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Basically prices for goods will increase. That's what I'd said.
But can't you see that income taxes being cut out would make it very good? Without taxes on gasoline and all other taxes that the federals charge it appears to me that we would all be better off. Of course, one has to realize what would happen to many prices without unseen taxes being applied since they are no longer paid. I guess you know about the rebates that everybody gets for housing, clothing, food, medicine and other necessities to remain alive.
I never got excited about the Fair Tax until I did some real reading about it. Try it, you might like it,too.
Last edited by roysoldboy; 12-11-2010 at 09:11 PM..
Of course hard work is important, but most of the rich are also very lucky. You need luck AND hard-work to be rich. The problem with setting taxes is that people just assume that the rich's wealth is proportional to their effort. I don't think that's true. I think it's more like after a certain amount of effort, you need luck to be super successful.
That's why I think the rich needs to have more taxes. It accounts for the luck factor.
The book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about how people become successful.
Luck is the residue of hard work. Your argument is one I hear often from people who think they are smarter, or more hard working than people who are more successful than themselves, but really are not.
I don't like the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax is moving in the right direction, but it places too much of the tax at the end of sales. Taxing products along the way with a VAT is more efficient and less susceptible to abuse. Putting a huge sales tax at the end sales of a product is a disincentive to buy products. With a mix of a VAT and sales tax, we can keep the tax lower instead of putting a 23% sales tax on everything.
I really don't know how many taxes are added on by manufacturers and retailers before we buy anything but without them, as in the Fair Tax, things will be cheaper before we buy them. I don't see any way to compare a VAT to the Fair Tax unless you think that the Fair Tax is just a flat tax, which it surely isn't. Study the Fair Tax system at http://boortz.com and see if you have been reading it right.
So you think Monopoly requires just as much skill as chess?
I'm not rich because I'm only 20 and I'm just a student at a Top 30 (worldwide) university. However, I'm intimate with someone who makes around $500K per year. I'm friends with someone who just bought two new Mercedes convertibles. I'm not sure if those people are "rich" but they definitely are wealthier than 99% of Americans.
Luck had a lot to do with how they become rich or at least their current lifestyle.
I've never said that I'm an expert. That's why I recommended Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.
Have you ever heard of a random number generator? That's pure luck. The existence of pure randomness can be proven.
My point is not to make a statement about current tax rates, but to say that the concept that everything is determined by hard work is wrong. I just can't stand how the Republicans say that the rich get all their money from hardwork without any luck. Life is unfair, we should accept that rather than pretend that life is fair.
Life is unfair so we should tax the hell out of people who were lucky enough to become rich by whatever method. Is that what you are saying here? I think I would like to know the name of that top 30 university that you attend. I wonder if I could learn something about the place if I knew what it is.
Why did you strive for a hotel management position instead of an investment banking VP? If everyone can do the same thing, and if you were willing to try your best then why didn't you work at an investment bank?
I think I know a few reasons.
You didn't go to a magnet school because your parents couldn't afford the 30K per year for a private school.
You didn't get into the top private universities because you couldn't afford them and didn't have the chance in high school to get really good grades (you were probably working during the summer when some classmates went to Brazil to volunteer).
You might have had community college education but the top investment banks don't hire from CCs.
You didn't get an MBA (last chance for IB) because you didn't get a BA from a top school and you couldn't afford the 200K tuition.
Basically, you had no chance of working at a top investment bank and earning $1M per year as a VP. I just proved that "we all can do the same thing IF we are willing to do" is false.
I wonder how many of the top college athletic coaches in this country would have been real successes in investment banking. I also wonder how many of your bankers could have been top coaches. i am listening to one of those coaches, who is retired now, as he talks about basketball and can't believe how much more he knows about the game than any of your investment bankers.
Yesterday I heard from a very wealth man named Jon Huntsman, Sr. He is very wealthy and has been broke more than once. He is too honest to be a really successful investment banker so I guess the fact that he has given over $1 billion to charity makes him an idiot. He did not attend one of your hoity toity colleges but he has made so much money by doing business so honestly that others know they can trust him. He plans to give all his wealth, that his children (9of them) haven't been awarded, to charity so I guess he is really stupid.
Luck has been involved with Huntsman's success but he has made most of his luck, himself.
I am just trying to tell you that not all wealth is made by investment bankers, even if that is what you plan to be.
lol... isn't the notion of taxing the rich an essential small penis/loser syndrome?
Should good looking people be curbed to two dates per year, since ugly people feel left out/envious?
I think enmity towards the rich simply stems from envy, or infantile notions/concepts of fairness. Granted, economic inequality is a bad thing if at too high a margin, but the hate the rich attitude just stems from envy, nothing more nothing less.
There is a good chance that most people who seem to hate the rich do so because they have been influenced by people who want to redistribute their money. I am talking influence by socialist thinkers. Most of them don't really understand the words about what do we spend when we have spent all the money that the wealthy have? What do we do when they run out of money? I don't even want to think about a time like that.
For some reason the ideas of "class warfare" seem to have captivated too many people's thinking. That class warfare is what the people in the White House are so interested in promoting.
why should i have gone into investment banking? what is wrong with the hotel industry? hilton made his money in the hotel industry, as did many others. one does not have to have the best education to make themselves rich though, take bill gates, he dropped out of college, dave thomas never went to college, neither did sam walton or colonel sanders, or many others who made themselves rich, and NONE of the ones i mentioned were investment bankers.
and why so you think that only investment bankers can get rich? you have an extremely myopic view of the world.
I think you are talking to a college student who desires to be an investment banker.
The Fair Tax doesn't make sense. A simple VAT with sales tax could be done with lower taxes and no gimmicky food rebates or rebates for the poor. Putting a 23% sales tax on products is a turn off.
One more time. Study the Fair Tax and then compare it to a VAT. As far as I know the only people who want a VAT are left leaning politicians, and, of course, you.
It's also about being smarter. Smart people can figure out more ways to make money than stupid people. How do you tax that?
Forcibly take some of the results of their success and give some to the stupid people.
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