"expect hard working people to subsidize their useless lives?"
Yeah, Senile-Suicidal Skibum yelling out the bared window of his locked nursing home.
The poor have always worked harder. Had to. No different today. A poor person uses more brains each day than a rich person uses in a month.
I hadn't realized how serious it was at the time, but we never should have let Reagan set up the IRA and 401K accounts. These actually get a tax break, and all they are is an attempt to undermine Social Security.
Far better that retirees and the jobless get supported off of current tax revenue, than that people are encouraged to try and hold onto money and use it to inflate the stock and real estate markets.
Keynesianism and its high progressive taxation, max 90% to 70%, worked perfectly for over 40 years. Never failed, except maybe when OPEC formed because the middle-eastern nations wanted something more fair for their oil.
Only the very shallowest of booms and busts under Keynesianism. An entire generation of Americans really had it good. Get a good job, buy a house, support a family, and know that you will be taken care of in old age, if you get sick, or if you become disabled. Who could want more?
Were there problems, yes racial, and women were left out, and there was very little protection for the rights of children. The rich did not have that much control over our democracy, not with the high taxes, and even a smaller split between owners and workers on pre-tax incomes.
So what happened? Well there was a back lash against the War on Poverty, the women's movement, and the civil rights movement.
And then the US had installed this Shah of Iran, and there was a revolution. Americans ended up being held hostage.
And the the Christian Right was furious that the federal government would dare to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act on Bob Jones University.
So Americans who had had such a great thing, voted against it and elected an icon of reaction, Ronald Reagan.
Soon Poor People were seen as Bad People, and like Reagan said, "I'm for an American where everyone can get rich." And what does that mean, it means controlling the land, the labor, and the capital. It means you want to get rich by making other people poor.
So soon our cities started to fill with homeless and the national debt started to explode.
And who gets the most benefit from taxation and spending?
Well it is those who collect wages, salaries, service fees, and business profits.
They get these because there are people who have money to spend. And what keeps this mid sector of the socio-economic hierarchy in place is taxation and spending.
If Skibum does not like this, let him relinquish his income.
Most every society has always divided into the very rich and the very poor. And this later does not have much beyond subsistence. And that very rich is just a handful of people. The rich get this by social affiliation, and by owning the means of production.
So taxation and spending, going back to the New Deal, is what sustains our middle-class.
And if a benefit program gives the poor money, what do they do with it, they spend it.
The idea that everyone should have a personally financed retirement is absurd. Where I live the min income for home ownership runs around $140k per year. Prior to that, very had for someone to save money. Over half of the US population is only two paychecks away from defaulting on rent or mortgage.
And then why put it in the stock market, when they could put it into their own ventures? This would allow another generation to have a chance to use their skills and education. As it is today, this is uncertain.
An entire generation of Americans had a great thing. Even Nixon said, "We are all Keynesians." He never tried to cut taxes or social programs. He even tried to improve social programs with his 1969 Family Assistance Plan, giving federal money for welfare, exceeding what the South East had, and softening the cost bite on the North East.
Americans had it great, then they voted for Ronald Reagan and it has been down hill ever since.
What we needed was in 1980 to start moving towards Medicare for all, to UBI, to public housing, and to free college.
But with Reagan and the extreme wing of his party its instead been down hill.
Psychologists tell us today that the thing millennials worry most about is having enough money to retire. What an absurdity that our own people should have to worry about such a thing, and that they should look at the stock and real estate markets, making money off of other people, as the remedy.
San Jose State has 4300 homeless students, the vast majority employed and living in their cars, because they cannot afford anything else.
And even UCLA has had to set up a homeless shelter for their own students.
And the to add insult to injury, these people have to face the indignity of hearing the likes of Skibum yelling at them from his nursing home window, "Fucking miilenial loosers!"
And then Donald Trump and his Uncle Tom Ben Carson want to put the homeless and the poor into internment camps. And then after that, then who?
Well not on my watch. If they try, then its going to be bullets, bayonets, and bombs.
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