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You argue as is if there's a right answer, when I argue that there isn't. You claim that those who disagree with you make some error in logic, when I claim it's possible they argue using a different basis for utility. Until you address those issues, you'll be arguing at cross-purposes. I think a better start for the arguments would be to establish a common starting point and then move forward. I think you'd find considerably more success convincing someone of your ideas or at least find out while you'll never agree.
Also, don't make the mistake of thinking that because some conservatives use "fictional power fantasies of Ayn Rand" that all conservative thought is equally shallow. There are plenty of right-leaning intellectuals, especially in economics.
There may not be a single right answer, but there are definitely wrong answers (or non-answers). A bunch of people repeating "b-b-b-but they earned it!" to any criticism, with no further explanation, are not arguing in good faith; they're just grasping for reasons to feel good about the fact that they're benefiting from exploitation. In the old days, the Powers That Be at least justified their position as divinely granted. Modern oligarchs can't even be bothered to muster that level of specious reasoning.
And I'm not trying to convince these people; you can't use logic to dissuade someone from their faith in themselves. I'm trying to convince the other people who can realize how dumb these arguments are.
A lot of individualism bootstrap bravado coming from the dispossessed in this thread....You know, siding with the wealth-siphoners simply because you aspire to be one will not make you one. Optimism-bias runs rampant in America.
The premise of the first sentence is a paradoxical inject. Nobody is seriously suggesting ramping up spending is gonna solve our problem. The point made is that if we're on such a road to hell, how come the upper crust is making out like bandits off the very system supposedly going to hell for everybody? Answer, the world is going to hell for you, not for them. You'd see that if y'all weren't spring-loaded to seeing red at the generic premise of having to take care of the unproductive amongst you, when it is merely the opportunity cost for having the law and order that allows you to live the American day-to-day "walk to mcdonalds, meet your friends at the movies, log on to your online anything, go to bed and the power still on tomorrow, watch 18yo kids die for you in Afghanistan thru an LCD and it feels like watching a movie" you so take for granted. Stop being so myopic. This whole "earn your own dime maaaan" might sound cute and self-righteous but it's disconnected from reality. It's not about physically earning a dime, it's about civil order, it's bigger than you and your paycheck, IF you value the life of the unproductive amongst you as equal to your own that is (yeah, stare at that mirror).
Life's not fair, humans are not equally productive, material affluence is NOT a moral quantifier (ergo poverty isn't either). Either publicly state you approve of death and hunger in the street for the unproductive or quit the internet outrage and S.T.F.U and pay your taxes. Actually, stop defending your lords and demand they pay their taxes, since they're the ones most effectively circumventing it. Stop daydreaming about becoming one of them at the expense of your less aggressive neighbor.
I like the Chris Rock mantra. You know: "when ya make 30 million, and yo wife want half? No probl'm ....u ain't starvin'.... but when you make 30 THOUSAND....and you wife want FIFTEEN?! You might have to KILL 'A!!! " If I toil and make 250K/yr (remember, the physical exhaustion(y)/labor return(x) curve is NOT linear, it's logarithmic with a positive mathematical limit on y-axis) and society wants to tax me 50%, I ain't starving, I'm still a boatload of sigmas above the median individual income, thence I still live in comfort for my troubles. It's the cat within one sigma of the median income that feels the pinch of taxation...Put simply, these statistical outliers ain't hurting, and if you were one or at least had the ability to empathize (FAIL in this thread) you'd see that.
I say heck yeah for 1 thru 10. Stop drinking the kool-aid. Remind yourself about the theory of marginal utility. The closer your lower-tier maslow needs are to your last dollar the more screwed you are with taxation. These cats in question have their last dollar buried so deep in the cayman islands, even their blow and eastern european hooker habit (higher end needs eh? ) don't come close to them. Unfair/inequitable/uncomfortable as it may seem to not get to buy your toys with the money you "earned" might be, I'd take my ability to wake up and walk outside my dwelling and not find Cali Colombia in every street of this country as a righteous opportunity cost to validating some well-to-do aggressive from having the ability of splurging on his third toy and vacation home. This country needs a labor party like a fat guy needs Gold Bond going up a hill in a Louisiana summer.
Brilliant post and you made me laugh. "Bootstrap bravado". Whole lotta that going on. On this Forum and in the US.
You're jealous of people with EBT cards? Oh man, I've gotta laugh....
I'm grateful that I'm a good deal more than half smart and I had a bit of money to get me started in life.
So why don't y'all drive by some low rent trailer parks or your local municipal project this Sunday? Feel sorry for yourselves because those places are filled with folks who "can't" but wish they "could".
At least you have a car. They most likely do not.
Or it isn't insured. And when they drive it, they'll get thrown in jail and lose that they were trying to get to that day.
A Christian Nation? Well we are not. We aren't even a nation that attempts to make any motions in that direction.
Read the Sermon on the Mount. Have a nice Sunday.
When I think of the bastion of "bootstrap bullies" and Ayn Rand loving Christians I have but one phrase
You understand what few others do. We are not all created to be millionaires, and if you were; be careful; cause there's someone with more just waiting to snatch that from you.
Er, what? Where did he get the stock? It's a mix of compensation (income, taxed at 100%) and cap gains (taxed at 100%), and his interest and dividends are also taxed at 100% as income. The only way he spends $100mil is if he acquired that much without any income or investment gains.
In the meantime his $75B in wealth has been taxed away as he received it as compensation so it doesn't exist in the first place.
Gates got that stock because he founded the company. He wasn't paid in stock. You have no clue do you how people like Gates and Bezos became wealthy?
Basically YOU want a massive wealth tax, not a massive income tax.
How is it fair to tax him at a higher rate than you or I, just because he is more financially successful?
It actually seems more fair to charge people without any income a minimum tax since they are still getting the benefits of the government services, in fact usually more of them.
If you read my posts - I do NOT think it is good practice to tax someone like Gates punitively. I was just trying to explain to FrankMiller how his ideas are futile.
There may not be a single right answer, but there are definitely wrong answers (or non-answers). A bunch of people repeating "b-b-b-but they earned it!" to any criticism, with no further explanation, are not arguing in good faith; they're just grasping for reasons to feel good about the fact that they're benefiting from exploitation. In the old days, the Powers That Be at least justified their position as divinely granted. Modern oligarchs can't even be bothered to muster that level of specious reasoning.
And I'm not trying to convince these people; you can't use logic to dissuade someone from their faith in themselves. I'm trying to convince the other people who can realize how dumb these arguments are.
First, my original comment was not directed at you, but rather at both sides of the thread. You may understand the nuances of your own arguments, but there are nuances to both argument that are clearly not being understood by everyone.
I don't quite see how someone would claim that they didn't earn their money. Generally companies earn money by selling a finished product or service that costs less than the inputs necessary to create it. I would consider someone who does that has earned whatever money they gain from such a process. Do you disagree with this? If you do, what would you consider earning? Do you subscribe to the labor theory of value?
It's another topic, and as yet seriously discussed in this thread, the implications of what the obligations of someone who earns money is to the society that allows them to earn that money. Certainly most enterprise would be difficult without civilization, but one of the fundamental questions I raised was how much does an individual owe to society. Self-consistent arguments could be made for anywhere between a fixed individual contribution and a fixed amount per person after contribution. Clearly the "b-b-b-ut they earned it" crowd tends toward the former and you toward the latter.
I don't quite see how someone would claim that they didn't earn their money. Generally companies earn money by selling a finished product or service that costs less than the inputs necessary to create it. I would consider someone who does that has earned whatever money they gain from such a process. Do you disagree with this? If you do, what would you consider earning? Do you subscribe to the labor theory of value?
Well, I think an important part of the issue is, how much should leverage be compensated? If you buy a plot of land in town, and it turns out that your plot contains the only source of fresh water in the community, does that entitle you to ownership of the town, or to enslave everyone around you? If you buy land that needs to be worked, do you have the right to employ people at slave wages, or with literal contracts of slavery, to work that land? I think that society doesn't really work, if you allow property rights to be superior to human rights. Everything just devolves into an undemocratic might-makes-right scrum.
I find it very curious, furthermore, that conservatives have no problem with wealthy people making laws left and right to take wealth from society at large and funnel it into their private prisons or police protection for their mansions or army expeditions to force their way into new export markets. Yet, for some reason using laws to move wealth in the other direction or even just to prevent wealth thievery is suddenly unethical. What it boils down to is "whatever I want to do is ethical and what you want to do is unethical because I said so nyeh nyeh." The whole edifice of civilization is built on laws to say who gets what, it's not suddenly unethical when it doesn't go your way.
But anyway, I've clearly put more thought into conservatives' arguments than they have. There was a time in my life when I tried very hard to be a conservative, but like most high school libertarians I eventually realized that numerous inconvenient facts made my position untenable.
Well, I think an important part of the issue is, how much should leverage be compensated? If you buy a plot of land in town, and it turns out that your plot contains the only source of fresh water in the community, does that entitle you to ownership of the town, or to enslave everyone around you? If you buy land that needs to be worked, do you have the right to employ people at slave wages, or with literal contracts of slavery, to work that land? I think that society doesn't really work, if you allow property rights to be superior to human rights. Everything just devolves into an undemocratic might-makes-right scrum.
I find it very curious, furthermore, that conservatives have no problem with wealthy people making laws left and right to take wealth from society at large and funnel it into their private prisons or police protection for their mansions or army expeditions to force their way into new export markets. Yet, for some reason using laws to move wealth in the other direction or even just to prevent wealth thievery is suddenly unethical. What it boils down to is "whatever I want to do is ethical and what you want to do is unethical because I said so nyeh nyeh." The whole edifice of civilization is built on laws to say who gets what, it's not suddenly unethical when it doesn't go your way.
But anyway, I've clearly put more thought into conservatives' arguments than they have. There was a time in my life when I tried very hard to be a conservative, but like most high school libertarians I eventually realized that numerous inconvenient facts made my position untenable.
Basically what you don't understand is that wealth is not just "there". It is earned by the risk takers and the people of talent. What people like you need to do is bow down and be thankful that the people of talent, wealth, creativity, virtue, and productivity build a magnificent world so that the envy-ridden collectivists can try to figure out how to steal what they cannot earn.
You have obviously never owned, designed, or run a business. If you did, you would be ashamed of your views.
Fortunately the virtuous and productive are OK with dragging people like you up from the depths of envy. A rising tide raises all ships. And even the jealous barnacles residing at the deepest base of the hull get a boost!
Is that your argument? That Bill Gates is the most talented person at Microsoft by a factor of a billion? He's not taking advantage of any systemic issues or leverage advantages, he's just super-talented?
Edit: P.S., you aren't one of the talented genius ubermench, you're a schlub like us (except that you're an apologist).
Basically what you don't understand is that wealth is not just "there". It is earned by the risk takers and the people of talent. What people like you need to do is bow down and be thankful that the people of talent, wealth, creativity, virtue, and productivity build a magnificent world so that the envy-ridden collectivists can try to figure out how to steal what they cannot earn.
You have obviously never owned, designed, or run a business. If you did, you would be ashamed of your views.
Fortunately the virtuous and productive are OK with dragging people like you up from the depths of envy. A rising tide raises all ships. And even the jealous barnacles residing at the deepest base of the hull get a boost!
Ptf!!! Get over yourself!
I don't give a damn how much money anyone makes. The income on the tax return does not make the man. There are people in this world who don't care about being wealthy. They simply want to live a comfortable, middle class life. The issue is the American Dream of a comfortable middle class life is evaporating. It was stolen by greedy right wing plutocrats.
I don't owe the 1% a thing.
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(yeah, stare at that mirror). 
) don't come close to them. Unfair/inequitable/uncomfortable as it may seem to not get to buy your toys with the money you "earned" might be, I'd take my ability to wake up and walk outside my dwelling and not find Cali Colombia in every street of this country as a righteous opportunity cost to validating some well-to-do aggressive from having the ability of splurging on his third toy and vacation home. This country needs a labor party like a fat guy needs Gold Bond going up a hill in a Louisiana summer. 
