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No not really. I consider investment income (taxed at 15%) income gained from taking a risk, and willing to loose money. This can provide capital to businesses, and in turn help create jobs. I am fine with investments being taxed at 15%. If someone is living off investments, than their is a good chance their total tax contribution to services recieved is pretty high.
I have more of a problem in excess use of services and not paying anything for them. I would be open to exhempting those is dire financial situations, but when almost half of wage earners pay no income tax, their is a problem.
So you are one of those who believe that money earned through investing, while sleeping or sit around the pool sipping martinis is sacred and should be taxed lower, while money earned by people getting up in the morning and toiling, is less valuable and should be taxed at the ordinary income rate?
Sorry, I don't see the basis for that. We used to have a 40% capital gains rate and we had no shortage of investors willing to take risk to earn a profit.
Well you have completely stated the Republican argument. You don't care how much money that a rich person pays even if it is less than what you pay...because they all deserve it. From your point of view it is down right immoral to even suggest that a person that has a disposable income of 100 million a year pay one penny more in taxes, while at the same time saying the people who are barely able to pay their electric bill should have to pay more.
Maybe what the problem is that we have different morals. My morals dictate that those that are part of a community should be helped when help is needed and deserved and those that are in the best position to give that help should do so. The Republican propoganda machine has actually gotten people to believe that these morals are outdated.
I doubt that I will ever convince you that you are wrong. Maybe life will.
Despite the obvious moral problems with your theories. There is also an economic problem to your theory. If A majority of the wealth of a country is held in the hands of a few, the country will collapse even with the best brainwashing techniques.
No my morals just fine. I belive in charitable casues and helping others. I belive in community responsiblity. However, I don't believe that expecting people to pay their way is too much to ask. I did not say that someone making alot of money should not pay more. However, if someone is paying 15 milion on a 100 millipon dollar investment income, why should htey pay more? So it can be redistributed? They are already paying more for a specific set of services. Your telling me that 15 million isn't enough? Your rationale is, oh....life is bad for others, we need their money to help others out.
What about consequences for bad choices that people made? No accountibility?
There is plenty of money to go around, I don't believe that only a few control most of the wealth. Wealth is constantly created, it is not static and set at one amount.
I did not say that, but I don't think it is a horrible idea for people to be responsible, and accountible for bad decisions. I think we can find a better balance then what we see now. It is fine that those who are better off pay a litltle more, which is what they do...but to asolve any responsiblity to others simply becasue it is uncomfortable is not right either.l
I think Krugman has nailed the divide that exists.
Quote:
One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.
The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.
So you are one of those who believe that money earned through investing, while sleeping or sit around the pool sipping martinis is sacred and should be taxed lower, while money earned by people getting up in the morning and toiling, is less valuable and should be taxed at the ordinary income rate?
Sorry, I don't see the basis for that. We used to have a 40% capital gains rate and we had no shortage of investors willing to take risk to earn a profit.
I simply disagree, if I want to risk my captial in a business, that I have a much greater chance in loosing it(regardless if I sit a pool all day), should be taxed based on the risk I am taking. What risk is there for going to work every day? How many people actually loose their job on a daily basis as compared to how the mkt goes up and down. WHy the hell should the Govt get 40% on my smart investing if I make money. Oh yea, I forgot, the individuals don't build business, without the help of the GOvt., so they need thair cut.
It is unfortunate that you fail to understand capitalism. You are a success of our leftist media, who has launched the class-warfare offensive in an attempt to swing the whole country to the left.
Over the last five years, they have paraded out a long line of "experts" who give out statistics that the middle class is disappearing, when, in fact, even the welfare class in this country is fat and overfed, own cars, live in apartments and homes that are the envy of the middle class just one or two generations ago. Yet, "the middle class is disappearing! the middle class is disappearing! the rich are taking everything away from us!". It is a media with an agenda that totally ignored the rise of China by continuing to preach a "peace dividend" and other garbage at the end of the cold war. Of course, the "peace dividend" was another intent to extend the dependent class in this country and expand an already over-reaching federal government.
And you have totally bought it.
There must be a term in the medical journal of abnormal psychology for what ails libs.
It was the unions, and there liberal democrat partners in government, who created those unsustainable union contracts, that have given states like California an unfunded liability of $500 billion for their public sector union benefits.
This is nothing more then the bill coming due, for decades of irresponsible politicians and their public sector unions voting themselves bloated pensions and benefits plans.
Ever since they won control of the House of Representatives and several states in 2010, they have launched an unprecedented assault on working American's and the poor. They've attacked union bargaining in several states, cut or eliminated promised retirement benefits, laid off thousands of government workers, failed to offer a jobs program of their own beyond cutting taxes for the wealthy, tried to eliminate health and safety regulations, defunded education and turned some states into virtual corporate fiefdoms by parking corporate bureaucrats right alongside the state agencies which regulate them (see: Oklahoma). Along the way, they've promised to eliminate health care options, cut off aid to the poor, "privatize" Social Security and defund various regulatory bodies. They're promising "you people" little more than scraps from the tables of the elites.
In August, they will nominate a candidate who represents the worst excesses of the modern day Era of the Robber Barons which has been responsible for the virtual annihilation of the middle class and the outsourcing or off-shoring of our jobs. He's a man with a history of slashing and burning American jobs in the name of corporate profitability.
And then, they have the audacity to try and make us believe that what's good for the elite is good for us.
Don't be shrill and over the top. It's a referendum on Keynesianism, which has proved to have no answers for the economy.
There is plenty of money to go around, I don't believe that only a few control most of the wealth. Wealth is constantly created, it is not static and set at one amount.
If that's what you believe then you don't know what you are taking about:
What about consequences for bad choices that people made? No accountibility?
The government isn't about expecting accountability. That's why the same entity (the government) bails out those who've repeatedly made bad life and financial decisions, as well as the banksters who gave loans to the uncreditworthy which subsequently defaulted.
No accountability for your actions. Here's the taxpayers' money. Exorbitant deficit spending and record national debt ensue...
I simply disagree, if I want to risk my captial in a business, that I have a much greater chance in loosing it(regardless if I sit a pool all day), should be taxed based on the risk I am taking. What risk is there for going to work every day? How many people actually loose their job on a daily basis as compared to how the mkt goes up and down. WHy the hell should the Govt get 40% on my smart investing if I make money. Oh yea, I forgot, the individuals don't build business, without the help of the GOvt., so they need thair cut.
Yup, you don't deserve what you earn because somebody else made it happen, and you owe them for as much money as they get away with taking from you.
According to CBO, top 50% income earners close to 70% federal income taxes
Bottom 50% income earners, pay just over 30% federal income taxes
THis is nuts...if the Govt wants more revenue, why not more of a balance in taxes?
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