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Why tax the rich more?

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-22 14:31

Taxing them gives negative feedback. Why should we support the poor and encourage their behaviour? If the invisible hand guides natural selection by doing away with those who can't make a living why go against it?

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-22 16:47

That sounds good in text, but it does not hold up in the real world. In America the current system supports the rich and encourages their behavior. There are far more tax breaks for rich Americans than there are for the poor. An example can be seen here in a HuffingtonPost article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/tax-rates-for-americas-to_n_466480.html

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-22 17:47

OP is a bad troll.

Name: IHBT 2010-06-22 21:31

HuffingtonPost
There's your first problem.
But you are correct in that the current tax system is heavily supportive of being rich.  I contest, however: isn't that also the point?  If we tax rich people until they are poor, we'll just have a country on the poverty-line; moving the bar just re-focuses the target sign.  You can say "tax until they're middle class again" but there's no reliable means of gauging when you hit that in real time.  Furthermore, the more hostile to the rich, the fewer rich there will be and the less reliable the tax the rich system will prove.

(Let's not ignore that "the rich" already pay absurd rates compared to people on the upper income brackets - say, $100k+ earners account for more than 70% of federal income taxes.  That's only 10% more than $200k+ earners.  For perspective, the majority of Americans who are not at $100k income pay just over 25% and those with incomes below $40k pay only 3% of total fed income tax; also, more than half of Americans don't pay federal income tax for some reason and less than 10% of those people belong to the $100k+ bracket.  No matter how you look at it the federal government is squandering the bulk of its revenue, collecting a lot from a small subset, and then complaining it doesn't get enough from that subset.  If the federal government took 100% of what makes "the rich" rich, short of their life and their wits, they'd still squander it all and say they need more to sustain whatever it is they are trying to do.)

The thing is this: the reason "the rich" are rich is because they know how to get rich and know how to continue to be rich.  That's not something you can take from them; even if you were to drive their personal finances into the ground once, they'd bounce back up.  Yes, there are people who get rich by unscrupulous means but those are not always the people correctly targeted by the said "rich" taxes when those are the people who should be hit.  Those people who were honestly rich are more likely to be hurt because they are honest.

>>1
Robust welfare efforts are more dangerous than lower taxes for the poor as far as "supporting ... encouraging their behavior."  To borrow from my argument above: I would wager a good portion of the poor most temporarily enriched by these dynamics are those who have abandoned the motivation to work to be rich (or those who do not pay federal income tax).

Also, the invisible hand has nothing to do with class system poising and, furthermore, has been rendered decommissioned due to extreme prejudicial interventionalism.  What we call "capitalism" today little looks like what capitalism really is - all the trappings but none of the meat.

I doubt anyone will read to this line.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-22 21:55

>>4
You have eloquently stated why taxing "the rich" more is a frivolous argument. Thank you kindly. You also mentioned the Federal income tax, what would you say about those who advocate for abolishing it? Certainly an overnight abolishment of income tax would prove disastrous, but a gradual abolition would probably work out.

Of course more of the arguments against it are that the Sixteenth Amendment was never properly ratified, the tax code somewhere says that it's "voluntary" and is not mandated that it should be paid into, or even the moral argument that the fruits from a man's labor is his property, harking back to the days of The Enlightenment and John Locke and Adam Smith.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 1:34

If the world is for money and economy, cutting tax for the rich and dead of almost all the poor is good.
If the world is for the man, government must help almost all people to eat.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 2:29

>>6
Terribly cynical.

If the world is for money and economy, then the poor must want to not be poor, for that is not a mindset you can lift them out of if they accept it; and, feeding that mindset of "I am poor" is antithetical.  Make them want to improve their livelihoods and show them the path, for it is in your best interests and in the interests of their brethren that they make themselves better as well.

If the world is for the man, then the man must learn how the world works or else he will be guilty of neglect.  What can he do in the world for himself? what reason can he find to do things for other people?

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 3:49

>>7
Always man don't want to be poor.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 3:50

Always a man doesn't want to be poor.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 6:32

10GET

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 6:36

Well, I think you have to mind rewards and punishment here.  Our system basicly punishes the rich by taking more of what they make, and at the same time it rewards the poor by not making them pay tax, and giving them all kinds of handouts.  That's a recipe for having people choose to be poor.  And a nation whose citizen aren't trying to get rich will get poorer.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 8:00

It's not punishment.
When a man get more wealth, another man lost wealth even. It's economy. But when it overrun, somepeople lose all of their wealth. It's not healthy for us.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 9:30

We need to abolish taxes. They are unamerican and maoist. There are welfare queens out there driving cadillacs.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 9:39

>>13
There are welfare queens out there driving cadillacs.
Really? I see them driving more BMWs and Mitsubishi Eclipses rather than Cadillacs. Guess they don't even have that slight shred of decency to at least buy an American car, then again can't fully blame them as GM has pretty much gone down the toilet at this point.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 11:27

>>14
There's always Ford.
There has always been Ford.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-23 13:19

>>4
I did also

Come from /newpol/ please!

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-24 18:58

>>16
No. /newpol/ would be a better board if he and more like him posted.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-25 19:23

>>assuming that Fords haven't been 98% manufactured in Mayheeco since NAFTA

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-25 19:34

>>18
Crown Victorias as far as I know are still manufactured here with a huge percentage of American made content. I think it's safe to assume that this doesn't hold true for the majority of their models.

NAFTA really has destroyed us.

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-26 5:35

>>17
That's what I said?

Come from /newpol/

Name: Anonymous 2010-06-26 22:26

>>20
Oh, okay.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-27 13:09

>>18
what?

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-28 0:15

dude ever heard of robin hood, our economy is robin hood, they take from the rich and give to the poor, its like mitosis, we're trying to balance out both sides of the wall to make a delicious mix of RED KOOLAID NIGGA SHIT IM HUNGRY IMMA GO GET SOEM FRIED CHICKEN MABYE HAVE A COUPLE BABIES DEN LEAVE THE BABIES MOMMAS TO GO EATTA DICK THEN GO ROB A STORE KNOWING THAT IMMA GO TO JAIL BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK IM TRIPPIN MA NIGGA ASS OFF DAT PURP NIGGA CHILLIN SHIT I DON NEED A JOB I'LL JUS GO KICK IT WIT DA, 1...2...3...65TH BITCH I KNOCKED NIGGA SHIT IM OUT PEACE

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-28 15:34

>>4

I agree with your assertion that the government is mismanaging the wealth they tax, or at least they could do a better job of it, and that taxing more won't necessarily lead to improvements. That's something that will only be cured through widespread reform and more robust accountability mechanisms which will only be possible with the ardent support of the population. In other words, a forlorn hope. I would also assert that while those in the higher income tax categories pay more tax on paper, I would think they only do so if they weren't smart enough to avoid them. The issue of tax-avoidance, however, is an age old problem that concerns all classes, and is not pertinent to this topic.

I disagree that welfare encourages people to live off it, at least in my experience this is the case. Everyone I have known who has been on welfare has done everything possible to get off it and get back in the work-force. I would propose that the majority who do live off welfare permanently are already predisposed to being 'averse to labour' as it was once said. Welfare, however, is a vital safety net for those, especially in these tumultuous economic times, who lose their jobs and reach the end of their ropes. For these people, welfare allows them to 'tie a knot and hang on' until things improve. For others, it allows them to have a minimum quality of life despite a debilitating disability. It is frustrating that some people seek to exploit the system for their own gain, but its utility for those who genuinely need it is indisputable. It must also be noted that corporations have used government-funded bailouts extensively during the recent financial crisis, and in some instances have merely pocketed the money for their own gain. Welfare queens are a dime a dozen compared to such cases, but both are criminal in the extreme.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-29 7:48


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