Why is taxing the rich considered so taboo by the non-rich?

[Throckmorton]

We The People have spoken. Working people told Obama to stop and stop him we did.

Time for broke fuckers to pay their fair share.

I pay $201.36 out of every $1521.50 paycheck in federal tax, $402.72 a month. I'd hate to see what my "fair share" is.

Edit: I was looking at a paycheck from before we started furloughs. Now I pay $180.35 in federal tax. $360.70 a month. I'd think $34.8k salary puts me in the lower middle class, maybe lower class. Yet I sure as hell am not paying zero taxes or gaining money from the tax code...

You want me to take home even less than $985.72? If you understood how little that was, maybe you'd be able to comprehend the fact that a $100 more or less tax actually makes a huge difference. A 10% tax increase means I pay an extra $145 per paycheck, and suddenly that paycheck doesn't even cover my rent.

For someone making $500k, those numbers are just that-- numbers on a piece of paper. For us non rich folks, they actually mean something.

 

[Throckmorton]

Are you fucking serious?

He lives in Libertarian Fantasyland.

 

[Craig234]

I think my comment went over your head. There are no monopolies because of the government.

While the government does and should primarily prevent monopoly, there are areas it has monopoly, generally for good reason.

It has monopoly on currency, monopoly on non-urgent mail delivery, monopoly in most criminal justice areas, monopoly on things like certifying drug safety, for example.

It has had monopoly on some other things, like certifying exclusive rights for importation on a product in the past.

Some on the right also express concern that the government enforces monopoly for a period of time of use of inventions under patents and copyrights.

 

[ElFenix]

Anybody who prefers Apple computers to Microsoft needs to understand that the only reason they're still alive is anti-trust considerations on the part of microsoft...

i guess you could argue that MS's missteps in the smartphone and mp3 player market were due to MS become very conservative after getting slapped around in the antitrust suit, but i dunno about that. MS did invest in apple with non-voting stock, did apple need that cash infusion?

 

[ElFenix]

Actually one of the new theories is that the Roman Empire collapsed not because they got weaker, but because their neighbors got stronger (largely through their prolonged contact with the empire).

So to take this analogy to its logical conclusion, we should regularly bomb the rest of the world into the stone age to keep them from overwhelming us.

it's interesting that people talk about the roman collapse as if the eastern half of the empire didn't exist for another ~1000 years (although it basically limped along for the final 400 of that). i suppose that's due to people in western europe trying to claim various heirships to the roman empire through the church or whatnot.

the western half of the empire was much poorer and much more sparsely settled. with mass migrations of germanic tribes and tribes from central asia going on it's not surprising that it couldn't hold out.

We The People have spoken. Working people told Obama to stop and stop him we did.

Time for broke fuckers to pay their fair share.

the republicans aren't going to make 'broke fuckers' pay their 'fair share' either.