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Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

Good Lord, how many times do I have to tell people I have no interest in hugmongous, all encompassing communism? You didn't accuse me of it directly of course, but this is common, to smear people who are not in favor of feudal landlordism as communists.

Communism was the idealistic fantasy of a guy who had way too much time on his hands.

OTOH, conservatives and many Libertarians place way, way too much faith in the intelligence of money. Somebody splain to me why a couple of slicksters like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky were able to gain control of $hundreds of $millions and why that's a good thing for the world.

And how about one of the right's favorite punching bags, George Soros, who is sometimes called the man who "broke the bank of England?" Was there a genuinely useful service he performed when he alledgedly profited $1 billion in a day for betting that the pound would fall sharply? I'm sure some will argue that currency traders perform this or that valuable service, but I'm hard pressed to see what it would be.

When all is said and done, the real value of that money is the goods and sevices that people will deliver in exchange for it. People who manage, through gaming the system, to appropriate outlandish amounts of that labor to keep at their beck and call (in the form of gynormous sums of money) frequently do not contribute to wealth, IMO, but rather consume it imprudently (often) and hasten the depletion of real wealth: natural resources.

I'm sorry. Sandy Weil, CEO of citibank, who "earns" a reported $100 million plus per year, can damn well pay 35 to 40% of it in taxes. Nobody earns that kind of money by themself. Some ultra wealthy people provide more in real exchange than others, such as my billionaire doctor/inventor buddy whose house I worked on. His first invention, a balloon catheter for removing blood clots, is estimated to have saved the lives or limbs of around 15 million people. That is a lot of satisfied customers. I don't begrudge the guy his wealth. I'm sure he's in a high tax bracket, but what do ya know, he still manages to own 300 acres in Portola Valley, CA where land runs at around $1 mil and acre; a renowned winery up the hill from his house; a hunting lodge in the Siskiyou Mountains (near Oregon); and a horse training facility near Santa Clara.

God, if only we could get the burden of taxation off his back.

Still, the good doctor didn't earn that money by himself. Every doctor who used his devices in operations helped in that, doctors trained at many point in their careers, most of em I'll wager, in publicly funded institutions.

His money doesn't seem to be doing his sons any good -- stock car driving (mediocre) playboys both.

The use of money has it advantages and problems. A graduated income tax strikes me as one of the better ways to minimize some of those problems.

My response wasn't directed at you, it was directed at Zeit, the person who posted the pyramid chart image... And I never mentioned communism, I said "socialist"....but OK.... whatever you say... :confused: ????

Regardless: You keep saying that these uber-rich guys "didn't earn their money by themselves"... and you are right. They have hired a LOT of people along the way. A lot of people have made a lot of money off of these "rich guys". These "rich guys" have provided employment to countless people along the way. Of course there are always exceptions, but for the most part, no one makes that kind of money without paying a LOT of other people to do a lot of work.

This provides quite an important service to society, if you ask me... I don't see too many "poor" people providing jobs for hundreds or thousands of their fellow citizens!.... And how do people like you want to reward them for hard work, vision, motivation, intelligence and investment?.... By placing them in higher tax brackets. "They're rich bastards, they can afford to pay more!" Nice. :mad:

It's not about how much money they have. It's not about whether the tax bracket they are in puts a burden on them or not. At that level, of course it doesn't. That's not the point. It's about fairness.

Success should be rewarded and encouraged, not penalized. The line you and other progressive-taxation advocates always try to draw is an arbitrary one. Arbitrary lines are never fair. No one should have the right to make such decisions about money that someone else has earned. The FairTax would remove this arbitrary element from the equation, much to the chagrin of you grudge-holding class-warfare folks.

Mike

Dunno Mike. I am not sure what cmac calls it but he does seem to have very socialistic/communistic leanings. Maybe it is like a Chrysler Crossfire. A rebadged MB SLK

Quote:

Originally Posted by H2O2

http://www.spunk.org/library/groups/...s/sp001348.gif

You know that is strangley how a true socialist state works....even though the try to make the people believe its the opposite through institutionalized ignorance of the populace.

Its happening to great effect in muslim nations today.

Yet they try to pretend its the evil capitalists who are alone in this.

At least in a capitalist society Joe Average has a chance to climb the pyramid.....In a socialist state its whos ass you kiss....and in a muslim one you end up too uneducated and brainwashed to understand anything anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boneheaddoctor

At least in a capitalist society Joe Average has a chance to climb the pyramid.....In a socialist state its whos ass you kiss....and in a muslim one you end up too uneducated and brainwashed to understand anything anyway.

Well, in the muslim state, you won't know and you won't care then. Does it matter? :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by aklim

Well, in the muslim state, you won't know and you won't care then. Does it matter? :D

Thats why you see them keep the people uneducated for the most part (there are exceptions) how else can they convince people they like being oppressed?

Quote:

Originally Posted by aklim

Dunno Mike. I am not sure what cmac calls it but he does seem to have very socialistic/communistic leanings. Maybe it is like a Chrysler Crossfire. A rebadged MB SLK

OK, mercantilist genius, full tilt communism involves state ownership and control of the means of production, correct? The saying "power corrupts" has been proven to be true, time and again, and in a communist state, power is focused even more narrowly than in a capitalist system. In spite of some faults, at least in capitalist systems, power accrues to people with some kind of meritocracy involved, which is far less likely in a communist state, if you go by the history of these things.

The phenomenon seen in communist agricultural experiments, where farmers produce more on their own 1/2 acre than on hundreds of state owned acres is going to be hard to get away from in any full scale communist system. This is only natural, and I have no desire to participate in a state that doesn't get this salient point. Standing in line for a couple of hours to buy toilet paper would drive me nuts in short order as well.

However, some mild socialism has worked well in our country. I know you don't want to hear my GI Bill rap again, but briefly, I don't believe private enterprise is going to be funding GIs' education by themselves. Even if they wanted to, it would be very difficult for them to arrange it on their own. Unfortunately, using history as a guide, there are plenty of businessmen only too happy to get rich off of supplying military hardware who are later content to watch crippled GIs beg in the streets. See Gen. Smedley Butler's remarks about the huge number of millionaires and billionaires produced by WW1.

Likewise, all this whining about public education is just a bit weak. Look at states that have never had decent public education. MikeMover will tell you that public ed. is socialism. If so, then socialism has done good by me and my family.

But please, spare me this tired, "What?! You a communist, bwah?" crap. God only knows how much misery and wasted time and money in our great land can be laid at the feet of commie fear and loathing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikemover

Whatever, you'd be directing at me next. Communist/socialist, it's not too much different to right wingers.

You're right, the vision and euntreprenuership of many wealthy people has benefitted society. And even in a progressive tax scheme, they still come out ahead. Plenty of other wealthy people, more and more, are not in such a benevolent posture. The gap between management and worker salaries is growing in leaps and bounds and I believe that's more the result of chicanery than increased merit. Furthermore, landlordism is on the march and I don't see that benefitting too many employees -- more like extorting the lower classes to enable lives of luxury for the elite. Some will say this is just fine. Eventually, it will lead to the kind of social problems that spawn bloody revolutions, methinks.

You talk of fairness, but I don't see too much fairness in some of the huge profits that accrue to bankers and mutual fund managers, for starters. I have a feeling that the cheating on mutual funds that has recently been uncovered is just the tip of the iceberg. The Bank of America, formerly headquartered in SF, merged with Nation's Bank, out of NC, and its CEO, Hugh McColl, was a bit sharper than David Coulter, the head of B of A. McColl snookered Coulter and left him and SF holding the bag. B of A's headquarters left SF along with a lot of local income. In spite of all this, Coulter received a $100 million golden parachute when he left the company. W T F?!

While the wealthy man is of benefit to people by providing them jobs, the employees' value to the entrepreneur is enhanced by the degree of quality education and health care the employees receive. One could argue that a graudated tax system, if properly administered, can eventually be of benefit to the wealthy person.

At the very least, such a tax system can help to rein in some of the ill-gotten gains of charlatans and connivers, and slow or prevent a gradual slide to the sort of unbalanced society like El Salvador, where the top 1% owns about 80-90% of everything. In case you hadn't noticed, we're heading in that direction, and globalism is only going to increase it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikemover

The fact that you would even think of comparing the FairTax Plan (which you apparently dismiss as "rhetoric") to the claims of get-rich-quick scam artists indicates that you need to do some more research on the subject.

I think I provided quite an extensive response to your inquiry. Competition would keep most prices in check, just as it does now. The FairTax plan would not undermine free-market forces in any way. Competitors will still seek to undercut one another.

I'm not saying that this change would be a particularly easy one. Of course there will be speed bumps and hiccups along the way. Uprooting such a gargantuan and firmly-entrenched system and replacing it with a vastly different one will involve a LOT of work. But that doesn't mean it's not worth it.

Come on, bro.... Must I cut-and-paste the entire website and book for you? You are not someone who normally expects to be spoon-fed information like this... why the sudden change?

Mike

Just replace rhetoric with argument. I can't buy it and frankly I don't care about the blue sky promises that the fairtax plan makes. I care that taxation should be fair, but how do you make the rich guy pay to imprison a thief who is obviously not out to break into my modest stationwagon?

I like to think of myself as one of those fish who has been caught and released a few too many times and survived to tell the tale.

Life has been improving for us each year. I do better than the economy. Income is back to dual income levels, we save twice as much and we plan to retire at 55-60, and our tax burden is getting lighter each year. My life goals have changed from making enough money to running farther and faster than I've ever done before. Life is good. If anything, I'm living the fairtax promise right now.

Kuan used a term that I think is the crux of arguments that swirl around taxation.

What is "fairness?" It sounds simple but evidently it is not simple or we would all have a common understanding of it.

So what can we agree on concerning fairness? In other words, what components of fairness would we all approve of?

I think that honesty is a fundamental attribute of fairness.

If we think of taxation as inflicting pain in order to achieve some future benefit, then we all could probably agree that it would be far preferable for somebody else to get the bite than ourselves or our friends. But is that fair? In absolute terms it certainly is not fair. Unfortunately, taxation is not a binary function. Instead it is a vast and complex manifold.

Taxation also follows the rule of unintended and unforeseen consequences. What I mean is that when taxation is enacted things happen as a result of the enactment that nobody predicted or if predictions were made, the probability of the particular bad consequences were minimized. I think every tax ever enacted by man anywhere and any-when had unintended consequences. May special favorite is protectionist tariffs which always have long and short term unintended consequences for all trading partners and often for industries in nations that are completely unexpected.

So somehow the distribution of pain has to be fair, or if that is not possible, then the distribution of benefit must compensate those unfairly burdened by pain for the unequal distribution of that pain.

Bot

I think I can make my concerns clearer by saying that I object due to the lack or rigor in the fairtax argument.

Yep, that's it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kuan

I think I can make my concerns clearer by saying that I object due to the lack or rigor in the fairtax argument.

Yep, that's it.

Every form of taxation will have some potential negative facets. Such observations ought to be spelled out and addressed in a constructive way. Making comments like: "NO, I just don't like it", makes you sound like a 2-year-old, or someone who just doesn't care to read or think outside the box. Why bother saying anything? Your statement about doing better each year financially is inconsequential. Most people who tool around in a Mercedes are doing better than average anyway.

HR 25 is the best alternative to our current stinky system. I think it has sound principles. If you disagree, please refer to that section of the act's text. I will also say Fairtax may have unintended consequences that are uncovered by the actions of dishonest people. Its the extent and potential breadth of those drawbacks that need to be looked at. Yes, there is a better mousetrap, but no silver bullet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by raymr

Well you don't know me and I'm sorry I sound like a two year old to you. I read the whole darn thing from taxpanelreform.org and skimmed through HR 25. Not convincing enough for me and convincing enough for you. Could be different personalities or different ways in which we interpret arguments. Mine are almost purely logical.