You see Steve believes that we need to help the poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free and this is best done by people richer than him paying more of their money with no real need for the middle or lower classes to get involved. However he doesn't seem to be in favor of dividing all the world's wealth by the population of the world because then that would effect him. Somehow poor South American < poor American. (Better put, solution that he thinks doesn't effect him > solution that does effect him. Even though the rich that he wants to tax more will just fire some more poor people or pass on these new taxes to people like Steve)

They already do. Not just in terms of tax revenue, but also with jobs, innovation, and investments.


A) Infrastructure improvements such as? Protecting private property? I'm not sure what you mean by that.

B) My reading comprehension skills must be off today, because I'm not getting what you're saying here.

Here's your perfect world then...

Average income worldwide is $7,000 - The Boston Globe

Or in your utopia will you still be making whatever you make now? (My guess is nowhere close to 7K) Somehow you don't see that in the world's view you are one of the elite rich. If you make 50K a year you are in the top 1% of the world's population, if you make 100K you are in the top 0.5%. So who exactly are these super rich you bitch about all the time? That's right it isn't based in reality it is just anyone that makes more than you do. It's envy, pure and simple.

When did national borders cease to exist?

Whatever. I don't rag on you and DT's liberal views but you don't talk the complete communist nonsense he does. If he really wants everyone equal he can't claim, but only in America where I still would be OK and not poor like those Asians or Africans. What a load of shit and I hope you see through it as well.

This.

Now, I'm not with Steve in how much the upper and middle classes have to pay. However, I do think the whining that they have to pay more (esp that they may have to pay 40% on anything above $350k) is patently absurd since they are the ones that benefit the most from the system. I mean how would they like to live in something like a sub-Saharan African state where the rich are a handful of connected people who are SUPER rich and everyone else in incredibly poor relatively and exists for the rich's benefit?

I think we all know that this is a dishonest argument. If income was spread equally across the world many things would be different, not least of which would be cost of living. Supply and demand alone would reduce the price of most goods and services.

Yes, the part that the free-marketers get right is pointing out that the entrepreneurial rich are the ones who have helped turn America into the world's greatest economy. But the nuance they miss is that what has made America great is not that our entrepreneurs have more gumption than those in the rest of the world, and the rest of history. It's that we've created a society that enables them, where most societies have not, and still do not. It's our intellectual property laws among many other such inventions that have turned them into gears in such a great machine. And so while yes it's important and accurate to point out the importance of entrepreneurs, including very successful ones, it's not exactly accurate to say that they owe nothing to the system. The same person placed in most anywhere else in the world would not be a success, and both they and the society would suffer. We should be happy to have them here, and they should be happy to pay higher taxes to enjoy magnitudes more success than they could anywhere else in time or space.

Sorry, I guess this probably isn't polarizing enough for America today.

Yes, I believe by using that same analysis the "equal" cost of living is something like $9,000.

Has anyone posted this? I may have missed it, but it should interest y'all

Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Last time I checked, WE ALL use those things. We all benefit from this things. And last time I checked, the successful already pay a hell of a lot more taxes.

The world is a different place. People and capital are mobile. You can tax the rich all you want and put in place all the social programs you want, but the successful, businesses, and capital will allocate their resources to those locations that benefit them the most.

For intellectual laws, don't we pay for those things through filing fees, lawyers to enforce it (such as paying our lawyer to go after violators). It's not like it is stopping China from violating them.

Why are those not concerned with things like defecits and government spending even concerned about tax rates at all? I have no problem with clinton-era tax rates but what exactly are we depriving ourselves of by not having them? Why is this the one and only area stevebollea types are suddenly concerned about the bottom line and what our country can afford?

Let's just cut the tax rate to 0% then! Cheney said himself that deficits don't matter.

Sometimes I wonder why not.

Perhaps there's just different lines where people become concerned about such things.

Dola...it's just funny to hear all these liberals this week saying "we can't afford" the bush tax cuts. Huh? Just as funny as republicans spouting off about fiscal responsibilty and then supporting wars and their own pet projects and being responsible for even more runaway spending (while holding firm that tax hikes shouldn't be involved in paying for all this)

1) All taxes are different. Stick with the one we are talking about, federal income taxes. If you want to debate state or property taxes, we can. That's just a different discussion.

2) So basically you're saying we all pay for education? Sounds good to me. A corporation pays corporate taxes. A CEO doesn't pay corporate taxes, he'll pay income and capital gains taxes.

3) The European rich have moved to tax-friendly nations such as the UK (for non-Britain nationals), Monaco, Channel Islands, Switzerland, Barbados, and even other places in the Middle East (Dubai is a prime example) and Singapore.

Bingo! And it isn't like there is a 90% tax proposed (which, btw, the was the highest tax level in the 1950s). The idea is that the rich should be slighly more than the middle class, who should pay slightly more than the poor, etc, because they've benefited from the societal institutions put in place. Therefore a large product (if not all of it) is partially the result of a beneficial social programs designated to foster innovation and protect private property.

And yes, successful business and capital will orient themselves to places that benefit them the most, which is why industries that rely on high labor productivity will flock to Western countries with vast social networks, which result in things like a highly educated workforce and low social unrest (if people are somewhat taken care of, they tend not to get all violent and stuff - for the most part).

It wasn't as if a 39% top income tax rate scared internet companies out of the United States in the 1990s.

WTF!?!?!?

How'd I get brought into this??

I put you with JPhillips on the list of reasonable liberals who I happen to disagree with. I understand your points of view but don't share them. Stevebollea's arguments all come down to class envy. I feel like he must of gotten picked on by a rich kid when he was little or something.

It may just be me, but I think someone who lives off welfare as their entire income may just benefit more from society than the rich do.

It's kinda hard to live off welfare as your entire income... well, at least for a sustained period of time. Unemployment doesn't last forever.

And, as someone who is middle class, I feel that I've probably benefited more than my friends who are poor. I've had great public schools, a wonderful public college, and a substantial amount of federal loans to get me a law degree from a private school, and have been able to parlay that into a comfortable lifestyle.

Aaah okay. Cool. I must have misunderstood. I thought you were putting me in the other group. :D

It is MUCH easier than you would suspect. Perhaps growing up middle class you haven't seen it as much.

I've known people who lived off unemployment. It tends to have a timeline until it ends.

Unemployment, yes. Government assistance? Much easier.

How much do you feel parenting plays a role in your education?

So the Philly Fed is predicting 9.3% unemployment for 2011 and 8.7% for 2012.

Good thing we're not going to foolishly spend any money putting people to work.

Yeah those predictions are always so historically accurate. They predicted this crisis back in 2007 right?

Here is some reading from just a few years ago. Glad the unemployment capped at 8%. :rolleyes:

http://otrans.3cdn.net/ee40602f9a7d8172b8_ozm6bt5oi.pdf

What percentage of people in the US are "unsuccessful"? how much would your more gov't control of society lower the unsuccessful rate? at what cost?

here are 3 gov't truths i give my students, i am amazed you preach against each one:
1. Everything is a trade-off. The more equal you make society the more rights you give up
2. The more centralized the government the less capacity it has to change and adapt to individual needs
3. Economic equality = more government control = less motivation/ incentive

Federal Reserve predictions and White House predictions are not the same. Do you really want to argue that unemployment is going to be significantly better than that in two years?

Those truths seems to lead to an end point where maximum inequality = maximum freedom. Would we really be more free if one person controlled 99% of the nation's wealth?

No I am actually arguing the exact opposite. I guess I didn't understand your initial post, I thought you were saying those numbers were a good sign.

Obviously a decent amount. However, also obviously, good schools produce better education than bad schools. Having good pro-education parents and bad schools wouldn't necessarily be better than bad pro-education parents and good schools.

And it seems quite harsh to condemn a child to a less than optimal future simply because their parents didn't value education. Though it appears US society likes to do that sometimes (which is why social mobility is far less than we assume... and less these days than in European countries, IIRC).

Yawn.

Sarcasm is a tool best used sparingly.

I'm pretty sure that isn't what he was saying.

Not if your name is HyperBollea.

But if any reduction in inequality leads to reduced freedom that's the end point.

Oh, it's not an either/or. the most important part of the truths is "everything is a trade off." they absolutely could be written in the reverse. i chose to put them in that language because steve seems to not understand what is given up in order to reach his goal.

The way you stated them they certainly are either or propositions.

I believe in FDR's four freedoms, so I don't think freedom is simply limited to government action. How free can you be if you can't afford food and shelter?

If everyone hates the "great strip mall/big box homogeneous blob large chunks" of the US then why does everyone shop there?

I generally find them to be of great convenience.

what's funny is all those things were "fixed" by a system that you think needs to be replaced

LOL - too funny

So now the GOP is going to block ratification of the new START treaty. Doesn't matter that the military sees it as essential, previous Defense Secs see it as essential, previous Secs of State see it as essential, foreign policy types of both parties see it as essential, no the important thing is to not let Obama achieve anything.

If the damn Democrats could just get on message like this it would totally backfire. Unfortunately I have no faith in the party as a whole to define such a coherent message...

I liked it better when it was called SALT.

I know you're being funny, but I feel the need to point out that START is much better than SALT.

Strategic Arms Reduction is far better than Strategic Arms Limitation.

Yes, I was being funny, but, I thought that SALT also had a reduction provision in it as well?

I certainly wouldn't mind the political hammer, but this is about a hell of a lot more than politics. Obama has already capitulated to all of Kyl's demand and he still backs out so as to not give Obama a victory. It's infuriating that the GOP is willing to play a fucking game with a critical component of our security.

Country first, bitches.

A childrens book written by Obama is being released this week. In it a father talks about Americans that have inspired him. One of the Americans is Sitting Bull. Fox News ran the following headline:


I have to admit, that is so over the top I find it funny.