Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
Originally posted by: Craig234
All you need to figure this out is that Dreier is a right-wing congressman, and therefore his tax proposal will help the wealthy. Whether it shifts the taxes to the poor or to the debt is just a detail.
You can put lipstick on a pig, as they say, but it is what it is. Having investigated that conclusion in proposal after proposal, there's not much point in doing so for each one they come up with.
It's marketing 101 - start out with what you want, a tax reduction for the wealthy; then ask what will sell it, "simple!"? "fair!"? "New and improved!"? "Conservative!"? "Fiscally responsible!"? Who cares, do some market research and get the popular flavor of the day, and try to put a little in the bill, and then hype it with the flavor at high volume.
So now that you've shot him
Shot him? You misrepresent what I said. I pointed out whathis agenda is, and that I disagree with it. If you want to disagree and say that no, this right-wing politician doesn't want to help shift the burden even further off the rich, then go ahead, and offer some evidence, but you can't, because that is his agenda, and my post was right, and your false attack was the only unfair 'shooting' that happened.
why exactly do you think this would be bad or wouldn't work?
If you can't understand the issue I have from what I said, that I'm not in favor of plans that shift the burder further off the very wealthy however much lipstick is added, what can I sai?
For what it's worth, I don't mind some complexity in the tax code, where it serves a useful purpose. When it's merely unjustified special-interest rules, of course, I'm not for that.
And the issue isn't without its gray areas. While deductions for increasing home ownership or for blind people may seem pretty helpful, and sections which say 'Company XYZ is exempt' just because they're a nice donor for a politician are pretty clearly corrupt, there are plenty in the middle that have a bit of both. Are rules to help the elderly good public policy, or handouts to buy their votes under AARP pressure?
The point is as I said, that it's not worth the time to pick apart the hundreds of specific 'proposals' from the righties one at a time, when they prettty much all have the same basic structure of wanting to shift the taxes off the very wealthy, and to use some lipstick, like 'simplified!', to sell it. I said all this already, though, and if you didn't see the point the first time, why will you now?
Sounds almost like the system we have today except for simplifying it.
So, if he doesn't SAY clearly "the real point to this is to shift taxes off the very wealthy!", then you don't think that's the purpose? He has to NAME it the 'help the wealthy' plan for you? No wonder the schemes these people come up with get som many voters' agreement, no wonder the Bush administration named its pro-pollution bill the 'clear skies act' to get agreement - voters like you think if it's named the clear skies act, it must be good for the skies!
I mean, there is still "progressive" taxation which mean the "rich" still pay more than the rest of us. Isn't that what you people want?
Yes, it's less radical, it's less reduction of being 'progressive', than the radical flat tax. So what? It's still a step in the wrong direction.
In the past 30 years, the wealthy have paid a lower and lower share of taxes; that trend should be reversed. The Eisenhower administration and his Republican congress weren't commies, but they had far more taxes paid by business, and a top tax rate of 90%. The nation was not in a catastrophe over it. I'm not saying to go back to that point, but voters like you appear unaware of the huge shift just since Reagan took office off the very wealthy (the top 0.01% especially), which partly explains their incomes skyrocketing hundreds of percent while the bottom 80% have had zero net gins after inflation over 25 years, unprecedented in out nation's history that I'm aware of - increased economic productivity not shared with everyone, but all going to the top. You don't seem to know that, so how can we talk about it?
If you could get past the ideology you have been fed claiming that all fairness concerns are 'just jealousy and class warfare', and instead notice that one of the Richest men in the world, Warren Buffet, has said there is class warfare - and his side is winning - we could start to have a discussion, but that's rare for your side to do. Can you lay out any idea at all about what you think 'fairness' is regarding wealth distribution in the US, other than blind ideology like 'the government shouldn't play any role', which isn't the question?
My position is pretty simple, that an unprecedented lack of sharing in the nation's growth by the bottom 80% over 25 years, with a skyrocketing concentration of wealth draining the economic rewards available for incenting productivity and increasing our economic wealth so that the very wealthy can sit fat and happy, is a problem requiring the system to be better balanced for the very wealthy to pay a fair share, for poverty to be reduced, for the middle class to share in the gains, for there to be resources to reward people.
You know, as CEO compensation has gone from, say, 30 times workers to 400 or more times workers, we have not seen the CEOs somehow run companies much differently.
It's not, as the right-wing propagandists like to lie, an issue of 'class warfare', it's an issue of what's good for the nation, and we WANT people who run companies well to make a lot.
But not an absurd amount that harms the society.
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