Originally posted by: sactoking
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: JS80
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: Brigandier
The more you punish people for creating wealth in America, the less wealth will be created in America. The consequnce of this will be more people creatng wealth outside of America and the middle class will suffer.
The more you use right-wing propaganda phrses like 'punish people for creating wealth' the wronger your economic policies are going to be.
Society creates opportunity, and requires that those who benefit from that opportunity give beck to society.
Taxation isn't a punishment, it's the price of a prosperous society. Taxation should not be for excessive spending; it should be balanced to maintain incentive.
Your position would be great if the wealth created benefitted all of society. What we see happening is not that, but for the last 30 years, all growth after inflation going to the top.
That is simply increasing the concentration of wealth, and therefore the concentration of power, making America less democratic and inviting increasing tyranny.
The predictable result will be the most wealthy using their power to slash the policies benefitting others, and that's what will harm the middle class, and already is.
Having said all that, this particular ballot item does not appear too well thought out.
Society DOES NOT create opportunity. INDIVIDUALS create opportunities.
No, societies largely create opportunity, individuals take advantage of it.
Why don't you go 'create opporutnity' in the old USSR and then tell me that?
Opportunity is a combination of society and individual creation. Society can both empower and oppress opportunity. Individuals, in the right society, can create or not create opportunity.
In the US, opportunity is largely an individual creation abetted by our society. In the former USSR, opportunity was largely a boon granted by society and individual attempts to create opportunity were squelched by society.
In both cases, it takes a combination of individual effort AND societal acceptance.
Beyond that, 'punish[ing] people for creating wealth' is not a "right-wing propaganda [phrase]". Taxation of wealth, in it's very essence, is disincentive to create wealth. Each person must decide for themselves how much disincentive it creates, but it does create disincentive for EVERYONE. That, in and of itself, is pure economics.
Beyond that, absolutely nothing you stated was anything except policy decisions. It is common to mistake economics for economic policy. They are quite different animals. One is not inherently political, the other is.
Saying things like
Society creates opportunity, and requires that those who benefit from that opportunity give beck to society. Taxation isn't a punishment, it's the price of a prosperous society. Taxation should not be for excessive spending; it should be balanced to maintain incentive.
is not proven fact. It is your interpretation of what SHOULD occur based on proven fact. Many reasonable people will and do disagree.
Sometimes, you can't win on these boards, insofar as if you try to get the details laid out in a long post, many complain about that, but if you simplify, the details are nit picked.
I was making a couple of broad points, and your response IMO was quite misguided.
You are not going to get away with laying out broad statements as prported fact on things like the way taxes are disencentives, yet then try to have a different standard for what is 'opinion' about how 'things should work' versus fact in my comments. I'll try to layo our a couple points simply for you.
To preface them, any system as complex as our economy is going to require discussing in simplified terms, for which there will be exceptions to those simplifications.
When you say all taation is disenctive, you are the one being dogmatically ideological, as if the math correlates to the human situation on incentive. How can you prove that someone actually changes their behavior based on whether they're taxed at 40%, 35%, or 30%, as much as you want to? My point isn't that there isn't some macro difference from the different rates, but rather that your own comments are not as literally, exactly, 'factually' acurate as the standard you set up.
Many people will build the same new factory or work on the same cure for cancer regardless of those rates.
But the larger issue is that the phrase *us* right-wing propaganda - it only looks at one side of the taxes, the cost, without *any* reference to the benefits.
If you build such one-sidedness into the discussion, of course it will affect your views.
And as for my comment, it's hardly 'only' how I think 'things should work'. It's quite obvious how a lot in society - and note my disclaimer about the simplification - does indeed work how I said. Our most wealthy people do indeed pay taxes that do go to the benefit of society.
If you're going to post a platitude about the difference between economics and the politics of economic policy, don't just post a platitude, make it relevant and specific to the thread.
I recognize that I'm talking to some ideologically indoctrinated people here abot their being indoctrinated, and that's not easy (I'm not saying you are for sure yet, there are hints).
Having said all that, I do acknowledge simplification on the topic of society creating opportunity; I'd writtent additional comments about the role of indivudials, but did not post them to keep the post on the topic, which is challenging the right-wing delusion about the lack of the role society plays.
BTW, do remember, society is nothing but a group of individuals, before the semantics get too far off point, so saying society does something doesn't mean individuals don't do it.
The discussion of the differences between 'socity' and 'indivuduals' are not quite that literally different.
FYI, if it helps clear up the discussion, one of my views is that one of the huge blind spots for right-wing people is how they attribute all accumulation of wealth as assumed to be productive activity. Their blind spot is how concentrated wealth and power tend to accumulate wealth in ways that are not only not 'productive' to society but ultikately destruvtive to society, however benefical to the lucky few.
Such a blind spot corrupts a lot of the discussion if not pointed out.
So, it's somewhat helful to talk instead of our goals - areyou for increasing opportunity broadly, or are you for policies resulting in increased concentration of wealth, for example?