nobodyknows
Diamond Member
- Sep 28, 2008
- 5,474
- 0
- 0
Just because someone collects a high salary doen't mean they earned it. Conversely someone who doesn't make a lot of money may have earned every bit of it and more.
Just because someone collects a high salary doen't mean they earned it. Conversely someone who doesn't make a lot of money may have earned every bit of it and more.
glenn1
Lifer
- Sep 6, 2000
- 25,383
- 1,013
- 126
So basically you feel believe that wealth creation should be uncoupled from the value someone creates. It's unfair that people should be able to pay others for products, services, and ideas they value, the provision of which is how most folks come to generate wealth. The author of Harry Potter books has made millions from her work, should others be prohibited from buying her books because that would make her even richer?
So we should ignore productivity and value creation and allocate income by some other method? Maybe we should ensure that the janitor and surgeon switch positions for a few days so that their incomes can be equalized - I'm sure you will be the first in line for an operation by the new staff?
It doesn't matter who works harder - Warren Buffet creates more value (in this case, surplus capital from investment returns) than the restauranteur. Fairness has nothing to do with it - people line up to invest in Berkshire Hathaway (thus "giving" Warren Buffet their money) and they don't for the restaurant.
ETC ETC ETC The rest of your post could be answered the same way, but you get the gist.
No, your misrepresentation of what I said - is that even straw inside your man? - is so far from what i wrote I can't recognize anything I said in it.
The author of Harry Potter books is not a problem, more people buying them is fine, and why you ask is a mystery suggesting you don't understand the difference between the wealth of an author like her and the corruptive concentration of wealth that I was discussing.
No, you are a troll if not an idiot, you pick. Nothing in my post suggest anything in your response. You are simply posting garbage.
You missed that I was answering the right's ideological talking point that's always saying the reason the poor are not rich is they don't work as hard as the rich.
You agreed with my point. A larger discussion on that is another topic. You obviously missed the point with the rest of your comments, so you can go re-read the post.
Your deslution was answered in my post, Chairman Fuhrer Patranus Manson-bin Laden the Troll. You can ignore it, as you did so far.
nobodyknows
Diamond Member
- Sep 28, 2008
- 5,474
- 0
- 0
That's a pretty good idea. We could control costs by having all the forced labor work in one place. We could call those places (for lack of a better word) "camps".
Several country's have done well with labor camps over the last century or so, Stalin really dialed in the idea, and there was a German fellow that did a lot with it as well. I think China is still working out the bugs in their version, but once they get the system purring it should be a good model for us to follow.
soundforbjt
Lifer
- Feb 15, 2002
- 17,788
- 6,041
- 136
You know what else is unfair: the 'owner class' pays 100% of the costs of the workplace infrastructure.
All the employees benefit from the infrastructure too - they get income by having a nice office building with clean toilets, so why shouldn't everyone chip in for the expense?
What we need is a 'flat infrastructure bill'. The company owner gets 5% in profits, he pays 5% of the office cost. The employee who makes 0.01%, pays 0.01%.
And the ownership class in our nation, as the thread points out, paying the costs of the nation's infrastructure more than the poor who work in it and enrich the rich - unfair.
All the employees benefit from the infrastructure too - they get income by having a nice office building with clean toilets, so why shouldn't everyone chip in for the expense?
What we need is a 'flat infrastructure bill'. The company owner gets 5% in profits, he pays 5% of the office cost. The employee who makes 0.01%, pays 0.01%.
And the ownership class in our nation, as the thread points out, paying the costs of the nation's infrastructure more than the poor who work in it and enrich the rich - unfair.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
Ive never....bitched. Ever. What I have said numerous times is I'd like to see the lowest tax rate something like .5 or 1%. When I grew up, I learned to value a dollar. I learned that nothing comes for free, and if you GET something, you should GIVE something in return. Sometimes its proportional, sometimes its not.
Whats so unfair about that? Give those that use our tax money the most some ownership. Thanks for trying to demonize me though. Piss poor attempt.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
- 15,776
- 392
- 126
The working poor do pay federal payroll taxes, FICA and (name escapes me atm). In the 8% range as I recall, though I haven't checked in quite a while.
Edit: I should also point out the poor also pay sales taxes. They may or may not pay state income taxes depending on their individual state laws.
Just out of curiosity. . .We are tossing around this figure of 45% of Americans not paying anything at all in federal income taxes but where does this figure come from?
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
- 15,776
- 392
- 126
IRS data. It refers to the percentage of "Tax Units" with no federal income tax liability. A Tax Unit can be a single payer, a couple, head of household, etc. Something over 99% of tax units earning less than $10K have no federal income tax liability. It drops with income, but still the vast majority under $30K have no liability.
Just as a side note, when we're talking about those who pay no federal income taxes, that includes over 60% of large corporations. Funny that the people calling for "fairness" don't seem concerned about this. We also have the very wealthy paying a lower effective rate that the upper middle class, and much of the middle class, yet one again, not a peep about this either. Very interesting perversion of the word.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
xj0hnx
Diamond Member
- Dec 18, 2007
- 9,262
- 3
- 76
But they kind of are paying something in that they work, and produce for the economy for a lower wage. Indirect but still, I don't tihnk you could find anyone that if you asked them if they would rather move from paying no federal income tax and continuing to earn less than $28,000 per year to paying income tax and making $50,000+ a year that would stay in the lower bracket just so they could get a piddley $2,500 at the end of the year.
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
- 15,776
- 392
- 126
Agreed. My point is that they do pay some federal taxes, and at the moment those taxes actually go into the General Fund just like income taxes. Also per my edit, they pay sales taxes and often other taxes. While most don't pay income taxes, they largely are NOT getting away with paying no taxes at all.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
One of which is to pay big bonuses that are tax deductible for the corporations, others are to play games with companies where debt is moved around to where it eliminates taxes.
From David Cay Johnston (see my sig), my favorite commentator on matters of taxes and corprate abuses of the tax laws:
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
Not that I disagree with you as I have got squat for a raise for the past 2 years in a row and the year before that I got like 2% and the 2 years before that squat again, but I will point out that in order to get a raise there are 2 presumptions you have to make: 1) They have a job or 2) They don't have a job but want a job.
Now here's another problem I see which could contribute partly to why the pace of inflation is outpacing wage/salary growth for the working class folks. And by working class folks I'm going to lump together everybody in both salaried and hourly categories with a gross annual income of $100,000 or less. Now granted I am no eonomist and I don't hold any degrees in economics or anything like that so this is purely just me "thinking aloud" so to speak. But the thing I see is that, all things being relative, there is only so much that let's say. . .a burger flipper. . . is worth. It seems to me that at some point you have to just say on absolute terms that no, this job cooking hamburgers is not worth more than $X per hour and I don't care what the rate of inflation is. Inflation, on the other hand, knows no bounds. It can and will steadily increase.
Here's perspective. I used this calculator (cuz it's the thing I found by googling for annualized rate of inflation 1973 to present) to get the annualized rate of inflation from January 1973 to Dec 31 2008 and it tells me it is 4.5%. That means $1 today has roughly the same purchasing power that $.20 had in 1973 or vice versa, what cost you $1 in 1973 would cost you on average about $4.95 today. I picked 1973 only because that was the year somebody else quoted earlier saying that real wages had decreased every year since.
Now lets see what the minimum wage was in 1973 and assume a burger flipper in 1973 was making that amount per hour: $1.60 (taken from US dept. of labor)
Minimum wage today: $7.25.
This constitutes an increase of only 422% while you need 495% of what you had in 1973 to have kept up with inflation. There's a 73 percentile gap there. . .
I suppose you can do this exercise for any different time periods you choose using the calculator and the labor department historical minimum wage charts. But the thing is minimum wage workers are probably faring better off than salaried exempt workers in some regard because they are generally guaranteed that they will get a cost of living increase whenever the minimum wage increases because it is dictated by law. Salaried exempt workers, on the other hand, have slowly seen their standard of living eroded because they have no such guarantee and in general, if my own job is any indication of the larger trend, they are just getting poor slowly. The minimum wage workers are struggling to keep up but will never quite make it with one job while those of us who were a little better off are being gradually brought down.
Feel free to pick apart and shred my logic and thinking here because I know you guys can and will do so anyway. As I said, I'm not really making any firm assertions here as I'm not professing to be an economist but I'm just an average working guy playing with some numbers and commenting on what I see going on in the world around me. I'm sure there are any number of things that I may have failed to take into account which I'm sure you guys will be all to happy to point out.
People need to get rid of this "fair share" idea. If you don't know already, let me just tell you the world isn't fair. If you start talking this fair share business, first of all nobody can definitively tell you what is fair, and second of all depending of the definition of fair, rich can easily accuse the poor not paying and vice versa.
You need to focus on what's practical. Tax is nothing more than renue to support gov. program. All we need is a tax rate that supports gov. program that we all agree on. Nothing more, nothing less, not a tax rate based on fairness. You need tax rate that's competitive with the rest of the world so you don't lose the most productive people and companies. You need a tax system that's easy to practice so people don't waste tons of money to figure out what to pay, and you need a system that's hard to circumvent.
Why can't more people debate on these things instead of this stupid "fair" business.
You need to focus on what's practical. Tax is nothing more than renue to support gov. program. All we need is a tax rate that supports gov. program that we all agree on. Nothing more, nothing less, not a tax rate based on fairness. You need tax rate that's competitive with the rest of the world so you don't lose the most productive people and companies. You need a tax system that's easy to practice so people don't waste tons of money to figure out what to pay, and you need a system that's hard to circumvent.
Why can't more people debate on these things instead of this stupid "fair" business.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
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