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Here's an example of redistribing that our government is practicing.
Close down profitable companies, outlaw their product, then get the product from China. Then we send money(tax dollars) to them to make that product and they send it to us because that's what our government demands we do. They call it supply and demand. It is to bring more of us down and bring more of china's workers up. Balance the playing field by FORCE.
Let's give 50 billion of our tax dollars to buy cook stoves for third world countries, sell it to them so they use less carbon credits. Then take the carbon credits saved and sell them to another country to a factory that now will be allowed to pollute more for a price. We pay the bill and get nothing for it. The seller of the carbon credits that would be the international climate exchange which makes out like a bandit for all it's investers. Al Gore and his crony buddies.
Now we have redistributed America's money from all tax payers and nothing to show for it. And they are just getting started on this agenda. So they will continue to tax everyone and everything to lower our standard to redistribute the wealth.
So really this is the bigger picture of income re-distribution.
I'm going to assume that you're not incredibly rich simply because the probability that you're incredibly rich is also incredibly small.
But more or less, this is the base of my argument. To people who make $20k a year, $1k is worth more than $1k to people who make $100k. I can guarantee you that $1k means more to you than $1k means to Bill Gates.
$1k to someone in poverty means whether they can pay for car insurance; whether they can pay for day care so they can go to work; whether they can buy healthy food rather than junk. $1k to Bill Gates is whether he should buy a new suit.
Yes, but the dems have defined rich as anyone making over $250k. That's nowhere near Bill Gates rich. And those people are targeted for significant tax increases.
And there you go again...making assumptions about what $1000 means to me...how do you know me and what I've been through and how I treat my money? $1000 means the same to me now as when I made 1/10th as much a few years ago. I treat it as such and I act accordingly. That is such a b.s. argument about why I should more willingly part with my money.
I am so careful with my money, buying on sale, going without stupid items...it is too, too painful to work that hard and then watch it totally squandered by Congress on stupid sh*t we know doesn't do any good.
It's not about taxing people more anymore. It's about reining in the ridiculous spending of the last decade which only seems to be getting worse.
So far nobody has come close to justifying income redistribution. There have been a few emotional responses that basically said that it just isn't fair that a minority makes so much more than the majority. This isn't an argument, it is an emotional plea.
If you feel (notice I didn't say think) this way it is because you simply don't understand economics. What you are describing is a natural phenomenon that will always take place when liberty and free trade exists. Notice every game of "Monopoly" eventually ends with winners and losers.
Let me state again for those who didn't bother to read the thread, I am not talking about who should pay for public infrastructure like police and military. I am talking about taking massive amounts of money from one group of people and giving it to another. See the article below.
As far as your subjective opinions about who in your eyes "earns" money and who does not; none of that matters. If you inherit a huge corporation and do nothing but sit on a beech in the Bahamas sipping Mhi Thais the fact remains that the company is your legal property and you have a RIGHT to the proceeds produced by that company. And the employees have a right to the amount for which they agreed to work and not a penny more. If a guy agrees to mop a floor for $8 per hour, it has nothing to do with whether or not the owner makes $100M per year. He is entitled to exactly $8 per hour.
And even if the company was inherited and the guy did nothing to earn the company, someone in his family did earn it by building the company. His family paid their taxes and they bequeathed the product of their earnings to their child. While we may all be jealous, it is illogical to suggest there is anything wrong with a person leaving their children the fruits of their labor.
Furthermore, your opinion about what type of work constitutes "earning" is irrelevant and nonsensical. If you own a roofing company and stand around on the job sight with a cup of coffee while supervising others humping shingles, that is your prerogative as the owner of the company. Who is working harder simply doesn't enter into the equation. The profit belong to the owner of the company and the agreed upon wage belongs the the employee. If the employee makes $15 per hour and the owner makes $30 on the labor you produce that is perfectly fair. In fact, that is what makes the business profitable. Anyone who feels otherwise has never built a business and has no idea what goes into it. Again, this is emotion, not logic.
Now as far as capital gains - this is largely a BS issue. Capital gains from stocks is a highly risky way to earn money and the government doesn't issue refunds when people lose money. When we hear stories about guys making $10M per year from stocks it is only on paper and there is no actual cash income. If we tax capital gains as if they are ordinary income there is practically no incentive to risk your money. Plus, much of the time the stock is purchased with money that has already been taxed once. When you raise taxes on capital gains, you remove all the incentive to invest.
So, I guess I'm still waiting for a remotely logical argument for the justification for income redistribution.
The fact is, the 'how much this money means to you' argument fully dies when I see my coworkers (all of whom make WAAAAAAY less money than I do) buying stupid sh*t and wasting their money every day. They eat out every day, they have outrageous cell phone plans, they buy new cars every five seconds, and clothes, make-up, ATVs, motorcycles, etc, etc...none of which I would EVER do.
They don't have the dollar sense god gave a banana, and I'm supposed to feel bad for making more and wanting to keep more of my money? I don't think so.
The fact is, the 'how much this money means to you' argument fully dies when I see my coworkers (all of whom make WAAAAAAY less money than I do) buying stupid sh*t and wasting their money every day. They eat out every day, they have outrageous cell phone plans, they buy new cars every five seconds, and clothes, make-up, ATVs, motorcycles, etc, etc...none of which I would EVER do.
They don't have the dollar sense god gave a banana, and I'm supposed to feel bad for making more and wanting to keep more of my money? I don't think so.
I love how your anecdotal evidence is supposed to describe all of the working class. Show me some actual statistics to show how wasteful people are. I know plenty of thrifty people that do nothing but work because housing and transportation is still overpriced and wages have been stagnant for 3 decades. They brown bag their lunch, drive beaters, go to goodwill. Plenty of responsible people out there as well.
Most Wall street execs don't have the dollar sense god gave a banana (otherwise we wouldn't have our current economic mess), even after 4 years of college, yet they get paid millions. Justify that.
I love how your anecdotal evidence is supposed to describe all of the working class. Show me some actual statistics to show how wasteful people are. I know plenty of thrifty people that do nothing but work because housing and transportation is still overpriced and wages have been stagnant for 3 decades. They brown bag their lunch, drive beaters, go to goodwill. Plenty of responsible people out there as well.
Most Wall street execs don't have the dollar sense god gave a banana (otherwise we wouldn't have our current economic mess), even after 4 years of college, yet they get paid millions. Justify that.
Well, given that I meet 40 to 50 new people every day, I think I have a good idea about what the general public is up to. My wife works in finance and did public banking and loans for years, and she has an idea, too. I've volunteered with the underprivileged and poor for almost 20 years. I think we have a good bead on what's the exception and what's the rule.
I never said Wall Street greedmongers with no common sense (or plenty of common sense and evil intentions) were ok. That's just the other spectrum of nonsense and b.s. And again, these aren't the hard-working business owners, docs, lawyers, etc, that make around $250k...you single out the evil-doers the media tells you about - NOW who's going by anecdotal evidence?
And no matter how evil and greedy some Wall St people are, NO ONE forced anyone to take a home loan that they couldn't afford. That was driven by personal greed and, again, financial sense subpar to that of a banana.
Well I'm not for forced income redistribution via government taxes.
I did find this though as a reasoning for it..you end up with "utopia" for all.
Sadly though it's an academic dream and not much thought given to consequences of forced taxation of higher earners to be redistributed to lower earners.
In reality..47% of Americans pay no Fed Income Tax (via refunds/credits).
Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax - Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1 - broken link)
"About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization."
And here's what academia thinks will happen with mandated income redistribution: Income redistribution - Conservapedia
"Socialists believe that increased redistribution and consequent reductions in inequality lead to better outcomes for individual welfare and freedom. Likewise, Professor Richard Layard has argued that "in societies where income differences between rich and poor are smaller, the statistics show not only that community life is stronger and people are much more likely to trust each other; but also there is less violence – including substantially lower homicide rates – health is better and life expectancy several years longer, prison populations are smaller; birth rates among teenagers are lower, levels of educational attainment among school children tend to be higher; and there is more social mobility. In all cases, where income differences are narrower, outcomes are better.""
If anyone should explain anything, it should be explained to you (the OP) just how much you seem to blatantly pis* on the American worker. It only takes a few to create business and opportunity. It takes millions of people to keep these businesses and opportunities prosperous. Go ahead and keep cheap labor in China only to receive cheap, recallable products here. See how well that's gonna work out for 'us'.
Why don't you justify your blatant disregard for the backbone of America... it's working 'class'.
We all know what justifies "income redistribution", if it truly exists at all. We fund social programs to support the lower classes at a subsistance level in order to maintain economic stability. Capitalism requires some level of stabilitiy in order to thrive. Food riots in the streets, crimes committed by desperate people, etc.; all are easily reduced by a small redistribution of income. It's the price capitalists are willing to pay to continue in prosperity.
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