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I think this shows the problem of authoritarianism. I disagree with the left on forced charity and subsidizing people who are able but unwilling to work hard, but then you have a lot of people on the right (I know a few personally) who agree, but also want population control.
A family member sometimes jokes that “90% of people are idiots who should just be shot in the head”. I know he doesn’t mean it literally, but I listen to his political views and the authoritarianism really comes out when he gets into that mindset. It’s a problem on the left and the right.
Bottom line for me is that you respect everyone’s rights as a human being. No authoritarian schemes.
Generally agree, about authoritarianism anyway (longest word of the day)...
But I don't see SNAP, for example, as "forced charity" or that assisting people out of work is "subsidizing people who are able but unwilling to work hard." Go from there to this about population control and no doubt we're getting awfully far from intelligent discussion related to the topic of this thread...
Per the highlighted, your college debt is actually debt incurred by gaming the federal aid system for money to live on, under the guise of being in college. You weren't just getting the minimum required aid for tuition, but going for max aid to pay for your (and your child) actual living expenses. You borrowed an income supplement to welfare for 15 years. I am shocked it is only $165k you owe.
Per the highlighted in red, yes, it is your fault. If you were legitimately physically disabled and unable to work, proving that to the roughly bazillion welfare agencies who give disability would have been no trouble at all. You chose to not do that and game the federal aid system for supplemental income. Why you chose that is something only you can answer, but I'd be curious to know what illness you have such that it prevents you from working or even attending school regularly, but doesn't pass disability clam muster. But you did indeed choose, and that makes it 100% your choice, thus your fault.
Oh wait, you did get SSDI after all. So what happened during those 15 years? Did the "illness" progress to a point where disability finally accepted it as an SSDI claim?
Anecdotes aside...
This is yet another program badly in need of significant overhaul.
Cutting federal student loans to save taxpayers money is not the best idea
Any decent poll would include at least a few other options to choose from...
Inheritance tax
Corporate tax
Tax on high income earners
Capital gains tax Sales tax...
Sales tax (a 25% national VAT like European countries have would work well in the US) is the only valid option, as clearly explained by many economists including the UC system's Peter H Lindert, PhD, in his book, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century. A VAT tax and other regressive forms of taxation like a flat income tax rate paid by all, etc., are the only ways to widen the tax base to generate enough tax revenue to fund massive, generous social programs without harming economic growth.
That is precisely the reason why European countries tax MUCH more regressively than does the US. Look at the chart. There IS a distinct pattern:
It's plain as day that the more regressive the tax system, the more progressive the social spending programs redistribution of wealth. And, conversely, the more progressive the tax system, the less progressive the social programs spending wealth redistribution. And that should be common sense. The fewer that pay a disproportionate amount of the tax revenue, the less tax revenue there is to spend on such programs.
That also, in turn, exacerbates income inequality, such as we see more in the US than in European countries. Another economist explains why that is...
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[Economist Anatole] "Kaletsky argues that over-reliance on progressive taxes creates "a perverse incentive for governments to promote income inequality. If the solvency of the state and the ability to fund basic services for the poorest people in society depends on the rich getting even richer, it is tempting for even the most progressive politicians to support widening inequalities."
Tends to be a bit of an issue for the poor people I think, and that's a lot of people. A serious problem...
Let them eat cake?
Once more, that misattributed quote was along the lines of all modern day liberal solutions. "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" was a "limousine liberal" solution for the food shortages in Paris prior to the French Revolution. The "problem" was that cheap bread the poor could afford was in short supply, so the bakers of Paris were ordered to sell expensive bread and pastries, like brioche for specific example, at the same price as cheap bread if they ran out of affordable bread. If they cannot afford cheap bread, then let them eat brioche.
The cheap bread shortage was, of course, caused by government because the crown had spread the military out far and wide under the combined reigns of Louis 14-16, and grain was being purchased below cost or outright commandeered to provide supplies to the military, to the point that grain prices went crazy, thus making cheap bread a huge profit loss for bakers, who chose to use their ever more costly flour on more profitable baked goods like brioche and other fancy pastry.
So government causes the shortage, then the price spike for input good, and how do they solve it? By blaming the capitalist and ordering them to operate at a loss, which ended up bankrupting many bakers in Paris, thus making the entire problem that much worse, like any proper government "solution" always does.
And this entire discussion is the same thing. The poor suffer from access to stuff they want for whatever reason, so what kind of force can we apply to the rich such that the gap between the two populations will close? And in the end, the exact same ting will happen as did in pre-Revolution France - less stuff will be available because you have declared that profit should be punished, which is not exactly motivating for people who produce excess in order to profit. Make profit painful, and they will cease producing excess. When that happens, shortages will happen, and the gap will be the least of your worries, as starvation drives the poor to all new heights of "activism."
I think that as long as there's a minimum standard of living (no families dying of frostbite in the street gutters), who cares about the wealth gap.
Affordable food
Shelter and heat in winter
Necessary healthcare
Honest justice system
That's all people really need.
That list of yours remains completely aspirational at this point....
The wealth gap gives too much power to a very select group. They have been using that power to increase their power to the point we see today where the very wealthy are picking and choosing who gets into power and how they vote once there.
We see just a handful a families subverting the the US, twisting our democracy and stacking elected and appointed positions with their lackeys.
Trickle down has been perverted into Trickle UP. Our system favors capital over labor at every turn.
Rewarding the holders of capital is fine, as long as it does not come at the expense of labor and that is precisely what it does today.
40 years of anti worker policies , employment at will, breaking unions, loss of pension plans, weakening social safety nets have resulted in the situation we have today. Ie the bottom 80% just hanging on and the top 0.1% having more assets than 150 million americans!
what we need is to restore some balance. Americans should not be working checkouts at 73 just because their medical copays are too high...
Workers are carrying all the risk, corps and the uber wealthy are hoarding all the wealth...
THAT IS YOUR FIRST MISTAKE.
Poverty is caused by money madness, not cured by it.
Wealth is not prosperity. Nor will redistribution of wealth end poverty. In fact, money is the cause of poverty, not the cure. If money was the cure for poverty, then let us permanently eradicate the “need for money,” by crediting everyone with 22 billion billion quatloos. Now, no one ever needs money again. They have more than they can ever spend. Does that end poverty? No. Even the starving children are phenomenally wealthy.
Unless the masses are laboring, producing, transporting and selling surplus goods and services, all that money is useless, worthless, and meaningless... and civilization collapses.
Prosperity is based on the production, equitable trade, and enjoyment of surplus usable goods and services. Doing more with less so more can enjoy is superior to doing less with more so few can enjoy. The only valid function of a medium of exchange is to facilitate equitable trade - of all that is available for sale - not constrained by scarcity of precious metals, debt-credit, or whatever is used for a money token.
Anything that impedes prosperity is contrary to good sense.
Unmet need, unemployment, underemployment, closed factories and retailers are the result of a lack of money impeding prosperity. And yet if everyone had "enough" money, the system would collapse.
And that sums up our maddening situation.
Might be your comment is one of those a bit too much to absorb in one quick read...
Beginning with my "first mistake," I'm not sure I agree, but there is no doubt it's time for me to sign off again for now, and your comment deserves more time than I can devote at the moment. Perhaps I can reconsider how everyone with 22 billion billion quatloos might make a difference. I don't know, but I do know that's one hell of a lot of quatloos!
While I don't like the shady tax deals in the EU, the US is no better
Actually, it is. US citizens are taxed on their worldwide income regardless of wherever in the world they live. The same is NOT true of European countries and their citizens. Also, US corporations are taxed on global income. The same is NOT true of corporations in European countries. That's exactly how Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish citizen billionaire founder of IKEA, was able to avoid paying both individual income tax and corporate tax to Sweden for 40 years while he amassed his multi-billion dollar fortune. He simply used the plentiful European tax havens. US citizens and corporations can't do the same. There are laws such as FATCA, etc., which prevent that.
Quote:
Here it is the social security system that pays pensions, based mostly on contributions and a smaller share of taxes if necessary.
That's why even average income Europeans are paying a 45% effective national tax rate. I'm telling you... The average US income earner will NOT agree to that.
Quote:
On the other hand, the taxes and contributions we pay are worth it.
You may believe so. But, again, I'm telling you... There's NO way the average US income earner ($59,000 per household) will agree to pay a 45% effective federal tax rate.
No, it isn't. There is no authority by which federal elected officials can confiscate some individuals' earnings to redistribute to those who haven't earned it. That, in and of itself, is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
Education? No. That's a state issue, not federal. National defense? Yes, that has a Constitutional mandate. The space program insofar as it relates to a national defense objective also has a Constitutional mandate.
Additionally, those who receive federal tax dollars in the capacity of national defense have EARNED it. It's not a direct transfer of wealth taken from some and given to them just for merely existing as is the $1+ trillion spent on means-tested public assistance programs.
I just can't get to every comment as I would like to but before I sign off now, real quick about yours...
Take up what authority the government does or does not have with the government and/or constitutional scholars and/or the supreme court, because unlike you perhaps, I'm not as well versed in these areas as these other people tend to be, and I'm not about to pretend I'm such an expert. What I know is what our government is involved in today, quite different for obvious reasons compared to back in 1776, but all constitutional far as I know until deemed otherwise.
I have paid taxes at the highest income levels of our progressive tax code and needless to say those tax dollars have gone toward welfare programs, education programs (federal student financial aid for example), and NASA, even not so far as it relates to national defense (nice one). If you can take your/our case to court and win, I am 110 percent behind you, because I'd love those tax dollars back. All this time unconstitutional you say? Where do I sign?
Meanwhile, please spare me the lesson on what is constitutional in the face of the reality we must all accept today. Fair?
You have your opinion, but you "don't get to decide" what is constitutional or not...
Additionally, it's pretty hard for me to understand how any taxes collected is not a form of "redistribution" if and when that's the way someone wants to think about taxes and where it goes, all essentially involuntary of course unless we happen to agree with how it's spent.
None of us agrees with how all of it is spent. No doubt that's about ALL we can all agree upon far as that additional reality is concerned!
Until tomorrow, don't forget to keep your pocket-sized copy of the constitution handy!
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