<p>To clarify, Mini, I’m sure you’d be the first to agree that the Democrats share in the responsibility for this trend, as big a fan of the party of the clueless as you are. My personal choice for top villain is the University of Chicago school of econonic/legal philosophy, including Richard Posner, although I prefer to believe that it is an unintended consequence of that theory of the world’s workings. (See - I managed to include a college-related comment into my post!)</p>
<p>Actually, in some ways, more so. The neo-liberals of the 90s are those (at governmental level) most responsible for the mass shipment of high-paying jobs abroad, and the destruction of the rural sector abroad as well (hence high illegal immigration.) AND by far the most destruction of the global environment, as manufacturing moved from places in the U.S. where there were at least minimal environmental controls, to those places in the Third World where there are none whatsoever. I can, and HAVE, personally documented many of these impacts first hand (see, for example, “The Color of Freedom”.)</p>
<p>Al Gore should hold up a mirror.</p>
<p>It’s odd how LatetoSchool never sees the contradiction in these two propositions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Accept inequity in society without complaint.</li>
<li>Inequity in society, it’s the fault of those who get inequitable treatment, for not doing something to change it.</li>
</ol>
<p>Garland, I am very sorry that LTS has persisted in the blame game about what happened to your daughter. All we can hope is that eventually s/he will figure out that it’s hardly advocating “personal responsibility” to claim that any time a man chooses to break the law, whether it be a law against employment discrimination, medical malpractice, or criminal assault, surely there is a woman to blame–either for enticing him or for not somehow foreseeing he was going to do it and stopping him.</p>
<p>There’s not anything that you or I can do to change the mind of someone with this kind of attitude toward life.</p>
<p>Kluge, fair enough, I see your point. And you’ve always had my attention, even if I’m approaching the topic from a completely different position. I also agree with regards to legal redress - my parents, never foreseeing what was to happen, hard coded into their wills the clause that I could not touch my inheritance until age 30. I am sure you can imagine what can happen to an estate over the course of 17 years, if the persons in charge of it are not diligent in their care of liquid and real assets. At age 17, I finally achieved emancipation, and went to the lawyers in charge of the estate, pleading for an advance - not to live on - just enough to pay college tuition. “No” was hard to hear; I even suggested that they could send the money directly to the college, I would never touch it; they could have access to grades, progress reports, etc. and they could stop paying tuition if at any time they were not satisfied with what I was doing. Still they said “no”. At 17 and being uneducated, clueless, and lacking any professional guidance, I had absolutely no leverage and could not figure out any way to get them to seriously consider my issue. </p>
<p>Later, at age 30, I finally got my hands on what was left of my parent’s assets. It’s horrible how the value was simply decimated. Both liquid and real assets were simply gone - I received a check for < $20,000. The lawyers deducted fees for everything - including my visit to their offices at age 17. </p>
<p>I don’t blame the lawyers. Their fees were legitimate. This issue like all others comes back to personal responsibility: the healthy option is to get over it and move on. After all, it’s only money; although if I had a magic want I would have preferred to have my parents, not their money. </p>
<p>In the broader scope of the segment of the population caught up in situations like this (I’m thinking Enron, where trusting middle and lower class wage earners who sacrificed and saved for years lost everything), it still comes back to personal responsibility: there will be criminals and miscreants always, more than any jurisdiction can catch, prosecute and jail; diversification of investments is typically a smarter strategy than dumping all of one’s hard-earned savings into the employer’s 401K. </p>
<p>Having said that, I would be curious to know what you think might be a practical solution to avoid the possibility of the “have nots” resorting to violence, or rather, how would you elevate the “have nots” faster so that they focus on being productive vs. felonious?</p>
<p>
A false construct which recommends yet another reading of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic parable “Harrison Bergeron.”
<a href=“Philosophy | West Valley College”>Philosophy | West Valley College; Do we really want a U.S. Office of the Handicapper-General?</p>
<p>What I find odd is those who profess to understand that our economy isn’t a zero-sum game, yet persist in the belief that the reason some are poor is that the rich are taking too much of a finite income pool. Talk about a contradiction. It’s either a zero-sum proposition, or it isn’t. I say it isn’t, and those who gripe about the have-mores would do better to expend their energy finding ways to get more from and for themselves rather than expending it on envy and resentment. I find this concept just as silly: “A New Class War: The Haves vs. the Have Mores” (NYT)
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/weekinreview/19konigsberg.html?ei=5070&em=&en=5e533d158ff17740&ex=1164171600&pagewanted=print[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/weekinreview/19konigsberg.html?ei=5070&em=&en=5e533d158ff17740&ex=1164171600&pagewanted=print</a></p>
<p>Driver, you either didn’t read or didn’t understand the implicatures of the posts that prompted that summary. But nice, albeit dated, pop culture reference.</p>
<p>“What I find odd is those who profess to understand that our economy isn’t a zero-sum game, yet persist in the belief that the reason some are poor is that the rich are taking too much of a finite income pool.”</p>
<p>There is a third possibility: that the country on the whole is generating wealth, and that the government plays a role in directing where it goes. It’s not just a matter of the rich stealing from the poor; it’s a matter of examining our government to figure out whether we are collectively subsidizing the rich. I think that in some ways, we are. The capital gains tax rate is one way. So are the countless tax shelters that CEO’s pay Congressmen to write into the tax code. Corporate welfare paid to industries that are making record profits and are in no danger of collapse (like the oil industry at the moment). The list goes on. What’s wrong with looking at, and criticizing, government subsidies that we feel are going to the wrong people?</p>
<p>Oh, no, not social engineering! 
(the corporate socialists have never done it any other way.)</p>
<p>Stay the course.</p>
<p>Leave it to Driver to post a link to an article about the jealousy of people with a seven figure income towards those with an eight figure income when I’m talking about the fact that people who earn $30,000 a year have, as a group, seen no economic betterment in 20 years. And yes, Hanna, you’ve hit the nail on the head. But it’s not just government subsidies and taxes. I think you mentioned that you’re a lawyer? Look at some of the legal precedents over the past 20 years and see if you detect a trend which is not economically neutral. I imagine people in most lines of work could identify some development in their profession or industry which has tended to shift wealth upwards in recent years if they thought about it. It’s a multi-faceted phenomenon.</p>
<p>There was a mention in this morning’s paper of an organization called “Demos” - a “non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization.” I checked out the website, and while I haven’t read anything there in depth it seems to be focussed on the shrinking of the middle class, the fact that (as I’ve stated here before) a college degree is the current equivalent of the past’s high school diploma, except that it comes with a mountain of student loan debt, the financial challenges facing 20 and 30-somethings today which are different from the past, and other issues I’ve been concerned about as the parent of three young adult children. You might be interested in looking at it. <a href=“http://www.demos.org%5B/url%5D”>www.demos.org</a></p>
<p>Hanna, I don’t see the absence of taxation as a subsidy. I don’t think allowing people to keep what is theirs can be considered a subsidy.</p>
<p>Conyat, I understood your fractured implicatures only too well. No one said that inequities should be accepted without complaint—just that we all are unequal in some way, and that mature people learn to deal with that and overcome it…hence the dated “pop culture reference,” the simple yet profound implicatures of which clearly eluded you. Neither did anyone say that inequities are the fault of anyone, or that anything in particular should be done to change it (see: nice, albeit dated, pop culture reference.) I like that phrase, though–wonder if it could be applied to Dickens.</p>
<p>Driver, when you move to a desert island where you build all of your own infrastructure, defend your own shores, provide your own emergency response to illness, weather crises, test your own food and water for safety and purity, etc. etc, etc - then it will be “what is yours”. Until then, if you don’t contribute your fair share you’re just a parasite, same as any other welfare cheat.</p>
<p>Corporate socialists have always been parasites, which is why they’ve had to subvert democracy from the very beginning, and have their corporate fictions labelled as “legal persons” under the law.</p>
<p>
Kluge, you can get away with such stuff when you’re holding court at the kitchen table in your underwear, bellowing at Biff, but not here. I pay a great many of our shared expenses, and I don’t really begrudge you the graduated tax code. I just object when you thanklessly look the gift horse in the mouth and demand more.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Driver, I think you’re confusing the income/asset discussion with the one that I am referencing, but whatever. No matter how wrong you are, I’ve never seen you admit it.</p>
<p>Hanna and Kluge, very good explication of the issues. I have really learned a lot from reading your posts.</p>
<p>Conyat, I completely understood that your comment addressed to LTS had nothing to do with income/assets. I completely understand you and all of your referencing and implicatures. I know where you’re coming from.</p>
<p>Driver, you’re the one who insisted that “allowing people to keep what is theirs” shouldn’t be considered “a subsidy.” I get that you consider sharing some of “yours” with the government to be a “gift” you are graciously bestowing on an ungrateful nation. Forgive me if I forget to tug my forelock and grovel while acknowledging your largess. </p>
<p>As for demanding “more”, all I’m asking at this point is enough to pay the bills your guys have rung up over the past six years, plus the extra left over from the Reagan and Bush I administrations. The only “gift horse” I see around here is the one that cut federal taxes below the level needed to balance the budget while passing the debt on to our kids. Who’s being “thankless” here?</p>
<p>“Hanna, I don’t see the absence of taxation as a subsidy. I don’t think allowing people to keep what is theirs can be considered a subsidy.”</p>
<p>Person A and Person B drive on the same highways, are protected by the same army, and eat the same government-inspected Grade A beef.</p>
<p>Person A is heavily taxed and pays for the highways, the army, and the meat inspectors. Person B gets to “keep what’s his.” Person A is subsidizing the hell out of Person B.</p>
<p>It’s not a subsidy to keep what’s yours as long as everyone gets to keep it. When oil companies get to keep it, but computer companies don’t, that’s a subsidy.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agreed. So when the top 50% of earners pay 96% of the income taxes they are subsidizing the hell out of low income earners. That is not enough? Or is that data just another Bush lie?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/factsheetwhopaysmostindividualincometaxes.update.pdf[/url]”>http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/factsheetwhopaysmostindividualincometaxes.update.pdf</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I guess you are going to be one of those “revenue deniers”, who will always equate “tax cut” with “revenue cut” and who will deny, against all evidence to the contrary, that tax revenues are up and at historically high levels. There is a budget deficit but it is not because of reduced tax revenue. I seem to recall that voting for most of the budget busting measures passed in the last six years was not along strictly party lines, i.e., the urge to spend is bipartisan.</p>
<p>Ahem…to return to the subject of this thread:
Uncle Charlie Wants You!
<a href=“http://■■■■■■■.com/yxhb65[/url]”>http://■■■■■■■.com/yxhb65</a>
</p>
<p>Of course, the source is that group of right wing dupes at the Heritage Foundation, so we can ignore the study.</p>
<p>
Technically speaking, it’s the third type of lie - a “statistic”. Let’s look at what you repeated, adding in the facts that make it actually meaningful.<br>
“when the top 50% of earners” - the 50th percentile for tax returns in 2004 (latest year reported) was about $30,000 - which includes taxpayers like my three kids, who work part time and file returns but are below the tax threshhold, and pay no taxes. In my house 40% of the taxpayers pay 100% of the taxes! Scandal!
…“pay 96% of the income taxes” - the “top 50% of earners” have 87% of the taxable income
…“they are subsidizing the hell out of low income earners.” Is a 10% surcharge what you call “a hell of a subsidy”? But wait, as the ginsu knife commercials promise – there’s more! </p>
<p>The statistics only track reportable, taxable income. Unrealized capital gains - even when inherited and sold off - are not included. Nor are exempt bond interest, phantom depreciation, etc. But only people above $30,000 a year are involved in that - under that benchmark pretty much everything you earn is reported and taxed. So even with income tax - the sole progressive tax around - the result is essentially flat. Start folding in FICA, sales tax, etc., and it’s pretty clear - our overall tax burden is regressive - lower earners pay a bigger share of their income in taxes. But you won’t get a slick 2-page handout on that one, will you?</p>
<p>
Revenue has almost - but not quite - returned to its expected level based on historical trends, adjusted for inflation and population growth. Whoopee! Here’s the chart from the Heritage Foundation again: <a href=“http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/charts_C/c1.cfm[/url]”>http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/charts_C/c1.cfm</a>
Look at that chart and see if the steady diet of propaganda that you’ve been subjected to has completely eliminated your ability to add 2 + 2. Over time, slightly lowered (or raised) taxes have no net impact on the nation’s overall economy (they can have a short term effect) but they do have a net impact on the national debt. Which means that our kids have been handed a multi-trillion dollar credit card bill which gave them no net benefit, unless they are among the handfull of extremely wealthy people who are now even wealthier as a result of the tax cuts their propagandists have sold you and millions of other Americans through the use of “Big Lie” techniques.</p>