OT: Income Inequality Part II
Dougster
https://www.tuscl.net/postread.php?PID=3…
I'm not really convinced that it is a problem. I think it's just become a meme the media is pushing and people are repeating because it's fashionable to do so. Something you say because everyone else is.
But maybe I'm wrong and there really is an urgent problem. I found that people did not elaborate much on what could be done about it. Again, just a knee-jerk restatement of a fashionable statement about an alleged problem, followed by a fashionable statement about what is to be done be done about it: "raise taxes on the rich". Can you folks help explain to me why the proposed solution would help and not do more harm than good?
Okay, you raise taxes on the rich. First of all there are issues with fairness here. Personally, I think it's disgrace to ask for this in the first places. If taxes need to be raised for the common good, okay, so be it. But making one group exclusively responsible for footing the bill for others? Can't believe what I'm hearing.
Then the places people want to see taxes increased: capital gains, dividends, inheritance. It seems people don't understand why the tax rates here are lower in the first place. It's because that money has been taxed already. Good back and re-read that a dozen or so times. This income has already been taxes. I'm shocked by how many who don't understand that basic point.
Ok but let's say that people can rationalize away the unfairness. How exactly does raising taxes on the rich help? Do you get that most of this money does not sit around idle? It is money the vast majority of which is invested in public markets, private ventures, give to charity or loaned out to the government via bond purchases? So you take away some of this money and do what? Spell this one out for me:
Just send checks to people below a certain income levels. Maybe with a note saying "Have a good time. On us. Yours truly, The Koch Brothers"?
Or you hire them to build roads and other infrastructure?
Or you just increase the salary of teachers thinking that is going to overcome the influence families and peers groups have on children? Because teachers say it will, but nobody can point me to the statistics showing it makes a difference?
In my view, the real problem is self-perpetuating cultures of poverty that cut across many races. This makes it hard for just throwing money at education to help fix the problem, because in these cultures education just is not fashionable. (Now I do think there is an experiment you could try to see if you could reach kids here early enough. But if might up the cost of education by a factor of 5, and it's nothing I've ever heard anyone propose. What I hear is just "increase teachers salaries" and it ends there.)
I think the current tax structure is not too bad and it's like it is for good reason. It's not some scheme to transfer money for the poor to the rich. In fact, if you look at hard numbers it's quite the opposite. It's very top heavy in how much the wealthiest carry everyone else.
I not sure tweaks to tax rates would do much at all, since it is other factors like the product cycle, and cultural factors regarding attitudes toward education, and work which have the deeper influence.
My view is that the best thing to do is just adopt policies which increase the general wealth. It might not feel fair if that means that risk taking activities need to have lower tax rates than back breaking manual labor if that increases the general wealth. But if that's the best way to deal with income inequality shouldn't it be done?
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Inner city poverty is the result of culture IMHO. Education is not stressed as a way to get ahead in inner city communities, and there is little accountability for children to their parent (note singular tense) in too many cases to get good grades. There are too many single women raising children form too many fathers, and the men don't seem to care how many kids they have with different women. I think government funded birth control and abortions would help a lot, but the Republicans would have none of that. The government seems to lack the will to address poverty in any meaningful way.
We've seen the rich get richer in America and that's not a big issue with me, but the middle class is disappearing due to health insurance costs and education costs. Obamacare is trying to address the former, but we need what every other Western country has: National healthcare. It's appalling that the richest country in the world cannot take care of its citizens.
We spend more money on prisons than college educations, and too many people who DO get to go to college are studying pointless subjects. Journalism majors? Geography majors? How can you get a good job with a humanity degree?
My son recently graduated college with an engineering degree from a Big 10 college, and he said 70% of the seniors had a job before graduation. Salaries start around $60k depending. If an inner city kid would value education and then have some of that prison money to support tuition, he would have a great path out of the ghetto. Same with poor whites in Appalachia or Native Americans on reservations.
Things like tax code changes and the like are very small matters that politicians like to talk about because they are benign. When you're asking the wrong questions, like how to fix the economy and social problems through taxes, it doesn't matter what the answers are. Politicians love that because they can then concentrate on being re-elected as opposed to making hard choices. We need term limits in congress!!! Then they might actually place policy over politics.
Most of us think rich are people who's net worth exceeds the Tens of Millions .
The Founding Fathers only wanted to afford land owners the right to vote because they would be invested in the well being of the country. Well now days wealth has become so exorbitant and global if the 1% drive this country to hell, they have their private islands and other places they can stay, in effect they are do wealthy they can afford not to be invested any more.
I was very specific about mitigating power through lineage (like the royal families of fudal times) and that we need a system that encourages individuals to create their own wealth generation to generation and not through the linear transfer of power (inheritance)
It's a problem. Gahndi "Wealth without Work" is one of his seven sins.
We have mediocre movement between income quint Iles in the US. If you're born in the bottom quintile, you're almost guaranteed to never see the top quintile. If you're born in the top quintile you have the social capital to nor fall too far, no matter what kind of a fuck up you are. A healthy meritocracy has more movement between quintiles.
Anyways, Reagan era tax rates clearly didn't break the rich and helped the poor. I do believe in fairness. Fairness is paying your share. Fairness is noblesse oblige. Rich people hoard cash. They rarely deploy capital efficiently. They don't invest like government can. The working poor are the true Job Creators in this country, and right now they are hamstrung by our tax policy.
I don't necessarily think we need to tax the rich more if we cut social security benefits and military spending. I think the sequester was a disaster, but at least it finally forced the bloated military to tighten its belt. Compared to every other country in the world our military spending per GDP is insane. And we do need Death Panels to keep the growth of health care costs for old people in check. Old people use almost all our medical resources.
Double taxation is a myth. Many corporations pay ZERO income tax. Zero. Chew on that.
Of course not. The private sector invests more effectively yah government.
Yes, because, in many cases, like s-corps the owners report it as personal income to avoid the hefty rates. How about you chew on that?
Currently with the super rich controlling politicians, there has been decades of tax loopholes which minimize taxes for many corporations and provide opportunities for minimizing taxes for the wealthy.
Education was always viewed as the great leveler in society (Horace Mann) but teacher's unions have put an end to that. Most inner city schools, like all public schools, are a reflection of the society from which their students live. If the society is transitory and lacks goals and direction, so do the schools. I recently asked 10 students at a high school in the South Bronx where they'd be in 5 years and how they planned to get there. Talk about blank stares! Long range planning doesn't enter the picture. Unions protect incompetent and promote mediocrity.
Income inequality is here and is tearing at the fabric of our society. Various proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15, to increase the inheritance tax, to raise rates for upper bracket incomes, are all attempts to mollify the current situation, but a total plan incorporating many aspects needs to be implemented. Maybe a moderate or liberal Republican president could do this. (Are there any? Bill Weld?)
I don't agree with that. Far too much private capital is invested overseas, or are just numbers in computers in the US. This money does not create jobs or help the economy.
Spending money on tangible items is what runs our economy. A billionaire can only buy so much with his money, while someone making the average US wage spends almost all of it. Government spending almost always either creates jobs, or is returned to the economy through entitlement programs. Poor people on welfare spend all the money they get. This is not the case for the millionaire investors. Even when the money stays in the US...it's just numbers like I said.
This is why I don't think cutting Social Security and welfare makes good economic sense, apart from reducing fraud. All that money is circulated back into the economy.
I'm taxed when I spend it.
I'm taxed to own.
I'm taxed to inherit it.
She will be taxed when she inherits it.
I'm even taxed to be"In her it".
Fuck me.
I think you could probably jack up the marginal tax rate significantly on salaries over about $1M without any serious effect on GDP growth. Maybe when I get my next massively-parallel supercomputer, I can write a few lines of simulation code and convince that oligarch Dougster once and for all.
The discussion is moot since nothing major will happen to the tax code, even under Hillary. Hopefully we'll have the common sense to regulate the financial services industry (think Glass-Steagall?) so we don't get another disastrous meltdown. Also, if we insist on allowing a few families to take on unimaginable wealth, then we should at least have campaign finance reform and get rid of Citizens United. Both should be no-brainers.
What are you lazy asshole going to do when the people who make the money and the jobs get tired of you all on our backs, say FUCK YOU and stop working and paying 60% of our income to be "redistributed".
One of my favorite stock tickers is GS. I've been fortunate enough to receive some nice dividends and capital gains from them over the years. Now according to JamesSD, that must mean they pay zero taxes. Oh, wait better chew on that for a while. ZERO TAXES right? So how come when I look at their investors statements it says they are paying around 30% tax. Hmmm... ZERO versus 30%. Guess they are lying and we should get the SEC on it, right, James?
Tax the shit out of the Koch Brothers but nobody else! How does that help? Fuck if I know, but just tax the shit out of them? Why? I don't know, just tax the shit out of them!
It's just repeating what people like to say these days, and I sure as hell don't want to be behind the trend!
As for JamesSD vs RickyBoy. RickyBoy was definitely The Ultimate Faggot. If someone sat around and tried to dream up a gayer character for years and play him out, couldn't be done. Every ounce of RickyBoy's DNA and every decision he makes is all about being a complete homo. I don't he could ever be topped in that department.
Here's the SEC website for filing claims about fraud or wrongdoing:
https://www.sec.gov/complaint/tipscompla…
Might be amusing to file a complaint against Dougster for manipulating security prices. Maybe accuse him of manipulating the price of RICK or TWTR to naive investors on TUSCL.