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I will agree with the others here and think this post would be better served to be relocated to the Politics and Other Controversies forum. But, in anticipation of that move, I will now offer my counterpoint to the OP.
The left in this country frequently serves up the canard that "income is redistributed upwards away from the middle class." The fact is that the upper classes, in fact, all of us earn money, irrespective of occupation. We earn it because it is a manifestation of our labor. That is your money: you have earned it. And, by extension, that labor and effort is tantamount to your personal property, which takes various forms: homes, cars, etc. This to me seems to be so elementary in scope, that I can't believe that some still can't comprehend it. The dimunition of your labor comes through the form of income taxes. That is where the redistribution element comes into effect. A government, is in effect, seizing that portion of your effort, and redistributing it to whatever the philosophy of the office holder of what political stripe is in office at such time. This is the doctrine of socialism: that your life and your labor must be dilluted for the benefit of general society. I reject this doctrine strongly. I believe that one should be able to keep as much money as they earn, and that all persons should be subject to an equal income tax, and that this tax should be limited to military, defense, courts, and transportation. We have become so conditioned to accept the premise of a progressive income tax. It's actually regressive. It makes no sense.
Income is a product largely of your mind. You have a right to it. In my view, if you truly believe in personal human liberty, you must answer this question: Yes.
This is where a proper view of taxes becomes important. Part of the problem in America today is that people don’t really view taxes for what they truly are: unpaid labor for the state. Most people are so used to paying their taxes (many times not even seeing them, as they are deducted automatically) that this reality is blurred. You and I pay a certain percentage of our annual wages in tax. What this really means is that we spend that percentage (if you are middle class, between 30 and 35%) of our year working directly for the state and not ourselves or our families. Furthermore, we don’t really get to decide what happens with the labor we do for the state. We get to vote about this or that spending bill from time to time, but at that level, we are so far removed from any real control over how the product of our minds is put to use that it is almost negligible. More realistically, the product of our labor is handed to a government official who then gets to decide what is in my, and society’s best interest. I have never been comfortable with this pact. And believe me, contrary to what you might think, I am not opposed to taxation, but I am against a centrally autonomous government (controlled by few) bureaucracy which presupposes that what is in my personal interest, or an entire society.
I understand this philosophy is becoming increasingly unpopular these days, but I am hopeful one day that this collectvist philosophy will reverse course.
Actually, that depends on how you define "responsible." If you look at the so-called Northern War of Aggression, you'll see that South Carolina fired the first shots at Ft. Sumter.
thats because they were being invaded by a foreign power.
the side that doesnt fire the first shot is the stupid side. you never want to fire second.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s my mother never earned more $50,000 per year. And yet she sent me to private schools and then onto Stanford. Apart from a $500 per quarter Pell Grant, she paid for all of it. Beyond providing me with an education, she took us on annual European vacations and on annual Christmas vacations which rotated between Florida, the Caribbean and Colombia. She bought a home in Westchester County, New York and a vacation home in Rhode Island.
I was curious tonight and looked up my old high school's current tuition. It is now running $36,900 per year. That's 30 times more than when I was there. Stanford tuition now runs $12,460 per quarter or more than tuition, room & board, books combined ran for a full academic year when I attended. Four years of Stanford now runs more than $200,000.
To replicate my mother's feat, I would now need an income of $500,000. How is this progress?
What prompted all this is that I have been focusing more and more on the topic of income inequality. I was shocked and dismayed to learn that 74 percent at the nation's top 146 colleges and universities now come from families in the top quintile of income. And just three percent come from the bottom quintile. At the state-funded University of Virginia, just eight percent of the student body comes from the bottom half of income distribution. In short, the Sonia Sotomayors and Michelle Robinsons are increasingly a rara avis in the nation's top schools.
Rich households in the United States have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries, but nowhere has this trend been so stark as here in the United States. As of 2008 the average income of the richest 10 percent is $93,000 the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10 percent of the US citizens have an income of $5,800 per year - about 20 percent lower than the average for OECD countries.
That's income. Wealth is even more highly skewed. The top one percent control about a third of total net worth and the top 10 percent holds 71 percent. By comparison and on average in the rest of OECD, the top 10 percent have just 28 percent of total income.
Now for the truly shocking. I was reading Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference by Alberto Alesina and Edward Ludwig Glaeser. In terms of social mobility, being born in the bottom half in the United States is a life sentence of poverty. You stand a better statistical chance of becoming wealthy if you are born poor in Italy than you do in the United States.
Now consider rates of entrepreneurship. A 2005 survey showed that 28 percent of Americans would like to own their businesses. That compares to just 15 percent of Europeans. Yet Americans, it seems, are deferring their dreams while Europeans are living theirs. 14.7 percent of Europeans are self-employed while just 7.3 percent of Americans are self-employed. What's more, the rate in the United States is actually declining. In 1994, 9.1 percent of Americans were self-employed.
This is to me all quite startling and befuddling because Ronald Reagan, who remains an adored figure by American conservatives, won the Presidency in part by claiming that the GOP was the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich. But the facts demonstrate quite the opposite. Reagan's policies were nothing more than a redistribution of wealth upwards away from the middle class. By allowing the minimum wage to fall below the poverty line, he single-handedly created the working poor. The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line in 1979 was 11.7 percent. It is now 13.2 percent.
Your mom likely had additional income (child support? parents? trust-fund?).
Also, normalized for inflation, your mom was making a good wage back in the day.
Can you provide the statistics about social mobility? There are tons of prominent Americans that grew up < middle class. Bill Clinton, Oprah, Ronald Reagan...
Big problem in the US is a desire to excel at x-box and blunt rolling....and not being some "loser nerd" that studies all the time. We have a culture of stupidity where education is not valued.
Location: The Land Mass Between NOLA and Mobile, AL
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thats because they were being invaded by a foreign power.
the side that doesnt fire the first shot is the stupid side. you never want to fire second.
Ok captain, I'll go there. I do not find it surprising that you have this contrarian point of view. For most people, to say that the South's act of secession was illegal is not controversial--the Union was within its rights to be iin SC, because secession was illegitimate at best, illegal at worse. For you, apparently this question is still controversial. That said, Lincoln wanted to avoid war if he could--that's why he didn't fire first. You can find out about this by reading Lincoln's papers, many of which are available online.
What I do find surprising is that you, presumably a northerner, would make this antiquated argument, which is really an apologia for the South's behavior in the 19th century. I mean, it is 2009 and all.
Ok captain, I'll go there. I do not find it surprising that you have this contrarian point of view. For most people, to say that the South's act of secession was illegal is not controversial--the Union was within its rights to be iin SC, because secession was illegitimate at best, illegal at worse. For you, apparently this question is still controversial. That said, Lincoln wanted to avoid war if he could--that's why he didn't fire first. You can find out about this by reading Lincoln's papers, many of which are available online.
What I do find surprising is that you, presumably a northerner, would make this antiquated argument, which is really an apologia for the South's behavior in the 19th century. I mean, it is 2009 and all.
thats good that you can declare the south's action of secession illegal and then justify a war that killed around 700,000 Americans. i dont think thats legitimate and i am not the only one. calling my argument antiquated is just a sad tactic to try to marginalize it but many people agree with my argument.
if the south wanted to secede, what right does the north have to butcher southerners just to keep them in the same union as the north? the south had just as much right to secede as America had a right to revolt against the English. anyway, it would not have been my wish that the south secede frome the union. however, if we are to celebrate a leader who "kept the union together" (as is the reason we are taught to worship lincoln in grade school) then he should have done it without killing 700k Americans. if ever there is a time for diplomacy, its before butchering your own people. keeping the union together at that moment wasnt worth it. lincoln is no more than a bloodthirsty animal. you have countless liberals crying for diplomacy in relation to the middle east and iraq and yet they couldnt care less about the killing of americans.
Location: The Land Mass Between NOLA and Mobile, AL
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thats good that you can declare the south's action of secession illegal and then justify a war that killed around 700,000 Americans. i dont think thats legitimate and i am not the only one. calling my argument antiquated is just a sad tactic to try to marginalize it but many people agree with my argument.
Quote:
if the south wanted to secede, what right does the north have to butcher southerners just to keep them in the same union as the north? the south had just as much right to secede as America had a right to revolt against the English. anyway, it would not have been my wish that the south secede frome the union. however, if we are to celebrate a leader who "kept the union together" (as is the reason we are taught to worship lincoln in grade school) then he should have done it without killing 700k Americans. if ever there is a time for diplomacy, its before butchering your own people. keeping the union together at that moment wasnt worth it. lincoln is no more than a bloodthirsty animal. you have countless liberals crying for diplomacy in relation to the middle east and iraq and yet they couldnt care less about the killing of americans.
Can you cite some sources, please? I can. See Kenneth Greenberg, James Cobb, James Ayers, and Robert Fogelman, for starters. I've got dozens more. Each of them talk about how secession differs from the revolution, mainly because the southern states signed on to the Constitution in 1787. The colonies, in contrast, did not sign any such contractual (or constitutional, for that matter) and legally binding document with England.
And I am still not sure how to reconcile your claim that Lincoln "was a bloodthirsty animal" with your claim that only losers shoot second that you raised when I pointed out that the South shot the first shots of the Civil War. Was Lincoln supposed to let the South shoot on Union soldiers with impunity? You have expressed your beliefs in self defense elsewhere at length, even going so far as to post pictures of weapons. In what logical universe was the Union Army supposed to have not defended itself from southern aggression? How can Lincoln be both a loser for shooting second and a bloodthirsty animal who bears sole responsibility for the Civil War? I really don't get it.
Finally, I characterized your claims as antiquated because they are similar to those made by southerners in the 19th century. Again, see the sources listed above for verification--all have written books published by university presses. I think it is fair to say that a 200-year-old line of argument is antiquated, but others may disagree. But if I had a piece of furniture, say, that was 200 years old, I would probably call it an antique. Why not apply that same criterion to a line of argument?
are you guys on crack? Healthcare reform is a good idea, Stop expecting the government to pay for everything from college education to healthcare!
We are "supposed" to be the richest nation on the face of this earth yet we can't provide for our sick......we have 12 billion dollars a month for bombs for Iraq however we sit at 38th in the WORLD in providing healthcare while nations we consider to be "lesser" than us are managing to provide their citizens with national health care programs that provide better care than ours. Our leaders have lost focus on the fact that they are there to provide for the safety and welfare of its people.....its an absolute disgrace that there are 38 other countries on this planet that have found health care systems and a way to pay for it while we have 50 million people who can't afford to see a doctor. Whats wrong with us that we can see suffering yet turn our heads and allow the suffering to continue ? Finally......if I am facing a serious life threatening illness I don't want to have to worry if I can "afford" to pay for treatment.......I don't want my doctor to have to call an insurance company and ask what the limits of my policy is........how can anyone have faith in a health care system thats first piority is to insure a healthy profit for the insurance company ?
We are "supposed" to be the richest nation on the face of this earth yet we can't provide for our sick......
i dont understand why someone even makes such a meaningless statement. how does this plan solve this problem in a positive manner? its just a bunch of political corruption. most people in america are satisfied by their health coverage. why should we create a whole new system for the small amount of people that arent happy? reform is fine, but we dont need a complete overhaul and government takeover.
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We have a culture of stupidity where education is not valued.
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