intentional, and the reason why might surprise you.
The income tax was passed as a temporary 1% war tax to fund Wilson's stupidly awful entry into WWI.
Congress passed an income tax to fund the Civil War in 1861; it expired in 1872. The 16th should've been temporary as well, like the 18th.
LOL! Since you asked:
University of Colorado, Boulder, BA (with honors), MS
And you must be a grad from that private Colorado university known by all as a party school for the off-spring of wealthy parents who consider 4 years of hitting the slopes at Telluride and Aspen to be the equivalent of a college education. You have both my condolences and my promise not to reveal to others where you wasted 4 perfectly good years of your life. Or not.
Trivia aside -
Let us get to the root of the subject which would be The Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. In lobbying for adoption of the Constitution over the existing Articles of Confederation, the essays explain particular provisions of the Constitution in detail.
For this reason, and because Hamilton and Madison were each members of the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers are often used today to help interpret the intentions of those drafting the Constitution. I have changed the paragraph spacing to facilitate ease of reading comprehension and the emphasis added is my own.
Quote:
Federalist No. 30
Concerning the General Power of Taxation
From the New York Packet.
Friday, December 28, 1787
Author: Alexander Hamilton
IT HAS been already observed that the federal government ought to possess the power of providing for the support of the national forces; in which proposition was intended to be included the expense of raising troops, of building and equipping fleets, and all other expenses in any wise connected with military arrangements and operations.
But these are not the only objects to which the jurisdiction of the Union, in respect to revenue, must necessarily be empowered to extend. It must embrace a provision for the support of the national civil list; for the payment of the national debts contracted, or that may be contracted; and, in general, for all those matters which will call for disbursements out of the national treasury.
The conclusion is, that there must be interwoven, in the frame of the government, a general power of taxation, in one shape or another.
Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.
A complete power, therefore, to procure a regular and adequate supply of it, as far as the resources of the community will permit, may be regarded as an indispensable ingredient in every constitution.
From a deficiency in this particular, one of two evils must ensue; either the people must be subjected to continual plunder, as a substitute for a more eligible mode of supplying the public wants, or the government must sink into a fatal atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish.
Your desire to make income taxes a TEMPORARY expedient, SOLELY for the funding of military operations is the product of your own imagination, not the Constitution.
Last edited by Colorado Rambler; 04-16-2018 at 11:36 PM..
Reason: CD has a dirty mind when it sees "magna *** laude"
You make the classic reading comprehension error. The Constitution says "promote the general welfare of the United States" NOT "provide social welfare program benefits to the people of the United States."
Promote and provide have different meanings, along with your other miscomprehension.
FAIL (or as you people now scream "FAKE NEWS!")
You have made the tactical error of ascribing words to me that I never used.
Quote:
Actually, they didn't do it. The Fed Gov did with regulatory mandates. Even former U.S. Representative Barney Frank finally admitted it on C-SPAN in 2013.
Hint: It has to do with the entities that needed a $2 trillion bailout. $1.76 trillion of that has still not yet been paid back.
Read how that happened, and the subsequent fallout:
How about a REAL link that is based upon accurate information? Until you give us one, I am underwhelmed by your link to yourself to back up what you post - it's like having two mirrors standing exactly opposite from one another - an arrangement which always gives me headaches.
Quote:
That's quite incorrect. The U.S. pays more per student for education than any other country. The REAL reason the quality of our country's public education system has plummeted is outlined in the following link. The dumbing-down began 50 years ago, it was intentional, and the reason why might surprise you.
Your "new" link goes to an article published in 1991 - that would be 26 years ago. I don't know which is worse - linking to yourself or linking to information that is more than a quarter of a century behind the times.
Quote:
There's a lot going on about which you know nothing.
Well, at least we agree on that much. The number of things and the amount of what's going on that I am completely ignorant of boggles my mind. If only I could be HAL, the computer in "2001 - A Space Odyssey" or at least Doctor Spock. Alas, I am neither and stand guilty as charged.
Last edited by Colorado Rambler; 04-17-2018 at 12:29 AM..
We are not wealthy, but as our household income is (barely) over $100k, we pay plenty in taxes -- and, yes, it irks me when I find out we owe even more. However, the amount of the taxes wouldn't bother me so much if our taxes were not used so wastefully, to support people who are here illegally, and to finance wars that we can't win in order to make the rich even richer.
I also resent the fact that so many wealthy corporations pay NOTHING -- that makes me even angrier than any of the things I listed above.
You have made the tactical error of ascribing words to me that I never used.
The words are in the Constitution. Read it sometime.
Quote:
How about a REAL link that is based upon accurate information? Until you give us one, I am underwhelmed by your link to yourself to back up what you post - it's like having two mirrors standing exactly opposite from one another - an arrangement which always gives me headaches.
How is The Atlantic not a real periodical? How is the OECD not a real organization? When I post a link to their info/data, that doesn't somehow magically make them not real.
You're just cranky because you can't refute a thing I've said.
Quote:
Your "new" link goes to an article published in 1991 - that would be 26 years ago.
It was a big problem, then, and has only gotten worse. Have you seen the NAEP results I've posted?
Look at that data, and remember The Atlantic article about how our country's public schools were deliberately dumbed down beginning 50 years ago.
Are you a millennial? Here's more bad news for you...
Quote:
"This exam [OECD's PIAAC], given in 23 countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving. The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society.And U.S. millennials performed horribly...
But surely America’s brightest were on top?
Nope.
U.S. millennials with master’s degrees and doctorates did better than their peers in only three countries, Ireland, Poland and Spain...The ETS study noted that a decade ago the skill level of American adults was judged mediocre. “Now it is below even that.” So Millennials are falling even further behind.
Top-scoring US millennials – the 90th percentile on the PIAAC test – were at the bottom internationally, ranking higher only than their peers in Spain. The bottom scorers (10th percentile) also lagged behind their peers."
"U.S. millennials post 'abysmal' scores in tech, math, thinking ability, and workplace skills test, lag behind foreign peers"
I think EVERYONE should complain, since taxes are so imbedded in everything we earn or buy. Taxes are supposed to pay for services you get: infrastructure, a basic social safety net, police & fire, etc. Instead, now we are being brainwashed to think the Ruling Elite Class deserves half our income just because it is their due, as our Godly Rulers.
As for the "Safety Net," my parents and extended family, and my own family for 90% of my life, were all dirt poor--and none of us got a penny, EVER (since we didn't do stupid irresponsible things like have kids we couldn't afford). Now my spouse and I enter the declining health part of the workaholic lifestyle, and find that joke Safety Net is STILL RESERVED FOR THE IRRESPONSIBLE. Totally disabled with visible holes in every bone, dying of a rapidly progressing, incurable cancer and needing constant chemo gets you a whole 7 months of meager benefits immediately following the Stem Cell Transplant--after contributing over $400,000 in SS taxes alone. Appeals are denied without being read, with no reason given (tons of info submitted, and everything must be recopied every single time). Denial form letters look like they were written by a 2nd grader, and show they never even looked at the info sent. Apparently they won't even look at it until you've appealed into the Legal System and hired a lawyer (to repeat the same info submitted 20 times already), thus losing 1/3 of the disability amount--that was originally about 1/2 of what you needed to survive at all.
How a Big Government can take so much, and give back NOTHING to responsible people over their lifetimes is almost incomprehensible--for such an inept and corrupt organization, over my lifetime they've batted 1000 when it comes to rewarding the irresponsible and punishing the decent American.
I'm wondering if our Social Security numbers have an extra digit, a 0 or a 1, indicating if you are a taker or a maker--the level of efficiency is absolute perfection. Any hackers out there willing to change my "invisible" identifier?
I confess, already. I am a lowly millennial with abysmal thinking ability. I can't work and I spend all my time blotting out reality by becoming completely absorbed in Face Book and Twitter. I cheat to get food stamps that I buy only Twinkies with and on top of everything else, I'm an illegal from Mexico left hanging by the abrupt disappearance of DACHA. I voted for Hillary (illegally) in the last election and I get a disability check - a big fat one - from the gubbermint for an illness that I made up all by myself.
In addition, I moonlight as a welfare queen and have 3 illegitimate children by 3 different fathers. We all live in Mom's basement and my 4th little illegitimate illegal is on the way. That basement is getting pretty crowded, but I've got a stolen section 8 housing voucher that will allow me to live in a $3 million/month 20 room mansion in the land despised by all conservatives - California - San Francisco to be exact.
Me and my Afro BF have joined Black Lives Matter and are using it as a front to kill cops and old conservative males who live in Florida. I remain high 24/7 on a concoction of opiates, meth, and heroin that are supplied to me free of charge by the Mexican Mafia and my local MS 20 gang members.
Worst of all, I'm a democrat.
Please eradicate me before I break into your house and steal your collection of semi-automatics and your stashed gazillion rounds of ammo.
You'll be glad that you did. And you'll never be forced into tax payer slavery again because the good, REAL Americans who hate their fellows and would rather see an old lady die of starvation in the streets instead of getting a meal on wheels will now inherit the earth.
Nighty night and don't let the global warming monster crawl through any of your tax free windows.
My cousin works at a tax place and he tels me folks with big money seem to always be more bitter when they find out they have to pay more. Not aure what the proportion is. But is jt really crippling?
How do you feel about taxing some people at a higher percentage of their income than others....... while not taxing other people at all?
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