Income of 400 Richest Americans Doubled During Bush Era

reply to post by ImaNutter


So you admit to jealousy... congratulations on expressing the emotions of millions of helpless people across America. Emotions such as those just aren't justified because they exist. Jealousy evolved for a reason. It's a psychological motivator, when there is nothing else left for you, to lock your eye on your neighbors' possessions. Once you steal from them you are rewarded with a diminishing of the negative feedback loop intrinsic to jealousy centers in your brain. Don't pretend your emotions matter. They don't.

reply to post by PhyberDragon




YA that was good:UP:

Originally posted by TheAgentNineteen

Originally posted by AllSeeingI
Enough is enough. Lets get this revolution started.
The rich still bleed as we do.


EAT THE RICH! There's only one thing that theyre good for.
-Aerosmith (Eat The Rich)

Anyone who has this much money and claims to need more should be jailed for willfull reckless endangerment... for having money to feed and house millions but they do not.

I am so angry I dont have the words.
There does not exist a curse proper for the damnation of this Oligarchish system.


[edit on (2/1/09) by AllSeeingI]

Individuals who feel that there is such a concrete "Oligarchist" System lurking in America, need to and should travel around the world in order to form a more Relative Perspective.

The United States of America is one of the FEW places in the world where anyone and everyone can move up the "Hierarchy" of Society at their own Free Will. You can become "Upper Class", or at the very least Successful as you wish, and the only factors holding one back are their Initiative and Planning (Sometimes Circumstance as well).

To create this idea of "Down With The Rich" is to engage in a HIGHLY Dangerous Precedence of "Class Warfare", and thus Communist Ideology. The Rich have just as much a right to keep their money as ANYONE else. The only structure and enforcement which we should go after however, are issues such as "Golden Parachutes", and the EXTREME Wage Differences currently present between CEOs/Board Members, and their Employees.

Aside from these Specifically Aforementioned Issues, the Wealthy should not be treated any different than your Average Citizenry; and in fact, the two Aforementioned issues are only present because by addressing them, we are in fact assuring that the Wealthy ARE being treated the same as the Common Citizenry.

I DO agree however that we all too often find Politicians running this Nation, and Representing us, who have become Corrupt and Completely Out of Touch with the Common Citizenry. For one, I believe that we can solve this issue by placing Consecutive Term Limits Upon Congress, of both the Upper and Lower Houses.

Apparently, you need a history lesson too, Ok her it is:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

History 101. Read it. Learn It. Quit making me have to Repeat it.

The only way to be rich is to be a crook, and if you own a business and aren't, or not employing people to run it who aren't. You are lying to yourself, because, I know better.

Originally posted by cognoscente
reply to post by ImaNutter

 

So you admit to jealousy... congratulations on expressing the emotions of millions of helpless people across America. Emotions such as those just aren't justified because they exist. Jealousy evolved for a reason. It's a psychological motivator, when there is nothing else left for you, to lock your eye on your neighbors' possessions. Once you steal from them you are rewarded with a diminishing of the negative feedback loop intrinsic to jealousy centers in your brain. Don't pretend your emotions matter. They don't.

ON A SIDE BAR

IF YOUR EMOTIONS WERE NOT ENGAGED YOU WOULDN'T HAVE ANY MOTIVATION TO RESPOND, IN FLATTENED EMOTIONAL STATE YOU WOULD BE CONTENT IN YOUR VIEWS (sorry caps - I'm not yelling) and you would have little reason to engage in debate. In stead you FEEL compelled to express your thoughts which are shaped by
emotions.

Nothing gets done with pure logic - and nothing is optimized by pure logic.

Same goes 4 emotions


Emotion

and

logic

exist in permanent stasis.

One or the other is rendered completely ineffective without one other, when applied to humans.

With pure logic, a death would not matter because there are plenty more.

With pure emotion, one would cease to function if all they felt was the fear of death.

POLITICS Has zero to do with logic in physical reality.

LIKE IT OR NOT FEELINGS ARE ALWAYS ADDRESSED IN POLITICS FIRST.




[edit on 2-2-2009 by The Bald Champion]

reply to post by The Bald Champion


Actually. that is not true. i am clinically insane, I am an anti socio psychotic with delusions and hallucinations. that I have the intellect to engage in argument and debate, is really based on past rememberances of emotions, more so than actually having them. I do not feel emotion as more than a vagueness, anything more than that and it fades. I truly do not care if you put a gun in my mouth and threatened to kill me, I might shrug at best and hope that it is quick to avoid severe discomfort and pain. But, since my psyhche would just send me off to la la land where I would cease being me at all- I don't much worry about that either. I love my family and friends, but, only in a vague loose sense of the term. I don't actually have any feeling about it either way, just a faint feeling which comes through the numbness, so, while it is there, it doesn't really qualify. Most of the time I catch myself acting out of remembrance more than any actual emotion. And once I realize that I'm doing it, it usually just fades again. So, while emotions are there. They are not necessary to debate. I am Apathetic. I concern myself with things because I still possess knowledge. However, emotion plays very little role in my day to day life. Be greatful, I suppose. Some of us have to forego the luxury so that others may enjoy it.

[edit on 2-2-2009 by PhyberDragon]

reply to post by PhyberDragon


That makes a lot of sense. Perhaps some people, if not the majority, are simply recalling past vestiges of emotional states in their day to day lives. It's just wrong to feel pissed off that some people have profited from these tax cuts. It's as if wealth is measured in relative terms, in how much your neighbor has in comparison to you. It's not like the quality of your life suddenly became horrendously worse because certain people profited during this period of time.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
Hasn't anyone noticed the FACT that if the tax rate of the rich was reduced by a third, but their income doubled, they actually paid a higher amount in total to the government.

If you paid 60 percent of 1 million in taxes, that would be 600,000.
If the rate went down by a third to 40 percent, but you made 2 million, you would pay 800,000 to Uncle Sam.

I hate to give such an obvious example, but it really is as simple as that and somehow people just don't see it.

Put the blame where it belongs. Lower taxes allow the rich to create more jobs and expand their businesses AS WELL as pay more in taxes overall.

If you don't like what the government does with the money, I'm right there with you, but lower taxes benefit everybody except the power hungry politicians who don't like us being capable of taking care of ourselves without them.

I am absolutely not rich by the way. I make $32,000 a year in California.

If it allows them to create new jobs, why keep outsourcing to third world countries, keep losing trillions of dollars and asking for bailouts when the CEOs are making more money?

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
Hasn't anyone noticed the FACT that if the tax ratePut the blame where it belongs. Lower taxes allow the rich to create more jobs and expand their businesses AS WELL as pay more in taxes overall.

What a bunch of Special ed. Rush Limbaugh talking point BS.

Most of the rich aren't in manufacturing, creating jobs; they are in banking and finance. The only jobs they create are for Tax lawyers figuring out a way to avoid paying their fair share.

Schools out. Now go play.

reply to post by whaaa


You are right.
This is probably the worst time to introduce such a tax cut.. CEO's receiving tax-payer bailout money still have their private jets and six-seven figure bonuses out of some kind of delusional sense of entitlement. Now, some politicians are trying to put caps on what TARP-funded (bailout-funded) CEO's can make in a year and they are trying to include such regulations in the new bailout plan. Both are EXTREMELY bad ideas for many reasons..

Being a successful and humble capitalist CEO is one thing.. But justifying million and billion dollar salaries, private jet transport for the corporate elite, and shelling out massive bonuses when you were just given millions of dollars in bailout money (if not more) is completely insane.. It doesn't matter that some companies received bailout money without asking for it.. Those are still tax-payer dollars. You can't somehow look at one pile of money and say it is yours and then look at another and say that is the taxpayers.. It is all in the same pile... Noone's saying it is illegal for companies to do what they want with their own money..But it SHOULD be illegal for companies to do what they want with our money.

Now, the republican pundits are all talking about how Obama is cutting military spending by billions of dollars. The problem is they're either not seeing the big picture or they are unwilling to acknowledge it. First of all, Noone wants money to be diverted from the military where money is pretty much always needed (DUH!). Second, we are in an ever-destabilizing fiscal budget crisis in basically all of our major cities (and probably alot of the small to mid level cities and towns in America). Our economy is about to go from bad to worse. All the experts say that.
If you have read about the recent budget crises' in California and New York you know exactly what Im talking about. California is so screwed at this point they can't even afford to give everyone their tax refunds back..

California delays $3.5B in payments

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Running short of cash, California has started delaying $3.5 billion in payments to taxpayers, contractors, counties and social service agencies.

With the governor and state lawmakers locking horns on resolving California's budget crunch, the controller Monday halted checks covering these obligations so the state could continue funding its school system and making its debt payments.

The delay will inflict more pain on the already sorry condition of the Golden State, which is facing a $40 billion budget gap. People won't have tax refund money to spend, businesses won't get paid for their services and agencies won't have funds to help the needy until the budget situation is addressed.

If something isn't done these immense budget shortfalls are going to grow by billions and billions until there isn't any money left at all for cities to afford pretty important things like infrastructure/road improvements, education, maybe even eventually things like emergency services.

What I see is a new president trying to put things in order to address the imminent financial crisis while assuring there is future money for things like revamping our national infrastructure.

What people aren't seeing despite the funding cuts to the military (even if that is really what Obama plans on attempting) is that the amount of annual funding going into corps of engineers projects and military installations is going to triple (if not quadruple) in the coming years. That money is basically already slated to be paid for by our government to improve/expand military installations and tear down things like 40 year old army and marine barracks that are falling apart around our soldiers.... If you've seen threads like this you know what I'm talking about..
YouTube video raises concerns about Bragg barracks

What I'm getting at is that although there might be a short term budget cut for the military there is an immense long-term plan to increase it and that military installations will receive orders of magnitude over what they did in the past to increase national infastructure and quality of life for military families living in 30 and 40 year old housing (just as an example)..

Cutting taxes at this point will only make the fiscal budget crises' in our major cities even worse. Maybe republicans think that it is justified by more and more government bailouts in order to make up the difference. Or maybe they think that a tax-cut would lead to a reinvigoration of the private sector in this country. We DO need a reinvigoration of the private sector in this country.. But it is a little more complicated than giving tax-cuts to companies that are run by crazy people who just want bigger bonuses, bigger private jets, and 400,000 dollar umbrella racks in their offices. A tax-cut would lead to a corporate gamble that we could somehow overcome this financial crisis by putting faith in those same kinds of CEO's instead of providing immediate bail-out relief to those same corporations. Yet we should somehow believe that in an economic crisis that was at least partially caused by lack of oversight, bad corporate decision making, questionable salaries/bonuses, and this sickening corporate sense of entitlement, we should put our faith in those same companies to pull us out of this mess?

I think I speak for most people when I say that I still have some faith left in smart American capitalism.. Not all CEO's make bad decisions and not all are this greedy.. I think most CEO's understand the situation we are all in and how dire the circumstances are (as well as what actions need to be taken on the part of their company to ensure they can get through this mess). So it isn't that I don't have faith in American capitalism. I just don't have faith in people that get a bailout and then give themselves massive bonuses, spend over a million dollars of the company's money to renovate their offices, buy 90,000 dollar rugs, 30,000 dollars for new toilets, etc..(Kind of like Jim Thain of Merryl Lynch.. )

www.bloomberg.com...

This kind of transfer of money and power from the public sector to the private sector is what was such a huge staple of the Bush administration.. And it didn't exactly help avert the mess we are in now or we wouldn't be having these problems.. I'm not saying that our economic woes are the fault of the Bush administration, but that kind of carelessness and unwillingness to even acknowledge an economic crisis existed didn't help one bit. "NO we are not in a recession, NO we are not in a recession, HOLY S#17 WE ARE IN A HUGE RECESSION!" That is basically how it unfolded. Twiddling your thumbs and hoping that American capitalism would eventually even out the playing field and make things better didn't work for the Bush administration.. That is one of the reasons Obama won the election to begin with. Things are not going to change overnight. In order to make everything work there are going to be cuts in some areas and increases in funds to other areas.. That is pretty much expected I would think. So talking about Obama's plans to cut funding in certain areas in the short term doesn't make any sense whatsoever when you consider the big picture. I just think so many people are missing this.. And the republican pundits see the funding cuts as a way to attack Obama. How does that make sense?

-ChriS

[edit on 3-2-2009 by BlasteR]

I find this thread interesting because I see it as a microcosm of the USA as a whole. There's a basic difference in phylosophy between liberals and conservatives, and I only see the gap getting larger. There are those who think Government can solve all our problems and those who think we'd be better off with Government off our backs. Socialism vs. Free Market Capitalism.

I see class envy here. It is rampant. Everyone needs a villain I suppose, so lets throw darts at the fat cat CEO's and all their millions. It's a red herring. The kind of money they make compared to our economy as a whole isn't just a drop in the bucket, it's literally a few molecules. You are muddying the water. It's a minor sidebar in the macroeconomic discussion. The subject of the OP is as ridiculous a subject as the many other socialist red herrings that are thrown around, right up to and including the new president. It almost reminds me of the global-gullible warning arguments by socialists.

Warren Buffet(Socialist) using his secretary as an example of the tax code is ludicrous. He's done it for years and it's been proven to be another red herring by many experts. I'll find a link for you.

Red Herring: something the detracts attention from the real issue.

[edit on 3-2-2009 by starcraft]

reply to post by muzzleflash


I am actually all for wealth caps. CEO's should still make a lot of money, but the $50 million or whatever insane number thrown out there, all for CEO's, can better be spent by paying the workers higher wages, thus evening things out a bit.