<p>Actually, spideygirl, you just confirmed what I said. The only “game” that heirs have “played well” is being born into the right family. They didn’t do that through “cleverness, hard work, and willingness to risk.” They just popped out of the right womb.</p>
<p>You seem to have difficulty perceiving any middle ground between Ayn Rand’s cartoonish vision of capitalism and an equally cartoonish 1984-style communism. There’s actually lots of room in there. What dstark and I have been talking about (for years) is along the lines of a 2 or 3% shift in the overall balance between the treatment of the wealthy and the poor and middle class, to offset some of the increasing concentration of wealth at the top. You react like we’re proposing putting all the Waltons, Kochs, Scaifes and Mellons in front of a wall and shooting them before looting their estates. Extremist attitudes such as those you express make a reasoned discussion difficult, to say the least.</p>
<p>DS, I agree with much of what you say in this thread. But government on both sides of aisle primarily want to spend money that benefit the hands that feed them. So you have them taking money and feeding Wall street; or you propose a stimulus program that primarily benefits school teachers. Not exactly constituencies that have been the hardest hit by forces in the world. So I personally see the poorest being used as pawns to justify one well connected lobby to milk money from another.</p>
<p>What happens is that the one gets the money, and institutionalizes it as an entitlement, and continues to reap the benefits well past what is required, while the second uses its clout to get out of the obligations. If we begin to see a Greece/Italy situation happening among the states and munis here, I see the feds that can get its hands on money in the name of helping the poor starting a trend on bailing out irresponsible behavior of states and local governments… So personally, I’d rather keep them starved.</p>
<p>Kluge, I did not confirm what you said. It is perfectly appropriate to extend the notion of playing the game well to an entire family. The difference is irrelevant. You seem to resent the fact that an individual can risk all and amass wealth, and then pass some of it on. Why does it matter to you whether a person earned it directly, or had it had it handed to them by a parent? This is nothing more than a distraction. In many families there is one bread winner. Are the sacrifices of non-workers in the family, including adult children who may help with a business, any less than the person who leaves the house each morning? How do you decide these things? You don’t. Both you and government should just stay out of people’s houses and families and wallets (and bodies and bedrooms).</p>
<p>Just because you say it doesn’t make it so, Kluge. I think Rand is a great reference point but I am not advocating a cartoonish version of America either (where there are no social programs or taxes). </p>
<p>What you and dstark are proposing IS the crazy extreme, because it would push us further in the same direction that has led to the current economic mess. Your premise that there are enough rich people to make a difference is ridiculous. Most of the people in your definition of “rich people” are themselves small business owners who are already leveraged to the hilt. People are hurting, Kluge, and your anti-business ideas are way more than this fluttering economy can handle right now. We can’t afford to lose any more businesses and jobs, and we also can’t afford to make it any harder for people to create new ones.</p>
<p>When you take money out of the economy that will be used to expand businesses, and hand it to people who will supposedly spend it on goods (assuming it won’t be saved - a difficult assumption since hardly anyone here in America has “nothing” by world standards), what kind of solid improvement have you made? Business owners get a short-term uptick in demand (maybe), and then sit on whatever income results from it (to replenish what was taken, and to protect wealth knowing that the next vote can redistribute more of their assets). But the demand you have created is as weak as can be, and fleeting (are you going to keep going back to take more money in order to create more brief upticks?). In order to create a lasting increase in demand you have to create jobs.</p>
<p>You do realize that tax structures and rules and regulations are man made? We don’t have free markets.</p>
<p>I don’t think you want free markets.</p>
<p>Financial Markets implode…they don’t always go up.
Oligopolies and monopolies occur…free competition doesn’t stay free…</p>
<p>In a free market…a company can buy its competition, right?</p>
<p>Do you want governments to stay out of the financial markets? Looks
like many of the European banks are really broke…should they be allowed to go bust? And then what will happen?</p>
<p>Real customers have a JOB, not one time check from the government that represents money taken from someone else (assuming it would not go directly into savings, as I would think it likely would). Good customers are also people who are not afraid to spend, because they see so many people out of work.</p>
<p>Entrepreneurs can always, if they have capital and belief in a reasonable business climate, uncover demand and opportunity.</p>
<p>
You are so completely wrong about your premise, that jobs are not being created because there are no customers. Hogwash.</p>
<p>Businesses would benefit by government spending. Businesses would have more customers. Businesses would have more money.</p>
<p>I think grocery stores take money from retirees, and food stamps, and money from unemployment checks, and money from government workers, and money from people that have jobs because of government stimulus programs.</p>
<p>Spideygirl, what you may not be aware of is that the concentration of wealth in the top 1% or so of Americans happened in significant part as a result of government policies which favored the strong and wealthy and handicapped the poor and middle class. It’s not like this all just happened through magic - it’s been the predictable result of actual policies which affected laws, regulations, interpretations of both, etc. Simply returning our framework of laws and policies to where it was for 35 years following WWII would do quite a bit to reverse the stratification of America. A 2 to 3% shift in policies would takes us back most of the way to that era of economic growth when the rising tide actually did lift all boats.</p>
<p>Spideygirl, your efforts to cloak your ideology in a mantle of idealism is tiresome. Dstark and I are talking about the real world, not some Randian pipe dream.
This is known as “the law of the jungle.” It works great in theory - not so well in the real world.
For anyone.</p>
<p>Tom1944 - you are grossly oversimplifying. Tax rates are only a small part of the overall skewing of government policy in favor of the wealthy which has had the net effect of weakening our national economy.</p>
<p>Spideygirl…you do realize that living standards are not increasing over the last 10 years for most Americans and have not increased much over the last 30 years…</p>
<p>Or that Laffer has admitted that when you cut tax rates…you don’t get increased tax revenue…</p>
<p>Instead you should have written “throws head back, grabs stomach, chortles loudly” to create the image you were after. Or instead of “LOL” I think “HAHAHAHA or AAAAHAHAHA” might be better. :)</p>
<p>OK, now that I have given full witness to your humorous reaction, please respond to the numbers I posted, because I know you like numbers. There are are decades of data for you to refute.</p>