Tax the rich? Statistics show Alexandria Cortez May be right

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

As I said, our leadership did not fight the Islamic wars with the intent of America winning. They were orchestrated by fools, thieves, and liars. Boots on the ground are unneeded to win a war against a stone aged enemy. Bush was a damn fool.

a reply to: ketsuko

I agree and I probably used a very poor choice of wording. From my unimportant point of view, I think those that cheat others out of material resources are the weak and uneducated/unintelligent.

But what if the amount of material possessions accumulated makes all of the difference in the world? The small time criminal could be a matter for local society/community because they really don't impact a large number of people. But the big time crooks that accumulate a large amount of resources through fraud are able to impact large numbers of people in turn.

Basically, should we care? Should we try to regulate corruption so the less powerful and connected social being would be afforded a more level playing field? Is it even possible?

Is there even a ball to get rolling towards a fair and just society measured by how well we treat each other? Instead of how much we can rip each other off.

I agree that she doesn't have sufficient work and life experience.

However, in NYC bartenders can't really be seen as "minimum wage." By law, yes, they only need to be paid some kind of base min. wage. However, with tips they are making anywhere from $20.00 an hour to $100,000 a year. Even in just popular busy neighborhood bars.

Get them into a high end club, they can be pulling real solid money.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
a reply to: pexx421

Sorry but I don't want a minimum wage bartender making my countries tax policy.

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

And what if those with the resources are able to just buy off the politicians and have their own rules and regulations made. Rules and regulations that turn their corner of the market into a monopoly?

Sorry everyone, I am not trying to be combative here at all. I am just trying to work my way out of a new thought pattern that provided a small glimmer of an answer to something I believed was unanswerable before.

It is probably the wrong direction, but I have to exhaust all possibilities in the fullest before letting it go.

Thanks to everyone for their time and wisdom on this one.

a reply to: ClovenSky

Here's the thing -

Reagan was famous for saying the most dangerous words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." I have a corollary. I think the next most dangerous words are "There outta be a law!" (or a regulation).

Laws and regulations are like rules in a game. The more there are, the harder it is to play and the more opportunities there are for the enterprising to find exploits, cheats and loopholes to game the system. Additionally, the more there are, the higher your barrier to entry into the system. Think about your learning curve for things like super tough MOBA games. They get that way because of all the complexity and variety in the system.

Now consider this is what has been done to the market via government interventions in various ways. In some instances, only the very largest ones can survive. You detest large corporations? Well the government regulatory and legal environments done to "protect" us have helped to create that. Every law, every regulation adds expense and complexity and raises the bar to market entry, chokes out the smaller and weaker businesses who might be more responsive or serve the public interest better.

And larger entities concentrate resources, are more powerful, can cheat easier, grow corrupt quicker and are more resistent to market forces by design.

And they begin to have power over government ... You create your own devils.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

EVolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology contain group fitness and survival aspects for social animals, including humans.. Social/pack animals don't necessarily survive better by each member cutting each other's throats. Tribes, communities, and nations, can demonstrate some competitive advantage with social care appropriately applied.

Point being, evolutionary theory is not a whole sale embrace of anarchist or pure capitalistic arguments, applied to social theory, necessarily.

a reply to: ketsuko

Almost like 'behind every great fortune is a great swindle'. I probably slaughtered that quote. What if there were large corporations that actually produced 'stuff' to get their fortune? A large noble corp that had a great internal structure that has honest and didn't cheat. Something along the lines of promoting that type of business endeavor and restricting the ones that subtracted or leached off of society.

It appears that once again, there are no global overreaching answers to this problem. Hmmm, maybe it isn't even a problem to begin with. Maybe it is the fire to mold us. So the answer is back to individuals. The society is a reflection of us and until we change, all of this regulation and taxation talk is pointless. Even if there was no more wealth to extract and they let this thing crash, we will still not learn. We will just be eager to get back onto level ground and create the exact same structure as we have today.

Maybe today is the perfect society. Maybe materialism is the peak of mankind's ability to interact with this reality. Maybe spirituality was meant to be crushed and buried as some relic of the past ages. I just find that so wrong.

a reply to: Quetzalcoatl14

Lot of qualifiers in there. Obviously I agree that we don't want to see a world of pure cut throat brutality. That said, charity begins at home, not on the steps of Congress. Our government has their fingerprints on far too many things they don't belong on, including corporate welfare, individual welfare, growth impeding regulations, and forced wealth redistribution. If Company XYZ deserves to stay in business, then it will produce products Americans really, really want to the degree that their purchase will keep that company robust. If the company extends itself too far and struggles, so be it, it should be on their heads.

The US should eliminate the central bank fully, running the entirety of the cash supply from the Treasury, itself. Cash should be made available to banking institutions direct from the Treasury at a window rate pegged entirely to inflation (defined in the traditional manner, not this hybridized bullsnip that cherry picks components to consider). If a bank goes heels to Jesus, ce la vie... and yes, that includes to those with money in said bank. The only regulation from the government in that respect should be instantaneous and involve placing the bank into a federal court's hand from which the banks outstanding accounts (customer accounts and deposits) will be paid first, investments second, non-management employee compensation third, and if there is any money remaining the banks management can pick the bones. That is how all failing businesses should be handled by the federal government. Not coincidentally, that is also how the government presently handles individuals who go bankrupt...

The system is broken and to right this ship we need to eliminate the broken and diseased portions of the system before we start trying to add new nonsense like AOC is proposing.

a reply to: ClovenSky

And what if those with the resources are able to just buy off the politicians and have their own rules and regulations made. Rules and regulations that turn their corner of the market into a monopoly?

Thats a problem were already dealing with right now........unfortunately.........

originally posted by: ClovenSky
a reply to: ketsuko

Almost like 'behind every great fortune is a great swindle'. I probably slaughtered that quote. What if there were large corporations that actually produced 'stuff' to get their fortune? A large noble corp that had a great internal structure that has honest and didn't cheat. Something along the lines of promoting that type of business endeavor and restricting the ones that subtracted or leached off of society.

It appears that once again, there are no global overreaching answers to this problem. Hmmm, maybe it isn't even a problem to begin with. Maybe it is the fire to mold us. So the answer is back to individuals. The society is a reflection of us and until we change, all of this regulation and taxation talk is pointless. Even if there was no more wealth to extract and they let this thing crash, we will still not learn. We will just be eager to get back onto level ground and create the exact same structure as we have today.

Maybe today is the perfect society. Maybe materialism is the peak of mankind's ability to interact with this reality. Maybe spirituality was meant to be crushed and buried as some relic of the past ages. I just find that so wrong.

Most corporations don't cheat. They all produce stuff or services to get their fortune. You forget that large corporations usually start off as a small business and over decades, they grow by doing whatever better than their competition.

Corporations fail and go out of business all the time. I saw a study showing that only 12% of the Fortune 500 from 1955 existed in 2016. Let that sink in... Just over 10% of the largest companies in the world from 1955 exist today.

Remember when IBM was the dominate player in personal computers? Remember Nokia? Remember Blackberry? Remember Atari? Commodore? Polaroid?

Remember when Yahoo! dominated the internet? AOL? Compuserve? Myspace? AskJeeves?

a reply to: Edumakated

I don't know anymore. I always question myself and start over asking 'is this the society I would wish to live in if I had a choice'. I have food. I have shelter. I am not hurting. But inflation pisses me off. Watching my savings deteriorate by the loss of purchasing power of our fiat makes me upset. Granted I love to stack metals, but what if? Why shouldn't I be able to simply save and expect the purchasing power of the fiat to be the same when I get ready to retire? Or is that holding back progress of this great financial society?

With all of the past corp failures, has it made a difference today? Has the market become honest or have the players simply figured out how to change the rules? How many bankers went to jail from 2008? How much fraud was embedded within our financial system at the end of 2007?

Even though a large number of corps have failed, did the wealth disappear? Did the wealth get transferred out of the rotting corpse before it collapsed? Just because a company fails, doesn't mean it wasn't successful through the eyes of a corporate raider.

If there weren't the leaches and corruption of today's financial markets, maybe we would be working 3 day weeks for 5 hours a day, as was suggested through the application of technology. It looks like we are working longer nowadays. Able to save less. Less access to disposable income. Less happy. More personal bankruptcies. Now how is the wealth concentration doing? I just can't help in thinking we should be doing a lot better.

a reply to: ClovenSky

The answer is back to us.

All of these structures we talk about from government to corporations have one thing in common - human capital. They're people-run endeavors.

If the people aren't honest, the things they run won't be either.

So when certain aspects of society decided to banish religion to the closet, they maybe buried the better angels of our nature with it and this is the result. Law and regulations don't make men moral. If they did, Old Testament Mosaic Law would have been sufficient for our salvation, but God knew it wasn't and never would be. Man cannot live and be righteous through the letter of the law. We must live in the spirit which is one of the points of the New Testament and Jesus Christ.

But here we are .... passing law after law to fix broken people.

ketsuko, I suspect you are right. grrrrrrrrr

thank you everyone for your time and responses.

Time to think and reevaluate again.

a reply to: pexx421

Right fall of the Roman empire stuff here.
There are several argument's about why the Roman's collapsed as a society ranging from becoming too slow to adapt to new threats from beyond there borders to logistical break down of the Roman empire due to there poor system of numbers, imagine the struggle writing up huge numbers in roman numeral's and of course lead poisoning and replacement of there old patrician class.

But one thing is clear, toward the end of the Roman period the empire was fragmenting - it continued for about another thousand years in the east Byzantium but that section of the empire was cultured and civilized long before Rome took it over.

A big part of the problem was that the Taxation meant for Rome that paid for it's soldiers often never got there, regional governors were often corrupt and the money often ended up in there own pockets and as this happened not only did Rome become more poor as the wealth of the FEW elite roman citizen's milking the empire for there own profit soared but as a result the leadership of the empire became increasingly ineffectual until at least the Vandal's, Hun's and Goth's finished Rome off for Good, while the eastern Capital remained intact and had plenty of soldiers left to protect it Byzantium then knew or thought it knew to cut ties with the old capital of the empire - the Greek's never really like the Roman's anyway so for them it was kind of a win - win and they continued for another thousand years until the Doge of Venice (probably actually the Venetian's were the descendants' of the Roman's whom had fled to the swamp's and built Venice 1 then after a plague built the newer Venice 2 - which we know today - abandoning the old Venice whose main cathedral still stand's alone on an island in the swamp's (marshland) to this day) blackmailed a bunch of Norman crusaders (whom were only in on the crusade to make money anyway) into not retaking Jerusalem but instead attacking the fabulously wealth but unsuspecting city of Constantinople a Christian city and then this left Byzantium bankrupted as after the looting of there city they were unable to pay there long off border soldiers and army's that were keeping the Muslim's at bay and in turn this resulted in the fall of Byzantium becoming inevitable though it resisted even when all that remained was the city of Constantinople itself until the Turk's pounded it's ancient roman wall's into dust with there cannon, stole the great cathedral turning it into a mosque and renamed the city Istanbul, the leader of the Turk's had pretensions of (and indeed for a time succeeded) rebuilding the eastern Roman empire as a Muslim empire with him as it's head and wanted the city for his capital.

In today's world (not just the US) the growing greed of the minority of ultra elite whom most often have so much money they do not know what to do with it while there fellow citizens are living on the street's in abject and total poverty is a horrendous reminder of the last day's of Rome.

This kind of thing's always happens before the fall and society's set for the fall always become ever more divided until they are only a society in name and no longer in actuality.

Runaway conservatism is as sure fire a way down the road to societal collapse as is enforced runaway communism - they are both extreme ideology's that lead to extreme division's or extreme resentment in society and eventual to that society failing but perfect middle ground is also never the way to go the pendulum has to swing, the problem in today's world as in the past is that this pendulum is not regulated and that is exactly what it need's to be, we also need to be able to trust our government's to secure our sense of national unity and once again in today's world who does?.

I am in England and I certainly do not trust my government.

So what I am saying is history repeats and the lemming's always run off that same cliff.

originally posted by: toolgal462
What is the ACTUAL tax rate that the rich paid??? After they took all their deductions and had their CPA take advantage of all the loopholes in the law?

Look it up, I have a feeling the story changes substantially after you do that.

This is whst im talling about. If the rich paid any taxes whatsoever it would be nice.

originally posted by: drewlander

originally posted by: toolgal462
What is the ACTUAL tax rate that the rich paid??? After they took all their deductions and had their CPA take advantage of all the loopholes in the law?

Look it up, I have a feeling the story changes substantially after you do that.

This is whst im talling about. If the rich paid any taxes whatsoever it would be nice.

Like i said , flat tax......15-20% of 2 million or more is still more than 100k....making it a flat tax will instinctive them......

Honestly if i was making millions and someone wanted to tax me over 50% for my income I would do whatever I could to avoid having the gov take what I worked for too.....

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask they should just tax capital gains. Not income. That way labor wouldn’t be taxed, and companies would be more likely to reinvest their profits to expand production rather than saving it or investing it to inflate stocks.

a reply to: neo96

I have a friend that was top of his class, majored in economics, and is an anarchist/leader of Antifa. In fact pretty much everyone I know who majored in economics for reasons other than getting a well paying job after school is now a far Leftist.

What is the reason why people so want to come to America?

Because, here, dreams really can come true.

A person gets a great idea. Bill Gates, as an example, started DOS in his garage. They create something wonderful.

It prospers. They get rich. They employ thousands. Those thousands also get wealthy.

The American dream.

And then, we have liberals who want everyone to be wealthy.

That's not the way it works. Work for what you earn. Reach for the stars.

Fred..

originally posted by: drewlander

originally posted by: toolgal462
What is the ACTUAL tax rate that the rich paid??? After they took all their deductions and had their CPA take advantage of all the loopholes in the law?

Look it up, I have a feeling the story changes substantially after you do that.

This is whst im talling about. If the rich paid any taxes whatsoever it would be nice.

The rich pay most of the taxes as it is... extract your head from your keister.

The top 1% pay nearly 40% of all federal taxes. The top .001%, just 1400 people paid 3% of all federal taxes.

Nearly 50% of people pay no federal income tax....

Top 3% of US Tax Payers Pay Majority of Taxes