Fleecing the rich

[Galt]

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Just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).

People are stupid because they hate evil, rich companies no matter what.

[Gooch]

makes me feel terrible,

[Arpikarhu]

http://www.fairtax.org

[Gooch]

Ahh, another hoodwinked suburbanite suckered by a conservative elitist-welfare scheme disguised as grassroots populism.

[Galt]

so you are against taxing actual spending as opposed taxing income. Do you realize that taxing income screws the middle class more than anything?

[Gooch]

I'm not against it. I just like riling you both up with some liberalism.

I just am not sure on the Americans For Fair Taxation group. I'd like a more transparent system than the awful IRS system and skewed and manipulated back and forth between Rupblicans and Dems that happens every few years. There definitely needs to be a better system.

Some info on some issues with Fair Tax:
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"We found that, whatever Americans for Fair Taxation’s intentions, there remains much confusion about the FairTax. "


I wasn't against Forbe's Flat Tax either. Just not so swayed by either final numbers, despite the grassroots push and energy.


Interesting Question and Answer between Huckabee and McCain on it:

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[Arpikarhu]

I'm not against it. I just like riling you both up with some liberalism.

Liberalism, america's way of saying socialism.

[Mad]

The good news is that overweight people tend to die faster, hence they cost less to insure in the long run.

[Galt]

Obesity-caused issues account for over 10% of the annual healthcare spend in the country.

[diceisgod]

Sickness-caused issues account for under 90% of the annual healthcare spent in the country.

Therefore, rich people pay most of the taxes...and by the way get zero government subsidies nor breaks which are bascially their own tax hits (and ours) funneled right back at them.

So let's see the FULL balance sheet & ledgers before we make any hasty calls about the poor "fleeced" Exxon execs out there who claim to foot "most" of the bill during tax season. Bollocks.

[Galt]

The "rich" (top 20% of income earners) get 26% of the benefit and pay 68% of the cost for the federal government

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[diceisgod]

The "rest" have been funding high technology research sectors for decades (still are) and moreover the developments and any associated infrastructure (again paid for by the "rest") have been handed over, straight given to the "rich" - which they very neatly and kindly charge the "rest" to utilize.

I still say let's see the FULL ledger and balance sheets as I find Bloody Anus's pie charts more convincing and informative than margarinized whatever the fuck dot com's.

[Galt]

who is the "rest"?

Are you saying the poor, who by definition have no money, are somehow making investments that the rich somehow are benefiting from?

Or are you saying that the government (funded with 70% of the "rich" people's money) has spent money for infrastructure which the rich have used to make money? If so, that "benefit" was captured in the Marginal Revolution link. And this "marginalwhatever" is run by Tyler Cowen, one of the most respected economists around.

[diceisgod]

I am unconvinced that the "rich" pay 70% of the taxes. That's the first thing.

Second, if it is correct (which I doubt) then what does that say about the relative incomes of the "rest" of the taxpayers in this country to that of the "rich"? Is that not a clue as to one saying to themselves: Hey, maybe this game is a bit loppsided?

If 70% is true, is there even a difference between the "rich" and the govt it funds nearly in full? And if no difference (and there isn't one in reality btw), do you trust these motherfuckers and expect these so-called benefits the "rest" of us indulge in will be around much longer?

And lastly, do you always try to stick up for the people who are dead-set on castrating you? This Tyler Cowen fellow, for example, I respect him about as far as I can ball him. Most especially so when he's set on creating absurd arguments about absurd issues when there are way bigger fish to fry. Sorry, but he's a propagandist, a servant of power, and a total jerkoff no matter how many polled Fortune 2000 company execs says he's the next Johnny Aces.

[diceisgod]

Wow. Just look at this guy's resume and background below from his wiki entry. Geobells couldn't touch this guy: Harvard grad, The NY Times, his rhetoric about "free markets" (might as well believe in Oompa Loopas), his shameless support for "globalization"...I can only guess there is more absurdity if one cares to dig into it. The guy's a tub of shit.

Tyler Cowen (COW-en) (b. January 21, 1962) occupies the Holbert C. Harris Chair of economics as a professor at George Mason University and is co-owner, with Alex Tabarrok, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. He currently writes the "Economic Scene" column for the New York Times

Education:
After graduating in 1983 with a B.S. from George Mason, in 1987 Cowen received his Ph.D. at Harvard, where he was mentored by 2005 Nobel Prize winner, game theorist, and Harvard professor Thomas Schelling.[1]

Books:
Cowen's primary research interest is the economics of culture and has written books on fame (What Price Fame?), art (In Praise of Commercial Culture) and cultural trade (Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures). In Markets and Cultural Voices, he relays how globalization is changing the world of three Mexican amateur painters. For Cowen, free markets change culture for the better, allowing them to evolve into something more people want. Other books include Public Goods and Market Failures, The Theory of Market Failure, Explorations in the New Monetary Economics, Risk and Business Cycles, Economic Welfare, and New Theories of Market Failure. His newest work, Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist, was published in August of 2007.

[Galt]

OK, the 70% issue. So if you don't believe that the top 20% of earners pay 70% of the burden, is it because you think that if it were true, it would be unfair that they pay so much?

It's quite easy to confirm the 70% number. It's quite common, government statistic.

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Wow, Wikipedia, the worlds #1 source for impartial information.

[diceisgod]

The percentage is irrelevant. So let's forget details. The entire argument that the rich is somehow being fleeced or taken advantage of by the govt is absurd. They run the govt and if they happen to foot most of the bill for it's general operations...then good and so bleepin what?

The governement is an impotent irrelevance as far as the 'rest" goes. It was bought and sold and controlled centuries ago and it's electric & gas bills don't concern me nor interest me (nor does any of this really but to keep things intersting i continue...).

The point is as i stated: The fleecing of the rich" argument serves no purpose...or rather...it serves no purpose that does anybody other than the "rich" any good. It's smoke, it's propaganda and it's sole purpose is to distract the "rest" from seeing the real fleecing.

You know all this already of course and you also know that as biased and skewed wiki is or might be, I'm sure the facts that Mr. Cowen is a product of harvard (Hitler U), writes for the NY Times periodically (a rag), and writes books about how "globalization" changed the lives of two painters in Bolivia (or whereever) & has overall had a "positive impact in changing cultures for the better" is still accurate. Not only are these things accurate I'll bet, these things also & definitely serve to completely render anything that he says or writes or posts on his site as complete & utter BUNG.

[Galt]

How often have you left your basement in Philly to actually see other areas of the world and realize how "globalization" has impacted their lives. Raising their standard of living doesn't necessarily mean that they are happier or living a more fulfilled life, but this "ooooh, evil" globalization is the reason why there is running water, electricity, and immunization in formerly sheltered, cut-off third world nations.

That jobs which are given by companies started in the US, somehow inherently "belong" to americans and are being "stolen" by people outside the US is a foolish concept.

You are still working on the assumption that this government benefits the rich by an unbalanced percentage. The numbers show that the governemnt is funded largely by the rich, while for the benefit of the not rich. Basically the rich get back 30% of what they put in.

That this country's economy enables people getting rich doesn't mean that it "benefits" the rich. If you are already rich, It taxes the rich at a much higher rate than those who aren't rich; it taxes investment income (which has already been taxed once) which also hurts the rich, and when you are die, it takes half of your money so your children can't get rich for nothing.

That the economy makes it so easy for someone to create wealth, and go from little or no money to a lot of money actually benefits the poor more than almost any other country out there. We have less of a caste system, and are run on a meritocracy than most any other nation on the planet.

You and Noam Chomsky can eat a dick up.

[diceisgod]

Just because you saw fireworks over the Kremlin on mushrooms doesn't make you and giggles Louis & Clark.

As I'm not interested in helping you sort out your ignorances, I will just say the following. For the most part (and incidentally having nothing to do with anything as far as globalization goes...you mentioned this irrelevance for whatever reason) you are correct in that the US has strengths and provides more vertical economic movement for it's people...domestically but selectively (chance and race and current economic status and other things that have weight in one's relative chances of "creating wealth").

Outside of the US though, we fuck people overseas directly, and - to tie it together in a real way and not just for the purposes of flag waving and boasting per your self-serving sidetracking tactic before - domestically we are indeed hit as well. The choice is pay a spic village pennies to put the car together or pay a unionized American labor force. Where does the $ diff go and how does this help anyone out other than the profitting?

So yeah, the rich have to worry about keeping their nest eggs in tact. Well, they better worry about that and they do...and not just about half their fortunes...as the worse-off the "rest" get, the rich need to watch their own hides' halves as well.

[Arpikarhu]

LEWIS and Clark, you illiterate, no-nothing hack.

stop cutting and pasting arguments from the tin-foil hat society.
your grasp of any facts is slippery and practically non-existent.