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Originally Posted by Fear&Whiskey
This was a very eloquently written piece and I loved the ananlogy between chequers and chess. But I have to ask, if only around 2.7% of the entire American population are millionaires how can taxing millionaires do anything but help rebalance the economy? What am I missing here?
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Thanks ... and let me correct myself here ... I really didn't mean just Millionaires .. as the mantra coming from the left has focused on the more broad term of "wealthy" ... which based on most public discourse, includes everyone with income over $250,000 per year. We've seen that figure tossed around repeatedly, including the pledges to not raise taxes on anyone making less than that amount (which is a bold faced lie).
Now, to the average working stiff that may earn anywhere from the $30,000 - $100,000 range, $250,000 may seem like a grand fortune ... and to be honest, I would love to be in that income category myself. However, $250,000 really does not describe the "wealthy" in this country ... comfortable ... maybe even privileged ... but not wealthy. And many of these $250K folks operate small businesses that employ dozens, and even hundreds of people. Their revenue may be in the Million or several Million dollar range, but a lot of business profits range from 5-12% ... so someone with a business that generates 2 Million in annual revenue may only see a net of $150 -$250K ... but employ dozens of people earning $30-50K. This is the life's blood of the economy, and when you attack that group with higher taxes, you stifle that segment, and you ensure that they won't grow, but will retract .. or become leaner and smaller. It's disastrous for an economy to have this segment hampered with taxes and regulations and mandates.
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Originally Posted by Fear&Whiskey
To me it makes more sense to look at things as a redistribution of wealth from the working-class to blue collar class to the middle class up and quite frankly anyone who hasn't already being ensnared in the trap of industrial fallout, repression in wage inflation and rising living costs is way ahead of the game as far as the average American is concerned anyway. Who surely has far more vulnerability in wondering how he is going to confront life should he have an accident to work and disrupt his paycheque to paycheque stability.
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Redistribution of wealth is a fraud. When the wealthy (I mean the truly wealthy, and not the upper middle class) run the country, you can take it to the bank that whatever propositions are proposed will not effect them, as they pretty much dictate economic policy. Secondly, redistribution of wealth from a tax standpoint is an even greater fraud, because it never results in economic advancement of the working class .... NEVER. It only results in more money for a combination of expansion of government and wealth being redistributed from government to the economic interests that dictate government policy ... be it the financial sector or the military industrial complex, and now, with ObamaCare, to the pharmaceutical and medical industry.
When you attach greater taxation to the mid level businesses as being proposed now, there are only a few things that can happen, and they are all negative in relation to the working class. Either the increased costs to that business are passed on to the consumers (meaning the working folks pay it) ... the businesses balances that additional costs by reducing their workforce (meaning loss of jobs for that working class) ... or if those businesses were just barely profitable to begin with, they may be forced out of business, with all of the jobs and tax revenue lost. None of these things benefit the working class.
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Originally Posted by Fear&Whiskey
Can't say I'm feeling dewy eyed for the millionaires just yet. But as regards multi-national corporations I think you have made an excellent point. But the bulldozer that demolishes any hope of a balanced economy is the elephant in the room that is corporation tax.
Apple alone evades billions in taxes every year and this is money that is disappearing through the ether of opportunity that could be re-invested in America's future and the kind of publicly funded innovation that put Apple in the enviable position whereupon it was able to step in and feed itself record profits from the hard work of publicly funded innovation such as the Internet. You don't re-invest in society you get what you deserve I'm afraid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/bu...pagewanted=all |
You're dancing all around the problem, but haven't quite allowed yourself to embrace the bottom line reality yet. You're close though. Believe it or not, Apple is a small player in the greater scheme of things, but they just show the symptoms of the larger issue. With appropriate laws and regulation and tax policy that required Apple and many other home based corporations to either manufacture a significant percentage of their products at home, or not be allowed to market them here (as many countries demand) this could be the source of manufacturing jobs, and an overall boom for our economy that would turn things around immediately. But Apple by itself, could not survive and thrive unless all it's competitors had to play by those rules .... from GE to Ford, and everywhere in between. They could still manufacture off shore for supplying foreign demand for their products, but for domestic sales, they'd have yo make the products here. And they'd do just fine profit wise ... they just wouldn't be making the grossly obscene profits they're making now, by utilizing slave labor overseas.
You don't fix this problem by simply increasing taxes on them ... because they'll just pass on those increased costs to consumers, and you'll have "fixed" nothing .. except increase revenue to the government gangsters that will in turn redirect it to other institutions. Read: redistribute wealth to the wealthy beneficiaries of that increased revenue ... again, straight out of the pockets of the consumer.
We did not get 16 Trillion in debt (which is also a phony figure given that over 16 Trillion was distributed by the FED between 2008-2011 in off book transfers to foreign banks and financial institutions, and not accounted for in that national debt figure), and an economic crisis we have now by having too many dollars going to "social programs" as many on the right contest, while the left keeps pushing for more of those social program dollars. These so-called social programs are literally revenue mechanisms, where the vast majority of those dollars are redistributed to the transnational corporations too. It's the justification used by these financial terrorists to continue increasing the debt ceiling, allowing the FED to continue creating vast amounts of funny money that do not make it to the general economy, until the greatest amount of value of those dollars have been drained out of it. And so-called "stimulus" money, and "quantitative easing" is another mainline stream of wealth flowing to the crony capitalists, with 80 cents of every dollar winding up in their pockets.
The reality is, "government" itself has become a giant mechanism of wealth extraction from the people by the financial gangsters and the transnational corporations that own the government, with government being the weapon used for "legally' robbing us blind. And every time the public buys into this fraud of creating another tax or another government program, we're just providing additional ammunition for that weapon.
This relationship between the financial establishment, the transnational corporations and government MUST BE UNDERSTOOD. Once that reality is embraced and fully recognized, it will become obvious that the only way to stop this looting is to drastically reduce the size and scope of government, because government is no longer serving the interests of the people, but serving the interests of the MEGA WEALTHY. Feeding the beast more in the form of new taxes is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what needs to be done.
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