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Welcome to the free market, where the only thing all players have in common is greed and selfishness.
Something you said previously:
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But hey, its much easier to hold up the minority of the poor people with misplaced priorities and say that all poor are like that than to help out the silent hardworking masses that get overlooked.
Maybe their priorities are not that misplaced.
Working stiffs, work and work and do all the 'right' things, and still scrape by, especially in some places, barely making ends meet. What's the point of playing by the rules if the rules are stacked against you?
Working stiffs, work and work and do all the 'right' things, and still scrape by, especially in some places, barely making ends meet. What's the point of playing by the rules if the rules are stacked against you?
I have a theory.
Those working poor are working poor because they made a wrong step somewhere. At least in the eyes of the wealthy. Hence, the only way to know if you take all the right steps is if you end up wealthy.
The myth that anyone can be a millionaire is a false one and as soon as the MIDDLE CLASS recognized that they have been duped, the sooner they will demand more from our legislation and policies.
Generational income mobility has declined and is still declining. The rich have been quietly building their own little gated community up there at the top of the income ladder, making it progressively harder to get either into or out of that, and leaving the rest of society pretty much just stuck in its tracks. Be sure to support that repeal of inheritance taxes, by the way...
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Originally Posted by roseba
No. I think it is only applicable to look at countries that are similar to ours. I don't live in those countries. I live in this country. So one can only fairly compare with Western Europe, Canada, Japan and a few other countries. Any other comparison is ridiculous since we don't base our standards on the third world.
Just another diversionary argument-from-the-outliers variant. Our poor people are just whiners. Real poor people live in third world countries. Of course, the right-wing doesn't actually have any intention of doing anything for them either. It's all just an obfuscation.
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Originally Posted by roseba
Some are materialistic, some are not. But too many middle class are on a treadmill where they never get beyond the same economic circumstances they were born into. THE DATA SUPPORTS THAT. Unless YOU HAVE DATA to refute it.
Nope, no data. They might have some wooden-nickel anecdotes that they'll try to pass off as data, though.
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Originally Posted by roseba
If we can't pay rent and buy food and actually put money into SAVINGS, then we feel deprived!
Don't worry...the rich are busy investing so that benefits can trickle down on you like manna from above. Should start any day now...keep an eye out...
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Originally Posted by roseba
You need to pick your friends more carefully. I don't know people like that.
Neither do they. Just another caricature to appeal to.
Welcome to the free market, where the only thing all players have in common is greed and selfishness.
Levels of greed and selfishness are pretty much constants. Which is one reason why free-market capitalism is such an inappropriate and ineffectual model. No regulation, no oversight, no watchdogs. This is how you end up with things like S&L collapses, market concentration rather than competition, rigged IPO scandals, Enron, credit-card abuses, corporate pension wipe-outs, hedge fund abuses, real estate and credit market collapses, fifty million people without health insurance and on and on and on. We've basically run a 30-year experiment with laissez-faire free-market capitalism, and once it again it has failed the test miserably. We need to begin the return to managed capitalism very soon.
Those working poor are working poor because they made a wrong step somewhere. At least in the eyes of the wealthy. Hence, the only way to know if you take all the right steps is if you end up wealthy.
There is so much evidence stacked against that theory, that it doesn't hold water.
Levels of greed and selfishness are pretty much constants. Which is one reason why free-market capitalism is such an inappropriate and ineffectual model. No regulation, no oversight, no watchdogs. This is how you end up with things like S&L collapses, market concentration rather than competition, rigged IPO scandals, Enron, credit-card abuses, corporate pension wipe-outs, hedge fund abuses, real estate and credit market collapses, fifty million people without health insurance and on and on and on. We've basically run a 30-year experiment with laissez-faire free-market capitalism, and once it again it has failed the test miserably. We need to begin the return to managed capitalism very soon.
You say this as if the free market doesn't allow for failure and correction. The point of a free market is to allow the participants to view the successes and failures and give them the power to learn from past experiences. Failures create opportunities, given free entrance to the market.
By not swapping out effective rates for marginal rates...
$2,000,000 x .95 = $1,900,000 After-tax income = $100,000
$4,000,000 x .95 = $3,800,000 After-tax income = $200,000
Meanwhile, the actual effective tax rate in 2005 on the top 1% of income earners ($400K and up) was a little better than 21%. In 1996, it had been 27%.
At the same time, the share of all income that went to that top 1% in 1996 was less than 17%. By 2005, it had climbed to just under 22%.
What we've seen over this ten-year span is more and more income going to the top 1% who then pay fewer and fewer taxes on each dollar they receive.
Higher income...lower taxes. Just one of the reasons why it's been good to be in the top 1% of income earners...
So you are suggesting there be no marginal rates for "the rich", simply a flat 95% tax on all income? Great way to encourage any entrepeneurs not to live in the US.
Why do you think "the rich" pay less in effective taxes? Because they have a great incentive to bypass the system. Because our representatives line their pockets with breaks and loopholes. Create a 95% flat tax and see how many people wind up paying... or how many people wind up renouncing their citizenship and living in Belize or the Caymens for 2 weeks a year.
Would you care to describe for us what, to you, magaged capitalism is and how it should work?
It should be managed by the government, which will construct rules which benefit the interests of the representatives's friends and largest donors. One needs to look no further than Sarbanes-Oxley to see what a draconian system the government can create to benefit accounting firms at the expense of startup businesses.
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