Stephen King's Message

reply to post by buster2010


Basically what all that means is that King thinks that wealthy people are mostly not enough like him...ie...not as unselfish as him and that it requires govt to make them "do their fair share". So in effect, because King can afford to make donations, he wants the govt to force others to, he's a Statist through and through.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

Kudo's Stephen King. You are one of the few rich people that remembers where they come from. From the link brought by OP on page 1:

This has to happen if America is to remain strong and true to its ideals. It’s a practical necessity and a moral imperative. Last year during the Occupy movement, the conservatives who oppose tax equality saw the first real ripples of discontent. Their response was either Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”) or Ebenezer Scrooge (“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”). Short-sighted, gentlemen. Very short-sighted. If this situation isn’t fairly addressed, last year’s protests will just be the beginning. Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.

Spoken like a true King. Take heed, all you phony "Kings".

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
From the Daily Beast;
Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!
(thedailybeast.com)

Warning, harsh language at the source.

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.

I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bull**** persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-****ing-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.

Much, MUCH more at the source. One of the best tirades I've heard in a long time, and it speaks to the core of the current ongoing political dissension.

There was a time when people viewed the government as a public service, there to provide for the common good of all Americans, rich and poor. The government wasn't a for-profit corporation, out to keep itself in the black, nor was it means to control and dominate every facet of your social or personal life, by invasive privacy-robbing dominionists. People used to believe in America, that's why they were willing to pay their fair into the system, to keep it strong. But now we have a class of super-wealthy elite, who are doing everything they can to undermine that system, to keep the system so skewed in their favor that it all but eliminates the ability for competition - it reduces America to a vassal state of the select wealthy.

HAHAHAHAAH this is an amazing thread my friend!

"We built IT"
www.youtube.com...

Couldn't embed and this is the best one i could find,


S&F for the thread though thanks
Mike

blame senators and congress.

what do u expect when they have been writing laws for 200 years.

you start to run out of stuff to regulate.

then to justify their jobs, they start to pass laws that start to hinder the lives of americans, the economy and structure of society.

imagine how america will look after 500 years of constant legislating.

everyone will be a robot, scared to breath more than their allotted oxygen.

First of all, King is my favorite author by far. But he really does need to zip it sometimes when he talks because he can go off on tangents that lose people. I'm sure he has the best editors money can buy for his writing, but he needs to cross-train them to edit him when he talks. I can relate. Talking isn't his strong suit. Writing is.

Anyway, I read the whole article and it seems that Kings biggest issue is the wealthy who have a sense of entitlement. If you want to make millions in America, fine, but remember that this is one of the few countries in the world where you're able to that even if you grew up the poorest of the poor.

Here's an example, I think, of what he was getting at: John makes millions in the early 1900's because he invented and made a tractor. It caught on, became mass produced and he died a very wealthy man. His children inherited that fortune and, because they got the kind of college degrees that afforded them the education needed to keep that enterprise going, they too kept making millions. Their kids did the same thing. As did theirs. Now, here we are, 100 years later and that fortune has grown even more.

They have sustained their wealth by hard work and education, but what they didn't sustain was their memory of how it was all stated in the first place and the key ingredient that made it all possible. The fact that it all started and was maintained in a country that makes it very easy to do all the things that family did over multiple generations. Because they forgot where they came from and what it took to get from point A to point B, they now have a sense of entitlement which, for all intents and purposes, means that they're biting the hand that fed them in the first place.

Maybe they don't think it's important anymore to give only America the credit for them maintaining their wealth because now there are so many countries around the world buying their product. In a way they're right. This is more of a global community now then it was when their great-grandfather built the very first Allis-Chalmers tractor. But if anything, they should respect the past for the fact that, global community or not in 2012, it wasn't that way in 1914 when great-granddaddy started it all. The customer base was smaller, more fickle and demanding the best product money could buy.

If you don't respect, or at the very least remember, your past, you're not going to have a future. It's that simple. You can try to circumnavigate that fact by building up your offshore accounts for tax purposes and moving your production facilities overseas for profit purposes, but in the end all you're doing is biting the hand that fed your great-grandfather and pissing on the country that he loved. he loved it because it afforded him the opportunity to realize the American dream and to give you, his heirs, the chance at a better life then he did. And this is how you re-pay it all? YOUR grand-kids are going to look at all this, from their cardboard box on Hollywood Blvd., and see what you can't: You're f***ing up big time, Allis heirs, and you can't see it because you've got your money blinders on.

( I'm not slandering Allis Chalmers and I have no idea if this example is true to a fact, it is just an example of how someof the wealthy are. It's just the first company that came to mind. That's all )

Steven King called it shortsighted. I can't think of a more apt word for it and it doesn't matter how much education or money you have. Some of the poorest, richest, dumbest, and smartest all have one thing in common: Their love or admiration for money and the fact they think that alone can make them better people blinds them to the other realities of the world. Not the least of which is that I've never seen a Hearse with a luggage rack. True, you may be working to give your kids a better life and pass everything to them, but if you don't stay focused and grounded on what got you their in the first place, well, time doesn't forget. Put it that way. Your heirs will end up paying for the fact that you didn't want to invest in a new pair of glasses.

But what do you care? You're not going to be here, right?

Originally posted by Bluesma

Originally posted by buster2010
Has anyone noticed that the people who earned their wealth seems to have no problem paying taxes? The ones that are always whining about taxes are the ones who inherited their wealth the ones who didn't work for it. Unless you call waiting for mommy and daddy to die working.

This is the thing I keep noting! In my family, and their entourage, many are supportive of more taxes being placed on the rich... and yet they ARE that rich, and acknowledge they are ready to do so. They are also people that came from poor backgrounds and struggled and worked hard to get where they are.

I run into people who defend the old trickle down theory and insist the rich shouldn't be required to pay more taxes, but up to this point, those have all been people who are not of that more affluent population we are speaking of.


(Maybe there is people reading this that are exceptions to that, and welcome them to say so , that I hear them out and take note, this is just what I have collected in experience so far)

But I admit it does make me wonder about the Stockholm syndrome type of explanation....

Or the simple way people like to have figures in society that represent a potential of being free from all responsibility, duty, to the collective. The possibility of believing that "if I struggle and suffer, I can be one day rewarded with total freedom and benefit of power, without responsibility with it." (is it a coincidence so many right wing people are also into religion that promises a similar idea?)

People live their dreams through such figures and personalities they identify with and admire. Even if they never get there themselves.

I've noticed the same thing. Many of the people who are against any type of inheritance tax are in no danger of every having to pay one. Many who defend the rich, that they deserve to keep their money, they earned it, make very little money and probably will continue to make very little money. However, in America people think that they are just one lotto ticket, lucky break, or year of hard work away from being in Mitt Romney's shoes. It is a delusion many have.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
reply to post by buster2010

 

Basically what all that means is that King thinks that wealthy people are mostly not enough like him...ie...not as unselfish as him and that it requires govt to make them "do their fair share". So in effect, because King can afford to make donations, he wants the govt to force others to, he's a Statist through and through.

I think it's more of a difference between King knowing how lucky he has been and people like Romney think they're entitled. It's the difference between new money and old.

reply to post by Dr Expired


With all due respect, being a writer is worthy of money because we would be without many great works of art in our past without writers pitching in their stories and ideas to contribute to society. Stephen King DID work for what he has and he and his wife were once very poor before he began writing to pull them out of it. He had his credit cards cut up, started writing in any magazine for publication that he could, and worked very hard to be noticed. If this is your standpoint on labor, then why don't some office workers go out and start digging ditches? Your point of view is nothing but ridiculous.

Originally posted by tinfoilman
reply to post by Blackmarketeer

 

I guess if he wants to be taxed then tax him. While it may fix certain problems, it will not fix the problem we're actually having right now. Unfortunately he does not understand our current situation.

The problem is the poor have an unusual shortage of money. The reason is because we're post housing crisis. The vast majority of money in this country is created when loans are taken out. Take out a loan, most of that money is created right then and there.

After the housing crisis banks stopped loaning and people stopped borrowing. This caused the money supply to shrink. This made money harder to get. Remember all the talk about how the banks aren't loaning after the bailout? Well that's the problem. Taxing the rich isn't going to make them loan more money either. We'll still have the same problem.

The rich don't even have enough money to make a dent in the problem anyway. It's that big of a problem. But mainly because, taking money out of an economy that already doesn't have enough money is stupid. You wouldn't fill up an empty bucket by taking water out would you?

The actual problem won't get fixed until we either change our money system, or people start borrowing again and therefore buying again. But that won't happen unless they have real wealth to back the loan up, like a job for example, and a car to get back and forth to work to pay said loan back and a road to drive it on.

What we need is infrastructure investment like high ways, bridges, dams, power plants, levies, fiber broadband. Something to give people jobs so they borrow and buy houses. Something that actually creates jobs for the 99% and which increases the tax base. Getting the 99% jobs is going to create much more tax revenue than the 1% even have let alone tax.

If they did tax the rich it would only be enough to increase the debt. That's right, INCREASE! The gov borrows so fast that even if they raised taxes on the rich the debt would still increase. The money would just vanish into a meaningless debt and help no one.

So, we're going to tax the rich to still be broke? That's kinda retarded. If we're gonna be broke either way, then just keep the money. After all, It's not like rich people's money just sits there. They invest it. Or the bank invests it.

Most of the time that money isn't even in the hands of the rich. 99% of the time rich people's money are in the hands in the poor being loaned out and used to buy stuff and keep the economy going. It's just the rich don't know that because the bank doesn't tell them who they loaned it to.

But the problem right now is nobody has a job to borrow that money and put it to use, and second nobody wants to build infrastructure in a country that has no jobs. Build a road to abandoned industrial park because all the jobs went to Mexico? What's the point?

The solution to the problem is to ask why people have to borrow and be in debt in the first place or else our money supply dries up and we starve to death?

The answer to that question is the fractional reserve banking system that's ran by the Federal Reserve.

I think you're partly right. The banks did tighten up on lending after the housing crisis, but they're pretty free with the money now, as long as you have good credit. I know this because I sell houses. I have not had 1 buyer who could not get a loan, even putting down as little as 5%. What the banks did was hold inthe reigns on people using their homes as an ATM. Which they never should have done in the first place.

We're up a creek without a paddle now because it's going to take some time to adjust to technology. The computer has eliminated many jobs that enabled people to support a family. Look at the whole printing/newspaper/publishing industry for one. The jobs are gone. The work that IS still being done is being offshored. Heck, hospitals are offshoring radiologist's jobs now because a radiologist in India can see your xray on a computer. It's going to take some time for society to adjust to this.

Originally posted by jude11

Originally posted by Hydrawolf
Old news...5 months old infact!

Wow...

1st post in and you're setting us straight.

Peace

edit on 1-9-2012 by jude11 because: (no reason given)

No, although I do believe that the original poster should have done a thread search prior to rehashing an old news thread. If news such as this is 5 months old, chances are there has already been a thread discussion on the topic, such as this one - www.abovetopsecret.com...

He should have added his input and opinions to the above mentioned thread, after all he missed the boat by 5 months...just sayin'

Peace

Originally posted by Dr Expired
reply to post by EvilSadamClone

 

Some say the rich get richer, by making others work harder and then reaping the fruit of others sweat.
But that isn't borne out by fact ..is it?
Stephen King got rich by collecting money for words he put on paper, perhaps he should drive a bus for awhile or be a cleaner, see how his opinion may change then or not.

Stephen knows better than anyone that there can only be a certain number of horror writers, or else he wouldn't be earning enough to worry about tax.

Stephen King is one of my few heroes. He worked many jobs as a young man. He pumped gas, was a high school teacher and worked at an industrial laundromat. He struggled for most of his early life and worked really hard to get where he is. He is an incredibly talented story-teller, and he has never forced anyone to read his stories. I have yet to see a hostile takeover by any of his books.

He is also an extremely down to earth guy, always remembers his roots and that hard work doesn't always equate success. His mother taught him that . You asume that he writes his genre for the money, when in reality it's the other way around. He writes because he enjoys it. The money was the sprinkles on the cupcake. I've never seen a pic of him with money coming out of his ears.

Originally posted by RealSpoke
reply to post by AfterInfinity

 

Do you realize exactly how much of America you covered in at least half of those bullet points?

Uh no, the majority of people are not sociopaths or psychopaths..

Ummm a lot of America is its just theyre not to hte extreme where theyre given that title...Americas full of terrible people.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Yeah if he wants to help people he can give more of his money to charity. I can assure you it will help a lot more people than giving it to a government bureaucracy that will skim off 90% of it, as opposed to just 50% from charities.

Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
So we should just punish them for being rich by taking away 99% of everything they own and giving them to the lazy people who don't want to work because they deserve more than the rich do. Okey dokey, that sounds good to me.

Which is why I believe in the flat tax, with no loop holes.

I don't understand why anyone would star this comment. EvilSadam obviously didn't read the OP at all. Where did King imply taking 99% of what the rich own? It was specifically about being taxed in the same proportion as the rest of us. For example, I typically pay about 50% of my gross income in taxes (fed, state, sales, property, excise), whereas someone like Willard Mitt Romney pays a significantly lower percentage of his gross income in taxes.

reply to post by Riposte


Go back and re-read what Mr. King wrote! He specifically addressed charity giving - and the fact that even if someone as rich as himself, or a Bill Gates or a Mitt Romney - were to give every cent of their wealth away to charity, it wouldn't have that big an impact! Sure, the recipient of that charity would be helped - but no one else. That's where the government safety net picks up the slack. It helps everyone who is in need of help, not just the handful who are lucky enough to be on the receiving end of some charitable persons largesse.

Just a small bit of information. I looked at Romney's 2011 tax return. He made roughly $21 million, gave $4 million to charity, and paid $4.7 million in various taxes. So, taxes and charity were over 40% of his income. It's hard to get upset with that.

Ah yes, another article/thread operating under the false presumption that tax dollars actually go to helping those in need, and not into the pockets of politicians, government bureaucrats and their cronies.

It makes sense, if you think about it, that you'd have all of these celebrities coming out in support of increasing taxes on the rich. It garners them more respect among a 'certain' element within the younger generation. Besides, even if their taxes should get increased a little (which is very unlikely to happen), they already have so much that they likely won't even notice the little extra is gone.

Whatever the case, I would really like to live in this dream world Mr. King apparently inhabits, where we all give a little money to the government and magically there is no more crime or hunger or homelessness or sickness. Sounds like a pretty nice place.

reply to post by CaptainIraq

Sadly, I have to agree with you. The idea of just putting more and more money into the government system in order to help the poor has a very dismal track record. While I'm not sure the current approach has to be eliminated entirely, it seems clear to me that we need a different idea, a different approach.

I was hoping that this would be one of the issues that would be seriously discussed in the campaign, but I'm beginning to think there will be no serious issues discussed seriously by both sides.

reply to post by Paceryder


Yeah it's gotten a little better on the bank side.

A few things still hurting us is the loaner side is still slow. People still aren't sure about taking out a loan even when they can get one. Another is that after all the foreclosures and bankruptcies you simply have fewer people with good credit. So, we're waiting for 7-10 years while people build credit again.

And when it comes to housing, well even if we had buyers, they're for the most part just buying up the empty houses left over. If we can get through that supply we could start building again and get construction going.

I don't know. Like I got to thinking a week or two ago. Our money system was based on the idea that the population and economy would continue to grow. We created a consumer society. Maybe we need a new system.

Because then we started telling everyone to stop having babies and lost Row v. Wade and started killing our consumers off. Some say we've had as many as 50 million abortions. That may be a high estimate. But who knows, but we have about 20 million empty properties? Wonder if those have anything to do with each other.

Wonder what our economy would look like if those now grown babies were buying those houses and cars and starting businesses and creating jobs and paying taxes? I'm really not sure you can have a debt based consumer society while killing off your consumers.

I mean think about it from a business point of view. You just lost all those potential customers lol. Wonder how much of an effect that's had.

Originally posted by CaptainIraq
Ah yes, another article/thread operating under the false presumption that tax dollars actually go to helping those in need, and not into the pockets of politicians, government bureaucrats and their cronies.

It makes sense, if you think about it, that you'd have all of these celebrities coming out in support of increasing taxes on the rich. It garners them more respect among a 'certain' element within the younger generation. Besides, even if their taxes should get increased a little (which is very unlikely to happen), they already have so much that they likely won't even notice the little extra is gone.

Whatever the case, I would really like to live in this dream world Mr. King apparently inhabits, where we all give a little money to the government and magically there is no more crime or hunger or homelessness or sickness. Sounds like a pretty nice place.

I believe the article by Mr. King is based on the not so false presumption that all the money given to government assists those in need. I expect that the majority of americans has gone to public school, a not so minute segment of the population has applied for and qualified for the Pell grant or gone to a state university, soldiers have received their well earned benefit of the GI Bill, have purchased homes through FHA/VA/DA loans, and if they have worked a day in their life, have paid towards Medicare/Social Security, funds that should become available to them upon retirement. Those are all government programs. These programs are not charity based and are directly funded by our taxes. So yes, the obscenely rich and their cronies, the corporations, need to pay more than a paltry 15% of their monies in taxes. The rest of us do.