The Super Rich Tax you to death

reply to post by drew hempel


Two things...

the 30 year long war for lower taxes, a war that was fought as any conventional war, using lower classes as cannon fodder, has resulted in lower "taxes" but higher "fees". Ex: A family whose children once rode a school bus free to school must now pay a fee. Where parks/museums were once free, now there is a fee. It is much harder for lower incomes to absorb these fees. Yes, taxes were lowered but fees increased.

a better indicator of the economic times we live in might be the growing disparity between incomes and the increasing accumulation of wealth at the top.


Having grown up in a 1950's-60's household, I was raised on the wages of a father who worked for a company, whose owner had been made rich by that business. At the end of the year, that owner saw fit to share his profits with his employees who helped make them. My father got a "profit sharing" check, along with a frozen turkey.

The owner probably did make (at most) 30 times what my father made. Nowadays, that gap would be higher. Plus, that wealthy, religious Republican owner would probably be labeled a Godless liberal commie/socialist for sharing his profits.

Such wealth disparities used to be seen in third world countries run by generals or civilians greedy for power and money. Usually totalitarian. The US today seems to want a first world country with a third world economy. This is from 2003!

When the leader of a national political party thinks, "after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money", something is wrong with this picture. source
Little wonder many rich do not see how many of the rest of us cannot afford to pay for things like...like...our medical bills! I get the feeling we're thought of as fat, lazy scum who only need to get a job/education/initiative to pay for those bills!

Too bad we didn't eat the rich back then when we had the chance. Instead, we let them breed their ideas about unfettered re-distribution of wealth, until we have the sorry mess we're in today.

[edit on 20-3-2010 by desert]

I see nothing of a breakdown of inheritance vs. earned wealth
in your link. And these are the 'publicly' richest people. The family's that control the true wealth of the world hide behind articles like this and pay no taxes.

[edit on 20-3-2010 by ISHAMAGI]

reply to post by OnceReturned


First of all you define evolution WRONG -- and do so in terms of economic superiority -- then you clarify

my wrong definition of evolution is not for biology but for economics!

That's called a "straw man argument" -- and it exposes your views as extremely immoral.

Secondly the self-made man illusion is just that -- totally bogus -- as even conservatives will admit:

yglesias.typepad.com...

Once you realize that the poor are on unequal footing not only because poor people tend to attent ill-funded schools but also because poverty per se is a cause of ill-health and has deleterious consequences on emotional and cognitive development then equality of opportunity becomes a reason to pursue a measure of equality of outcome. What measure? Well, it all just depends how equal you want the opportunities to be. True equality of opportunity will require true equality of outcome.

reply to post by ISHAMAGI


Sorry, I wasn't meaning to be deceptive with that link. I tried to find a source for self made vs inherited and came upon this:
moneytipcentral.com...
That article makes the 1/3 inherited to 2/3 self made claim. I tried to determine the source for that article and I was under the impression that the author got his info by looking at the forbes list. I still think he figured it out by based on the forbes info, but I don't know exactly where.

reply to post by OnceReturned


That's totally bogus -- I was reading the list of the top 100 billionaires from Forbes and -- consider that

1) computers are the single highest source of toxic waste of any industry -

so is that self-made?

NO -- it's called

EXTERNALITIES

2) The food industry is based on corrupting other countries and destroying their local farm economies - through public subsidies!!

That means ADM - Cargill -- none of that is self-made...

3) Walmart relies on severe sweatshop conditions

4) -- Koch ? C'mon -- it's OIL -- you gotta have imperial wars to get cheap oil. Not self made.

Consider John Jacob Astor -- he was one of the first big rich men of the U.S. -- how did he do it?

Furs -- from the Native Americans -- and how? Rhoda Gilman documents that it was the policy to get the Indians drunk because only then would they kill off their own animals -- for the profit of John Jacob Astor -- and that's how the NYC subway was built, among other NYC infrastructure.

On and on

Self-made is a total joke.



[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

reply to post by OnceReturned


Although the top income brackets have a nominally high rate, there are many estate and business planning techniques rich people can use to avoid high tax rates.

One technique is forming private equity firms. In a private equity firm, a banker can earn millions of dollars as a "partner" of the firm. His million dollar salary is treated as a capital gain, so is only taxed at a 15% rate.

On the estate and gift tax side, family limited partnerships can be used to achieve tax reductions. A family limited partnership is a way one can artificially deflate the value of assets in one's estate. In a family limited partnership, it is not unheard of for people to give $10 million worth of property, yet get treated as having made a $6 million gift.

reply to post by OnceReturned


Yeah consider Michael Bloomberg -- an accountant -- the whole industry is a big tax deduction!!

"Always use a good accountant, it's tax deductible too, so you might as well get a good one"

www.articlesbase.com...

As are attorneys and advertising!!



[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

I think if you want to get rich quick in America, which I believe to be possible. though unlikely: You don't make something good. You make something with a high profit margin and sell the crap out of it.


eg. auer83.files.wordpress.com...


Amazon customer reviews:

Mine does not chop, it just trys to. Won't chop through apple , garlic , onion. The food gets caught up in the blades. This is the first time I used it, but I'm looking for an easier one to chop with. The chopped onion (which is why I bought it) comes out in big pieces and they are stuck in the blades, I have to dig them out. This is no fun!

As Vince says in the commercial "you're gonna love my nuts" but the slap chop doesn't do a very good job of chopping them. This thing is flimsy and cheap. It has a hard time chopping foods with peels. Food goes everywhere and gets stuck in the blades. I don't recommend this TV product.

Now, if only you or I would have thought of this -- invent a product (actually a rip off of another, similar product Billy Mayze was selling long before "Vinny"), get production costs down to "dirt cheap," promote it in a catchy commercial where you intentionally mislead your customers into wanting something that doesn't work, then sell at a high premium.

reply to post by Kaytagg


Oh yeah that's call "Drew's Law"!!

Get rid of overhead costs -- and you got quick profits.

Check out this amazing Food Inc expose on the "self-made" food industry!

www.esoterictube.com...

Farms as estate tax deduction shelters:

dor.wa.gov...

That reminds me - this is an AWESOME little expose

Take the Rich Off Welfare!!

www.amazon.com...

Here's excerpts from TAX THE RICH OFF WELFARE

www.thirdworldtraveler.com...

www.ewg.org...

“American taxpayers have been writing farm subsidy checks to wealthy absentee land owners, state prison systems, universities, public corporations, and very large, well-heeled farm business operations without the government so much as asking the beneficiaries if they need our money," says Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. "Even if you live smack in the middle of a big city, type in a ZIP code and you'll find farm subsidy recipients.”

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

If you think taxing the super rich at a greater rate will not tax you with raises in the cost for goods and services you are sadly mistaken.

That is unless you make your own Gasoline, produce your own steel for you generator that will power your electric plant, and produce your own food from your green house and garden with surplus to trade with your fellow citizen, then you will be taxed at the same rate as always because the rich own the goods and services you use and until you can do it your self

or

make the government stop all the non esential welfare services which in true would allow for lower taxes which in true would allow citizens to pay for theses services them selves or help those they wish.

The poor will always be over taxed as long as welfare and non essential services are around and the fact that we depend upon others for food, water, sewer, electrical, ect.....

reply to post by drew hempel


You might also be interested in:

THE CONSERVATIVE NANNY STATE
How the Wealthy Use the Government
to Stay Rich and Get Richer
By Dean Baker

Which you can read for free here:
www.conservativenannystate.org...

reply to post by ACTS 2:38


www.markzepezauer.com...

Ha -- check this out ... now as for

"regional monopolies" -- price fixing? C'mon!

dissidentvoice.org...

We're talking primitive accumulation -- what's the price on Nature!

www.amazon.com...

Yankee investors and plantation managers mobilized engineers, agronomists, and loggers to undertake what they called the "Conquest of the Tropics," claiming to bring civilization to benighted peoples and cultivation to unproductive nature. In competitive cooperation with local landed and political elites, they not only cleared natural forests but also displaced multicrop tribal and peasant lands with monocrop export plantations rooted in private property regimes.

Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World, Concise Revised Edition (Exploring World History)
~ Richard P. Tucker


That just takes some democracy.

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

Originally posted by drew hempel
reply to post by OnceReturned

 

First of all you define evolution WRONG -- and do so in terms of economic superiority -- then you clarify

my wrong definition of evolution is not for biology but for economics!

That's called a "straw man argument" -- and it exposes your views as extremely immoral.

No. I didn't define evolution. If I had, it would have been a staw man argument. Instead, this - what you have said here - is a staw man argument. A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponents position. You're talking here about where I went wrong defining evolution. This is what I said about evolution - all that I said about evolution - and I'm quoting here,

Isn't evolution - biological and cultural - predicated on the idea that when availible resources are limited it's survival of the fittest? I'm not implying any biological superiority here, I'm implying cultural/national economic dominance.

No definition -> No wong definition -> No straw man. Your hypocrisy is palpable.

"Predicated on" means based on. Survival of the fittest is logically equivalent to natural selection. Natural selection is the primary mechanism of evolutionary change. Evolution is predicated on natural selection, therefore also on survival of the fittest. But that is neither here nor there. My point was that since human behavior has as much of an evolutionary basis as any other behavior, shouldn't we expect groups of humans to act in order to secure resources? Clearly possession of resources when they are limited offers some advantage. Aren't we hard wired to pursue that advantage? Isn't it okay that we do so?

Doesn't the tribe that secures the best hunting ground stand a better chance when food is scarce? Don't they survive because of natural selection/survival of the fittest because they secured the resources? Aren't we descended from the this tribe, and not the ones who didn't care who had what?

I think you have a tough case to make if you're saying that behavior which is clearly a function of our fundamental human nature is immoral. Where does that morality come from? Outside humans? Something divine?

Secondly the self-made man illusion is just that -- totally bogus -- as even conservatives will admit:

yglesias.typepad.com...

Once you realize that the poor are on unequal footing not only because poor people tend to attent ill-funded schools but also because poverty per se is a cause of ill-health and has deleterious consequences on emotional and cognitive development then equality of opportunity becomes a reason to pursue a measure of equality of outcome. What measure? Well, it all just depends how equal you want the opportunities to be. True equality of opportunity will require true equality of outcome.

The self-made man is an illusion when you define it in a way that is so obviously not ever meant to be realistic. True equality as defined here - as equality of outcome - is impossible under any system. Is it at all reasonable to think that we can expect equality of outcome for people with severe mental disability, even under ideal circumstances(not including a miracle cure)? Of course not. That definition is useless because it is so inapplicable to reality.

What most people mean by self-made is that someone is successful in large part because of their own actions. Obviously, no individual's success can be attributed entirely to their own actions; that person could have been born in Somalia and then virtually no actions would have lead to success. Or that person may have at some point gotten a good letter of recommendation to business school by a prominent person which they had become friends with. No one pretends that circumstances outside of our control don't influence our path in life. At least, no one with a brain.

Opportunity exists to varying degrees. Everything about you and your circumstances influences what you can and will do in life. This is going to be true absolutely no matter what. Obviously, we would like to mitigate the negative effects of circumstances beyond an individual's control on that individuals potential in life. An effort is being made to that end. Still, there is a lot of room for improvement. I agree. At this point your luck in life is who you were born as, and what your circumstances are.

It's hard to imagine any system in which everyone starts on a level playing field. I'm with you as far as saying that it's a good idea to do whatever we can to give people a chance in life. But, that sentiment can only be taken so far. Not literally whatever we can. We ought not take too much money from the people who earned it and use it to level the playing field. We can and do take some, but we ought not take too much. As it stands, public education, medicaid, and public services which are paid for the by the government are paid for with money that the government got from taxing rich people. Most of these services benefit the lower class disproportionately.

The issue of what to do to help give poor children a better chance is a tricky one. I agree that we should try to level the playing field in whatever ways we reasonably can. An effective solution to this end is not self-evident to me.

Isn't evolution - biological and cultural - predicated on the idea that when availible resources are limited it's survival of the fittest?

THE ANSWER IS NO

Evolution is NOT PREDICATED ON AVAILABLE RESOURCES

That's the REVERSE DEFINITION BASED ON SOCIETY

O.K.

So evolution is the RANDOM VARIATION OF GENES which provide the basis for adaptation.

Whether there are resources or not in now way affects the random variation of genes --

Here watch this academic lecture

FROM DARWIN TO HITLER

www.youtube.com...

Even Darwin's concept of evolution was never innocent -- it was created by and for the industrial revolution based on genocide.

It's in no way "progress" -- it's self-destruction and idiotic!

For example the Amazon - the brain of the planet - is being replaced by soybeans for Cargill -- among the top billionaires on Forbes list

www.tcdailyplanet.net...



[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

reply to post by drew hempel


I'm getting something out of this "capitalism/american institutionalized wealth/exploitationg of the poor/exploitation undeveloped nations vs. not those things" conversation, and I'd like to avoid getting off into evolution.

But, I will at least say this: Evolution is based on random genetic mutation. You are right about that. But, it's more than that. Random mutation provides a variable gene pool from which the natural selection process "selects" the "most fit" specific genetic make up. Genes vary randomly and certain genetic profiles propagate more than others. It's a two part story. In my earlier post I was talking about the second part - the part which "picks" which random genetic variations will be successful. You're talking in this recent reply about the first part - the part that provides new stuff to pick from. My characterization of evolution was really not central to my thesis, and I wanted to reject your notion that it was some kind of straw man argument, because it really wasn't.

Evolution does have to do with resources. That's not a purely societal notion. It is self evident that organisms compete for resources when resources are limited. Therefore, if we accept the theory of evolution, genetic traits which increase an organism's ability to compete more successfully for resources will propagate in accordance with natural selection, barring some overwhelming counteractive factor.

The nefarious applications of the theory of evolution, as well as any malicious intent at the time of the conception of the theory, have absolutely no bearing on its validity in the sense of truth. Those things don't factor in to a scientific interpretation of the evidence for or against any theory. Moral implications are checked at the door when assessing scientific validity.

I would prefer to not get off and running in this evolution direction. I will take in what we have said here today and respond in the coming day or two. I'd like to come back at this discussion with fresh eyes and a fresh brain. I'm glad we've been able to keep this civil.

reply to post by OnceReturned



Modern industrial society is DESTROYING EVOLUTION.

EVOLUTION STOPPED FOR ALL LARGE MAMMALS OVER THIRTY YEARS AGO ACCORDING TO MICHAEL SOULE, a top conservation biologist.

books.google.com... BOoFO1V8&hl=en&ei=kZelS7TaB9G0tgf4wIjCDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBgQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=michael%20soule%20evolution%20large%20mamm als&f=false

So evolution has nothing to do with human society -- except that modern society has stopped evolution!!

www.nytimes.com...

Meanwhile Lloyds uses fraud to keep from paying taxes. Self-made?

www.guardian.co.uk...

www.rollingstone.com...

And there is the Walton family, owners of Walmart, a clan whose worth may exceed $75 billion. Their personal profit from repealing the estate tax would total $30 billion — roughly the gross domestic product of Jordan.

www.amazon.com...

The Great American Tax Dodge, the pair's latest examination of U.S. systems gone awry, spells out exactly how massive tax fraud is currently costing the nation enough to provide health care for its 44 million uninsured citizens--and precisely why the problem will continue to grow at virtually all economic levels unless remedial measures are immediately employed. In their fully detailed but always readable style, Barlett and Steele authoritatively discuss multimillionaires who never file tax returns, Internet sites that can link anyone to shady tax havens, the use of "phantom children" and "invisible employees" to illegitimately shelter income, and evasive techniques like offshore accounts and holding companies that illegally keep money from reaching the government agencies to which it is owed.

www.dailyfinance.com...

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

Originally posted by drew hempel

www.rollingstone.com...

And there is the Walton family, owners of Walmart, a clan whose worth may exceed $75 billion. Their personal profit from repealing the estate tax would total $30 billion — roughly the gross domestic product of Jordan.

Look for Eike Batista to possibly become the worlds richest man, in the next 5-15 years.

Just a note of interest, for those who follow such things.

reply to post by Kaytagg


Ah yes -- son of the former Government Mining Minister.

yep -- self-made. Nothing like Raping Nature and having the Western world fawn over you as if you're some god.

www.alertnet.org...

While it sends more troops and cartographers to curb logging, the government is promoting deforestation through large infrastructure and mining projects, roads, as well as settlements for landless peasants, Smeraldi said.

www.scidev.net...

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 20-3-2010 by drew hempel]